METAPHYSICS

WHAT EXPLAINS MIND AND HOW IT FITS INTO THE BIG PICTURE?
Two ancient Greek philosophers formally split mind away from matter around 350 BCE in Western thought, when Plato and Aristotle distinguished between seen and unseen reality. They had two different philosophies regarding what was more important—mind or matter?

RAPHAEL’S PAINTING DEPICTS THE HISTORICAL MOMENT.
Raphael portrayed that cleaving moment in his 1510 painting, The School of Athens. Its philosophical divide created a chasm between unseen yet evident mind versus the material evidence of seen, testable matter.

In the painting, Plato’s hand points to the heavens, supporting his view that an invisible idea, form, plan, design, or code is transcendent over the actual physical universe. Plato was honoring a hidden plan that is invisibly meta—beyond our evident physical reality. He said its hidden ideal form or design is what creates reality.

But Aristotle’s hand is firmly parallel with the earth, symbolizing his pragmatic emphasis on testable events that manifest in nature. Aristotle was honoring the logical, scientific principles that developed physics, biology, botany, chemistry, and zoology.

A long span of time stretched from ancient Greece to Raphael’s Renaissance painting, and even more centuries stretch on up to now.

PHYSICS NOW BELONGS IN SCIENCE; METAPHYSICS BELONGS IN PHILOSOPHY.

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy. Its prefix meta means transcendent, beyond, or more comprehensive. It’s a catch-all term to describe what is beyond physics…phenomena that we have no means to test, yet we still do recognize and ponder.

HERE ARE SOME SPECIALISTS IN METAPHYSICS:

The Metaphysics branch of philosophy examines the nature of reality itself, the question of free will, first causes such as the origin of space and time (which we cannot scientifically test or even observe happening), the possibility of an immortal soul, the existence of a supreme being, and so on.

METAPHYSICS IS NOT A RELIGION OR DOGMA.

Metaphysics shows the human mind at work trying to understand the source and ongoing meaning of reality.

Metaphysics is willing to ponder what may be true beyond the known parameters of our dogmas, conceptions, and sensory limits…issues that some ascribe to the mystery of God.

World cultures have mingled and morphed so much over time that modern science even has a theory named for a goddess in Greek mythology, Gaia, who gave birth to the Earth and all life on it.

But in modern bioscience’s updated version…

GAIA REFERS TO PLANET EARTH, ALIVE IN ITS TOTAL ECOSYSTEM AND BIOSPHERE.

Otherwise, the concept of a god or divinity has just about completely dropped out of the hard science picture.

Why? Because no respectable scientist knows how to include any God-data that is accurate in scientific terms (meaning its data is systematic, replicable, quantifiable, and falsifiable).

OUR WORLD HAS NO SHARED STORY OF UNIVERSAL CREATION.

Some adhere to a Christian, Jewish, Islamic, or Shinto creation story. Some point to the Big Bang as the real deal. A few still proclaim Einstein’s steady state theory.

But many of us just shrug off creation or God, saying it doesn’t really matter…where’s dinner?

Science ushered divine force out of the picture for a logical, pragmatic reason: it made us stop taking the easy way out when we try to explain how the universe began, what it is made of, how it works, and why we exist.

A pat “God did it” just isn’t enough to spin the threads of data that weave the vast garments of scientific theory.

MAKING A SCIENTIFIC THEORY FIT THE SHAPE OF NATURE TAKES A LOT OF WORK.

Science is more than just a guess or idea. Someone makes a prediction that turns out to be correct when tested in experimental ways. Researchers weave strands of data as tightly together as possible into an ongoing story about reality that is as nearly true as possible.

In doing so, they throw various theories over the whole awkward shape of reality, draped on it like tailored garments.

Yet we never get to see reality whole and naked. Aspects of it keep shape-shifting on us continually, depending on where we stand to view it in our own time, place, and mindset.

THE UNIVERSE ITSELF IS ALIVE AND FRACTAL.

All events are fractal, and they morph along the upper bubble’s timeline and the lower bubble’s spaceline. Thus in this upper bubble, we inhabit, the natural world, and its human civilizations morph or evolve along our own bubble’s timeline.

We seek to understand the details of events in reality’s flow and act consciously to affect its direction. For instance…

SCIENCE HAS UPDATED ITSELF AGAIN AND AGAIN.

Unlike politics or religion, science has the privilege and duty to revise itself to include new information as it is discovered.

Astrology became astronomy. Alchemy became chemistry. Phrenology, the charting of bumps on the skull, became mapping the brain itself. Scientists helped that happen.