︎ Call for Applications for the Summer School PHYSIS 2025  at the SMR Campus in Greece ( Last updated: 09th of January 2025)



SMR Summer School PHYSIS 2025

PHYSIS in Stagira/Olympiada, Greece (wider area of Thessaloniki, municipality Aristotelis in Olympiada), 24-30 August 2025 with Dorion Sagan, John Ó Maoilearca, Thomas Nail, Katarina Kolozova, Joel White, Claire Sagan offering masterclasses and keynotes and more (panelists yet to be announced).

“Physis” at the Intersections of Philosophy, Physics, Biology and Classics at the SMR Campus

The Scope of the School

The study of physis (nature) in Greek antiquity marks the birth of philosophy and sciences simultaneously. Rational considerations of (what one would now call) material processes as the explanation of what the Universe is or of what it is made of, and how it works, and to what purpose laid the foundation for Philosophy in Greek antiquity, to which both logic and mathematics were inherent, and the rest of the disciplines were simply its extensions. It all begins with the old “physicists” (physikoi or physiologoi). The term (“physikoi”) serving to distinguish the pre-Socratic philosophers from those who spoke of the gods or myths is Aristotle's choice. Its function is to oppose the study of physis to the study of gods as that which grounds what would become philosophy and dialectical (logical) thinking, according to Aristotle's terminology. This choice of term or the definition behind it implies that the study of "Physis" vouches for a non-superstitious and rational or philosophical thought even of matters belonging to the realm of "ta meta ta physika."

Physis today is to be studied in post-anthropocentric context, in terms of posthumanism, in terms of its tension with technology. On the other hand, if we are to join contemporary theoretical contemplations, it is to be transformed into “environment,” which would be an anthropocentric definition, and into resource which would be a pro-capitalist definition. Is it possible to “deconstruct” (we are using the term in the sense of structuralist philosophy understood in its broadest sense) the notion of Nature while still addressing the relevance of “physis” without falling into the trap of the naïve, romantic vitalism? Can we speak of the relevance of its preservation without being anthropocentric about it? Can we speak of “physis” today without granting relevance to the materialist episteme even if we do not identify as materialists? We have assembled philosophers, theoreticians of sciences and physics, and classicists to address this topic.

Keynotes: Dorion Sagan, John Ó Maoilearca,  Thomas Nail, Katarina Kolozova,  Claire Sagan and Joel White.


Dorion Sagan
"Queerer than We Can Suppose: Mythology, Philosophy, Science, and the Future"

A scientifico-philosophical romp through evolution, thermodynamics, ecology, and the history of science with reference to Artemis, Aulis and Apollo, and the wise words said to have been inscribed at the Delphic Oracle, at the base of Mount Parnassus: μηδὲν ἄγαν – “nothing in excess.” While the thermodynamically based drive to grow, and to reproduce, can be traced to non-living systems, the tendency for exponential growth in living systems opens them up to wholesale extinction via viral infection, resource destruction and subsequent famine, as well as by being devoured all at once by predators. Growth unto ecosystem destruction can also be seen in the excessive production of heat (the final material waste after solids, liquids, and gases) near sensitive ecosystem surfaces. While a fatal tendency toward exponential growth has been to weed out, for example, in fetal growth, incessant cell reproduction, as well as to arrest in animal species, unsustainably rampant growth, in part by selecting for partially genetically underlain aging, the rise of technocapitalism can now be seen to be imperiling the human species as a whole. Anthropomorphic delusions of a uniquely fateful Anthropocene notwithstanding, however, unsustainable technocapitalist growth is unlikely to threaten the far-more-robust, three-plus billion-year-old terrestrial planetary ecosystem ​(Gaia),  which has survived multiple mass extinctions, including at least one previously caused by life. The Greek myth of Artemis’s killing of Orion (who overhunted her sacred forest) is used to illumine the ancient eco-evolutionary dangers of too-fast growth and resource extraction.

John Ó Maoilearca
“The Physics of Philosophy: On Impossible Absolutes and Incomplete Theories of Everything”

What is the relationship between our general (in)ability to form cosmological grand narratives (to think the ‘whole’) and more specific cases of ‘theories of everything’ that attempt to unify the General Theory of Relativity with the rest of physics (Quantum Mechanics), that is, to unify gravity with electro-magnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces? Can we discover parallel or covariant forms of observer-dependency and insufficient-thought in the two domains of classical metaphysics and (supposedly) non-classical physicalism? That is what I will discuss in this paper.

Thomas Nail
“The Birth of Chaos Before Physis” 

This class takes us back in time before the invention of nature altogether, prior to the 6th century BCE, to look more closely at several world cosmogonies that had no conception of nature at all. This class presents for the first time my research of the past several years on the oldest recorded world cosmogonies and the primacy of chaos in those stories. I find it interesting that in these cosmogonies where chaos was primordial, giving birth to everything else, we do not find ideas of nature. What does it mean to believe in a world without nature? What are some of the resonances between such a view and certain understandings of thermodynamics and quantum physics. This class looks closely at the historical and geographical invention of nature in the ancient world and asks why such an idea seems too incompatible with chaosmogony.

Joel White
“An Introduction to Critical Epistemology”

As per the title, the proposed talk will outline both what is meant by critical epistemology and why the “return” to a philosophical methodology that thinks the conditions of possibility (critique) of world-governing conceptual structures (episteme) has become both philosophically and politically necessary. For critical epistemology, an episteme (which takes it departure from Michel Foucault’s work on both critiqueand episteme as well as the meaning of episteme given in Plato’s Theaetetus) should be taken to mean: that epochal given regime of truth that relates to the knowledge of the world and that is sustained as metastable (structurally stable insofar as energy is invested in it) by the relation between the accepted nature of it (doxa) in discourse (the informational and differential relation between concepts or logos) and the social reproduction of that account as embodied in actually living social or material relations. Thus, following or furthering the historical epistemological method, that is, other than just determining how certain episteme have altered the “order of things” and how they function as “analogical exemplars,” (Foucault, Order of Things; Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions), critical epistemology also argues that it is necessary to determine what are the changes or alterations in political economy that co-constitute episteme. How does political economy maintain or “socially reproduce” such a structure as hegemonic (Gramsci)? In short, critical epistemology asks the question: what are the metastable conditions of possibility of episteme? Alongside Kant’s critical method, which, decides “as to the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics in general, and determines its sources, its extent, and its limits all in accordance with principles,” critical epistemology integrates Foucault’s definition of critique as “having the function of the de-subjectification in the game of what could be called, in a word, the politics of truth” (Foucault, What is Critique). As per Friedrich Lange’s claim that “the lasting importance of the critical philosophy,” is that it is “capable of affording…aid to the changing requirements of various epochs of culture,” (Lange, History of Materialism, 155), one might want to think of the “critique” in critical epistemology as determining the sources, the extent and the limits of epochal episteme in accordance with principles, so as to prepare the ground for the de-subjectification of any episteme’s subjectivizing structure. In other words, how might we no longer be governed by the ruling episteme. In this regard, critical epistemology also integrates critical theory’s own criticism of Kantian critique: that it “does not see reality as a product of society's work” (Horkheimer, Traditional and Critical Theory, 203). To ask what the relation between episteme and society’s work is, is, therefore, to ask how the epistemological reality qua the given reproduces itself through political economy.  Critical epistemology, in summary, is dedicated to determining the sources, the extents, the limits and political-economic conditions of epochal episteme understood as world-defining or governing technoscientific metastable conceptual frameworks (epistemes) that ideologically structure how the universe is substantially said to be.

Katarina Kolozova
“It all begins with Parmenides…”

A close reading of the postulates put forward by Parmenides – the father of ontology and thus of (European) philosophy as we have known it for centuries – discloses the fact that the riddles posed at the birth of Western rational thought have never been resolved. Zeno’s paradox is still a paradox – more so to philosophy than to the sciences – and ‘nothing comes from nothing’ is as much of a physical-metaphysical law nowadays as it was in sixth and fifth century BC of the European civilization. The principle was accepted by the pre-Socratics, and even those who advocated that change and movement were possible, such as the atomists, had to find a way around it instead of challenging it. In the Eleatic system, unchallenged till Aristotle, ‘nothing comes from nothing’ meant: change was impossible, empty space didn’t exist and everything had always existed in solid and unchangeable form. ‘Empty space’ meant nothingness in the ontological sense, whereas movement implied coming into being in the ontological sense argued in terms of ontology instead of physical philosophy. Movement was taken to be becoming an ousia, an essence or substance, which contradicts the principle that essence is of indestructible everlasting nature – and has, thus, always already existed. The idea of change violates the principle premise, an axiom of the axiom of the Eleatics – nothing is not, nothingness does not exist and becoming would mean and thus taking up previously ‘empty space’ (nothingness). Nothingness, non-being and empty space (or void) in the absolute sense are equated in Parmenides and continue to be so throughout antiquity, with some exceptional examples of direct confrontation with this logic that we will discuss further in this book. As for the atomist approach, it found a way to bend the Parmenidean rule rather than challenge or refute it.

Claire Sagan
“ Becoming Plato: Aporetic Callipolis Will Not Sustain Time or Irony “

This (anti-)reading of Plato proposes to take the polyvocities, irony, and temporality in the Republic seriously, emphasizing the tensions in the text: Socrates' maddening and provocative irony; the contradictory denunciations of stories, images and theater, cohabiting with myriad stories, images and theatrics in and of the text; the strict hierarchized onto-epistemologico-political project, eventually collapsing as a mere city of words that ineluctably fails to withstand the test of cyclical time, in spite of Socrates' seeming praise of an ontology of stillness and eternity. All this, to suggest that Plato's great work contains a suggestively materialist undercurrent just as strong as its surface idealist dimensions and their resulting utopian, positivist legacies. What if Plato's dream of the concept of Idea and his seemingly essentialist onto-political project invited, via its avowed temporal aporia and explicit ironies, a negative reading teaching us about matter's unstoppable motion, about a world of becoming, and a philosophy of immanence?

Practicalities, certificates, fees and your summer holiday hours at SMR Campus in Stagira:

Application process: We invite you to apply as a participant to the summer school which allows you to simply follow the program but also to submit a proposal to present in the afternoon panels. Apply on this link. Based on your application and in particular the motivation section of the application form, we will select not more than 17 prospective participants for in person participation and not more than 15 for online participation. The online component is fully integrated in the program which takes place fully in the zoom room as on-site. All discussion and interjection in exchanges must take place via zoom as well, a task for which SMR is fully prepared in 2025.

The deadline for submitting application is 1st of March, 2025

Program completion and certificates

We issue ECTS certificates for the participants of the Summer School that are students, and for the teachers and postdocs certificates of participation to include in their professional portfolio.

Scholē (in the original Greek sense: leisure and study as part of it), or simply time for pleasure and relaxation, is as important as the program itself: It is a key part of the overall experience, and we will make sure to allow for sufficient beach time, as the Campus is placed only 40 feet away from the beautiful city beach of Olympiada, and only 1000 meters from the site of ancient Stagira and the beautiful rocky beach next to it called Amos. The break between lunch and late afternoon sessions will allow you to do just that: enjoy a holiday in Greece with peers with whom you can exchange all sorts of ideas inspired by the morning talk, discussions and the informal program we (but also you) will put together such as movie nights with wine, and similar.

Accommodation at the Campus 

In the dormitory area we offer fully and newly built (rebuilt rather than renovated) and furnished bedrooms, toilets, and showers, and shared spacious balconies facing Mount Athos where you can have your breakfast if you choose so. Along with the accommodation you receive access to the kitchen/coffee station, cookers and laundry area in case you want to quickly prepare your meals or wash your cloths. Also, we will all sometimes cook together. The kitchen/laundry area is linked with the classroom area, a building attached to the dormitory, and will be available between 09.00 AM and 07.00 PM. To see the capacities of the building, check out this website https://www.smrgreece.com/ Breakfast will be served every morning with a rich variety of choices, covering a spectrum dietary preferences including vegetarian and vegan. (Additionally, we will try to provide some gluten free options as well, but we cannot guarantee the quantity as our supply options are relatively limited.) 

The accommodation is integrated in the overall price of participation as those staying at the dormitory are treated as our guests, part of SMR, and not technically as tourists. Accommodation with breakfast for 7 to 8 nights and occasional other meals and easy access to the beach and back costs 450 euro (plus 24% VAT as required by the Greek law). Most of the rooms are shared but there are bed dividers, individual keys, and the possibility of retreat to the balconies which allows you for some individual time as well does the use of the library area in the other part of the building (available in designated time-slots). Also, the city square park with multiple chairs and tables is just in front of the house and next to the central part of the beach.

You can also arrange your own accommodation in Olympiada via the local tour operator or otherwise. It would mean that the accommodation amount will not be part of the invoice.

Program fee (integrated in the same invoice as the accommodation)

In order to make the School accessible to applicants from less economically privileged environments, while trying to avoid the categories Global North and South division and the complexities of such a blanket categorization, we are reducing the program fee to 470 euro for onsite participation in Greece for one week (VAT not applicable) for everyone

Note: Most of our participants are funded by their university, and thus require our invitation to apply for funds. So, if this is your case, apply sooner rather than later in order to arrange the letter of support or invitation that you will require for your university’s financial support.

Transportation from and to the airport

There is public transportation leaving straight from the airport which is one hour away from the Olympiada. However, if you want to arrive fast and comfortably, we advise you to take the Hellenic Transportation shuttle and share it with other participants (a ride costs 100 to 130 euro). We can help organize you in time-slots depending on your arrival hours so you can share a shuttle for approximately 30 euro per person or less, and also book the pickup for you.

Online participation

The online component is fully integrated in the program which takes place fully in the zoom room as on-site. All discussion and interjection in exchanges must take place via zoom as well, a task for which SMR is fully prepared in 2025. Your experience will be seamless as close as possible to being at campus in person. You can also apply to present as part of the official program. Participation fee for the online component is 370 euro (VAT included)

Also, there are three symposium type sessions allowing for up to three presentations by participants (per session) who will choose to submit a paper (it can be proposed after the application form is submitted), suitable for advanced applicants: faculty, postdocs and PhD students.