Mallz wrote:We really don't need to employ a metaphysical approach when a less drastic one is present, more transparent and likely more true.
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I get what you're saying, but I still prefer the metaphysical approach first. I like to have the fundamental knowledge. Science is used to explore what occurs from the fundamental through it's own resources at a level above metaphysics. From what I've seen, is that solid metaphysical reasoning lasts millenia to forever, while science can only grasp what is unfolded to it, and is rarely 'solid'. So if the metaphysical is in contrast with the science, the metaphysical is to be believed. And the science shown to be flawed, as it is in it's nature, a sprout from our focus on the natural world, nonwholey inclusive of truth.
I am not saying metaphysics is reduntant, sure in matters dealing with philosophy, even logic, we can go around meta physics but the one thing we should not do, is philosophize science. That is not the aim of meta physics at all.
If a supernova happened just 500 lights years away from us, and that is a lot of distance, we'd be obliterated. Supernovas are that huge. And that is something meta physics can neither tell you nor help you with. And in these kind of matters, deferring to meta physics is the wrong thing to do. Metaphysical reasoning has nothing to do here.
And so is the same when we talk about space and time, they are not metaphysical entities. We know they exist and can be mapped and measured. Space-time exits and our universe and the bodies there in follow those paths.
Let me show you an another example. Recently in a few threads, I can't remember the exact ones. Someone, again not sure who, was talking about our central position in the universe. Now this is an assumption with a meta physical connotation with it. That it vaguely presumes that we are the center of creation.
What most people do not realize is that our solar system alone,
forget the Milkyway and the universe for now, is so vast that we don't even know where and what exactly lies at its edge. We don't know that. Its all good on paper. In reality if you are in space, the planets in our solar system are not in the same proportion of distance as we even see them in paper in 9 neat little orbits circulating the sun. It is just there because there is no other way to show it. The concept of centralized symmetry is only an illusion on paper, in reality the planets are so far off that if we shrunk our earth to the size of an actual pea and stuck it on a sheet of paper, Jupiter alone would be 1000 feet away from us, meaning you need a paper sheet 1000 feet long just to pinpoint Jupiter in our solar system. And pluto would be 1.5 miles down the road. Not to mention that to pin our nearest star Proxima Centauri on paper, you would need to unfold a sheet of pages ten thousand miles long on the surface of earth just to get the distance from your pea sized earth to our nearest star. That is how vast, enormous and uneven it is.
And then to think we are the center is just a blatant self congratulatory view. We really don't know where we are in space because we don't know how far space extends. This is putting metaphysics to something it does not address.
It would be a blessing if they missed the cairns and got lost on the way back. Or if
the Thing on the ice got them tonight.
I could only turn and stare in horror at the chief surgeon.
Death by starvation is a terrible thing, Goodsir, continued Stanley.
And with that we went below to the flame-flickering Darkness of the lower deck
and to a cold almost the equal of the Dante-esque Ninth Circle Arctic Night
without.
//johnadavid.wordpress.com