Tag: science
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Psychedelics, Society, and Reality
That tweet came after I listened to several episodes of the recent NYMag/Psymposia podcast series “Power Trip.” Having now finished the series and shared a mixed review, I wanted to collect further thoughts on the subject. The NYMag/Psymposia series focuses on the dangers of both underground and clinically regulated psychedelic psychotherapy. The basic criticisms being…
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Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot: Complete Seminar (Sessions 1-9)
Above is an embedded playlist featuring all 9 of the Eastman Seminars that I facilitated for the Science Advisory Committee of the Cobb Institute from June 2021 through February 2022. Tim Eastman, a plasma physicist and philosopher, is the author of Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context (2020). These seminars invited other scholars…
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Process Philosophy and Metamodernism with Brendan Graham Dempsey
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Tim Eastman Wrap-Up Session: Quantum Physics, Process Philosophy, and the Simulation Hypothesis
We wrapped up our 9-part seminar series on plasma physicist and philosopher Timothy E. Eastman’s book over the weekend. Above is the recording of the final session, which included responses by Michael Epperson and me, followed by a really great dialogue among the other participants. The simulation hypothesis came up and was challenged in light…
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Next Week: Physics of the World-Soul at the Open and Relational Theology Conference
Next Saturday, Feb. 19 I’ll be hearing from four respondents who will assess my recent book on Whiteheadian cosmology Physics of the World-Soul (SacraSage, 2021). Tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ortline-tickets-219336089147 Schedule: 9am EasternRory Randall, An Open Theist Renewal Theology: God’s Love, The Spirit’s Power, and Human Freedom– Panelists: Joshua Reichard, Steve Harper, Chris Baker, Monte…
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![Review of Timothy E. Eastman’s ‘Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context’ [DRAFT]](https://footnotes2plato.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/51yfucb2gml.jpeg?w=855)
Review of Timothy E. Eastman’s ‘Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context’ [DRAFT]
Click here for a PDF of this review, published in Process Studies. …. TIMOTHY E. EASTMAN, Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2020: 344 pages. [Reviewed by: MATTHEW D. SEGALL, Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program, California Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission Street, San Francisco, California, 94103, USA. <msegall@ciis.edu>.] …
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Returning to Cassette Tapes to dialogue with Will July about abiogenesis, the afterlife, and everything in between
It was great to chat with Will again on his podcast Cassette Tapes. Check it out here: https://www.cassettespodcast.com/episodes/30-matt-segall
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The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process Philosophy and the Hot Spring Hypothesis
I just sent a draft of this coauthored essay off to the editors. Astrobiologist Bruce Damer and I have been building toward this for a few years. I’m thrilled to have gotten it to this point, and looking forward to peer review! The essay will be featured in a book coming out of this conference…
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Goethe and Whitehead: Steps to a Science of Organism
This essay was slated to be published in the Holistic Science Journal, but it looks like it will end up somewhere else later this year. I’ve been sitting on it for a while, though, and wanted to share it here. Feedback welcome. “Goethe and Whitehead: Steps to a Science of Organism” (2021):
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Zombie Evolution (reply to Sean Carroll)
The physicist Sean Carroll was recently on the Mind Chat podcast hosted by the philosophers Keith Frankish and Philip Goff. Watch it here. I uploaded a brief interpolation of my own on YouTube, which among other things calls out the model-centrism at play in Carroll’s “Core Theory.” Earlier today, Carroll uploaded a blog post to…
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“Another End of the World is Possible” by Servigne, Stevens, and Chapelle
“How could we call ‘rational’ an ideal of civilization guilty of a forecasting error so massive that it prevents parents from leaving a habitable world to their children?”—Bruno Latour “The system is collapsing all around us just at the time when most people have lost the ability to imagine that anything else could exist.” —David Graeber…
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Towards a Mycological Metaphysics
The mycologist Merlin Sheldrake recently published Entangled Life (2020). The book revels in the power of fungi to “make us question our categories,” thereby “[changing] the way we think and imagine” (14, 214). A few pages in, Merlin defines mycelium as a process, rather than a thing (6). I am inclined to agree. As a…
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HomeBrewed Christianity podcast with Tripp Fuller
Had a great time discussing Whitehead’s cosmology with Tripp. Check it out here: https://trippfuller.com/2021/09/13/matthew-segall-cosmology-consciousness-and-whiteheads-god/ We discussed topics including: the allure of Whitehead’s vision of mind in nature (knowledge as ‘an adjunct within things known’) the potential of a process engagement with different natural scientific problems, including the origins of life the problems with reductionism what…
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Goethe’s Study of Metamorphosis in Light, Leaf, and Bone
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Science and the Soul of the World: Participatory Knowing in Goethe and Whitehead
a talk delivered for the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at CIIS.edu on Friday, January 29th, 2021.
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Science and the Soul of the World: Participatory Knowing in Goethe and Whitehead
I’m teaching for Schumacher College again, this time online. This course focuses on two towering exemplars of the organic approach to science, the German poet and naturalist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). The course will run via live video conference on Saturday mornings (PST) for…
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Thinking Cosmologically with Whitehead
Below is a presentation on Whitehead’s contributions to the natural sciences for the Cobb Institute several weeks ago. My talk is followed by some remarks by plasma physicist Timothy Eastman (editor of https://www.sunypress.edu/p-3844-physics-and-whitehead.aspx):
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Naturphilosophie as Process Philosophy in Schelling and Whitehead
Christopher Satoor and I discussed Schelling, his German Idealist context, and Whitehead’s inheritance of Schellingian ideas about mind and nature.
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Parsimonious Panpsychism? (response to Julian Walker)
This following is copied from a Facebook post Julian Walker made in response to Bruce Alderman’s defense of panpsychism (in the “Integral 2.0” group). I wanted to weigh in (my comments are below): “PANPSYCHISM is not more PARSIMONIOUS than EMERGENTISM (Reply to Bruce on his thoughts about the David/Matthew debate) In a way I hear…
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What is at stake in cosmological inquiry?
Some reflections after my debate with David Long. Also riffing on what I wanted to speak with John Vervaeke about (our dialogue should be posted on John’s channel in a few weeks).
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How is Natural Science Possible?: Whitehead’s first lecture at Harvard
I read Whitehead’s first lecture at Harvard, delivered in September 1924, which focuses on the metaphysical possibility of modern natural science. This lecture was just published in Process Studies 48.2; here’s the scan of the original that Whitehead read. Here’s a link to the interview of Lynn Margulis I mention at the beginning.
Footnotes2Plato 