Natural Philosophy · Writing · Ethics

Melanie
Challenger

Navigating the edges of life, agency, mortality, and the living world.

A figure crouching in snow inside a rusted whaling vat

Broadcast

The Psychosphere

A podcast investigating how agency and mind emerge in the living world.

The author lying face to face with a King penguin on a windswept shore

"How does life acquire meaning, and why do humans repeatedly relocate life and agency in abstract forms or essences?"
question in progress

“Natural philosophy” is the best description of what I do.

From the ancient world to only a few hundred years ago, the study of nature was called natural philosophy. This was a philosophical approach to investigating the living world, including us, that incorporates science, history of ideas, the arts, and philosophy. For me, it offers a solution to the separation of different, but equally important kinds of knowledge about the world.

“Our imagination is struck only by what is great; but the lover of natural philosophy should reflect equally on little things.”
— Alexander von Humboldt