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This weekend

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This weekend's reading

Where Value Touches Ground

A weekend at the boundary where thermodynamics stops being physics and starts being theology.

  • ◇Value Is Not Arbitrary: Its Thermodynamic Roots in Existence Itself
  • ◇The Sacred as Thermodynamic Necessity in Complex Societies
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Lit on the map

Where Value Touches Ground

A weekend at the boundary where thermodynamics stops being physics and starts being theology.

Meaning CrisisRelevance RealizationProcess PhilosophyPhenomenologyConsciousness Studies
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Where Value Touches Ground

“If mattering is thermodynamic before it is psychological, what does that do to the distinction between sacred and secular?”

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This weekend's quest

Where Value Touches Ground

Something is holding the universe together that isn't gravity. Three thinkers trace value from its thermodynamic floor to its sacred ceiling. Your task is to find the joints — the places where physics becomes meaning and meaning becomes obligation. The map has seven edges. Not all of them point in the direction you'd expect.

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About · founded MMXXV"Patient with the slow word."The full story →
  1. Observers
  2. ›Matthew David Segall
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BYOD: Bring Your Own Discernment · AI-assisted · Eternally in its infancy

Logbook·MCP Server·Terms·Privacy·Impressum·Fork the Knowledge

Matthew David Segall

Process-relational philosophy, Whitehead, consciousness — epistemology, ontological design, and re-enchanting cosmology from CIIS

California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS)
27 ideas78 connections

Associate Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Segall is a transdisciplinary philosopher whose work bridges Alfred North Whitehead's process-relational metaphysics with German Idealism and philosophy of nature. His books — including Physics of the World-Soul (2021) and Crossing the Threshold (2023) — argue for a re-enchanted cosmology that integrates the natural sciences with questions of mind, life, and meaning.

YouTubeXSubstackWebsite ↗

Codex Personalium — an AI-generated intellectual portrait synthesized from Matthew David Segall's published ideas.

Read the Codex

Topics

Epistemology16
Process Philosophy15
Relational Ontology12
Philosophy of Mind10
Phenomenology6
Ontological Design6
Consciousness Studies5
Hermeneutics4

Connected Observers

John Vervaeke15Zak Stein4Gregg Henriques4SWSara Walker2Brendan Graham Dempsey2Alexander Bard

Ideas in the Observatory

  • Human Beings as Earth's Consciousness, Not Its Conquerors
    Human Beings as Earth's Consciousness, Not Its ConquerorsThe planet didn't make us to leave.
    I
  • Whitehead's Open Categories: How Experience Generates New Concepts
    Whitehead's Open Categories: How Experience Generates New ConceptsNature learning to name itself
    I

Links

YouTube ChannelX / TwitterSubstackWebsite
Complexity Science3
Evolutionary Biology3
Theology3
Meaning Crisis3
Embodied Cognition3
Existential Risk2
Systems Thinking2
Wisdom Traditions2
Participatory Epistemology1
Political Philosophy1
Narrative and Myth1
Ethics1
2
  • Imagination as Cosmic Creative Power, Not Mental Recombination
    Imagination as Cosmic Creative Power, Not Mental RecombinationOur roots are in the sky.
    I
  • How Schelling Reversed Kant: Nature as the Ground of Mind
    How Schelling Reversed Kant: Nature as the Ground of MindThe world was never dead to begin with.
    I
  • Whitehead on Why We Feel Causation Before We See It
    Whitehead on Why We Feel Causation Before We See ItYou cannot stand outside the river.
    I
  • Whitehead's Dipolar God: Eros, Agape, and Co-Creative Theology
    Whitehead's Dipolar God: Eros, Agape, and Co-Creative TheologyThe poet of the world also weeps for it.
    I
  • Whitehead's Asymmetry: Internal Relations to the Past, External Relations to the Future
    Whitehead's Asymmetry: Internal Relations to the Past, External Relations to the FutureBefore the law of contradiction applies, something decides.
    I
  • Imagination as Organ of Perception: Toward an Expanded Empiricism
    Imagination as Organ of Perception: Toward an Expanded EmpiricismThe eye the sun made, to see the sun.
    I
  • Cells, Societies, and the Co-Creation of the Divine
    Cells, Societies, and the Co-Creation of the DivineThey are making it as they worship it.
    I
  • Spacetime as Social Achievement: Whitehead's Process Ontology and Quantum Gravity
    Spacetime as Social Achievement: Whitehead's Process Ontology and Quantum GravityThe universe earns its continuity, moment by moment.
    I
  • Emergence vs. Panexperientialism: Where Does Experience Begin?
    Emergence vs. Panexperientialism: Where Does Experience Begin?Simplicity becoming love, or love all the way down.
    I
  • Science Has a Hidden Metaphysics It Refuses to Acknowledge
    Science Has a Hidden Metaphysics It Refuses to AcknowledgeThe explainer left out of the explanation.
    I
  • Whitehead's Scale-Free Ontology: Same Being, Increasing Complexity
    Whitehead's Scale-Free Ontology: Same Being, Increasing ComplexityThe universe rearranges itself, but never reinvents itself.
    I
  • Platonism Completed: The Philosopher Returns to the Cave
    Platonism Completed: The Philosopher Returns to the CaveThe world seen with archetypal eyes
    I
  • Quantum Mechanics Does Not Prove Many Worlds Exist
    Quantum Mechanics Does Not Prove Many Worlds ExistThe equation is not the universe wearing a mask.
    I
  • How Science Built a Blind Spot for Consciousness Into Its Own Foundations
    How Science Built a Blind Spot for Consciousness Into Its Own FoundationsThe eye cannot see itself seeing.
    I
  • Abstraction Is Natural, But Misplaced Concreteness Distorts Reality
    Abstraction Is Natural, But Misplaced Concreteness Distorts RealityThe map forgot it was a map.
    I
  • Why High-Fidelity DNA Copying May Be Life's Rarest Threshold
    Why High-Fidelity DNA Copying May Be Life's Rarest ThresholdThe knife's edge everything had to cross at once.
    I
  • How the Vitalism Debate Was Dissolved, Not Won — and What This Means for Consciousness
    How the Vitalism Debate Was Dissolved, Not Won — and What This Means for ConsciousnessMatter was always looking inward.
    I
  • Physics Cannot Explain Why Anyone Does Physics
    Physics Cannot Explain Why Anyone Does PhysicsThe universe writing equations about itself
    I
  • Confronting Death as the Foundation of Meaningful Life
    Confronting Death as the Foundation of Meaningful LifeEverything you cannot take with you.
    I
  • Consciousness May Contain the Cosmos, Not the Reverse
    Consciousness May Contain the Cosmos, Not the ReverseThe universe has never seen itself without us.
    I
  • Whitehead's Challenge to the Materialist Split Between Matter and Experience
    Whitehead's Challenge to the Materialist Split Between Matter and ExperienceScientists proving they have no purpose
    I
  • Kant and Schelling Reverse the Relationship Between Mind and Nature
    Kant and Schelling Reverse the Relationship Between Mind and NatureYou cannot get out what was never in.
    I
  • Descartes Split Mind from Nature, Draining the Universe of Purpose
    Descartes Split Mind from Nature, Draining the Universe of PurposeOne soul left, screaming in the machine.
    I
  • How Medieval Theology Secretly Shaped Modern Materialist Thought
    How Medieval Theology Secretly Shaped Modern Materialist ThoughtGod left the building, but his logic stayed.
    I
  • The Insufficiency of Economic Interest in Political Mobilization
    The Insufficiency of Economic Interest in Political MobilizationThe void where a common myth should be
    I

    • Topics

    Epistemology16
    Process Philosophy15
    Relational Ontology12
    Philosophy of Mind10
    Phenomenology6
    Ontological Design6
    Consciousness Studies5
    Hermeneutics4
    Complexity Science3
    Evolutionary Biology3
    Theology3
    Meaning Crisis3
    Embodied Cognition3
    Existential Risk2
    Systems Thinking2
    Wisdom Traditions2
    Participatory Epistemology1
    Political Philosophy1
    Narrative and Myth1
    Ethics1

    Connected Observers

    John Vervaeke15Zak Stein4Gregg Henriques4SWSara Walker2Brendan Graham Dempsey2Alexander Bard2
    ← All Observers