Tag Archives: metaphysics
Metaphysics: Theory of Everything
Reality is existence, and existence is everything. Every theory of everything must start there. There’s existence, and there’s essence. These two things are separate but not separable. In the language of Thomas Aquinas, esse (or essence) is identity: To be, in other words, is to be something. The conclusion is inescapable because (as Aristotle noted)…
The Elegant Universe
A reader writes: Dear Sir: You are reported to have said that there is no order or disorder in the universe apart from what man himself puts there — this in spite of your well-known preoccupation with a fluid and congruent universe. Can you tell us how you reconcile this, with regard in particular to…
Epistemology: The Science Of Thought
Epistemology is the science of knowledge. The word derives from the Greek episteme, which means knowledge. Epistemology proper didn’t actually begin until Rene Descartes (1596-1650), but the stuff of epistemology — logic, reason, deduction, induction, et cetera — has been with us since the Ancient Greeks. Epistemology is an extraordinarily complicated discipline that starts with…
Postmodernism: The Destruction Of Thought
Postmodernism, in all its vicious variations, is a term devoid of any real content, and for this reason dictionaries and philosophy dictionaries offer very little help in defining it. And yet postmodernism has today become almost universally embraced as the dominant philosophy of science — which is the primary reason that science crumbles before our…