Timothy Bloxam Morton is a professor and Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. A member of the object-oriented philosophy movement, Morton explores the intersection of object-oriented thought and ecological studies. Morton's use of the term 'hyperobjects' was inspired by Björk's 1996 single 'Hyperballad', although the term 'Hyper-objects' has also been used in computer science since 1967. Morton uses the term to explain objects so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend localization, such as climate change and styrofoam.
Hyperproblems: New Ways of Doing and Communicating Science - Hyperproblems
562 – Ecological Cognition III: Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (part 1)
562 Continuing the journey in understanding the Ecological approach to cognition by looking at Tony Chemero’s book: Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Conceptualizing cognition in terms of agent-environment dynamics instead of computation and representation. What is RECS, and where did these ideas come from?Download link
Two Types of Assemblages
Recovering from an exhausting yet highly productive and exciting trip to Georgia Tech, I was excited to see that Alex Reid has a VERY INTERESTING post up on object-oriented rhetoric. In his discuss…
Hyperproblems: New Ways of Doing and Communicating Science - Hyperproblems
Hyperproblems: Hyperproblems are scientific challenges whose scale, complexity, novelty and interdependence overwhelm traditional research models, requiring…
Frameworks v0.2
FRAMEWORKS v0.2 Many of the thoughts in this document draw on and synthesize concepts from economics, math, physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology. Here are a handful of core concepts that are often relied on as inputs: Activation energy Behavioral economics Cognitive biases Darwinism En...
Howard T. Odum
Howard Thomas Odum (September 1, 1924 – September 11, 2002), usually cited as H. T. Odum, was an American ecologist. He is known for his pioneering work on ecosystem ecology, and for his provocative proposals for additional laws of thermodynamics, informed by his work on general systems theory.
Emily Riehl
Website for `Category theory in context' published in 2016 by Dover Publications.
Georgie Newson - Thinking Collectives: Biological Naturalism and the Problem of Group Minds
Assemblage (philosophy)
Assemblage (from everyday French: agencement, – arrangement, layout, "a collection of things which have been gathered together or assembled") is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari[1] and subsequently taken up by other theorists, such as Bruno Latour and Michel Callon who developed actor-network theory,[2] Manuel DeLanda in his work on assemblage theory,[3] and Jane Bennett who combines Latour with Deleuze and Guattari forming her own assemblage theory.[4][5][6] Bennett’s assemblage thinking has influenced environmental philosophy (e.g. Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects), political theory (e.g. William Connolly’s work on complexity and politics), and new materialism (e.g. Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad).
Golems, smart objects, and the file metaphor
Posted on Monday 1 Feb 2021. 2,011 words, 13 links. By Matt Webb.
Synthetic philosophy
In this essay, I discuss Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds (hereafter From Bacteria) and Godfrey Smith’s Other Minds: The Octopus and The Evolution of Intelligent Life (hereafter Other Minds) from a methodological perspective. I show that these both instantiate what I call ‘synthetic philosophy.’ They are both Darwinian philosophers of science who draw on each other’s work (with considerable mutual admiration). In what follows I first elaborate on synthetic philosophy in light of From Bacteria and Other Minds; I also explain my reasons for introducing the term; and I close by looking at the function of Darwinism in contemporary synthetic philosophy.
Emily Riehl, A New Paradigm for Mathematical Proof? | Natural Philosophy Symposium 2025
AI Data Centers Will Be Obsolete (Geometric Reasoning Explained)
Extended mind thesis
In philosophy of mind, the extended mind thesis says that the mind does not exclusively reside in the brain or even the body, but extends into the physical world.[1] The thesis proposes that some objects in the external environment can be part of a cognitive process and in that way function as extensions of the mind itself. Examples of such objects are written calculations, a diary, or a personal computer; in general, it concerns objects that store information. The hypothesis considers the mind to encompass every level of cognition, including the physical level.