Encouraged by successes in understanding black holes, theoretical physicists are applying what they’ve learned to whole universes. What they’re finding has them questioning fundamental assumptions abo...

The following essay is adapted from the transcript of this recording on our Urphänomen research guild Substack. It is a poetic commentary on Owen Barfield's essay in The Rediscovery of Meaning, "The Meaning of 'Literal,'" which was also the subject of discussion in this morning's reading group: When Whitehead remarked that every science has its instruments—physics its telescopes and microscopes, biology its binoculars and slides—he added that 

I’ve discussed the return of Platonism in biology before. The following recounts some of what I discussed with Bonnitta Roy as a visitor at The Pop-Up School earlier today. The main driver of the Platonic turn in the life sciences is Michael Levin’s remarkable lab research on bioelectric patterning in morphogenesis. He is now framing this as a Platonic research program and claiming that both biological form and organismic agency ingress from a realm beyond physical spacetime, with external bodies functioning as “thin user interfaces.” …

Learn about a new mathematical model that suggests Neanderthals never went extinct and, instead, became modern humans.

City-dwelling raccoons seem to be evolving a shorter snout—a telltale feature of our pets and other domesticated animals

Henry Corbin's involvement in Freemasonry and various Neo-Templar Orders during the final decade of his life is among the most seriously neglected dimensions of his life and oeuvre. Based partly o...

Learn how Hawaiian monk seals produce 25 distinct underwater calls, and may even combine them to communicate.

Beyond or beneath the theatrics there is a disconcerting sense that something much more serious is going on, that all...

YouTube video by Veritasium

The Making of a Modern Fiction and How a Platypus Explains What the Evidence Really Says

So, let’s just walk through the whole thing, end to end. Here’s a twelve-step program for understanding game design. One: Fun There are a lot of things people call “fun.” But most of them are not u…

If language is what makes us human, what does it mean now that large language models have gained “metalinguistic” abilities?

YouTube video by Michael Levin's Academic Content

The clue to these quotes in Neuropolitique is in the reference to Leary’s “6th Circuit” (which I think of as metahuman, & also as hyperobject)…