FROM THE FOOTNOTES2PLATO ARCHIVE
Tag: teleology
Explore the evolving conversation, or begin with a guide to its central questions.
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Music, Memory, and the Song of Life (dialogue with Karen Wong)
Karen Wong invited me on The Meaning Code again to discuss ideas we both find enriching. Below I’ll share a near transcript of some interesting tidbits, including discussion of Michael…
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Theoretical Archaeology Conference Abstract
Unfortunately, the track I was to participate in was canceled due to conflicts with another conference. But I wanted to share my abstract since I hope to develop some of…
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No Newton of the Grass Blade: On the impossibility of scientific genius in Kant’s “Critique of Judgment”
In preparation for a lecture on mind and nature in German Idealism, I’m working my way through Kant’s third of three critiques, the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790).…
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“Picking Holes in the Concept of Natural Selection” by Evan Thompson
The philosopher Evan Thompson (author of Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind) recently reviewed two books on the philosophy of biology: Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini’s What…
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Teleology in Science? Purpose in Nature?
I’ve just read Grant Maxwell’s critique of a HuffPo piece by Matthew Hutson. I enjoyed his rebuttal of Hutson’s blanket rejection realism regarding teleology. I am also enjoying the discussion…
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[Quantum Decoherence and the Incompleteness of Nature] The Relevance of Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism to Contemporary Scientific Cosmology
Quantum Decoherence and the Incompleteness of Nature “[Creativity] prevents us from considering the temporal world as a definite actual creature. For the temporal world is an essential incompleteness.” -Whitehead188 …
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Deacon’s Incomplete Nature (con’t.)
A week and a half ago, Jason/Immanent Transcendence posted the first volley of our summer reading group on chapter zero of Terence Deacon’s Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter (2012). In…
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Purpose in Living Systems
Levi Bryant and I have been going back and forth over at Larval Subjects about the role of formal and final causation in the explanation of living systems. He argues…
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Aristotle and the historical myopia of science
Another response to PZ Myers’ blog. I’m responding to this fellow in particular: Aristotle decided observation was irrelevant? Are you joking? If we are going to base physics on…
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Seeing With Teilhard: Evolution and the Within of Things
Preface “Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.” –Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of…
