Center for Philosophy and the Natural Sciences - California State University Sacramento

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order."
~ Alfred North Whitehead

New Book by CPNS Senior Fellow
Stuart Kauffman

Stuart A. Kauffman is the founding director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics and a professor of biological sciences, physics, and astronomy at the University of Calgary. He is Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, a MacArthur Fellow, and an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, of which he was a

founding member. His books include: The Origins of Order and At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity.


		Spacetime: From the Greeks to Gravity Probe B What did the ancient Hellenic philosophers think about matter and its relationship to space and time? How were these views inherited and modified in the work of Newton, and later in the work of Einstein? Gravity Probe B (GP-B) is a NASA physics mission that is currently investigating
Einstein's 1916 general theory of relativity--his theory of gravity. It is hoped that the results will yield new understandings of the long evolution of thought about the nature of the physical world.

Michael Epperson - Director & Principal Investigator

The Center for Philosophy and the Natural Sciences at California State University Sacramento engages in research and scholarship that explores the philosophical implications underlying recent innovations in contemporary science, including those occurring in the areas of quantum physics, cosmology, and the study of complex adaptive systems. This exploration is, in part, a speculative philosophical enterprise intended to contribute to the framework of a suitable bridge by which scientific and philosophical concepts might not only be cross-joined, but mutually supported.

Mission Statement

Research Fellows

Logical Causality in Quantum Mechanics: Relational Realism and the Evolution of Ontology to Praxiology in the Philosophy of Nature

Principal Investigator: Michael Epperson, Department of Philosophy, California State University, Sacramento. Co-Investigators: Henry P. Stapp, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; David Finkelstein, Professor, Department of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology; Timothy Eastman, NASA-Goddard & Plasmas International.

Funded by a grant from

July 5-7, 2010- Freiburg - University of Freiburg
Symposium: "Generalized Quantum Theory"

Jan 29-30, 2010 - Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Workshop: "Quantum Logical Causality, Complex Adaptive Systems, and the Philosophy of Whitehead"

June 26-28, 2009 - Brussels - Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science: Symposium - Logical Causality and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead

June 13-20, 2009 - University of Rome
Panel and Lecture by Michael Epperson: International Conference on Science and Spirituality (Cortona, Italy)

The Center for Philosophy and the Natural Sciences
California State University, Sacramento
6000 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95819-6033