Overview
In response to the growing inadequacies of scientific materialism—which has systematically excluded mind, purpose, and value from its conception of nature—the Process & Science Network (PSN) has been established to forge a more integral and experientially grounded approach to scientific inquiry.
Rooted in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, who warned that modern physics was degenerating into a medley of inadequate hypotheses and remained dependent on an often implicit metaphysics that tends to explain away rather than illuminate core elements of lived experience, PSN provides the robust institutional and social scaffolding necessary for genuine dialogue between process thought and the natural sciences.
Dedicated to advancing Whitehead’s vision alongside a wider plurality of process traditions, PSN aims not only to interpret scientific developments but to actively generate testable research programs that bridge the full evolutionary spectrum of nature—from physics and biology to psychology and cosmology.
Philosophical Background
As cracks in the metaphysical edifice of scientific materialism continue to widen, a popular scientistic orthodoxy still prides itself on having secured objectivity by eliminating any trace of intelligent human beings—and even sentient organisms—from its explanations of the universe. Scientific materialism treats mind and life as peripheral accidents, ultimately explainable in terms of a mindless, lifeless reduction base of physics. The natural world studied by this mode of thought has been scrubbed clean of everything qualitative, value-laden, or purposive, leaving behind only what can be quantitatively measured and fed into computer models.
From Whitehead’s point of view, the situation contemporary physics and natural science more generally find themselves in is double-edged. On the one hand, new mathematical methods and more precise measuring instruments have enabled tremendous advances. On the other, despite being forced to demolish the old metaphysical foundations of classical physics in light of new discoveries, no new philosophically coherent foundation has been erected in their place. As he warned a century ago, the result is that natural science is at risk of “[degenerating] into a medley of ad hoc hypotheses” (Science and the Modern World, 17).
The strange nature of the universe described in the models of physics has lost contact with the commonsense experience of human life. “The divergence of the formulae about nature from the appearance of nature,” Whitehead argued, “has robbed the formulae of any explanatory character” (Modes of Thought, 154). He was dissatisfied with the instrumentalization of physical theory and frustrated by the tendency of materialist popularizers to marshal unexamined and inadequate metaphysics in an attempt at “brilliant feats of explaining away” all those aspects of nature (colors, sounds, feelings, etc.) deemed superfluous or epiphenomenal.
In place of a bifurcated reductionism, Whitehead sought to construct a more adequate metaphysical scheme in terms of which new scientific discoveries could be understood to hang together with the hardcore commonsense presuppositions of our practical experience. For him, the red glow of the sunset that warms the hearts of poets must come to be understood as no less a part of nature than the molecules and electromagnetic waves by which physicists would explain the phenomenon.
Organizational Background
Five years ago, John Cobb Jr. (1925–2024) recruited Matt Segall to chair the Cobb Institute’s Science Advisory Committee. That work helped clarify both the promise and the limits of an informal committee structure. Cultivating a rigorous dialogue between process philosophy and the natural sciences requires a clearer mandate, stronger institutional scaffolding, and a funded research engine capable of turning philosophical concepts into viable hypotheses and testable programs.
With the Cobb Institute now merged into the Center for Process Studies (CPS), there is an opportunity to transform and expand this work under a new name and structure: the Process and Science Network (PSN). Housed within CPS, PSN catalyzes fresh research and collaboration at the intersection of process philosophy and the natural sciences—including physics, biology, and neuroscience—while continuing CPS’s half-century commitment to Whitehead’s decisive contribution to twentieth-century thought. At the same time, PSN embraces the wider delta of process philosophies and scientific theories that preceded and influenced Whitehead, extend from him, run parallel to him, and, on key emphases, even diverge from him.
Whitehead argued that evolution must become the guiding methodology of all branches of science. PSN will continue to carry forward the legacy and interdisciplinary efforts of John Cobb and David Ray Griffin to sustain dialogue with physicists, but it also emphasizes that, from a process standpoint, evolutionary theory is the most general science. On this view, the living world is not an anomalous add-on to an otherwise dead cosmos; rather, cosmogenesis is an ongoing creative advance whose intelligibility must be sought by building evolutionary bridges across the full spectrum of nature, from particle physics to cognitive psychology.
Our Aims
“The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, Seek simplicity and distrust it.”
– Alfred North Whitehead (The Concept of Nature, 163)
Our Primary Objectives Include the Following…
Build the Process and Science Network
PSN convenes a durable network of process-oriented scientists, natural philosophers, philosophers of science, and interdisciplinary researchers to share resources, refine problems, and seed collaborations.
Develop a Funded Research Engine
PSN’s long-term aim is to create the institutional and financial conditions for sustained inquiry at the intersection of process philosophy and the natural sciences. This includes identifying grant opportunities, incubating research teams, and translating philosophical concepts into viable hypotheses, methods, and empirical programs.
Record and Publish Dialogues that Move the Field Forward
PSN produces interviews, roundtables, and public-facing conversations with scientists and natural philosophers to raise awareness of process approaches while also sharpening the conceptual and methodological stakes of the debate. The goal is not publicity alone, but to host conversations that clarify research questions.
Organize Conferences, Workshops, and Working Groups
PSN plans and hosts online and in-person events addressing intersections of process-relational philosophy and the natural sciences. In addition to conferences, PSN supports smaller working groups and research projects designed to produce outputs including white papers, pilot proposals, syllabi, and collaborative publications.
Support CPS’s Broader Mission While Widening the Tent
PSN remains anchored in Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, but it also provides a home for adjacent and sometimes competing process traditions (e.g., evolutionary, pragmatic, phenomenological, Bergsonian, Schellingian, Simondonian, enactive, and others), creating a pluralistic environment where philosophical differences can become productive research contrasts rather than institutional fractures.
Program Director
Dr. Matthew David Segall is the Director of the Process & Science Network, and a transdisciplinary researcher and teacher applying process philosophy across the natural and social sciences, including the study of consciousness. He is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Program at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. Matt is author of Crossing the Threshold: Etheric Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead (Integral Imprint, 2023) and Physics of the World-Soul: Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventure in Cosmology (SacraSage Press, 2021). Follow his work at Footnotes2Plato.com
Affiliated Researchers
Timothy Jackson is an evolutionary toxinologist, pharmacologist, and biologist, and a philosopher of science. He currently co-leads the Australian Venom Research Unit at the University of Melbourne. His research interests sprawl from the usage of toxin-producing systems as models for diversification to the development of a speculative ontology grounded in evolutionary (i.e. complex systems) science.
Spyridon A. Koutroufinis is a Privatdozent (Associate Professor by habilitation) at the Institute of Philosophy at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. His primary areas of expertise are biophilosophy, process philosophy (Whitehead, Bergson, and others), the theory of self-organization in complex dynamical systems, and classical metaphysics (Aristotle, Leibniz). His research examines the philosophical foundations of biological form and process, drawing critically on systems theory and positively on process thought. Dr. Koutroufinis seeks to renew the theory of the organism through novel interpretations of the work of Canguilhem, Uexküll, Portmann, Jonas, Goldstein, and other biophilosophers and life scientists, inspired by the ontologies of Bergson and Whitehead. He has authored and edited numerous books, journal articles, and book chapters in these fields. His latest monograph, Organismus als Prozess (2019, Karl Alber), develops a process-ontological theory of ontogenetic and embryogenetic becoming. The book aims to synthesize contemporary systems theory with process thought, moving beyond twentieth-century process philosophy to address fundamental problems in modern systems-theoretical biology. Dr. Koutroufinis also investigates the concept of intuition in the history of philosophy and its renewal through process philosophy, while critically examining transhumanism and posthumanism.
Timothy E. Eastman, PhD was a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (retired) and has more than 40 years of experience in research and consulting in space physics, space science data systems, space weather, plasma applications, public outreach and education, and philosophy of science. Dr. Eastman’s interest in philosophy and philosophy of science extends over three decades with several journal publications in philosophy in addition to the SUNY volume. He is on International Advisory Boards for Process Studies and Studia Whiteheadiana (Poland), was lead editor of Physics and Speculative Philosophy (2016, DeGruyter Press). His latest book is Untying the Gordian Knot: Process, Reality, and Context (Lexington Books, 2020), which articulates a natural philosophy for the 21st century.
Ruth E. Kastner, PhD earned her MS in Physics and PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Maryland. Since that time, she has taught widely and conducted research in Foundations of Physics, particularly in interpretations of quantum theory. She was one of three winners of the 2021 Alumni Research Award at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of 3 books: The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Theory: The Reality of Possibility (Cambridge University Press, 2012; 2nd edition just published, 2022), Understanding Our Unseen Reality: Solving Quantum Riddles (Imperial College Press, 2015); and Adventures In Quantumland: Exploring Our Unseen Reality (World Scientific, 2019). She has presented talks and interviews throughout the world and in video recordings on the interpretational challenges of quantum theory, and has a blog at transactionalinterpretation.org
Ross Stein is a biochemist and has devoted his professional career to probing the mechanisms of biochemical reactions, and using this knowledge to help develop new drugs to treat human disease, in particular cancer. In addition, over the past twenty-five years he has become a student of philosophy, and has published in the areas of theology, process philosophy, the philosophy of science. You can learn more about Ross’ background and career at LinkedIn and his publications, in both science and philosophy, at Research Gate.
Program Recordings
Dialogues
Rupert Sheldrake on the Influence of A. N. Whitehead
Matt Segall interviews Rupert Sheldrake
Recording Date: September 2020
Conversation Series: Intuiting Life
Series Introduction
Presenters
- Matt Segall
- Spyridon Koutroufinis
Recording Date: October 3, 2023
Session 1
Presenters
- Spyridon Koutroufinis
- Federico Giorgi
Recording Date: October 14, 2023
Session 2
Presenters
- Philip Tryon
- Johanna Häusler
- Nathaniel Barrett
Recording Date: October 21, 2023
Session 3
Presenters
- Matt Segall
- Spyridon Koutroufinis
Recording Date: October 28, 2023
Conversation Series: Tim Eastman Unties the Gordian Knot
Session 4
Topic: Chapter 4
- Chapter Summary, by Tim Eastman
- Session Chat
- Response by Anderson Weekes
Recording Date: September 11, 2021
Session 6
Topic: Chapter 6
- Chapter Summary, by Tim Eastman
- Session Chat
Recording Date: November 13, 2021
Session 7
Topic: Chapter 7
- Chapter Summary, by Tim Eastman
- Session Chat
Recording Date: December 11, 2021
Session 8
Topic: Chapter 8
- Chapter Summary, by Tim Eastman
- Session Chat
- Response by Thandeka
Recording Date: January 8th, 2022
Session 9
Topic: Wrap Up
- Final Reflections, by Tim Eastman
- Meeting Chat
Recording Date: February 12, 2022
Revitalizing Biophilosophy Conference Series
Revitalizing Biophilosophy
Day 1
Day 2
The Revitalizing Biophilosophy conference series is an initiative dedicated to building biophilosophy into a transdisciplinary international movement. The first of two planned conferences, titled Revitalizing Biophilosophy, was held online on July 10–11, 2025. This virtual gathering brought together a diverse range of scholars to explore biophilosophy’s historical foundations, contemporary developments, and future possibilities.