From a conversation with an anti-metaphysics friend: “You create your reality.” This is one of the most delusional notions of the new age metaphysics (whose most famous forerunner is the Anglo-Irish idealist philosopher Bishop George Berkeley). However, using an example of deviant conceptions to represent and then discredit a whole field of intellectual inquiry constitutes a sloppy thinking. There have been many misconceptions and failed theories in the history of physics and science in general and what we assume or believe to be true today in physics or in science general may turn out to be false or at least lacking. The real question is whether or not there is any domain of experience or existence that cannot be covered by physics (and the sciences) and its method of inquiry, which can be claimed to be the uniquely proper domain of metaphysics as distinct from physics. We have experience (of reality) and narrative about experience, of which explanation is a unique category. It is critical to know the distinction between the experience and the narrative thereof. The fundamental guiding assumption of science is that deep within itself nature (reality) contains an order or a structure that is ultimately intelligible to human understanding. Explanation is that mode of rational discourse in which we logically show why matters must be the way they are by demonstrating that orderly structure we call “law of nature (or physics).” (A prediction is only an explanation in advance and therefore prediction is but a subcategory of explanation.) Mathematics is the language of ratios and therefore it is the language that is the most suited for the description of the order, the structure, and the law of nature (reality). Since if a discourse on (a process of) nature/reality itself is part of (the process of) nature/reality, then there is something within the process of nature/reality that is permanently hidden from the observer. Therefore, in order for nature/reality to be intelligible at all, we, the conscious observer, must claim that we step aside of the process of nature/reality and “objectively” comment thereon without anything impeding our view thereof. Thus, we the observers have replaced the mythical gods as the super-/supra-natural entity that speaks for nature. Although “God” may or may not be a mathematician, these new “gods” are. “We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning” (Werner Heisenberg). Now, regardless of whether or not you agree with the foregoing reflection, it makes no scientific statements or truth claims. It is simply a reflection—a thought about a thought system. When we develop scientific models or theories, we reflect upon them after (meta-) the models and theories are formulated. This process of rational intellectual reflection upon thought systems (models and theories) has its legitimate place in the conversation of humankind, including scientific discourse, and plays an important role in the advancement of human knowledge. That is to say, ‘meta-ing” is an important part and aspect of the entirety of human thought as well as an essential element of human consciousness. It uniquely contributes to the development and revolution/evolution of human knowledge. Further, the discipline of mathematics per se, and language or linguistics in general, is essentially meta-scientific/meta-physical in terms of its subject matter and field of inquiry and investigation. And yet it contributes invaluably and indispensably to the advancement of scientific knowledge. In addition, for example, the study of history in contradistinction with the study of nature is the realm of narratives proper, because in its highest expression historians abandon (any attempt at) explanation. Explanation subsumes all possibility inside the framework of the necessary; whereas narrative subsumes all necessity inside the context of the possible. And in this subsumption of the necessary into the possible, the study of history comes fully alive and finds its fulfillment. Thus there are many legitimate fields of intellectual pursuit that are distinct from and irreducible to physical science and the scientific method. This realization is tantamount to the realization of the immense richness and multidimensionality of experience of reality in its humanly-accessible totality. What should be avoided or extirpated, is therefore not metaphysics as such (or whatever terms we may use to call it) but irrationality manifesting as intellectual sloppiness, dishonesty, and out-of-integrity.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Apr 2014 22:48:37 +0000
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