Footnotes2Plato

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead

Tag: science

  • Fragments of a Romantic Theory of Evolution

    Darwin is supposed to have discovered something nowadays called “evolution” and to have laid to rest something nowadays called “creationism.” But if this is so, what are we to make of the theories of Schelling and Goethe in Germany, and of Coleridge in England, articulated several decades earlier than he? Their Romantic conception of the…

  • C. S. Peirce on Chaos and Law–On the Mystery of Naming the Real

    After Nature/Leon has brought my attention to a review of a new book, Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism by Paul Forster.  “[Peirce’s] opposition to nominalism motivated him as nothing else did and, as Forster shows, is central to his philosophical program. While Peirce’s argument against nominalism was strictly philosophical, his objection to it extended…

  • Coleridge and Scientific Realism

    I’m continuing to read Barfield’s book What Coleridge Thought (1971) with great excitement. Barfield includes two short chapters entitled “Ideas, Methods, Laws” and “Coleridge and the Cosmology of Science” wherein he attempts to say a bit about how Coleridge’s dynamic philosophy might be brought into conversation with contemporary natural science. It would be helpful, before…

  • Thinking with Hegel: Preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit

  • Remembering Creation: Towards a Christian Ecosophy

    “The Lord was born with me [Wisdom] at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. From everlasting I was established, from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth…Then I was beside Him, as a master artist, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the world,…

  • What is Enlightenment? – a response to Levi Bryant

    Bryant posted recently about how he would define the notion of “Enlightenment.” I agree with part of what he has to say, in that clearly Enlightenment does concern the bursting forth of critique. Where we seem to disagree is on the extent to which critique can ever lift itself entirely above the mythopoietic structure of the…

  • “We Scientists…” by John Cleese

  • Response to Knowledge-Ecology about Dawkins, Evolution, and Creationism

    Knowledge-Ecology recently posted his lament about the scientific ignorance of GOP presidential candidate Gov. Perry, who denies both evolution and climate change. Adam also mentioned his support for Richard Dawkins’ rebuttal. I might also count Dawkins as a political ally, but not as a cosmological ally. And since I, like Adam, struggle to avoid separating…

  • The Role of Imagination in the Science of the Stars

    Is the history of science a continuous progression from less to more accurate theories of physical phenomena? Or, as Thomas Kuhn suggested, is its history characterized by a discontinuous series of paradigm shifts? In the latter case, gradual “progress” occurs only locally within established theoretical frameworks until, through the sudden imaginative leap of a genius…

  • Stephen Hawking explains the universe over on PZ Myers’ blog

    I’ve jumped into a thread over at Pharyngula to offer my opinion of Hawking’s attempt to explain the Universe positivistically.

  • Religion and Philosophy: The God Problem

    The discussion continues over on Levi Bryant’s blog. Bryant agrees with me that Whitehead’s conception of God does not fall prey to many of the ethical and epistemological criticisms he levels against traditional theism. But he fails to understand the problem that Whitehead’s God is purported to have solved. Whitehead’s style of philosophizing has much…

  • Science, Art, Religion: The Role of Speculative Philosophy in the Adventure of Rationality

    I’ve just completed Isabelle Stengers‘ formidable but rewarding text, Thinking With Whitehead: A Free and Wild Creation of Concepts (2011). The final chapters concern the viability of Whitehead’s theology, specifically his articulation of the relationship between God and the World. Stengers’ asks the reader to go slowly while considering why a divine function became necessary…

  • Process Philosophy of Science

    I’m pasting a dialogue that I’m having on Facebook with Steven Goodheart here so others can chime in if they so please! ——————————————————————— Steven remarked that my comment about the paradox of science’s ancestral statements reminded him of Roger Penrose‘s somewhat Platonist take on the matter. I responded by saying: Steven, I think my statement…

  • Michael Persinger and the Extended Mind

    I’d like to follow up on my recent post about Michael Persinger’s research on the non-local electromagnetic aspects of consciousness. There is a growing contingent of cognitive scientists taking what has come to be called the “extended mind” theory quite seriously. Andy Clark is most associated with the idea, but Levi Bryant has been blogging…

  • Owen Barfield and Quentin Meillassoux

    Meillassoux and Barfield may at first seem like strange bedfellows, but by unmasking the pervasiveness of correlationism in post-Kantian philosophy, the former steps right into an issue that works its way into nearly all of Barfield’s published works. In perhaps the most complete and cogent explanation of his position, Saving the Appearances, Barfield writes: “…the…

  • The Decline Effect and the Scientific Method: newyorker.com

    The Decline Effect and the Scientific Method: newyorker.com. This is a big blow to big science. Apparently, the scientific method, with all its supposed statistical objectivity, is not as good at proving facts as you think. Is this just some sort of confirmation bias inherent to the process of publishing research findings, or is there…

  • Final Draft: Towards a Naturalistic Panentheism

    I finished the essay on the philosophy and anthropology of religion, called “Religion and the Modern World: Towards a Naturalistic Panentheism,” that I posted last week in rough draft form. Here is the conclusion: A naturalist panentheism builds its case for the existence and importance of God not upon logical or sensori-empirical proofs. Rather, the…

  • A taste of what’s to come…

    Two abstracts for the papers I am writing for courses on Carl Jung and the Philosophy of Relgion, respectively. ————————————————— “Uncovering the Unconscious: Psychology and the Soul” William James credits W. H. Myers with the discovery of “subliminal consciousness” (i.e., the unconscious) in 1886, a discovery James’ suggests is psychology’s most important insight into human…

  • Natural Science and Spiritual Science

    My recent comments on Pharyngula Excerpts from my comments: I should have written “all-loving” instead of “all-powerful” twice. Just a typo, nothing esoteric. The “etc.” was a placeholder for all the other typical attributes (infinite, eternal…). I wouldn’t say these attributions are necessarily incorrect, they are just inadequate descriptors. Cataphatic theology must be balanced by…

  • PZ Myers’ will never believe in God

    PZ Myers’ blog post: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/10/eight_reasons_you_wont_persuad.php Some excerpts from my comments (beginning around #403): The sort of god PZ has decreed impossible to believe in has little in common with Augustine’s, or Plotinus’, or Aquinas’, or with any other great theologian’s God. Natural science is epistemically closed to theological issues, not because they are unreal, but…

  • Consciousness: Problem, Paradox, or Practice?

    A quick contextualizing note for those who are just joining the tangled thread of my recent blogalogue concerning the nature of consciousness and its relationship with the nervous system and surrounding cosmos: Last month, Steve Ramirez, a PhD candidate at MIT, posted an entry on his blog (http://okaysteve.wordpress.com/) concerning neuroscience’s supposed successes explaining the “problem” of consciousness purely…