Question What is relationship of philosophy (in particular, metaphysics) to physics? It seems to me that both disciplines, especially the "classical" metaphysics of the Ancient Greeks and the medieval Christians, attempt to understand the structure of reality, but physics focuses on the development of the material world of matter, metaphysics primarily aims at understanding the non-material world (including how it is related to and shapes the material world). Is this an adequate understanding? I would be very interested to hear your opinion(s) on this subject.

Accepted:
August 31, 2006

Comments

Metaphysics, as it was originally understood, was 'meta' to physics. That is, metaphysics was concerned with general questions about the nature of physics or, again, with foundational questions about physics. That's certainly the sense you get from Aristotle's Metaphysics, which I think is where the term originates, but also from Descartes and many of the other early modern philosophers. I don't know about the medieval Christians. But even they might fit this mold insofar as their loftier speculations are, ultimately, driven by concerns about the foundations of physical science.