Philosophy Now – Issue 117

https://philosophynow.org/issues/117/Beyond_Physics_No_More

Beyond Physics No More?

by Rick Lewis

Let’s get meta-physical! Metaphysics is philosophy’s oldest and most central strand. When
Greek philosophy first kicked off in the port of Miletus on the coast of Anatolia 2,500 years ago,
the biggest question pondered by the likes of Thales and Anaximander was this: what is the
underlying reality of the universe, beneath the surface appearances of our everyday world?
Thales thought that everything was, deep down, made of water. Squeeze something hard
enough and juice runs out – see? Anaximander disagreed; the underlying reality, he said, was
an unobservable element called apeiron. And so Western philosophy began, with speculations
that could not be directly checked but which might with greater or lesser success explain those
phenomena that we can directly observe. Democritus (460-370BC) hypothesised that simplicity
of explanation could be combined with the diversity of the observed world if we assume
everything to be made up of arrangements of tiny indivisible articles he called atoms. Epicurus
a century later agreed but added that rather than just bouncing around in a mathematically
predicatable fashion, sometimes the atoms swerve unpredictably as they fall through the void
– and this swerve (called a clinamen), by defeating determinism, is the source of our free will.
You can read much more in this issue about Epicurus and his theories and we have a great
cartoon strip about him too.

Such speculations didn’t have a specific label until Aristotle’s editors gathered together his
notes about them into a volume they called ‘Metaphysics’, meaning ‘Beyond Physics’, perhaps
because Physics was the title of the previous volume.

Our metaphysics articles in this issue includes a feature on Bishop Berkeley; so you can find
out why he believed in ideas, but not in matter, and also why he made the surprising claim
that his colourful ideas were a philosophy of common sense. Berkeley’s idealism is well
known, but it’s often forgotten he too, like Democritus and Epicurus, believed in atoms –
though naturally he had his own unique take on what they were. The article on Spinoza
explores his reasons for thinking that God and Nature were one and the same – but the author
goes on to argue that in the process, Spinoza gives us valuable clues as to how to understand
some perplexing puzzles in science today. Nick Inman asks about the nature of human identity
and asks where, exactly, it is located, and Jon David wonders whether rocks have awareness.
And there you see a sample of the themes that have preoccupied metaphysicians for centuries.

For a couple of thousand years, metaphysics was such a central, essential part of philosophy
that for many people, it was the real story. The majority of the great philosophical theories and
debates down the ages were in one way or another part of metaphysics. Metaphysics is about
the deep structure of the universe, about how things really are, as opposed to how they look.
But this question directly connects with others which are part of metaphysics too. Does God
exist, and if so, what’s He (or She) like? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How
does the mind or soul connect with the body? Free will is another perennial problem in
metaphysics, and should not be confused with Free Willy, which was a movie about a whale.

Relatively recently, in the last three centuries or so, the invention of new scientific instruments
has revealed things about the universe which were previously hidden from our perceptions by
scale or distance. Philosophers used to hypothesise about everything being made of atoms – a
recurring subject of discussion in metaphysics for two thousand years. Yet over the last one
hundred years the structure of atoms has become very well understood through both
theoretical and experimental physics and we can even take photographs of them, using
powerful electron microscopes. Does this mean that the whole discussion of atomic theory has
moved from the realm of metaphysics into the realm of physics? If so, might other discussions
in metaphysics follow suit in the future? The mind-body problem has already done so, if you
believe physicalists like Daniel Dennett, but very much hasn’t if you agree with dualists like
David Chalmers. The jury is still out on that one, but perhaps there are other metaphysical
questions which can be solved by science. So, might metaphysics soon become a quaint
historical footnote like alchemy?

Clearly some metaphysical questions – like the existence of atoms – have indeed crossed into
the realm of experimental science, into a space where they can actually, finally be answered.
But there may be movement in the other direction too. Some philosophers have recently been
scrapping with scientists like Stephen Hawking about whether the world still needs
philosophy. Hawking claimed that “philosophy is dead”, as physics now does all the work that
philosophy used to do. Yes, retort philosophy’s defenders – that is because you astrophysicists
have all become amateur metaphysicians yourselves, theorising about supersymmetric strings
and dark energy and parallel universes and other matters way beyond the reach of your
telescopes! So from that perspective, metaphysics is not old-fashioned – on the contrary, it is
the new black. And as we stare out into the blackness still seeking answers about the nature of
the cosmos and the place of consciousness within it, mere labels, such as ‘scientist’ and
‘philosopher’ may come to seem less important than the questions themselves.