Education is Moving in Radical Ways - A Conversation with Prof. Thomas Nail

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Jan 31, 2026

Thomas Nail, philosopher known for a philosophy of movement and migration studies. He traces migration to a broader theory of movement, interrogates Western stasis-minded thinking from Aristotle onward, and explores cosmogonies that start with chaos. They discuss how movement reframes education, attention, outdoor learning, metastability, and alternatives to classroom order.

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INSIGHT

Education Promotes Illusion Of Fixity

Industrialized schooling teaches the world as fixed objects rather than relational patterns.
This fosters an illusion of stasis that masks constant movement in reality.

ANECDOTE

Fieldwork With Migrant Activists

Thomas Nail described his Fulbright year organizing with No One Is Illegal in Toronto.
That direct activist research during migration crises shifted his thinking from migration to movement more broadly.

INSIGHT

Western Thought Favors An Unmoved Center

Aristotle and the Euro-Western tradition privilege a fixed center (the unmoved mover) over indeterminate movement.
This metaphysical desire for foundations systematically downplays movement and mobility.

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The following conversation is definitely a wild ride*! It's not an argument often made, but I believe that one of the effects of our industrialised education systems is to create the illusion that the world is full of somewhat fixed and ordered things, that don't move or change much. Of course, we teach our children about orbiting planets, the water cycle or change in historical periods. But, for example, in episode 208, Vanessa Andreotti gave a great example of how we name objects in the world, such as trees, in order to teach about them. In doing so, we draw a boundary around a tree that separates it from all non-trees. This sounds kind of philosophical and abstract, but I think the effects of it are very real. Most young people then learn to read the world as a collection of more or less fixed objects, rather than as patterns of relations.

My guest this week has been exploring the depths of these questions for a long time through the lens of movement. As you will hear, Professor Thomas Nail started this line of inquiry researching human migration, and went on to develop an entirely new discipline of the philosophy of movement by pulling at the threads of how far our collective obsession with order and stasis goes! And it definitely goes back at least a couple of thousand years!

Thomas Nail is a Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver and author of numerous books, including The Figure of the Migrant, Theory of the Border, Marx in Motion, Theory of the Image, Theory of the Object, Theory of the Earth, Lucretius I, II, III, Returning to Revolution, and Being and Motion.

Some useful links:

https://liberalarts.du.edu/about/people/thomas-andrew-nail

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nail

The Philosophy of Movement website: https://philosophy-of-movement.com/

'The Birth of Chaos Before Physis': https://youtu.be/c3S4w7C2dGg?si=H-1RlmaK7p3x7C4a

The Philosophy of Movement: https://www.youtube.com/live/YQUtX64uqNc?si=EeP3mP4Z-6_4-DK1

What is New Materialism paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337351875_WHAT_IS_NEW_MATERIALISM

'The Random Walk of the Brain' (article in Salon): https://www.salon.com/2021/08/28/walking-and-spontaneous-fluctuations-brain/

*In the conversation, Thomas uses the word 'cosmogony' which in hindsight I wished I had asked him to define. Simply put it is a theory about how the cosmos or universe originated.