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12/04/2018 5:03 am  #11

Re: Reading recommendations on the metaphysics behind modern science?

Naturalism is a bad name for the metaphysics behind modern science for several reasons.

Even though many scientists like (the name of) naturalism, they would deny it is a metaphysics. Scientific or scientistic attitude is focused on experimental empiricism, which of course implies a certain kind of metaphysics that ends up denying the supernatural, because the "detect and verify" approach does not reach the supernatural. But the scientist(ist)s would say that there is no philosophy or metaphysics involved precisely because the supernatural is excluded, and the supernatural is not there since it cannot be detected and cannot be detected because it's not there.

From the theist point of view, I think that if we accept the label "naturalism" for scientist(ist)s, the debate is already half lost. The label "naturalism" tends to paint everything outside of it as somehow unnatural to some degree. In the old times, the supernatural did not mean outside nature or unnatural; it meant superiorly natural, just like supersensitive means extremely sensitive, not non-sensitive. Miracles were not unnatural. When God acts, e.g. creates, the result is nature, perfectly natural. The event may have been amazingly extraordinary, the end product only insofar as any creature or aspect of the created order is.

The problem with the scientific or scientistist metaphysics is that they are wrong in thinking that they have none. The little they have is so limited and distorted that it cannot be called naturalism. It's a stupid battle of definitions mostly.


1/17/2019 8:29 am  #12

Re: Reading recommendations on the metaphysics behind modern science?

Just finishing first book of 50 shades of grey series...would love to hear what others are reading I need some recommendations


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