Footnotes2Plato Podcast

In this session, Tim Jackson and I discuss Hans Jonas’ book The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. We focus in particular on two chapters, “Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism” and “Is God a Mathematician?” Our aim was to explore how Jonas, emerging from an existential–phenomenological and religious–philosophical context, offered both criticisms and appreciations of Darwin’s ideas, and how his reading aligns or conflicts with more nuanced approaches in contemporary biology. Background and Context: Jonas’s Project and Our MotivationsI began by introducing Jonas’ unique intellectual background. Jonas studied under Martin Heidegger in the 1920s, having initially hoped to study with Edmund Husserl. Jonas was forced to flee Germany in the early 1930s in response to the rise of Nazism. He eventually joined the British forces in World War II, fighting against the Nazis, then later participated in the events surrounding the founding of Israel. This harrowing personal history shaped Jonas’ sense of moral urgency, infusing his philosophical work with a passionate interest in ethics, existential meaning, and the metaphysical underpinnings of scientific views—especially Darwinism. His earlier scholarship on Gnosticism influenced his claims that modern materialist science risked lapsing into a form of nihilism uncannily reminiscent of Gnostic cosmologies.By situating Jonas in this intellectual and historical matrix, I wanted to emphasize that The Phenomenon of Life is less a work of straightforward philosophy of science. Rather, it is an “existential interpretation of biological facts,” as Jonas puts it in his preface, using a Heideggerian lens to read evolutionary theory and modern mechanistic science in light of broader religious–philosophical concerns. Jonas’ major preoccupation is how Darwin’s proposals—and, more broadly, mechanistic materialism—were received by culture at large, becoming entangled with nihilist or purely reductionistic views of nature. Modern scientific materialism, Jonas claimed, diminishes or eliminates purpose, interiority, and freedom in the organic realm.Throughout our dialogue, Tim and I recognized that Jonas’ reading of Darwinism often differs significantly from Darwin’s own nuanced statements. Our motivation, then, was partly to clarify where Jonas’s approach caricatures Darwin, conflating Darwin’s original texts with the more rigid “neo-Darwinian” trends of the mid-twentieth century. Meanwhile, Tim, as a practicing biologist, expressed concern that Jonas’ depiction of Darwin as purely mechanical and anti-teleological overlooks Darwin’s more processual, open-ended, and in important ways teleological reflections.Jonas’s Reading of Darwin: Existential Phenomenology Meets BiologyJonas’s Phenomenon of Life contains two chapters central to our discussion. The first, “Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism,” critiques how Darwinism supposedly subjugates all life to mechanistic explanations. Jonas contends that Darwin (and, more precisely, Darwinism’s cultural reception) eliminates teleology altogether by attributing all organic form to the haphazard generation of variations and the “negative” selection that merely eliminates maladapted forms. As Jonas frames it:“[Natural Selection] is a negative substitute for teleology. It accounts for the disappearance only, and not for the emergence of forms. It suppresses and does not create. Thus it replaces teleology as a directing principle only on condition that it is offered the suitable material to select from.”Tim and I both remarked that Jonas’ language here—referring to new variations as “freaks” or “aberrations” and describing selection as a purely external winnower—echoes the mid-century “modern synthesis” or “neo-Darwinian” line rather than Darwin’s own more fertile and open-ended accounts. Jonas appears to criticize Darwin for diminishing the organism’s agency, describing evolution as a product of blind, implacable environmental demands shaping random mutations. I noted again that Jonas, as an existential–phenomenological thinker, is worried less about Darwin’s precise biology and more about the broader metaphysical chill he sees in modern culture: an environment in which humanity, stripped of inherent purpose, lapses into a nihilistic mode reminiscent of Gnostic alienation.Tim’s Critique: Salvaging Darwin from MisreadingsTim took care to point out that Jonas’ reliance on the “received view” of Darwinism omits crucial details of Darwin’s Origin of Species and later writings. Darwin himself, Tim stressed, was not a systematic philosopher, nor was he a “mechanist” in the strict sense. Rather, Darwin studied variation in nature in enormous empirical detail, highlighting individual differences, organismic behaviors, and the capacity of living beings to shape their own evolutionary trajectories. He recognized, for instance, that organisms do not merely submit passively to a stable, imposing environment. The environment, in Darwin’s eyes, is largely comprised of other organisms who bring their own purposes—hunting, mating, feeding preferences—into the interplay of natural selection.In effect, Darwin’s “environment” is hardly a blind external force. It is shot through with purposeful activity at the level of many species interacting, and with emergent forms of adaptation. As Tim put it: “What is the environment for Darwin? Mostly other organisms. They have their own desires, drives, and preferences. That is hardly a pure mechanism.”Tim further explained how Darwin allowed for something akin to “immanent teleology.” Though Darwin did not use the term “teleology” explicitly in a robust, Aristotelian sense, he spoke of the purposeful activities of animals—preferences in feeding, strategies in predation, mate choice—that fundamentally shape how selection operates. Additionally, Darwin, prior to Mendelian genetics, was relatively open-minded about variation’s sources, invoking the inheritance of acquired characteristics and use–disuse patterns. Tim agreed with me that some of these ideas display a more Lamarckian flavor, showing that Darwin was hardly the staunch mechanist that later neo-Darwinists or gene-centric theorists made him out to be. Jonas, perhaps understandably, conflates Darwin with that narrower, mid-twentieth-century version of evolutionary theory that indeed subordinates organismic creativity to random mutation plus external winnowing.Teleology, Variation, and Emergent FormOur conversation repeatedly circled back to teleology. Jonas’ core accusation is that Darwin, as typically interpreted, banishes any final cause or immanent teleology from organic life. Instead, all new forms are “accidents” due to undirected variation that are then tested and selected by external environmental filters. I described how Darwin inherited the “design paradigm” from his former teacher, the natural theologian William Paley. Rather than God being the designer, that role is given to Nature by Darwin (the source of form being the environment rather than God). Tim seemed to agree that Darwin does at least emphasize external sources of form, even if he also acknowledges the organism’s own behavior as active in its own evolution.Tim pointed out that, for Darwin, variation itself is an expression of organismic agency and plasticity, not simply random. I mentioned the spherical shapes of micelles and the appearance of certain mathematical patterns—like the “phi ratio” in phyllotaxis—as cases of “order for free” that might be subsequently subject to selection. Tim then suggested that, if one generalizes Darwin’s principle in line with thinkers like Charles Sanders Peirce or Alfred North Whitehead, natural selection can be extended beyond biology to show how constraint and self-organization interact with selection-like processes even in physics and chemistry. Understood in this broader way, variation and selection become part of a generative schema of immanent form-production, not just a set of blind mechanics that weed out unfit mutations. Misconceptions of Mechanism and the Legacy of Cartesian DualismFor Jonas, Cartesian dualism and the mechanical philosophy underpin a conception of matter as mere extended substance—lifeless and purposeless—and a conception of mind as wholly removed from nature. Darwin’s demonstration that humanity evolved from animal forebears did, Jonas concedes, overthrow one bulwark of dualism. Yet Jonas contends that Darwinian biology remains mired in a mechanistic worldview, failing to account for genuine interiority and teleology.Tim and I emphasized the partial truth in Jonas’s analysis: historically, many biologists, craving the prestige of physics (“physics envy”), indeed tried to reduce living phenomena to clockwork processes or gene-based instructions. However, Darwin himself took a less reductionistic approach. Darwin was not imposing a precise blueprint upon nature but describing how purposive behaviors, preferences, and local constraints yield emergent patterns of speciation. Rediscovering an Immanent Teleology and Broader Philosophical ResonancesI touched on how Aristotle had conceived an immanent teleology, where living forms develop from within by virtue of an entelechy driving their internal processes. Jonas, for his part, yearned to reassert some version of this Aristotelian perspective without reverting to classical hylomorphism or dogmatic essentialism. My sense is that Jonas, caught up in the existential crisis of late modernity, saw an urgent need to restore purpose, value, and inwardness to a world threatened by nihilism. His own approach was an attempt to bridge Aristotle, Kant, and Heidegger with contemporary biology, albeit sometimes at the cost of unfairly flattening Darwin into the foil of a “materialist threat.”Meanwhile, Tim reminded me that a close reading of Darwin reveals abundant room for the organism to direct its own evolution. Darwin wrote extensively on animal behaviors, local adaptations, and reciprocal relationships that speak to co-creation, not a fixed environment imposing design by negation. Modern complexity theorists have taken these insights further, highlighting how variation and selection act alongside emergent order, morphological constraints, and even convergent evolutionary trends.Concluding Reflections: A Synthesis in ProgressOur dialogue underscores how Jonas’s philosophical biology and Darwin’s evolutionary vision can be mutually enriching if read carefully. Jonas offers a salutary warning: read superficially, Darwin’s ideas can indeed tip into a vision of “mindless, purposeless algorithmic” selection—a view popularized by several late-twentieth-century biologists and philosophers (eg, Dennett, Dawkins). This reading justifies the cultural impression of Darwinism as an acid dissolving any notion of cosmic meaning. Yet Darwin’s own texts, especially when read in the context of thinkers like Whitehead or Peirce, open onto the possibility that teleology is not an external imposition but a creative principle intrinsic to living organisms, thus at least affirming many teloi if not a Grand Telos.If Jonas sometimes glossed over scientific nuances, it may reflect his deeper existential concerns. He sought a new cosmological narrative that locates intrinsic value and interiority in nature, and that calls human beings to become morally responsible for Life, thus pushing back against the neo-Gnostic sense of cosmic alienation and the Nietzschean celebration of an amoral will to power. Darwin, ironically, can aid this quest if we appreciate his rich references to the agency of organisms, their mutual influences, and his resolute rejection of fixed essences.From my vantage, modernity is not the “adulthood” of humanity so much as its “adolescence.” In earlier European history—during the ancient and medieval periods—humanity still drew upon a transcendent source of meaning and value. The break from that source in modern times, however necessary for our maturation, has unleashed a rebellious, adolescent phase: technology, for instance, has amplified our capacity for violence even as it distances us emotionally from its consequences.I believe our current task is to move past this tumultuous adolescent stage and into a genuine adulthood. That means recovering what was vital in ancient thought—its sense of higher purpose—while integrating it with the epochal breakthroughs of modern science. The goal, as I see it, is to recognize that our humanity is not fixed but “in the making,” perpetually unfolding. At the same time, we need a sense of moral or spiritual allurement, cosmic sources of significance that can guide us through our evolutionary adventure, so that we are not simply falling through empty space, as Nietzsche’s image of modern dislocation suggests. These lures must be real enough to anchor our values without descending into dogma or rigid “preformations.”Historically, liberals have sometimes treated moral progress as a given, reducing values to mere common sense preferences. That leaves us unprepared for surging political movements that shatter the veneer of consensus. We can reclaim the metaphysical foundations that once supported moral ideals, but only on the far side of the existential confrontation with nihilism. The renewal of cosmic meaning requires going through disenchantment, not regressing to the pre-scientific security of childhood innocence. The “adulthood” I envision involves finding a balance between openness to novelty and discovery, and a deeper transpersonal (that is, personal plus) anchor that overarches the fragmenting pressures of personal preference. It is a daunting project, but I hope that dialogues like these help us chart the path forward. Get full access to ☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾ at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

I was joined again by Pedro Brea (we discussed Bergson and Whitehead a few weeks ago) and now also by Jack Bagby (a colleague of mine at CIIS). We discussed Jack’s translation of Bergson’s lectures on Plotinus (1898-99). We also discussed an essay by Wayne J. Hankey on Bergson and Plotinus. Although I had previously known Plotinus influenced Bergson, our discussion highlighted how profoundly Bergson resonated with Plotinus’ psychology. Bergson emphasizes that, for Plotinus, consciousness arises as a kind of diminution or limitation, contrasting sharply with modern conceptions of consciousness as an epiphenomenon added onto neural activity.Pedro raised several intriguing points, including Bergson’s notion of matter as an ever-renewing present, the active role of intelligence in shaping perception, and the place of mysticism in Bergson’s thought. We agreed that mysticism serves as a foundational philosophical insight for both Plotinus and Bergson.We discussed the challenge of determinism, with Jack noting Bergson’s criticism of Plotinus and Leibniz as implying that the future is fully predetermined within monads or intelligibles. I agreed, highlighting Leibniz’s monads as pre-established harmonies containing all their representations, which contrasts dramatically with Bergson’s and Whitehead’s metaphysics of creativity.Pedro drew connections between Nietzsche’s will to power and Plotinus’s metaphysics. We reflected on how Nietzsche might have misunderstood or caricatured Plotinus as overly life-denying. Jack and I both suggested a more nuanced reading: although Plotinus does see embodiment as a limitation, he still dignifies embodied experience as valuable, even if subordinate to contemplation.A significant part of our discussion involved examining Bergson’s metaphysics of matter and memory and its relationship to Plotinus’s concepts of soul and body. I argued there is a crucial parallel between Plotinus’s conception of matter as the unlimited lower principle and the One as the unlimited higher principle, suggesting a possible reconciliation of matter and spirit. Pedro connected this to Simone Weil’s Pythagorean idea of matter as simultaneously barrier and connection between the soul and the One.We expanded on Bergson’s notion of the élan vital, relating it to Plotinus’s Logos as a dynamic, generative principle of life and intuitive thought. We discussed the Stoic roots of this idea, agreeing that for both Plotinus and Bergson, reality is fundamentally dynamic and relational.I raised questions about terminology, particularly Bergson’s translation referencing Plotinus’s notion of the “audacity” of the soul, speculating that the Greek root might imply something closer to hubris or an act of individuation against divine unity.Jack clarified some misconceptions about Aristotle’s concept of matter (hyle), emphasizing that Aristotle’s matter is never simply passive, but dynamic, forceful, and full of potentialities, akin to Bergson’s vision of materiality. I compared this to Plato’s concept of the receptacle in the Timaeus, suggesting Plato may also grant matter a more active and vibratory role than is often recognized.Video of our dialogue: Get full access to ☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾ at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

The title of the article Ben Snyder and I are discussing is "The Objectivity of Whitehead's Propositions: An Explication of the Truth-Relation" in Process Studies 53 (2):256-274 (2024).Overview of Ben’s Main ArgumentBen begins with a summary of his paper’s main argument, which I’ll try to capture below.Propositions, for Whitehead, are more than statements in language: they are metaphysical “lures” composed of actual entities (as logical subjects) and an eternal object (as the predicate). A proposition is true if those actual entities really exemplify the predicate in question.Ben criticizes views that treat a proposition’s truth-value as contingent upon how some subject feels or entertains it. He notes that some scholars (eg, Isabelle Stengers, Brian Massumi and Erin Manning, and others) have implied that Whitehead’s propositions are not truth-bearing until a subject prehends them. Ben argues this misreads Whitehead.Ultimately, Ben sees Whitehead as arguing for a common-sense style correspondence theory: a proposition is about real individuals and states of affairs in the world, and it is true or false depending on whether that structure of logical subjects + predicate is exemplified. Although Whitehead’s exact language is different from standard analytic philosophies of language, the underlying shape of the theory remains objectively anchored.I find Ben’s framing compelling. From my vantage point, he effectively demonstrates that Whitehead’s texts do contain a fairly robust realism about propositions, contrary to purely subjectivist or relational stances. However, I also voice additional concerns about the role God plays in his account of truth. Whitehead’s scheme includes the “primordial nature of God,” which grades eternal objects in terms of relevance via conceptual prehension, and the “consequent nature of God,” which physically prehends the many actual occasions of the world. My reading of Whitehead is that a proposition only gains its impartial truth-value in God’s consequent unification of the nexus of occasions composing the universe.Thus, while no finite particular subject is needed to determine a proposition’s truth, there must still be a universal subject (God) whose all-inclusive prehension grounds the objective unity of propositions across time. We also discuss how Whitehead’s theory of propositions deals with future facts. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as “future facts,” since the universe is a creative advance and genuinely novel actual entities are arising all the time. So particular propositions about the future can’t be true or false “now,” in the usual sense, because you can’t have a proposition about an actual entity that doesn’t exist.Whitehead does allow for general propositions about how future entities will conform to or diverge from the past. We note that Whitehead integrates a sophisticated account of statistical induction and non-statistical abduction (to borrow Peirce’s term). Non-statistical abduction relies upon the ordering of relevance provided by God’s primordial nature, suggesting that we can have a meaningful (though fallible) basis for anticipating how novelty will ingress in the future, not just by repeated patterns (efficient causes) but by a final cause (the lure of higher intensities or novel contrasts). In other words, instead of a purely random guess, Whitehead affirms final causality via God’s primordial nature instilling a sense of which eternal objects might intensify harmony or beauty, so novelty is guided rather than arbitrary. In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead suggests that this is how his metaphysics accounts for least action principles in physics. I asked Ben whether he thought a proposition that is false now can become true in a subsequent occasion if the world comes to exemplify that possibility. This leads us to puzzle over whether truth-values can change over time.Whitehead’s idea of a proposition as a lure accommodates novelty: an occasion can entertain a possibility that is not exemplified in the immediate past. If that possibility is taken up into the satisfaction of a concrescent occasion, subsequent occasions may indeed actualize something akin to that novelty—leading to related but technically new propositions that can be true of new entities.Overall, I appreciate how Ben’s article reaffirms the objectivity of propositions—that Whitehead really does mean for truth and falsity to be anchored in how actuality exemplifies (or fails to exemplify) certain determinate characteristics. Yet the conversation highlights how much Whitehead’s system remains broader than a simple “naive realism.” Indeed, God’s primordial and consequent natures complicate how truth is realized or felt.I would say Ben and I maintain a fruitful tension on these questions. While Whitehead maintains a classic-seeming correspondence theory of truth, I want to keep pressing on the theological side—particularly the question of whether Whitehead’s account of objective truth could ever be unmoored from the ultimate “universal subject” (God) who harmonizes all propositions. Get full access to ☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾ at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Plato’s Timaeus rivals the Bible as one of the West’s most generative texts. It represents an ambitious synthesis, integrating earlier philosophical perspectives into a complex cosmological myth that attempts to build a bridge between the sensible and intelligible realms.Tim and I plan to devote an entire session to the Timaeus itself at some point, but in this dialogue we focused on Schelling’s 1794 Timaeus essay and a contemporary article by Tyler Tritten titled “On Matter: Schelling’s Anti-Platonic Reading of the Timaeus.” Schelling began reading Plato in the original Greek in his early teens. Written when he was 19, his Timaeus essay turns a Kantian lens on the ancient dialogue, offering a creative inversion of traditional interpretations of Platonism as a two-world dualism.In the Timaeus, Plato tries to synthesize the theory of forms (the realm of intelligible Ideas) with the so-called “necessity” or “unruly materiality” that resists purely rational ordering. This “necessity,” or ananke in Greek, is linked to chance, contingency, and the factor of reality that cannot be fully subdued by intellect. Timaeus’s cosmology therefore offers us a “likely story” rather than a definitive, perfectly self-consistent explanation.Tim and I stressed that Plato’s text is both generative and problematic: it invites centuries of interpretation. Philosophers from Schelling to Jung to Whitehead read it in ways that highlight the difficult “third” element—a mediating factor between perfect Ideas and raw matter.We noted how the chōra is depicted as feminine (“nurse,” “mother,” “wet nurse of becoming”) in contrast to the demiurgic paternal principle. In Timaeus’s mythic language, the “Father of all” (the divine craftsman) shapes the “Mother” (the chōra), yet that motherly power also stands on its own as a matrix of possibility. Tim emphasized that in a modern mechanistic reading, matter is often taken as purely passive, yet Plato’s “necessity” (and the generative chōra) has a strange autonomy—an “unruly” or “wandering cause” that cannot be perfectly harnessed by the divine intellect. Where Plotinus privileges the One or Intellect as highest, Schelling often suggests that Soul or Nature (the dynamic, living principle) is prior in certain respects—even a co-eternal ground with Intellect. He says one can have Soul without Intellect but not Intellect without Soul, thus elevating the animating, vital power that mediates between forms and matter.We compared Plato’s cosmology to the mechanistic turn in modern science, noting how figures like Newton preserved a Platonic sense of eternal laws in a “moving image of eternity.” However, Newton canceled the living dimension of matter and replaced the Timaean chōra with the fully deterministic geometry of homogeneous space. More recent scientific developments—statistical mechanics, evolutionary theory, theories of self-organization, and complexity science—are reversing the Newtonian-Laplacian program by reintroducing genuine contingency, creativity, and open-ended evolution back into our cosmology.We stressed the importance of recognizing a continuity between physics and biology, matter and life, but without trivializing the emergence of organisms and consciousness. Get full access to ☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾ at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Earlier today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Pedro Asmar de Lucas Brea, who reached out to me about his research on Bergson and energy. Pedro is a lecturer at the University of Colorado Boulder in the Herbst Program for Engineering Ethics and Society, and also a lecturer at the University of Colorado Denver in Philosophy. He holds a PhD in philosophy, but originally majored in physics as an undergraduate. Near the end of his physics studies, he experienced severe depression, which he eventually realized was a side effect of the worldview of scientific materialism that came along with his physics training. His healing began when he started studying philosophy, especially the existentialists, beginning with Nietzsche. Eventually, he discovered Bergson and decided to mount a critique of scientific materialism by focusing on the reality of time and change in his dissertation.Pedro laid out how his dissertation addresses energy using a Nietzschean genealogical approach, tracing the concept from the ancient Greeks through early Christianity to modern thermodynamics. Nietzsche features in his second chapter, and Bergson in the third. The dissertation tries to overcome the mechanistic worldview by giving change its ontological due and showing how materialistic science has not taken the reality of time seriously. Part of his personal journey involved Nietzsche freeing him from the rigid will to truth that led him into nihilism, then Bergson giving him the metaphysical tools to engage with physics so as to deconstruct materialistic metaphysics from the inside out.I asked him whether reading Nietzsche helped relieve his depression. “Reading Nietzsche makes you want to run up a mountain,” he said, describing it as empowering but somewhat limited for deeper engagement with physics. Bergson, by contrast, provided a fuller philosophical framework for taking time seriously, especially in Matter and Memory. We also discussed his more recent turn toward ethical questions, mysticism, and the notion of the Good, as found in thinkers like Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, and Plotinus.I shared my own reflections on Bergson and Whitehead, pointing out that Whitehead attempted to save Bergson’s mode of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism. I noted that Whitehead’s idea of “actual occasions” posits a discrete yet non-instantaneous pulse of becoming—a concept that might offer a more systematic account of how time and creativity work. It is not easy to tease out how this differs from Bergson’s sense of a continuous though heterogeneous flow of duration. We discussed how Whitehead tries to reconcile quantum discontinuity with spatiotemporal continuity, while Bergson is more emphatic about maintaining the continuity of duration as a qualitative multiplicity.We plan to continue the conversation by reading Bergson’s lectures on Plotinus—which have been recently translated by my colleague at CIIS, Jack Bagby.Watch the video of our dialogue: Get full access to ☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾ at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

“In one sense philosophy does nothing. It merely satisfies the entirely impractical craving to probe and adjust ideas which have been found adequate each in its special sphere of use. In the same way the ocean tides do nothing. Twice daily they beat upon the cliffs of continents and then retire. But have patience and look deeper; and you find that in the end whole continents of thought have been submerged by philosophic tides, and have been rebuilt in the depths awaiting emergence. The fate of humanity depends upon the ultimate continental faith by which it shapes its action, and this faith is in the end shaped by philosophy.”-Alfred North Whitehead (from “How is Natural Science Possible?”, his first lecture at Harvard University in September 1924)Metaphysical speculation, and the invention of new concepts for the elucidation of practical experience (which Whitehead tells us is the “sole justification for any thought” [PR 4, 13]), may take thousands of years to become culturally effective, whether in politics, in science, in religion, or in art. New ideas can lay dormant for millennia before achieving full ingression into not only the deterritorialized imaginations of a few savants but the behavioral habits of whole civilizations. On the other hand, history is punctured by revolutionary disruptions in all four domains of free human expression (politics, science, religion, and art) when our common sense interpretations of experience (both social and individual) are transformed nearly overnight. Charles Hartshorne argued that Whitehead’s concept “prehension” took over two millennia to emerge in Western thought because of deeply entrenched bad habits of thought. Meeting with Tim to discuss the metaphysical implications of Whitehead’s immaculate conception was not so much an escape from the political chaos of our times (which I admit I am struggling to comprehend), but rather an example of the value of practicing philosophy as a means of instigating a revolutionary transformation of the failed experiential hermeneutic responsible for the sorry state of our late modern so-called Western civilization. I’m reminded of some lines from Ralph Waldo Emerson, which I feel serve as a neat preamble for my summary below of the discussion Tim and I had about Hartshorne’s article, "Whitehead's Revolutionary Concept of Prehension." I’ll provide a little context for why I have that feeling, but hopefully the relevance of his reflections becomes clearer by the end of this post. How we understand our own times depends ultimately on how we understand the nature of time itself. For Emerson and other panentheists (like Hartshorne, Whitehead, Peirce, Schelling), understanding the nature of time also means understanding the nature of the soul, of personhood. The idea is that temporal process as a whole has a personal character. In Augustine’s terms, time is a distentio animi, or a stretching of the soul across the trinity of tenses. Without the threefold relationality of soul there is no time. Time (as creative advance or as the sort of living growth characteristic of ensouled creatures) is not a series of separate instants stacked against one another like a line of deterministic dominoes. Instead, time emerges from the asymmetrical prehensive relations stitching together varying intensities of the mostly unconscious memory, perception, and imagination active in even the lowliest actual occasions. Whitehead’s revolutionary move is to interpret causality itself in terms of feeling: every event is shaped by the feelings transmitted from the world it arises out of, even if those feelings do not rise to the level of consciousness. It seems that only in the higher animals and in humans does unconscious prehension (whether physical or conceptual) become conscious propositional prehension. While there was time before and will be time after each occasional subject of experience (ie, in Whitehead’s terms, in addition to present subjects there are past objects and future superjects), space-time is a relational affair, an ongoing composition, a self-organizing network of prehensions with—at least for panentheists—a rather persuasively (super)personal and yet radically distributed underlying character. Here’s Emerson: “The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of to-day is building up the Future. The Times — the nations, manners, institutions, opinions, votes, are to be studied as omens, as sacred leaves, whereon a weighty sense is inscribed, if we have the wit and the love to search it out. Nature itself seems to propound to us this topic, and to invite us to explore the meaning of the conspicuous facts of the day. Everything that is popular, it has been said, deserves the attention of the philosopher: and this for the obvious reason, that although it may not be of any worth in itself, yet it characterizes the people. … the subject of the Times is not an abstract question. We talk of the world, but we mean a few men and women. If you speak of the age, you mean your own platoon of people, as Milton and Dante painted in colossal their platoons, and called them Heaven and Hell. In our idea of progress, we do not go out of this personal picture. We do not think the sky will be bluer, or honey sweeter, or our climate more temperate, but only that our relation to our fellows will be simpler and happier. What is the reason to be given for this extreme attraction which persons have for us, but that they are the Age? they are the results of the Past; they are the heralds of the Future. They indicate, — these witty, suffering, blushing, intimidating figures of the only race in which there are individuals or changes, how far on the Fate has gone, and what it drives at.” (“Lecture on the Times,” December 1841)After my expression of dizziness trying to keep up with the new White House, we jumped into the importance of philosophical concept creation. Tim was keen to reflect on the “blue sky” quality of speculative philosophy. As an evolutionary biologist, he can’t help but ask himself How could such an abstract notion as prehension ever make a difference in the lab? I’d say he came up with several good examples of its relevance as a description of evolutionary dynamics. While process-relational philosophy might seem far removed from the day-to-day tasks of empirical research, it can transform how we conceptualize complex, relational systems in psychology, biology, and physics. As we discussed, the concept of prehension can help us reframe the local-global puzzle as well as the hard problem of consciousness.Hartshorne’s classifies Whitehead as a “qualified pluralist.” Extreme pluralisms—like those of David Hume or Bertrand Russell—tend to reduce all relations to external relations, and so miss the subtle ways that novel events incorporate and transform their predecessors. Whitehead’s pluralism is different: every new actual occasion is internally related to its past, inheriting objective data from prior occasions, yet remains externally related and so open to the unrealized potential of the future. Hartshorne emphasizes that prehension underpins both memory and perception. Memory is simply the present occasion inheriting the data of its own immediate personal lineage, whereas perception incorporates data from outside that lineage. There is no single enduring substance “remembering itself” by way of its identity with itself; rather, each new moment in a personal stream of experience prehends (i.e., inherits and transforms) the earlier moments. As for perception, it is by means of the “miracle of order” achieved by our animal bodies that “the treasures of the past environment are poured into the living occasion. The final percipient route of occasions is perhaps some thread of happen­ings wandering in ‘empty’ space amid the interstices of the brain. It toils not, neither does it spin. It receives from the past; it lives in the present.” [Whitehead, PR 339]. One of the “bad mental habits” Hartshorne critiques is the pathetic anthropomorphic fallacy: the suspicion that any attribution of feeling or experience beyond the human domain must be a naïve projection. Both Hartshorne and Whitehead maintain that if we avoid specifically human feelings and stick to a more abstract definition of “feeling” or “experience,” we can see that nature itself must have some means of “grasping” or “prehending” its own past and the possibilities it affords for the future. This does not mean an atom has “human” consciousness or deliberative capacity.If philosophers use “feeling” or “experience” too freely, people may imagine that elementary particles are having conscious thoughts. That is not what prehension implies. The concept is far more generic than our typical usage of “feeling.” Whitehead’s crucial distinction is between the how of experience (prehension) and the what of experience (consciously known propositional content). Most prehensions are transmitted unconsciously. Hartshorne claims that only God can prehend everything distinctly; in finite occasions of experience prehensions remain more or less vague.In classical metaphysics, continuity was often conceived as a single underlying flow in which discrete particulars are illusory. Conversely, some pluralists see only discrete elements, with continuity explained away. Whitehead resolves this tension by showing how discrete “pulses” of becoming—actual occasions—generate continuity via their mutual but asymmetric perhensions. This redefines how novelty arises without lapsing into either a monistic Absolute (as in F. H. Bradley) or a purely external atomism (as in Russell).While we were discussing Whitehead’s idea of a “becoming of continuity,” Tim recalled Whitehead’s remark about the “almost complete absence of intermediate forms” in biology. I agreed that Whitehead’s quip about the rarity of transitional forms is simply mistaken if taken at face value. Tim offered several biological examples showing abundant transitional states in fast-evolving lineages. Still, I believe Whitehead’s deeper insight is more about the structured backdrop of possibility—akin to how electrons can only occupy certain energy levels. Whitehead’s insistence on definite potentials doesn’t predetermine development or evolution, as if imposing rigid archetypes on self-determining actualities. Instead, his idea of conceptual prehensions of the graduated intensive relevance of eternal objects provides an infinitely abstract set of constraints that real historical processes continually reconfigure. A core feature of prehension is the asymmetry between the determinate past and the vague future. Hartshorne, echoing Whitehead, asserts that past events necessarily condition the present—they are fully real—but they do not exhaustively determine it. The past is determinate without being determining of the present. This is because the present occasion prehends not only the already actualized past but also the unrealized possibilities available as alternatives for future becomings. Although Hartshorne himself questions the extent to which one needs a separate realm of “eternal objects,” he agrees that the vague potentialities of the future coax novelty out of the present.Hartshorne questions whether Whitehead’s eternal objects are truly necessary to avoid the excesses of nominalism. Hartshorne proposes that physical prehensions alone might suffice, provided one includes God’s primordial valuation of possibility among our prehensions of the “past.” In this, Hartshorne claims to be less Platonist than Whitehead. But in Process and Reality [PR 249-250], Whitehead had already made a similar move. Actual occasions are dipolar, with physical and mental poles. Whitehead describes the mental pole as itself having two phases, the first being “conceptual reproduction” of elements already given in the physical pole’s prehension of the past, thus preserving continuity. He then describes how novelty enters into a concrescing occasion through “conceptual reversion,” the second phase within the mental pole. The second phase introduces relevant alternatives—unrealized eternal objects that were not directly felt in the antecedent phase—thereby enriching the qualitative pattern and intensity of contrasts felt in the newly forming occasion. This process allows for creativity that is nonetheless constrained by the “ground of identity” derived from what was already given in the physical pole and reproduced in the first phase of the mental pole. By insisting on both a ground of identity and an aim at contrast, Whitehead maintains that every new synthesis retains continuity with its past while still leaving room for self-creation.He then explains that, in strict alignment with the ontological principle (which holds that all real reasons must be found in actual entities), the deeper answer to how one unrealized eternal object can be more or less relevant than another to a given actual situation must be sought in God’s conceptual feelings. Conceptual alternatives do not simply float into our heads from nowhere; they come through the “hybrid physical feeling” by which God’s conceptual valuations of eternal objects is transmitted into an occasion’s concrescence. With that recognition, Whitehead effectively “abolishes” conceptual reversion as a standalone category, returning to the principle—shared with Hume—that all conceptual experience is derived from some form of physical experience, albeit now mediated by God’s own conceptual ordering of possibilities.Hartshorne’s argument here is thus not all that different from Whitehead’s (it is possible, of course, that Whitehead was led to abruptly abolish his category of conceptual reversion on page 250 of Process and Reality precisely because of conversations he’d had with Hartshorne). Tim wondered how this logic might line up with a more secular perspective. After all, Whitehead himself admonishes us to secularize the concept of God’s functions in the world [PR 207]. In my view, Whitehead’s introduction of God is not a matter of religious worship but a philosophical attempt to make good on the ontological principle—every real potential has to be prehended by an actual entity. For Whitehead, the everlasting macrocosmic concrescence is that entity. Nevertheless, the theological dimension in Whitehead need not be read as identical with classical theism. God is not to be treated as a ruling Caesar or ruthless moralist, but as an ideal lure toward future harmonies uniquely tailored to the local spatiotemporal condition of each occasion. Hartshorne explicitly introduces God as the one who is worshipped because regarded as “unsurpassably excellent,” whereas Whitehead states that his philosophical concept of God does not necessarily involve religious feeling. Although I appreciate Hartshorne’s more personal, confessionally oriented language, it is important to note that Whitehead was wary of conflating his philosophical depiction of the macrocosmic creative process with the God worshipped by religion. He wanted a concept that explains how universal potentials are always already woven into particular actualities, thus avoiding the implication that potentials lie in wait in some lifeless heavenly freezer. The net result is a dipolar divine function that includes both a “primordial” valuation of possibility and a “consequent” integration of every new achievement of actuality. Whether or not one invokes the term “God,” the operational schema or diagram of relations remains.Bad HabitsHartshorne lays out sixteen habits of thought (comprehensive list below)—from the dominance of subject-predicate grammar and substance-thinking, to the fear of anthropomorphism and determinism—that repeatedly blocked the kind of asymmetric, creative-relational insight Whitehead provides with his concept of prehension. Tim and I noted several that remain relevant to science:* Determinism: The common assumption that cause and effect must be symmetrical, stifling any serious account of novelty.* Anthropophobia: The dread of reading anything akin to feeling into nature, which ironically yields an anthropocentric stance.* Nominalism: Overzealous denial of real potentialities.* Hume’s axiom: Confusing distinction with separation, thus missing how events can be distinguished without being externally divided.Hartshorne sees Whitehead’s concept of prehension as the breakthrough that transcends these habits: it allows us to think internal relations without falling into a monistic absolute; to see feeling as an essentially relational notion not limited to human consciousness; to accommodate novelty within a lawful/habit-forming but not deterministic cosmos; and to hold a genuinely open future.The concept of prehension and its attendant process-relational ontology does not solve all questions, nor does it promise an immediate revamping of laboratory protocols. But it can reshape our underlying assumptions about what causation is, how novelty arises, and how value might permeate the living world. Hartshorne’s reading of Whitehead shows that philosophy’s “blue sky” can shed light on the details of scientific practice, illuminating new paths of inquiry for generations to come—no matter how chaotic tomorrow’s news cycle might be.“…the actual world, in so far as it is a community of entities which are settled, actual, and already become, conditions and limits the potentiality for creativeness beyond itself. This ‘given’ world provides de­terminate data in the form of those objectifications of themselves which the characters of its actual entities can provide. This is a limitation laid upon the general potentiality provided by eternal objects, considered merely in respect to the generality of their natures. Thus, relatively to any actual entity, there is a ‘given’ world of settled actual entities and a ‘real’ potentiality, which is the datum for creativeness beyond that standpoint. This datum, which is the primary phase in the process constituting an actual entity, is nothing else than the actual world itself in its character of a possibility for the process of being felt. This exemplifies the meta­physical principle that every ‘being’ is a potential for a ‘becoming.’ The actual world is the ‘objective content’ of each new creation.Thus we have always to consider two meanings of potentiality: (a) the ‘general’ potentiality, which is the bundle of possibilities, mutually con­sistent or alternative, provided by the multiplicity of eternal objects, and (b) the ‘real’ potentiality, which is conditioned by the data provided by the actual world. General potentiality is absolute, and real potentiality is relative to some actual entity, taken as a standpoint whereby the actual world is defined. It must be remembered that the phrase ‘actual world’ is like ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow,’ in that it alters its meaning according to standpoint. The actual world must always mean the community of all actual entities, including the primordial actual entity called ‘God’ and the temporal actual entities.” [Whitehead, PR 65]Hartshorne’s List of Sixteen Bad Habits of ThoughtIn his article, Hartshorne speculates about why it took Western philosophy millennia to develop a concept as useful and elucidating as prehension. He identifies sixteen “bad mental habits” that blocked prior philosophers from fully articulating Whitehead’s insight:* Subject-predicate grammar and the neglect of relative predicates.* Choosing a thing-ontology over an event-ontology.* Overreliance on common sense and ordinary language to settle profound metaphysical questions.* Fascination with symmetry in logic and mathematics, leading to false assumptions about symmetrical relations in reality.* The alleged simultaneous identity of perceiver with perceived, memory with data, and mind with body.* Determinism, or the symmetrical pairing of cause and effect.* Hume’s axiom that to distinguish is to separate (failure to see that we can “distinguish without dividing”).* The idea of a continuity of becoming, rather than a becoming of continuity.* Confusions of the given with the known-to-be-given, memory with known-to-be-remembered, and so on.* Belief in a neutral, emotionless qualia, instead of seeing prehensions as always clothed in emotion and purpose (subjective form and subjective aim).* The theory of mind as inextended, which sets up incoherent positions like dualism or materialism.* Anthropophobia or the dread of anthropomorphism—denying any analogy between human experience and more general forms of feeling in nature.* God as an unmoved mover, outside time, rather than as a fellow sufferer or participant who prehends and is prehended by the world.* The assumption that time is timeless, or that truth is timeless, negating genuine novelty.* Nominalism, taken too far to deny real potentialities or universals of any kind.* A non-intentional, non-modal logic, ignoring the real openness of the future.Hartshorne contends that Whitehead overcame many of these difficulties by introducing prehension. Even so, Hartshorne believes that, with his doctrine of eternal objects, Whitehead overcorrected for nominalism. Nonetheless, Whitehead remains, in Hartshorne’s estimation, the thinker who most systematically broke through the confusions that had prevented earlier philosophers from conceiving the world as an ever-evolving network of momentary acts of (mostly) blind perceptivity. Get full access to ☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾ at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Ruth Kastner and I first met several years ago in the context of a seminar series focused on plasma physicist and philosopher Timothy Eastman’s work. Ruth also participated in the “Metaphysics and the Matter With Things: Thinking With Iain McGilchrist” conference I co-hosted at CIIS last March. We’ve been meaning to sit down to see what bridges might be built between her Possibilist Transactional Interpretation of quantum physics (more recently extended into relativity theory) and Whitehead’s process-relational metaphysics. This was the first of what I am sure will be many more conversations. Ruth and I discuss my paper on eternal objects—"Standing Firm in the Flux: On Whitehead's Eternal Objects"—which is soon to be published in Whitehead at Harvard, 1925-1927 ed. by Joseph Petek and Brian Henning (Edinburgh University Press). You can read a copy here.I began by recounting my recent discussions with Michael Levin—a biologist exploring what he terms “Platonic morphospace.” I think Levin’s work, which challenges the reductionist confines of actualist materialism in biology by emphasizing a field of possibilities that shapes morphogenesis and regeneration, resonates across disciplines with what Ruth is up to in quantum physics. I suggested that possibility might serve as a kind of formal cause—one that has been overlooked not only in biology but also in quantum physics. I futher suggested that the tension between unitarity and non-unitarity in interpretations of quantum physics mirrors Whitehead’s idea of a continuous realm of possibilities giving way to the discrete actuality of events.Ruth and I then delved into Whitehead’s philosophy. I explained my fascination with his concept of eternal objects and the notion of concrescence—the process by which a continuum of possibilities irreversibly collapses into a discrete actual occasion. I expressed discomfort with how Whitehead sometimes appears to overly-reify eternal objects, while I prefer to lean on his alternative affirmation of the way eternal objects are dynamically enriched when the “shadow of truth” is cast back upon them by actualized events. Ruth agreed that the exchange between the limitless realm of possibility and the sharply defined realm of actualization is fundamental, and she drew clear parallels between this process and the measurement problem in quantum physics, where unitarity gives way to the collapse of the wave function.Our discussion shifted to the broader cultural and institutional resistance in physics to the transactional interpretation (TI). Ruth pointed out—and I concurred—that critics often dismiss alternative theories by demanding a novel, falsifiable predictions, even though similar standards would challenge well-established ideas like the kinetic theory of gases or the Higgs mechanism. We both lamented how entrenched actualist paradigms lead to a kind of intellectual double standard, one that refuses to address anomalies such as the inability of conventional quantum theory to account for definite measurement outcomes.Ruth suggested that our experience of being embodied in space-time might be nothing more than a user interface—an illusion overlaying a deeper, more intricate network of events. I echoed this sentiment by referencing Whitehead’s view that events, or “actual occasions,” are not mere points in space-time but processes that weave or “stitch” together the fabric of reality. In Whitehead’s scheme, every actual occasion synthesizes both a physical pole, anchored in the already determined past (or what—from the perspective of the presently concrescing occasion—he calls “real potentiality”), and a mental pole, tapping into a broader field of “pure” (or at least purer) potentiality. Ruth saw some parallels to TI, where the offer-wave may be akin to the real potentiality inherited by the physical pole, while the confirmation wave is akin to the pure potentiality tapped by the mental pole. We also explored the semiotic function of eternal objects, considering whether they might be seen as signs mediating between our perceptual experience and the external physical world. We linked Whitehead’s idea of the extensive continuum—a field of potentiality structured by rules of extensive connection—to conservation laws. Ruth suggested that, at least in the context of TI, these eternal rules might condition the flow of energy without fully determining the outcome of any given event, much as conservation laws constrain but do not dictate individual measurement results.Video of our dialogue: Get full access to ☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾ at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

Tomorrow, I’m talking to the philosopher of physics Ruth Kastner, who has developed the Possibilist Transactional Interpretation of quantum physics. I’ve also been talking to the developmental biologist Michael Levin. Both of them are exploring the space of possibilities in different ways—Ruth from a quantum physical point of view and Mike from a morphological, developmental biology point of view. In both physics and biology, science is beginning to wander into a new kind of territory.But it is no longer a spatiotemporal sort of territory. It’s not even measurable. It’s a “space” of possibility—if you can even call it a space. Maybe topos or extensive continuum is a better term. It’s not measurable; it’s not a Euclidean space, and it’s not in any higher-dimensional sort of geometrical space either. It’s some other kind of reality. It is not material—it’s mental. Or at least, that’s the philosophical direction I would say this sort of inquiry is inevitably headed. And I think both Ruth and Mike are comfortable acknowledging that this continuum of possibility is “where” minds hang out, where intelligences and agencies live. Crucially, this realm of possibilities is constantly transacting with the space-time realm of actuality. We already live in both of these realms. So don’t think of “quantum land,” as Ruth calls it, or Mike’s “Platonic morphospace,” as being somewhere else. No, we’re in it. Each and every thought, each and every movement that you make, that you are, is right at the interface of these two realms. Really, what exists is the interface, the interplay, the transaction between possibility and actuality. Neither one exists independently of the other, now or ever.So, when we’re doing science—when we’re trying to know nature—we have to take a few things into consideration. First of all, while actuality and possibility are inseparable, part and parcel of the same process, they’re nonetheless related asymmetrically. This is because there’s an irreversibility to the creative process. The interplay between possibility and actuality is going somewhere. It’s a creative advance.And so, when we consider scientific knowledge in this context, what does it mean to know ontologically? Not just what are the conditions of the possibility of knowledge, but what must the cosmos be, what must being be, in order for knowledge to be possible? And I think, to begin to answer that question, we have to start with perception. We have to perceive, and then try to describe what’s going on as we do so.Some would say perception is always of the past. That’s just a fact of physics—because of the finite speed of light, the finite speed of causality. What our retinas receive, what our brain processes, is something that has already occurred external to us. We receive light, sound waves, or other kinds of vibrations from the environment: those vectors of energy take time to travel through space and then take time to be interpreted by our nervous system. So, in this sense, we’re always perceiving the past.That would be the more realist perspective, at least. Even if we’re not perceiving what’s happening out there now, simultaneously with our experience in here now, we are at least perceiving what did happen out there in the past.But then, there are also the predictive processing approaches—an alternative way of thinking about perception—which suggests that, no, we’re not perceiving the past, we’re perceiving the future. Or rather, our prediction of the future. This is more of an anti-realist position, or at least, it considers the real potentiality of our environment in a different temporal direction.As those who listen to and read my stuff can probably guess, I think we need to bring these two perspectives together. There is a sense in which what we perceive is what we expect to perceive, but there is also a sense in which what we perceive is what has already occurred in the environment around us. And the distinction between these two—between expectation and reception—is, classically, the distinction between mind and matter.Matter is what is in the past. Mind is what is in the future. But they’re not separate. They’re just poles, held taut across what can appear to us like an interdimensional rift but what is really just a difference in degree or intensity.If perception has to be understood both in terms of a vector out of the past and a vector into the future, then knowledge is time-situated. We must recognize the time-developmental context in which knowledge is possible.We’re always situated. There will always be something more that comes after us that we can infer something about but not everything. And there is always something that has come before us—and to know it is really a kind of memory. But not just a personal memory—a cosmic memory, a cosmic anamnesis. Cosmology is in this sense an attempt to recollect the prior stages of the universe’s evolution—the same stages that produced us, that gave rise to us as perceiving, conscious beings.Gaining true scientific knowledge of the universe means remembering how we came to be who and what we are. The problem with scientific materialism and standard Big Bang cosmology is that they describe the evolution of the universe as if consciousness was incidental. Now, maybe you can construct some kind of “as if” approximation of the universe without us by leaving consciousness out. But scientific materialism constitutively elides the “as if” hypothetical nature of such approximations. In reality, consciousness does exist. It is the only reason there is such a thing as science to begin with! Life and mind did in fact evolve on this planet. The universe is not simply physics (or if it is then physics must have been already pregnant with life and mind).To understand the history of the cosmos as if it only had an outside—as if there was no inside—is not just leaving out half the picture. It’s distorting the whole picture. Because the inside is where the knowing happens, where agency happens, where decisions occur, where value is harvested and enjoyed.As Whitehead would say, actual occasions of experience ingress eternal objects—potentials that lure actuality forward. Again, there’s always this interplay between actuality and possibility. These aren’t two separate realms; they’re two intensities of one reality.There is a dipolarity to reality that throws the universe into forward motion, that allows for history, for evolution, for irreversible creative becoming. It’s not an eternal return. There aren’t a finite number of positions that the bits of the universe can take. There is open-ended transformation. No two moments are ever the same. Nothing ever repeats.And yet, knowledge is possible. So there is some degree of definiteness to things. There is something that can be recognized as recurring across occurrences—but only as an abstraction. Concretely speaking, no two moments are identical. But abstractly speaking, we can identify recurring patterns.That’s why scientific knowledge is possible. But it’s always a knowledge situated in time—it’s always caught between time zones, inheriting a past and anticipating a future.When we talk about the continuum of possibilities—whether in morphogenesis, where cellular collectives harvest the latent potentiality that haloes their biochemical activity, or in physics, where atoms become excited and try to figure out where to send their photons—there’s always a transaction occurring, a relation unfolding with determinate actualities.While it sounds odd at first, it is important to note that this transaction is not happening in an already constituted space-time. Quantum transactions do not involve some kind of retrocausality, where absorbers are sending signals backwards in time to emitters. Nor are emitters capable of precognition. It’s more like a quantum entanglement of intentionality, a synchronicity. It’s the universe deciding, microcosmic moment by microcosmic moment, the most efficient, least-action pathway forward.There’s a basic tendency toward beauty—mixed with stochasticity, chaos, and chance—that gives rise to endlessly complex forms at varying scales of the cosmic fractal. That’s why we’re here. And our knowledge of the fact is our resonance with and prehension of the same quantum patterns that made and are making us. Get full access to ☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾ at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe

My discussion with Jonathan Cobb about his book Logos and Liberation: The Path of Kenosis (2024).Jonathan, who is the grandson of the process theologian John B. Cobb, Jr (who recently died at 99 years old, and whose memorial was held over the weekend), explained that his book is the culmination of years spent exploring how transformative experiences, such as his awakening during the Occupy movement, reshaped his understanding of society. This awakening not only propelled him into radical politics and activism but also stirred a deep spiritual conversion. Amid the turbulence of protests and his own personal trials—notably, the painful witnessing of his mother’s dignified surrender to terminal illness—Jonathan discovered what he describes as a process of kenosis, or self-emptying, a concept that has come to embody his vision of liberatory politics intertwined with spiritual renewal.Jonathan recounts how his early intellectual life was marked by a flirtation with libertarianism and scientific pantheism, later enriched by explorations into psychedelics and diverse expressions of Christianity—from Gnosticism to the mystical strains of Kabbalah. These experiments, coupled with a growing disillusionment with purely individualistic modes of thought, led him gradually toward a more communal and politically engaged spirituality. His eventual embrace of a form of Catholicism—one heavily influenced by liberation theology and figures like Oscar Romero—reflects his belief that true Christianity must champion the cause of the oppressed and challenge systems of domination rather than merely offering personal salvation.Jonathan emphasizes that the quest for spiritual betterment cannot be separated from the struggle against political and economic injustice. He critiques the reductionist approaches of contemporary thinkers who dismiss transformative change as mere self-help, arguing instead for a synthesis in which the pursuit of individual enlightenment and the demand for collective liberation are mutually reinforcing. He explains that the “false Logos”—the idolatrous worship of power that has historically underpinned hierarchical orders, from divine kingship in ancient times to the modern capitalist market—must be supplanted by modeling divine kenosis. In this vision, power is not hoarded but shared, mirroring the organic, cooperative processes observed in nature and traditional forms of craftsmanship.Jonathan contrasts early egalitarian communities with the later rise of centralized, hierarchical civilizations that built monumental structures to legitimize despotic rule. He traces the evolution from the decentralized, mutually supportive guilds and communes of medieval Europe to the competitive, growth-driven imperatives of industrial capitalism, which were powered by fossil fuels and marked by the commodification of nearly every aspect of life. In his view, capitalism’s relentless drive to appropriate the commons—the natural environment, cultural knowledge, and social bonds—creates a tension that is both its strength and its undoing. Drawing on ideas from scholars like Eleanor Ostrom, he suggests that genuine democracy must be rooted in local, participatory decision-making processes rather than in the abstract notion of “voting with our dollars.”As the conversation turned to the present, Jonathan spoke with a cautious yet hopeful urgency. He envisions an “apocalyptic faith” not as resignation to an inevitable end but as an active, transformative stance that recognizes the latent potential for societal rebirth. This perspective is undergirded by his belief that while the current system appears to be in free fall—witnessing the excesses of capital and the erosion of communal life—it also creates a rupture through which a more just, community-oriented order might emerge. In his eyes, reclaiming the commons is both a practical and a spiritual imperative; it is a means of rediscovering our interdependence, of nurturing creativity, and of building a future that values human connection over profit.My Foreword to Jonathan’s book: In our fragmented and disconnected times, it is rare to find a heart-mind courageous and radical enough to argue that religious, scientific, and political renewal are all interconnected. In this book, Jonathan Cobb attempts to weave the world back together guided by the light of the incarnating Word.Cobb’s book begins with the Biblical account of creation in Genesis, which he reads as a mythic metaphor for what science now understands to be an evolutionary universe. I am reminded of Owen Barfield’s remark in Saving the Appearances (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1957/1988) that posterity will wonder why it took modern Western civilization so long to recognize “that it had, on the one hand, a religion which differed from all others in its acceptance of time...[and] on the other hand, a picture in its mind of the history of the earth and man as an evolutionary process [without supposing] any connection whatever between the two” (167). Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Alfred North Whitehead, both inspirations to Cobb, also intuited deeper resonances between the Biblical mythos and evolutionary science.For Christians, it is the person and deed of Jesus Christ that transfigures myth into history, symbol and metaphor into flesh and blood. But Cobb’s book is not narrowly advocating for a single religious doctrine. Rather, he argues that the Logos is a transreligious cosmic and societal organizing principle that shows up in all the world’s great wisdom traditions, even if by other names (such as Tao, Dharma, Ma’at, Om, or Asha). Whether we are engaged in the scientific study of nature, ritual communion with the sacred, creative expression through beautiful works of art, or active resistance to political injustice, we are making vessels of ourselves for Logos to transfigure the world.Apocalypse is an event within the soul, and is not simply a disaster—it is also an unveiling. Since Paul of Tarsus’ ministry and John of Patmos’ penning of Revelation, there has never been a generation of Christians that failed to imagine its own times as the end times. This is hardly surprising, since empires have risen and fallen before. But our nascent planetary civilization, still ruled over by Mammon, may be uniquely poised at the edge of self-annihilation. The megamachine of modern techno-industrial capitalism has seized powers on par with super volcanoes and meteorite impacts. Humanity now has the ability to destroy itself along with much of the community of life on Earth in a matter of minutes. And even if nuclear war does not break out in the coming years, our business-as-usual economy of exploitation has already declared total war on people and planet by seeking to maximize ROI above all other values, undermining Earth’s life support systems in the process. The worsening ecological catastrophe is not incidentally related to the social catastrophes of nationalism, materialism, alienation and nihilism. All are symptoms of a lack of attunement to Logos.Logos is not, in Cobb’s vision, a coercive order imposed from without. Logos is rather a kenotic or self-emptying activity, a creative-relational interplay otherwise known as Love. We know we are in its presence whenever we join in free association with others to build a wiser and more compassionate future together. Logos and Liberation is a prayer for this future. Cobb remains hopeful without being naïve, fired by faith in the human spirit that we might remember amidst all our frailty and fallenness that we are made in the image of a Creator, and that we and the world can be saved. “The good of the Universe cannot lie in indefinite postponement,” as Whitehead said in Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press, 1933/1967).“The Day of Judgment is an important notion: but that Day is always with us. […] The effect of the present on the future is the business of morals. And yet the separation is not so easy. For the inevitable anticipation adds to the present a qualitative element which profoundly affects its whole qualitative harmony” (269).Small or large, the acts of faith and love we perform in the present feed the growth of Spirit in the world, granting Logos ever more intimate passage into the flesh, blood, breath, and bone of everyday life. Political revolution, if unaccompanied by spiritual transformation at the level of individual souls and the loving communities they form, is likely to amount to little more than the spinning of wheels, replacing one dominator hierarchy with another. We cannot expect to build a just eco-social order out of foolish and selfish people, such as we know ourselves to be. We might do well to consider how the lilies grow. They do not spin, nor toil, but delight in the gifts of sunlight and soil, celebrating the splendor of creation while still groaning in expectation that we might learn to do the same. 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Timothy Jackson and I discuss Michael Levin's new pre-print "Ingressing Minds: Causal Patterns Beyond Genetics and Environment in Natural, Synthetic, and Hybrid Embodiments" (which will eventually end up in the anthology collecting papers from the “Metaphysics and the Matter With Things: Thinking With Iain McGilchrist” conference at CIIS last Spring). Also in the mix: Daniel Smith's article "The Concept of the Simulacrum: Deleuze and the Overturning of Platonism"; James Bradley's article "Whitehead's Transcendental Cosmology: The Speculative Transformation of the Concept of Logical Construction"; Evan Thompson's book Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind; and Tim's discussion with Michael Levin and Robert Prentner about Platonism in biology. Tim and I (as usual) had a wide-ranging and complex discussion. There are a lot of ideas to untangle here, and there is never an easy place to begin. Indeed, in process metaphysics, all we can hope to do is begin again in media res. We orbit around the re-emergence Plato’s Ideas in biology. Tim and I are seeking to avoid the rigid Platonism of perfect immutable forms (originals) hovering above physical bodies (pale imitations or copies) and instead seek to invert or overturn Plato, offering a more processual approach that invites us to think beyond traditional hylomorphic schemes. Mike Levin's work, and particularly this pre-print, presents a dramatic challenge to the reductionist paradigm, which attempts to explain biological form and agency in terms of collections of discrete material parts or biochemical laws, or in terms of more-or-less hand-wavy accounts of “emergence.” His pre-print is calling for a more layered or textured ontology: laws and patterns that operate not only on multiple scales, but even in realms that are not purely physical.I’m grateful to both Tim and Mike for reaching out to philosophers in their attempt to grapple with these problems, which are both scientific and metaphysical in nature. In a time when many scientists—think of Neil deGrasse Tyson—dismiss philosophy as irrelevant, the collaborative spirit on display here feels like a hopeful new trend. Tyson and other prominent physicists perpetuate the cliché that philosophy of science is of no scientific use, that it is as irrelevant as ornithology is to birds. But Levin’s engagement proves otherwise. 20th century philosophers like Simondon, Whitehead, and Bergson sought to help scientists keep up with the metaphysical implications of their own scientific discoveries. Their efforts were aimed at reminding scientists that their own discoveries—evolution, quantum nonlocality, and spatiotemporal relativity, for instance—cannot be reconciled with mechanistic materialism. The mechanistic worldview inherited from Descartes, which dominated the scientific imagination for centuries, has been undermined by science itself.That said, philosophers must continue evolving alongside science, integrating new findings into our speculative schemes without clinging to outdated assumptions. There is no final resting place in this journey. Reality is a perpetual flux (which is why I half-jokingly call it “Creality” in my book). The best we can do is to meet our ever-evolving reality with humility, continuously refining our conceptual schemes in sympathetic response with the rhythms of an environing cosmic community. It is a sobering but liberating task. There is no point of arrival in philosophy or science, only a creative advance into deeper understanding (Inshallah!).Within this larger project, I believe it is crucial to distinguish between cosmology and metaphysics. Whitehead’s insights on this distinction are essential here. Cosmology concerns the empirical study of contingent phenomena—patterns and regularities that emerge within our particular cosmic epoch. These patterns are historical and subject to change, to evolution. In contrast, metaphysics seeks the principles that condition the possibility of any cosmic epoch. These are not empirical findings but regulative ideals, philosophical principles or categorical conditions. We should not presume to have definitively grasped these categories, for they remain forever subject to revision in light of new experience.If we understand Mike’s work to be operating within the domain of cosmology, then I am largely in agreement with him. He posits the existence of what we might call transphysical agencies, non-physical yet organizing forces akin to Plato’s animating deities. For the ancient Greeks, stars and planets were not dead material bodies; they were living beings with their own intelligence and agency. Today, we might call them complex self-organizing systems, but the underlying intuition remains: there is something living or at least life- and mind-like about the cosmos at all levels. Thus, I affirm Mike’s generally panpsychist orientation when it comes to cosmology.However, my reservation arise if we shift to considering Mike’s proposal at the metaphysical level. He attributes agency to the Platonic forms or possibilities themselves, suggesting that they possess a kind of active intelligence that presses into the actual world. Here I diverge, leaning instead on Whitehead’s view. In Whitehead’s metaphysics, agency belongs not to eternal objects but to actual occasions—events that prehend possibilities and creatively actualize them. Forms do not impose themselves from without; they are taken up and transformed by occasions in the ongoing process of becoming. This distinction may appear subtle, but I see it as crucial. If we imagine forms as autonomous agents, we risk reducing potentiality to actuality by canceling any real distinction between them. Whitehead avoids this over-simplification by way of a dipolar ontology, in which eternalities and actualities exist in a relationship of mutual conditioning, mediated by a divine actuality.This is where Whitehead’s notions of the primordial and consequent nature of God come into play. The primordial nature conceptually prehends the infinite realm of eternal objects and can be said to shepherd all pure possibilities—forms that are not yet actualized in spacetime—into a unified (maximally simple) organizational continuum. The primordial nature carries the scent of both Heraclitus’ Logos and Plato’s Eros. The consequent nature, on the other hand, gathers together the creative achievements of actual occasions and the ideal possibilities refracting from them, weaving the dipole into a coherent whole. The consequent nature is like a cosmic memory, a tragic poet compelled to reconcile the wretched wreckage of history with the ideal judgment of the cosmic aesthete. Despite its macrocosmic significance, the divine dipolarity of primordial mental pole and consequent physical pole is just another instance (the first though still entirely accidental example) of Concrescence, and like all currently concrescing (in “unison of becoming” with one another) finite microcosmic spatiotemporal occasions of experience, God lives, dies, and is reborn eternally in and through the ever-ramifying and creative NOW. In this way, eternal forms are never free-floating substantially existing essences; they are dynamically entangled here and now and everywhere with actuality (ie, entangled with both the divine actual entity and all other actual occasions).Mike’s notion of “pointers” represents an important attempt to articulate how biological (and possibly future AI) systems interact with what might be called latent space—a domain of potential forms that have not yet been actualized. I would suggest that these pointers are not merely passive conduits; they engage in a dynamic process of selection and transformation, drawing out and enabling certain potentials to ingress into actuality. Mike explicitly borrows the term ingression from Whitehead, who used it to describe how eternal objects—possibilities or patterns—are synthesized into concrete actual occasions and the historical routes or societies they form (all enduring physical bodies are “societies” in Whitehead’s terms).Both Tim and I diverge from approaches that treat latent space (ie, the realm of eternal objects) as fully predetermined. We cannot assume that latent potentials simply exist as brute facts, waiting to be revealed or discovered. Rather, the process of actualization is itself relational, shaped by the creative tensions between past inheritances and the relevant novelty brought forth as historically situated actual occasions dip into eternal possibility from their unique perspectives. The relationship between actual and potential is one of ongoing negotiation and mutual transformation.Mathematics provides a powerful analogy here. It is tempting to think of mathematical truths as eternal and unchanging, existing independently of human discovery. Yet history shows that mathematics evolves through a complex interplay of discovery and creation. When Whitehead and Russell attempted to construct a complete formal foundation for mathematics in Principia Mathematica, they encountered paradoxes that required significant revisions. Russell introduced the doctrine of types to avoid paradoxes in some logical statements. However, as Ronny Desmet has described it, this solution was insufficient, leading to a more complex “ramified” theory of types, which itself proved too restrictive. To address these issues, Russell added further measures like the “axiom of reducibility,” the “axiom of infinity,” and the “multiplicative axiom.” This extensive patchwork undermined his goal of logically reconstructing mathematics from the bottom-up, from basic principles, forcing he and Whitehead instead into a more inductive, top-down approach to mathematical research.The mathematical imagination is an example of what Whitehead referred to as conceptual prehension in action. Actual occasions of experience, including those composing mathematicians’ streams of consciousness, do not simply uncover pre-existing or pre-individuated terms; they engage with a tensive field of potential patterns that is conditioned by both the subjective aim of their mental pole and the social environment inherited in their physical pole. There is also a divine “lure” or initial aim that orients this engagement, guiding which potentials become salient. I think Mike’s pointers can function in a similar way—they are systems that interact with latent space, selecting and actualizing certain possibilities based on their interface with the environment. The process is neither purely one of discovery nor pure invention; it is an emergent relationship that transcends that dichotomy.This entangled interplay between discovery and invention highlights the participatory nature of both cognition and morphogenesis. In morphogenesis, forms are not imposed from without (whether by genetic information or pre-determined Platonic Ideas) but arise through the complex causality of self-organizing activity (with various causalities at play, including material, efficient, formal, and final). Similarly, in cognition and perception, we do not passively receive information from the world. This is not a one-way imposition of order but a reciprocal exchange between the actual and the virtual.This feedback loop echoes Whitehead’s understanding of Creativity: a transcendent-immanent principle that sustains the dipolarity between potential and actualization. Creativity is a close analog of what Deleuze describes as "difference in itself"—a field of pure difference that generates new actualities without relying on static templates.Some words of caution: If this latent space is treated as a pre-existing reservoir of fully determinate possibilities, we risk falling into a form of actualism (defined by physicist Tim Eastman). Actualism transposes brute facts from the domain of the actual to the domain of the virtual, thereby canceling the difference and eliminating the polarity. Without this dipolarity, the dynamo of cosmogenesis would lose its dynamic charge. There is no purely autonomous, determining realm of forms; rather, potentialities are continually reconfigured within the larger process of evolutionary becoming. This is why the concept of a divine lure or initial aim is central to Whitehead’s philosophy. It provides a minimal structure of relevance—a pre-tuning of indeterminate tensions in the web of potentials, if you will—that guides the emergence of new actualities without determining them outright.This brings us to the broader philosophical problem of transcendence and immanence. Whitehead’s Creativity functions as a transcendent-immanent principle: everything actual exemplifies it, and yet in and of itself it is never fully graspable. Without some guiding aim—what Whitehead calls the divine lure—there is a risk of losing ourselves in endless difference: simulacra all the way down. For Whitehead, this divine aim does not dictate but persuades, offering a horizon of relevance that shapes each occasion’s becoming.This ethical dimension is vital. Philosophy, especially process philosophy, is not about asserting final answers. It is about participating in the creative advance of life, remaining open to new insights while critically interrogating the concepts that guide us. Transcendentals like Truth, Beauty, and Goodness serve as regulative ideals—not fixed absolutes but lures toward deeper realization. Even when we encounter aporia, when our concepts fail, we are called to lean into that uncertainty, to live without the comfort of final explanations.Ultimately, this is the task of speculative philosophy: to articulate the conditions, tensions, and transformations that structure our world, knowing that this work is never finished. We are embedded in a vast cosmic history, yet always called to creatively transform it in the present. Philosophy’s task is to help us navigate this process, not by positing grand explanatory systems but by attuning our thinking the evolving rhythms of cosmic life.Video of our dialogue: Get full access to ☿Footnotes²Plato☀☾ at footnotes2plato.substack.com/subscribe