As far as I can tell, Bertrand Russell's "neutral monism" is just a logically-denatured, reheated misunderstanding of William James' "pure experience" (there's some Mach in there too but go with it). James' pluralistic panpsychism has vitality and spirit. "Neutral monism" is

a logician's trick. It's a good old fashioned attempt at a view from nowhere. Honestly I hate always being "the Whitehead guy" (I'm finally teaching other stuff this coming academic year!). But in so many conversations about the current quandaries in fundamental physics &

consciousness, I constantly feel like I need to bring him up. W covered this territory 100 years ago in his critiques of the bifurcation of nature into mind & machine & his reconstructions of an organic cosmology to replace it.

I am a complete mathematical dunce, so

my only hope is reading as many of the theoretical physicists' popular books as I can (since this is where they usually try to hide their metaphysics) & to struggle through their undergraduate textbooks where available. This is what I've tried to do with

Alan Lightman https://footnotes2plato.com/2018/04/15/searching-for-stars-on-an-island-in-maine-by-alan-lightman/

& with Carlo Rovelli. I have not had the pleasure of meeting the latter, but last summer I was in Italy for a conference on the physics and philosophy of time, where my contribution was a Whiteheadian interpretation of Rovelli's quantum gravity theory: https://matthewsegall.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/time-and-experience-in-physics-and-philosophy-whiteheadian-reflections-on-bergson-einstein-and-rovelli-.pdf

I have no doubt that there are mathematical & experimental advances waiting in the wings that will bring quantum & relativistic phenomena into greater harmony. But I am doubtful it is possible to invent/discover the required math & measurements without also

doing the metaphysical work to uproot our old modern concepts (e.g., the split between primary/secondary characteristics, thought/extension, mind/matter, etc.) to make way for the anthropo-cosmological revelation that, e.g., allows us to take something like astrology seriously.

We have to know what we are looking for if we hope to understand Nature. If we are only looking for mass & velocity, we will not see that there is real emotion in gravity, that electromagnetic vectors realize value-feelings as they radiate with & through space-time.

We will miss whatever cannot be measured by so many clocks and rulers.

So what are we looking for? The instructions for the assembly of a giant machine? Or something more?

*special note on my use of "we" throughout this thread: https://twitter.com/ThouArtThat/status/1265419044154273793?s=20

**I am feeling a bit guilty for maybe being too hard on these two Brits (Russell and Dawkins).