janhoglund
“…cells and organisms don’t just passively follow genetic algorithms—they act with creative agency and purpose, even intelligence.”
—Matthew Segall, Is There A Metaphysical Revolution Afoot in Natural Science?
https://footnotes2plato.substack.com/p/is-there-a-metaphysical-revolution
#cells #organisms #creativity #purpose #intelligence
Is There A Metaphysical Revolution Afoot in Natural Science?

My dialogue with Mahon McCann

Footnotes2Plato
Apr 10 at 11:45pmWeb
Show threadjanhoglundApr 11
“…the old mechanistic, substance-based ontology seems increasingly inadequate to account for what’s actually being discovered and needing to be theorized.”
—Matthew Segall, Is There A Metaphysical Revolution Afoot in Natural Science?
#metaphysics #science
Show threadjanhoglundApr 11
“Self-organizing living beings are the crack in the Kantian phenomenal/noumenal firewall, opening up an approach to the study of form and purpose as operative in nature itself, not just in the human subject.”
—Matthew Segall, Is There A Metaphysical Revolution Afoot in Natural Science?
#metaphysics #science #selforganization
Show threadjanhoglundApr 11
“…modern science’s nominalism—its refusal to attribute reality to universals—has limited our ability to make sense of the kinds of wholeness and goal-directedness we now observe in biological systems.”
—Matthew Segall, Is There A Metaphysical Revolution Afoot in Natural Science?
#metaphysics #science #biology #wholeness
Show threadjanhoglundApr 11
“Rather than seeing truth as merely a matter of correct representation (correspondence) or internal consistency (coherence), truth as participation demands a kind of transformation in the knower. It’s an event of disclosure—aletheia—in which the knower and the known become co-constitutive. It’s not that we just discover truth; we are changed by it.”
—Matthew Segall, Is There A Metaphysical Revolution Afoot in Natural Science?
#truth #participation #transformation