It seems to me that physics (and all science) has never really escaped the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle. Western philosophy on the whole has not, but philosophy did perceive the problem long ago. It was David Hume who very early on, as soon as the grand Enlightenment began to roar, sneaked in and very improbably dynamited everybody's faith in the abilities of Reason. This show-stopper sent philosophy reeling in a dive from which she is only now just recovering, but meanwhile over in the Science Wing the boys kept chugging along never noticing.
Science remains committed to the old metaphysics, while even wondering if metaphysical questions themselves have any warrant at all. The age-old metaphysical posit is that Reality can only be perceived imperfectly through its Appearance, from which we must comprehend through Intuition and Reason. Therefore we must hypothesize, take a stab at it through experiment, rinse-and-repeat.
That's the Scientific Method, although to be honest nobody wants to talk about what it really looks like in practice. That's the prettified version of matters that they teach in the high schools. The trouble is that it doesn't work, and can't work, because the metaphysics are wrong. It really went wrong with Plato and Aristotle (or, better said, it failed to develop beyond then metaphysically). Science today is a scattering of heavily fortified fifedoms from which defenders pour hot oil upon the heads any challengers of their safe paradigms.
It seems to me that physics (and all science) has never really escaped the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle. Western philosophy on the whole has not, but philosophy did perceive the problem long ago. It was David Hume who very early on, as soon as the grand Enlightenment began to roar, sneaked in and very improbably dynamited everybody's faith in the abilities of Reason. This show-stopper sent philosophy reeling in a dive from which she is only now just recovering, but meanwhile over in the Science Wing the boys kept chugging along never noticing.
Science remains committed to the old metaphysics, while even wondering if metaphysical questions themselves have any warrant at all. The age-old metaphysical posit is that Reality can only be perceived imperfectly through its Appearance, from which we must comprehend through Intuition and Reason. Therefore we must hypothesize, take a stab at it through experiment, rinse-and-repeat.
That's the Scientific Method, although to be honest nobody wants to talk about what it really looks like in practice. That's the prettified version of matters that they teach in the high schools. The trouble is that it doesn't work, and can't work, because the metaphysics are wrong. It really went wrong with Plato and Aristotle (or, better said, it failed to develop beyond then metaphysically). Science today is a scattering of heavily fortified fifedoms from which defenders pour hot oil upon the heads any challengers of their safe paradigms.
The Prisoner TV series portrayed The New Atlantis in microcosm,