FROM THE FOOTNOTES2PLATO ARCHIVE
Tag: science
Explore the evolving conversation, or begin with a guide to its central questions.
-
Platonic Space, Organic Agency, and Creative Evolution
One of the important ideas that Tim and I discussed last night was his threefold differentiation of the inquired (natural science), the speculative (metaphysics), and the prosaic (everyday experience). I…
-
To See a World in a Grain of Sand: Whitehead’s Participatory Realism
Craig C. Shelton has written an interesting critique of correspondence theory (The Illusion of Correspondence Theory) that converges somewhat with what I’ve also been calling participatory realism. We share a…
-
A History of Life from Plato and Descartes to Darwin and Lovelock (My Frontiers of Knowledge talk in Aspen, CO)
I was back in Aspen, CO this past weekend for the second annual Frontiers of Knowledge event at Wheeler Opera House. I presented alongside David Peña-Guzman (who you’ll hear in…
-
Why Natural Science Would Be Better Off Without Physicalist Metaphysics
I enjoyed my chat with James Faulk the other day. Here’s the video: I had a mustache for like 5 minutes a few years ago. I have had to accept…
-
Intelligent Design Meets Process Philosophy: My dialogue with Stephen Meyer
It was rather serendipitous that a media agent representing Stephen Meyer reached out to me several weeks ago, since the Discovery Institute’s work popularizing intelligent design had just been brought…
-
Human Consciousness in a Cybernetic Age: Or Why Logos is not a Loom
The following is a transcript of my talk last week at our Mind-at-Large Project’s inaugural conference, “A New Dawn.” Video of all the talks, including this one, will be available in a…
-
My Responses at Mind-at-Large Project’s “A New Dawn” Panel: Personhood, Participation, Imagination, and Mystical Theism
A recap of my remarks on Day 2’s Mind-at-Large Conference Plenary Panel (also featuring Ed Kelly and Iain McGilchrist, moderated by Curt Jaimungal). I repeat the questions when relevant so you will…
-
Peeling Back the Veils
LLM transcript of my chat with Seekers Mindtalks. Chapter 1: Exploring Reality and Consciousness [00:00] Raj: What if the way you experience reality isn’t reality itself? What if this constant feeling…
-
Transcending the Culture War by Recovering Participatory Theism (Dialogue with Nathan Hawkins)
Nathan Hawkins and I just finished a podcast recording (above) that I hope will contribute to amplifying the deeper notes that are still just barely audible beneath the surface noise of…
-
The Logical Animal – Earth to Humanity: Put Down Your Maps
The frogs are croaking on my left down in the Eel River, and on my right is the low roar of semis on the 101. This is nearly my last…
-
Truth in the Making: On the Possibility of Metaphysics in a World-in-Process
“…‘becoming’ is the transformation of incoherence into coherence.” -Whitehead (PR 25) “There is not one completed set of things which are actual occasions. For the fundamental inescapable fact is the…
-
Thinking With David Krakauer
Listening to David Krakauer on Jim Rutt’s “Worldview” podcast while making dinner made a few things snap into place for me. You can listen to it here: https://www.jimruttshow.com/david-krakauer-3/ I appreciate how…
-
Philosophies of Ontogenesis: Evolution by Artistic Selection
First, have a listen to Timothy Jackson’s recent Lepht Hand podcast about the ontogenetic stance: Then have a read of his essay on Darwin, Simondon, and Battaile and the importance of a…
-
There’s no scientific evidence that consciousness exists.
Evidence, in a scientific age, is usually thought of in a very specific way. We tend to assume evidence means empirical measurement: can I record this on a camera, or…
-
Patterns Are Not Puppeteers: The Return and Reformation of Platonic Form in Biology
I’ve discussed the return of Platonism in biology before. The following recounts some of what I discussed with Bonnitta Roy as a visitor at The Pop-Up School earlier today. The main driver…
-
From Substance to Creativity, Or on the Modernity That Could Have Been
Yesterday in my history of Western philosophy course, where my students are reading Richard Tarnas’ Passion of the Western Mind (1991), I lectured on a couple of seventeenth century philosophers in an…
-
Between the Speculative and the Prosaic: Life, Imagination, and Individuation
Timothy Jackson and I went deep into descendental philosophy and aesthetic ontology, core concepts developed in my last book Crossing the Threshold (2023). I try to argue against both scientistic neutrality and dogmatic…
-
The Return of Form in Biology: Thinking Through Platonic Morphospace
The mystery of biological form has led some biologists, most prominently Michael Levin, back to Plato’s theory of Ideas. Levin is driven primarily by the surprising empirical findings of his lab.…
-
Matter, Life, and Mind: Love as a Cosmological Power
This was recorded on Saturday, September 13, 2025 as part of the Frontiers of Knowledge event at Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, CO. Below is the recording and a lightly edited…
-
Birthing a New Cosmology (reflections on my dialogue with Alexander Beiner)
I enjoyed dialoguing with my friend Alexander Beiner this morning. The recording will be published on Kainos soon. He asked whether I had a sense for whether the atheistic, secular orientation in…
