What is the relationship between science and metaphysics?

[whizrobo]

What is the relationship between science and metaphysics?

 

[SkullTraill]

There is barely a relationship. Metaphysics is a branch of philosoply, not science. Science and philosophy share a common root from which they both descend, and that is logic.

 

[Jarhyn]

I would say there's a heirarchy of ideas, where "metaphysics" rests at the very top, the root of all discussion of that which is.

On one side of this is discussion of "random+chaos", something that can at best be understood "statistically" which is to say putting a box of math around "how much we can't know about it," and "superstitiously" which is to say "place your bets here!"

Probabilistics discusses the first of these and divination encompasses answers to the latter, insofar as patterns do occur occasionally in the chaos.

On the other side of the equation is "that which is described and visible through axiomatic understanding."

Under this, we get a large umbrella of concepts, but somewhere underneath "logic" and then "class theory", then "game theory" we find "science".

Science itself is a game theoretic approach to uncovering unknowns. Other people might call it "philosophy" but that's about to get eaten in the next few years.

 

[Roma]

Scire - to know. Hence Science is what is known.

In the 19th century, much of the advance was by amateurs (lovers of science).

In modern times there are fashions in science. This is largely in science captured by industries and institutions and politicians. Try pandemics for example.

Until about 1990 it was not possible to publish in a scientific journal a paper disagreeing with Einstein. It was not that Einstein was thought correct, but rather that military science had made much progress contrary to Einstein and did not want it published. For example the ufos that make right angle turns at high speed. Inertia - what inertia?

It might be better then to distinguish materialistic science from etheric science (and beyond)

 

[Nana]

What is the relationship between science and metaphysics?

There isn't one because they address two different questions.
Science inquires how something happens. What cause precede phenomena. Science describes processes.

Metaphysics, as understood by most, is a mentation on why some thing happens. Characterized by inquiry over method, Metaphysics has no practical application for the laymen that doesn't present as religious dogma. This is largely because applied metaphysics require some form of gnosis to be employed.

First hand experience is essential to discuss metaphysics; As the metaphysical is inexplicable, describing it is achievable only through the substitution of phenomenal terms for ineffable reality metaphysics attempt to describe.

 

[Roma]

the metaphysical is inexplicable

Sometimes I call myself a metaphysicist. Metaphysical experiments are fun.

There is a spectrum from spirit to matter. There is no separation

 

[Mider2009]

It depends on the person...to some metaphysics is bullshit to others it's just another way of explaining how things work...but we don't yet have a way to produce mass evidence

Maybe 1000 years from now when humans evolve we will speak to other beings which we called angels and see onto other dimensions n see what we called cryptoids and demons etc

Then this will be science

 

[RoccoR]

RE: What is the relationship between science and metaphysics?
※→ whizrobo,

..................................Yes, "Metaphysics" is a faction of "philosophy." But philosophy is a "science."
..................................Metaphysics focuses on the study of reality in the environment.
..................................Metaphysics is NOT faith-based. associated, among others, with Plato and Aristotle.
..................................Metaphysics was opposed by logical empiricism, positivism, and linguistic philosophy.
.................................Metaphysics is more properly based on transcendental determinations.
...............................
• Science ∆ Metaphysics
........
........ Science is distinguished by the “difference of object, or of the sources of knowledge, or of the kind of knowledge.”
........ Science is that process that is subject to examination through the method natural science means not only that they provide a ........ ..........necessary foundation for Newtonian science,

What is the relationship between science and metaphysics?

Most Respectfully,
R

 

[RoccoR]

RE: What is the relationship between science and metaphysics?
※→ whizrobo,

I was reminded yesterday, that the Scientific Method does not always look very scientific.

What is the relationship between science and metaphysics?

(COMMENT)

The ideas being pursued along the lines of dimensions beyond the four we are familiar with (called String Theory) is being examined only at the theoretical level. You can not subject it to the scientific method. String Theory is beyond the known laws of science (physics). That which is beyond the testing through the scientific method is, by definition, "metaphysics."

Most Respectfully,
R

 

[Dre_87]

I actually have some sort of explanations and I talk alot about them in this thread that I made called 'The HIgh-Level Spiritual And Occult Knowledge, And Advanced Technology Thread'..

The High-Level Spiritual And Occult Knowledge, And Advanced Technology Thread

I just wanted to start a thread that was different from my incredible and almost unbelievable account of what happened to me in 2010, that I've posted in this section fo the forum before on here earlier. I wanted this thread to be like a repository of what you might call 'esoteric' and actually...

wizardforums.com

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

I would say sound, for one.
Reading Sacred Magic of Ancient Egypt and other resources, it is mentioned on sound and architecture that it was a critical process, while following hieroglyph instructions and other processes.
According to the Gaia show, ancient Egyptians and others used certain sounds to defy gravity and other natural laws. Certain sounds. Bumpin to catchy music isn't going to make your car fly in the air on its own.

After reading a post regarding Jason Miller and Sorcery is Real on Occultmirror, and reading the Magick of Angels and Demons, it makes me wonder why it doesn't work for me. I may try the experiment of not only finishing what I start, but to personally do my best steps forward to fulfilling what their powers are. That way if I do use either for anything, it wont be like my laziness as the problem. In doing so, we may find new psychological or scientific otherwise perspectives after we put in 200% effort into it all.

If you think this is too much work with a handful of spirits, consider I was planning to employ 30-40 demons on various tasks to better my life in a new ordered fashion. I was smacked down by a teacher for doing so. So, if its that much trouble, perhaps I should do the work for all 144 if they're too precious to deal with me using natural laws of various disciplines to accomplish the same.

 

[EpicBunty]

As Above So Below.
that is the connection between all of the Sciences and Disciplines.

 

[Xenophon]

Traditionally, metaphysics as invented and propounded by Aristotle was a "science of being." As actually developed by him, it was an articulation of categories for discussing all branches of knowledge. Much as I loathe Anglo-American analytic philosophy, it were arguably correct in apprehending that Aristotle was critiquing language as much as he was discussing reality at its root.

Whether the pre-Socratics' discussions of "physis" were the "same" as Aristotle's science of being is a controversial question. Heidegger vehemently denies this and for profound reasons.

Presently, "metaphysics" means just about any arcane thing the writer chooses to make it mean, not mean, or obfuscate.

In the Aristotelian sense, I'd say that metaphysics is expounding the basic categories used by the sciences. In physics this gets styled searching for the "constituents of" physical (heck, maybe psychic) stuff. Nowadays, cutting edge physicists do more real metaphysics than academic philosophers (who seem worn to frazzles in their Kulturkampf skirmishes re: whether Thales was trans and whether Pythagoras plagiarized the proto-Bantu.)

 

[RoccoR]

RE: What is the relationship between science and metaphysics?
※→ Xenophon, et al,

I'm not sure everyone agrees about Metaphysics's scope, breadth, and depth. I have a doctorate in Metaphysics and I tend to think that, like other sciences, Metaphysics has evolved and continues to evolve as the philosophical study of the "nature existence and meaning of the ultimate reality."

Metaphysics is research through opening a vein into philosophy by the interrogatives into the nature of ultimate reality; and as such, it is considered the most "abstract and speculative" wing of philosophy.

Presently, "metaphysics" means just about any arcane thing the writer chooses to make it mean, not mean, or obfuscate.

In the Aristotelian sense, I'd say that metaphysics is expounding the basic categories used by the sciences. In physics this gets styled searching for the "constituents of" physical (heck, maybe psychic) stuff. Nowadays, cutting edge physicists do more real metaphysics than academic philosophers (who seem worn to frazzles in their Kulturkampf skirmishes re: whether Thales was trans and whether Pythagoras plagiarized the proto-Bantu.)

(COMMENT)

Our friend "Xenophon" is correct when speaking in terms of the "Aristotelian sense." And while Metaphysics has a very strong philosophical content, it also has its share of adventures in the realm of the "

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(including Consciousness,

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and the Mysteries of Life).

Metaphysics is a form of Philosophy that, on the balancing scale, almost has a spiritual quality to it and an eye on the supernatural. But at the end of the day, Metaphysics asks questions about reality.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

[Xingtian]

There is barely a relationship. Metaphysics is a branch of philosoply, not science. Science and philosophy share a common root from which they both descend, and that is logic.

Science is also a branch of philosophy, AKA natural philosophy. You can’t have any science without epistemology, and you can’t have epistemology without metaphysics.

Post automatically merged: Mar 24, 2024

In days of yore a lot of the categories which have assumed very specific meanings today were much broader. For instance, “grammar” would include poetry, rhetoric, and philology. “Physics” meant all natural sciences. As it originally appeared Aristotle’s metaphysics was whatever was taught “after” physics. His book Metaphysics includes stuff that would nowadays be considered metaphysics- cause and effect, ontology, etc- but also cosmology (his all-important conception of the universe as a series of nested spheres appears there) and even something approaching theology (the Prime Mover). But the relation of metaphysics and physics (as in natural science) is intimate, you can’t have one without the other. Even the Epicureans with their empiricist epistemology had a basic metaphysics (there’s atoms and void). Nowadays one hears proud claims from the camp of modern science that they have jettisoned metaphysics and gather knowledge purely by observation, experimentation… but you can’t explain why any of that is reliable without ultimately bringing in metaphysical assumptions.

 

[Xenophon]

Some good replies in this thread. Better than my off the cuff stuff earlier. Could be love of wisdom is not dead and Sophia was just out for a facelift.

 

[astralmagickcraft]

I like how some put it "The Aim of Religion; the Method of Science." If you think there's a difference between what can be proved and what you believe, you have some serious thinking to do.

My belief is that if there is one form of non repeating infinity, there are all of them, if there are all ways of infinity, there's fractals inside. If there is every fractal that means that everything contains everything. Thus, As Above So Below.

If a seed contains everything in life, than I can understand the outside by looking into the within.

 

[Xingtian]

My belief is that if there is one form of non repeating infinity, there are all of them, if there are all ways of infinity, there's fractals inside. If there is every fractal that means that everything contains everything. Thus, As Above So Below.

It seems to be a perennial insight emerging here and there around the world. Maybe the most sophisticated version of it comes from the Huayan school of Buddhism. As as example,

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[HoldAll]

After some soul searching, I've uploaded Olav Hammer's "Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age" after all; I've hesitated until now because of its exceedingly scholarly content. I haven't finished it yet but what has become disturbingly clear to me that ever since theosophy arose, spiritual seekers have time and again been taken in by esoteric authors who alternately denied the truth or legitimacy of scientific discoveries, pooh-poohed them as incomplete or short-sighted, selectively used some of them to corroborate their doctrines while conveniently ignoring others that may have disproved them, interpreting them in their own idiosyncratic way that would not stand up to academic scrutiny, etc., a phenomenon the author calls 'scientism'.

What has been so inordinately insidious about scientism (and these are my own musings now) is the use of scientific terms to explain away the inexplicable, for example Mesmer's 'animal magnetism' (no magnetism whatsoever involved), the chakra system being often likened to a network of pipelines (astral hydraulics?), all sorts of 'vibrations', 'wavelength' and 'frequencies' shaking up the aura, 'inner planes' designed to describe a 3D+ (and not a 2D system as implied), purely hypothetical constructs (e.g. tachyons or m-dimensional space) in order to go really medieval on consensus reality, or the stereotypical misapplication of quantum physics by esoteric authors that has become so painfully cringy by now.

Similarly, the energy model of magic unintentially entails the inherent limitations of the energy concept in physics and everyday thinking, so a given type of energy is willy-nilly thought to be finite (as if emanating from battery that runs empty over time and has to be recharged, or like a current that can get switched on or off), or certain phenomena being described as 'light' where no movement in a straight line from a single source is actually sensed, and the list goes on and on; the information model of magic that was intended to transcend the energy model seems to have fallen by the wayside new since the heyday of chaos magic.

Physics as we know it cannot explain supernatural phenomena (and yes, and that goes for quantum mechanics, too), in my opinion. Science-inspired analogies, on the other hand, are often misleading or put unnecessary limitations on occult thinking. My pet peeve is when authors try to underpin their claims by such scientific (and thus seemingly respectable) analogies - an analogy can only ever serve as an illustration but never as proof; whole occult books have been written based on that fallacy. "Ineffable phenomenon X is like Y, therefore…" and hey presto, the reader believes that the author has got a handle on things, what a genius. Bullshit. Call a theory a theory and an opinion an opinion but never attempt to prove a phenomenon by means of a facile analogy.

I think people are still afraid of the unknown and unknowable and clutch at straws as far as the occult is concerned. Nevertheless, we have made some progress in that we don't hang on the lips of occult star authors anymore claiming revelatory 'secret knowledge' and shrug it off as UPG, at least in forums like this one (for the most part, as exceptions like the continued popularity of Crowley's "Liber Al" demonstrate). I think we should pay more attention to the belief shifting theories of chaos magick and treat the doctrines of even the most celebrated occult authorities as mere opinions and never as gospels of truths.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

After some soul searching, I've uploaded Olav Hammer's "Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age" after all; I've hesitated until now because of its exceedingly scholarly content. I haven't finished it yet but what has become disturbingly clear to me that ever since theosophy arose, spiritual seekers have time and again been taken in by esoteric authors who alternately denied the truth or legitimacy of scientific discoveries, pooh-poohed them as incomplete or short-sighted, selectively used some of them to corroborate their doctrines while conveniently ignoring others that may have disproved them, interpreting them in their own idiosyncratic way that would not stand up to academic scrutiny, etc., a phenomenon the author calls 'scientism'.

What has been so inordinately insidious about scientism (and these are my own musings now) is the use of scientific terms to explain away the inexplicable, for example Mesmer's 'animal magnetism' (no magnetism whatsoever involved), the chakra system being often likened to a network of pipelines (astral hydraulics?), all sorts of 'vibrations', 'wavelength' and 'frequencies' shaking up the aura, 'inner planes' designed to describe a 3D+ (and not a 2D system as implied), purely hypothetical constructs (e.g. tachyons or m-dimensional space) in order to go really medieval on consensus reality, or the stereotypical misapplication of quantum physics by esoteric authors that has become so painfully cringy by now.

Similarly, the energy model of magic unintentially entails the inherent limitations of the energy concept in physics and everyday thinking, so a given type of energy is willy-nilly thought to be finite (as if emanating from battery that runs empty over time and has to be recharged, or like a current that can get switched on or off), or certain phenomena being described as 'light' where no movement in a straight line from a single source is actually sensed, and the list goes on and on; the information model of magic that was intended to transcend the energy model seems to have fallen by the wayside new since the heyday of chaos magic.

Physics as we know it cannot explain supernatural phenomena (and yes, and that goes for quantum mechanics, too), in my opinion. Science-inspired analogies, on the other hand, are often misleading or put unnecessary limitations on occult thinking. My pet peeve is when authors try to underpin their claims by such scientific (and thus seemingly respectable) analogies - an analogy can only ever serve as an illustration but never as proof; whole occult books have been written based on that fallacy. "Ineffable phenomenon X is like Y, therefore…" and hey presto, the reader believes that the author has got a handle on things, what a genius. Bullshit. Call a theory a theory and an opinion an opinion but never attempt to prove a phenomenon by means of a facile analogy.

I think people are still afraid of the unknown and unknowable and clutch at straws as far as the occult is concerned. Nevertheless, we have made some progress in that we don't hang on the lips of occult star authors anymore claiming revelatory 'secret knowledge' and shrug it off as UPG, at least in forums like this one (for the most part, as exceptions like the continued popularity of Crowley's "Liber Al" demonstrate). I think we should pay more attention to the belief shifting theories of chaos magick and treat the doctrines of even the most celebrated occult authorities as mere opinions and never as gospels of truths.

I am completely against scientism. The other classic fallacy is 'X is weird and Y is weird so they both must be connected'.

As I've said before, if you want to use science to explain paranormal phenomena, you cannot classify those phenomena as supernatural, otherwise any 'explanation' you come up with will either be one of these useless scientism analogies, or will boil down to 'a big boy did it and ran away'. Once you take that step, it is (as I have discovered over thirty years) possible to explain magic, but you have to start with the physics and work backwards, or you will inevitably fall into scientism.

For me, one of the big revelations of Chaos Magic is that magic clearly requires a belief system of some sort to work, but it is immaterial what the belief system is; it is purely that it should induce a certain set of brain states that facilitate magic. So you can have the most complex magical system ever, but it will be functionally equivalent to another person who can create the same state just by being sufficiently convinced in their own abilities.

My favourite analogy for this is the old Sufi story about the six blind men and the elephant