•  406
    James Hansen, the world’s leading climate scientist, argues that global climate destabilization could totally destroy the conditions for life on Earth, and further, that politicians are not taking effective action. Instead, they are using their power to cripple science. This situation is explained in this paper as the outcome of the successful alliance between a global class of predators and people who must be recognized as idiots taking over the institutions of government, research and educatio…Read more
  •  2375
    Stepping Beyond the Newtonian Paradigm in Biology. Towards an Integrable Model of Life: Accelerating Discovery in the Biological Foundations of Science
    with Plamen L. Simeonov, Edwin Brezina, Ron Cottam, Andreé C. Ehresmann, Ted Goranson, Jaime Gomez‐Ramirez, Brian D. Josephson, Bruno Marchal, Koichiro Matsuno, Robert S. Root-­Bernstein, Otto E. Rössler, Stanley N. Salthe, Marcin Schroeder, Bill Seaman, and Pridi Siregar
    In Plamen L. Simeonov, Leslie S. Smith & Andrée C. Ehresmann (eds.), Integral Biomathics: Tracing the Road to Reality, Springer. pp. 328-427. 2012.
    The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to …Read more
  •  611
    While some philosophers and increasing numbers of scientists are striving to revive speculative metaphysics as a condition for further advancing science, solving the central problems of contemporary philosophy and confronting the major problems facing society, even philosophers decrying the increasingly marginal status of philosophy continue to ignore or denigrate their efforts. It is argued that this lack of appreciation and the associated misrepresentations of speculative metaphysics stems fro…Read more
  •  305
    Michel Weber, Whitehead's Pancreativism: The Basics Reviewed by (review)
    Philosophy in Review 27 (6): 444-447. 2007.
    Michel Weber Whitehead’s Pancreativism: The Basics. Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag 2007. Pp. 255. US$106.00 (cloth ISBN-13: 978-3-938793-15-2). In his introduction to After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre called upon his readers to imagine a culture in which, to begin with, the natural sciences had been destroyed by an anti-science movement, and then, reacting against this movement, people had attempted to reconstruct science from surviving fragments. In this imaginary world adults argue over the respective…Read more
  •  35
    Ecological Economics and Human Ecology
    In Michel Weber and Will Desmond (ed.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, De Gruyter. pp. 161-177. 2008.
    This paper argues that mainstream economics has never before been more influential, that this threatens the future of humanity, and provides a history and defence of ecological economics and human ecology founded on process philosophy showing how these can and should replace mainstream economics.
  •  334
    The primordial role of stories in human self-creation
    Cosmos and History 3 (1): 93-114. 2007.
    We now have a paradoxical situation where the place and status of stories is in decline within the humanities, while scientists are increasingly recognizing their importance. Here the attitude towards narratives of these scientists is defended. It is argued that stories play a primordial role in human self-creation, underpinning more abstract discourses such as mathematics, logic and science. To uphold the consistency of this claim, this thesis is defended by telling a story of the evolution of …Read more
  •  356
    Nihilism Incorporated: European Civilization and Environmental Destruction (Review) (review)
    Environmental Values 4 (3): 278-280. 1995.
    Review of 'Nihilism Incorporated: European Civilization and Environmental Destruction
  •  197
    Introduction: Overcoming Nihilism
    Cosmos and History 7 (2): 1-5. 2011.
    This is the introduction to the special edition of Cosmos & History on Overcoming Nihilism
  •  417
    Approaches to the Question, ‘What is Life?’: Reconciling Theoretical Biology with Philosophical Biology
    Cosmos and History : The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 4 (1-2): 53-77. 2008.
    Philosophical biologists have attempted to define the distinction between life and non-life to more adequately define what it is to be human. They are reacting against idealism, but idealism is their point of departure, and they have embraced the reaction by idealists against the mechanistic notion of humans developed by the scientific materialists. Theoretical biologists also have attempted to develop a more adequate conception of life, but their point of departure has been within science itsel…Read more
  •  82
    In the history of Chinese and European philosophy, metaphysics has played an outstanding role: it is a theoretical framework which provides the basis for a philosophical understanding of the world and the self. A theory of the self is well integrated in a metaphysical understanding of the totality of nature as a dynamic process of continuous changes. According to this view, the purpose of existence can be conceived of as the development and realization of the full potential given to the individu…Read more
  •  636
    Speculative Naturalism: A Manifesto
    Cosmos and History 10 (2): 300-323. 2014.
    The turn to analytic philosophy in Anglophone countries, which is still underway and is spreading elsewhere, has generally involved a retreat from ‘synoptic’ thinking and an almost complete withdrawal from ‘synthetic’ thinking, the creative thinking that in the past has been the source of the greatest contributions of philosophy to science, the humanities and civilization. Analytic philosophy’s ‘naturalistic turn’ led by Willard van Ormond Quine was really a capitulation of philosophy to mainstr…Read more