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21st century metaphysics: Leaving Fantasy Behind

Metaphysics is dead; long live metaphysics!

23rd January 2023
| Post-postmodern Philosopher
3,034 words
Read time: approx. 15 mins

This is the 8th instalment in our series The Return of Metaphysics, in partnership with the Essentia Foundation.

Read the previous articles of The Return of Metaphysics series.

What defined much of 20th-century philosophy was an attempt to overcome metaphysics and replace it with science. But those attempts failed. From the Logical Positivists and Wittgenstein to Derrida and Heidegger, metaphysics found its way back into the very theories that were trying to get rid of it. But even if metaphysics is inescapable, we cannot simply return to speculative theorising about the ultimate nature of reality. Instead, we need to recognise that all theories have limits and are merely attempts to find better ways to navigate our way in the world, not to discover “the mind of God”, argues Hilary Lawson.

 

For much of the twentieth century, metaphysics has been deeply out of fashion, derided as the unfounded beliefs and prejudices of a pre-scientific era. But metaphysics is back. Both in the writings of philosophers and implicitly in culture more generally. It is a phenomenon we should take seriously, but it is not one that we can casually endorse. To find a way forward, we need to rethink the very nature of metaphysics, and what it is to have an overall framework of belief.  

We can perhaps account for the fall of metaphysics from its highpoint in the nineteenth century and its more recent return as indicative of a more general long term historical shift in our framework of belief. An avalanche of technological breakthroughs and the remarkable impact of science in the first half of the twentieth century, cars, planes, electricity, and, more darkly, atomic power, led to a consistent and accelerating decline in religious belief. So that both intellectual and popular culture has come to look to science for the answers to almost all questions: be it the solution to Covid, a new anti-ageing cream, the origin of the universe, or the nature of consciousness. In this sense, science is the philosophy of our time, the framework through which we see the world.  

Hilary Lawson
23rd January 2023

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Nathaniel Joseph 27 December 2023

Outstanding and intriguing article. Always sharing wonderful things with us. Many thanks. Simply continue to produce posts of this nature.

Billy Melton 8 March 2023

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Xinhang Shen 28 January 2023

"What defined much of 20th-century philosophy was an attempt to overcome metaphysics and replace it with science."

Without the guidance of metaphysics, science has lost all meaning what a truth is. Relativity and quantum mechanics have introduced so many wrong concepts that have blocked the progress of the development of theoretical physics for a century. The mistake of Einstein's relativity is so obvious (just a few sentences) that everybody with high school knowledge can immediately see, but the top physicists still stubbornly hold it as a pillar for all modern physics theories, very similar to the situation in The Emperor's New Clothes. Here is a complete disproof of special relativity:

Special relativity claims that the clock moving relative to the observer ticks more slowly than the clock stationary with the observer. But Lorentz Transformation tells us that the time t' of the moving frame is shorter than the time t of the stationary frame:

t' = t/gamma < t

The period p' of the moving clock as an interval of the time of the moving frame should also be shorter than the period p of the stationary clock:

p' = p/gamma < p

Thus, the frequency f' of the moving clock should become faster than the frequency f of the stationary clock:

f' = 1/p' = gamma/p = gamma*f > f

That means, the moving clock should tick more quickly than the stationary clock, a direct contradiction that has disproved special relativity.

The mainstream physicists just ignore such an obvious contradiction and keep using special relativity as a pillar of modern physics.

How can we wake them up?