I recently had the good fortune of hosting Dr. Ryan Shea for a @theorosproject event, and then the even better fortune of attending a day-long colloquium that he hosted a few days later. At both events, Ryan’s emphasis was on Goethe’s contemplative phenomenology of nature, especially on the role of form (or formal cause) in living systems. The colloquium built on these ideas by adding to them an Aristotelian context, where we also discussed how it is we should think about telos (or final cause) in living systems. What I took from these discussions was a renewed sense for how to think about forms and ends in the worlds of living beings. This post is about that. Link below.

The Blind Spot: A Dialogue with Evan Thompson and Matthew David Segall If you're in or near the Bay Area, please join us for the next @theorosproject event on November 13. The event will feature an evening dialogue with philosophers Evan Thompson and Matthew David Segall, where they will discuss Thompson's new book The Blind Spot. RSVP link, descriptions, and bios in the next tweet.

In my last essay, I offered up an account of my views on the current state of the humanities, paying special attention to the challenges they are facing today. I argued there that I believe we need to think differently about how we defend the humanities, eschewing common arguments about transferable skills and economic advantage alone. Instead of this approach, I offered that the humanities consist in substantive books and works of art and artifacts that are, to be sure, goods in themselves—goods that lead to greater knowledge of our circumstances as human beings—but, more importantly, that the humanities also consist in and emerge from practices of transformation in attention and perception. These practices, I argued, attune us to the world and each other in deeper, more subtle ways, and they also train us in arts of expressiveness that let us articulate these deeper senses in more profound and generative ways than we could without them. This was all in service of introducing our new initiative, @theorosproject , through which we are curating a series of essays, lectures, and local in-person events that are designed to aid our contemplative thought, conversation, and practice. Our view is that thinking well requires the practice of contemplation but also the conviviality of dialogue. We aim to cultivate both through our event series, events which will share in a tradition of thought—both timeless and historical—carried by the humanities. But how and why are we doing this? And who is the theōros? This short essay will introduce our approach to contemplation and the humanities and the figure who inspires it.

I'm happy to share an announcement about a new project I've been working on for the past several months with @Shermanicus. It's called The Theōros Project (@theorosproject) a new in-person event, lecture, and salon series that we're hosting in the San Francisco Bay Area over the next several months and on into 2025. These events are designed to aid our contemplative thought, conversation, and practice, with an emphasis on contemplation and the humanities in the 21st century. We hosted our first event this past Wednesday (more recaps coming on that soon), but for now, I wanted to let you all know about the series so that you might plan on attending our upcoming events in November, December, and January. You can read more about us here: theorosproject.substack.com/… And in this short essay here: theorosproject.substack.com/… If you're interested in attending an event, we have a calendar of upcoming talks here: theorosproject.substack.com/… Go ahead and subscribe for RSVP details and other updates on our website!