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Jim talks with Matthew David Segall about the ideas in his and Bruce Damer‘s new essay, “The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process Philosophy and the Hot Spring Hypothesis.” They discuss the “philosophy as footnotes to Plato” idea, the hot springs origin of life hypothesis, closing the gap between chemistry & life, Whitehead’s idea of concrescence, metaphysics in philosophy, minimum viable metaphysics, why physical law doesn’t imply biological organisms, process-relational philosophy, deep-seated cosmic habits, the hero’s answer, the type 1a supernova, rigorous speculation, the incalculability of the adjacent possible, the nature of matter, autocatalysis, the tension between the actual & possible, the rate of evolution, getting past the error catastrophe, Prigogine’s ideas about dissipative systems, teleology & the second law of thermodynamics, why DNA is not a blueprint, the Fermi paradox, bringing the universe to life, social implications of the origin of life, panpsychism & panexperientialism, integrated information theory, why matter & energy must have an endogenous telos, prehension, life wanting to live better, necessity & openness, questioning falsifiability, and much more.
- Episode Transcript
- “The Cosmological Context of the Origin of Life: Process Philosophy and the Hot Spring Hypothesis,” by Matthew David Segall & Bruce Damer
- Footnotes2Plato (Substack)
- JRS EP 167 – Bruce Damer on the Origins of Life
- JRS EP 171 – Bruce Damer Part 2: The Origins of Life – Implications
- Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, by Tom Holland
- JRS EP 5 – Lee Smolin – Quantum Foundations and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution
- JRS EP 227 – Stuart Kauffman on the Emergence of Life
- JRS EP 157 – Terrence Deacon on Mind’s Emergence From Matter
- JRS EP 40 – Eric Smith on the Physics of Living Systems
- JRS EP 105 – Christof Koch on Consciousness
- JRS EP 178 – Anil Seth on A New Science of Consciousness
- JRS EP 17 – Bonnitta Roy on Process Thinking and Complexity
- Process Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)