All about Metaphysics

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter. Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics. 

Stephen Hawking was perfectly in line with the ancient philosophers when he acknowledged that physics points to the deeper questions of metaphysics. Indeed, when questions stop becoming scientific, they start becoming philosophical. If a yogi floats on air or walks on water, which cannot be explained by the principles of physics, probably we can explain it on the basis of metaphysics. Metaphysics (meta means ‘beyond’) is the study of those things and phenomena that are beyond the physical realm. It is a philosophy that concerns the nature and description of an ultimate reality that stands behind the physical world or the world of appearances.

Metaphysics seeks to answer the more intriguing philosophical questions that physics or in general science can’t answer. While the scientific picture of the real world around us is very deficient and silent in a ghastly way over certain realities of the universe, the metaphysical statements over the issues are complicated and meaningless. They take us nowhere.

All science originated from philosophy. Physics was called natural philosophy until the 19th century, but once it was proven to be correct it was no longer philosophy and became a science. Physics is the science of the natural world, more specifically dealing with the matter, energy, space-time and fundamental forces that govern the physical world. In physics we study a wide range of physical phenomena from subatomic particles to large galaxies of the material universe, and use empirical data and mathematics to find results and conclusions. Physicists have convinced us that leptons and quarks are the fundamental building blocks of matter and that mass, energy and space-time are the only real entities. The scientific method is perhaps one of the most groundbreaking applied disciplines to inquire into the question of what is meaningful and what is not. There is a restriction to data from our universe, and specifically what can be observed and falsified. Physics is also deeply concerned with arriving at knowledge about the ultimate nature of reality. Since we cannot know whether we have discovered everything which would affect our theories of the universe, all such theories are perpetually subject to modification or change.

Some living philosophers, such as Amie Thomasson, have argued that many metaphysical questions can be dissolved just by looking at the way we use words; others, such as Ted Sider, have argued that metaphysical questions are substantive, and that we can make progress toward answering them by comparing theories according to a range of theoretical virtues inspired by the sciences, such as simplicity and explanatory power.