Segall’s approach introduces a fascinating shift in how we consider space, time, and the very structures of possibility. Rather than reducing them to the static, a priori conditions that Kant proposed—forms of intuition that condition all experience—Segall’s view situates them within a cosmic, ecological, and historical process. Space and time are no longer just cognitive frameworks imposed by the mind, but are woven into the fabric of a broader, interdependent system that stretches across eons, built by a society of organisms and the ecosystems they inhabit. This reframing challenges us to think of these concepts as relational rather than intrinsic, emphasizing an ecology that exists before and beyond human subjectivity, yet remains dynamically entangled with it.

The move away from the subject-centered view is especially striking. Segall resists the Kantian impulse to begin with the human subject, or even to assume a fixed, abstract “I” from which all experience radiates. This echoes Karen Barad’s critique of the “view from nowhere,” which dehistoricizes and abstracts the knower from the very processes in which they participate. Instead, Segall's framework calls for an understanding of knowledge that is not just centered on a subject but on an interwoven field of forces, interactions, and relations that are inseparable from the phenomena being studied. The scientist, for Segall, is part of the unfolding process, not its detached observer.

In this way, the sciences—whether in physics, biology, or other fields—are not conducted from a privileged standpoint above the fray but from within the very systems they seek to understand. The notion of "endo-physics" or "endo-biology" brings this perspective to life, suggesting that the scientist is both participant and subject of the knowledge they generate. This intertwines epistemology with ontology: what we know and how we know it are not separate from the world we seek to understand.

Segall’s move to “reverse” the Kantian framework, rather than merely overturning it, is subtle but crucial. It's a challenge to think and feel beyond the structures that have long shaped our perception of reality, not by rejecting them outright, but by moving within and beyond them to a deeper, more relational understanding of space, time, and the conditions of possibility. The deeply relational and interdependent nature of existence championed here is not about a self-contained ego that knows and acts in isolation, but about a more diffuse, ecologically embedded "knowing" that emerges from the interactions and histories of all beings.

Thus, Segall’s ecological view does not so much discard Kantian ideas but transforms them, calling for a deepened awareness of how the mind is always already part of a larger, more fluid, and interconnected reality. It suggests that the path forward is one of re-engagement—keeping but moving beyond the conceptual categories that have defined our experience to a more integrated and relational sense of being.

GPT