QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

presumed features as features of the world was not legitimate. 444 In contrast to Descartes,
Newton did not himself claim that his narrative was the truth. In an addition to a new printing of
Opticks, he wrote: When account of all these factors is taken, it appears quite clear to me that in
the beginning, God made matter out of solid, massive, hard, impenetrable moving particles,
whose size and form and other properties and situations were such that they were best suited for
the purpose for which he made them. 445
Kuhn considered that the creation of paradigm required external criteria, according to which
different propositions could be scrutinised. 446 When physics attempts to explain the structure of
reality, its precise theories are always contained within some wider way of viewing reality and
because they are examined within this framework, can lead to anomalies and drive development
forwards. In spite of the obvious precision of physics, it should always be remembered that this
wider frame is a hypothesis. It can change as a result of new knowledge, and such change can
destroy the uncertain basis on which a whole world-view is constructed. Even though a physical
theory cannot, as it is, force the acceptance of new metaphysical assumptions, the basic
presuppositions of an old paradigm can, in the light of new knowledge and theory, appear to be
non credible. The need for dramatic change may be connected to the fact that we cannot perceive
our environment in any other way than via the limited analogies and metaphors that we absorb
from our experience. These descriptions may be incommensurable, even though they target the
same reality.
Whether a conception of reality or a theoretical world-view is considered to be either a realistic
reflection of the structure of the external world or just an appropriate systematic view of the
current state of our total knowledge, the construction of it requires, in addition to empirical
knowledge, creative imagination and speculative common sense. The Positivists have not even
succeeded in dismissing from scientific theories the metaphysical material that cannot be reduced
to observations. An even-more-impossible task is the striving to remove metaphysical
presumptions from the world-view which forms the background to these theories. The
Positivists’ honourable attempt did however have consequences – new scientific-philosophical
tools which are well-suited to the construction of a believable world-view. Thoughts concerning
metaphysical matters do not need to be either meaningless or beyond rational criticism.
444 Niiniluoto 1988, 299.
445 Toulmin 1998, 230.
446 Kuhn 1970, 106, 121
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