QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

Classical physics is not directly associated with particular values or ethics, but a mechanistic
world-view diminishes any belief in its objective significance: the possibility of making
responsible choices is not seen as having any basis in natural facts. This narrowing-down of the
representation of reality is not however generally seen as a problem by natural scientists, or
viewed as any kind of defect. Their confidence in the new scientific method and the universality
of the manner of explanation it employs was shaken neither by the fact that living phenomena are
difficult to understand on the basis of a mechanistic conception of nature, nor by the fact that
human creativity and other ‘human’ characteristics cannot be depicted within such a
deterministic framework. It is not surprising that within the generally-accepted mechanical
context, the paths taken by natural science and humanist culture began to diverge. The natural
sciences started to follow a course of their own choosing, without much apparent concern about
the philosophical legitimacy of what they were doing, while philosophy, on the other hand,
proved increasingly incapable of fulfilling, with regard to the study of nature, the leading role it
should have played in an ideal cooperation of all the mental faculties. 297
3.3. Philosophy in the Mechanical and Deterministic Era
Once the sincere belief of the Middle Ages in God had disappeared, Europeans were unable to
construct a generally accepted, monistic, i.e. completely coherent, world-view that was based on
a single fundamental principle. 298 The qualitative and teleological conception of nature was
substituted by a quantitative and mechanical one and a penetrating study of the post-Newtonian
philosophers quickly reveals the fact that they were philosophising in the light cast by
achievements of natural science.. The new science acted as a stimulus to philosophy and
generated metaphysical speculation on a great scale. 300 As a generalisation, it can be said that
both the philosophers’ work and the reception given to their thinking was conditioned by the
mechanistic-deterministic conception of reality employed by natural science.
Although the mechanistic view of nature was a source of great stimulation for science, it
confronted philosophy with the difficult problem of the real relationship between the subjective
297
Dijksterhuis 1986, 432. Burt 1980, 34, 25. Burt thinks that modern metaphysics is in large part a series of
unsuccessful protests against the new view of the relationship between man and nature.
298
Ketonen 1989, 100.
299
Ketonen 1989, 100.
113