Mutual Influence of the Metaphysical and Physical

By: Ziauddin Ahmed

Family of the Heart - DIALOGUE & DISCUSSIONS 

Of metaphysics and apple-bottomed houris

Dear Family of the Heart,

Re Post #9: Physics without Meta, by Ahsan of Strasbourg

The thrust of Ahsan's argument is that Physics could not have been born without the chemistry of human thought and ideas, logic and reasoning, experimentation, observation and analysis. I wish to add that Metaphysics is also the product of human thought and ideas, logic and reasoning, experimentation, observation and analysis.

Now, if Gravity is the supreme power holding our universe together, then Gravity is God and Newton its first prophet because he brought us this humbling truth from the depths of the great big Unknown.

I am certain that ripe apples have fallen out of the blue on unsuspecting laypersons and scientists alike snoozing in the sultry afternoon pulchritude of an orchard, but no one before Newton had ever wondered why the apple never disappeared upwards or sideways.

There's universal agreement that matter cannot be created or destroyed, and we have come a long way from the caves where we dwelt thanks to the motive power of steam, oil, gasoline, electricity and nuclear energy. However, I disagree with Ahsan's assertion that “only Nature (God!) has the power to create or destroy matter.”

I am wondering if Nature (or God for that matter) has a mind of its own, like Man has. Both Nature and God are interchangeable in the human mind with something that no one has been able to fathom because it is a metaphysical reality. Ha.

The closest that we have come to understand Nature (or God) is through the observations and theories of biologists and physicists, scientists and atheists, and all other people who use their faculty of reason to good advantage.

In talking about thought and ideas, logic and reasoning, experimentation, observation and analysis, it would indeed be utterly blasphemous to say that Religion is the science that has all the answers about plant, animal and human life, blah-blah-blah.

I am aware there are those who claim that Religion is the true metaphysics underlying (or superseding) all the sciences known to Man. These legions of ignorance often demonstrate instant verbal diarrhea when they hear the words Darwin or Evolution, perhaps because neither Darwin nor Evolution offers any 'metaphysical' comfort of a heavenly life in, say, the lap of those apple-bottomed houris up there.

Over to you, folks.

Rashid Mughal

Send questions or comments to Family of the Heart