Participatory Approach to the Life Sciences
* Article: A Participatory Approach to the Life Sciences. Matthew David Seagall. Footnotes to Plato, 2025
URL = https://footnotes2plato.substack.com/p/my-biophilosophy-conference-talk
Description
"This essay argues that mechanistic biology, despite its technical successes, fundamentally misunderstands life by reducing organisms to externally related parts governed solely by efficient causation. Drawing on a philosophical lineage from Kant through Goethe, Novalis, Schelling, Peirce, and Whitehead, I develop an alternative participatory approach that recognizes self-organization and purposiveness as constitutive features of nature rather than mere projections of human judgment."