QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

physics, they had to work within the mechanistic-deterministic paradigm or research programme.
Spinoza’s universum was an ordered whole, not a lifeless world of innumerable separate things.
It was at one and the same time both nature and God, a thinking being of infinite dimension.
Spinoza viewed human behaviour and emotions as members of nature’s unchanging organisation
which could be investigated using the same ”geometric methods” as those used to examine lines,
surfaces and solids. 842 Spinoza was not however able to incorporate free will in his double-aspect
system, since the thinking aspect of reality remained tied to events in the material world that
were assumed to be deterministic. Leibniz also believed that reality included both a dimensional
physical aspect and a mental thinking component. In his Parallelism, matter and mind are
connected to one another almost seamlessly. Perceptions were alterations in the soul itself.
Emphasising spiritual monads, Leibniz was in the end forced put his faith in Idealism, as
classical physics’ assumption of the mechanistic-deterministic character of the world would have
placed too-severe limitations on understanding the influence exerted by features of the spirit and
the soul. 843
Even though both Parallelism and Pantheism, neither of which could be accommodated within a
materialistic and mechanistic-deterministic framework, nowadays appear to be more-credible
attempts to reconcile the realms of matter and mind, both Leibniz and Spinoza were searching
for answers to Descartes’ problem rather than an answer to Compton’s problem. Their method of
approach was primarily ontological while any solution to Compton’s problem requires a clear
physical description. The formation of internal human dynamics cannot be illuminated to any
significant extent by employing philosophical analysis alone. The degree of speculation
employed by system builders can be criticised from the viewpoint of both natural science and
Positivism. Even though the psycho-physical problem naturally disappears if reality is postulated
as being in some way psycho-physical, the form of the problem becomes the more-precise
portrayal of this postulated metaphysical reality. Empirical science does not offer direct tools that
we can use to select the correct ontological model from an infinite number of possibilities.
Durable assumptions can only be found through a step by step process of detailed research and
the testing of different hypotheses – i.e. by trial and error.
842 Spinoza believed that although humans could develop within the material world, they did not have either free
will or absolute power concerning their actions.
843 The relationship of the conscious monad to physical structures would have been easier to explain if Leibniz had
had Zohar’s or Stapp’s knowledge concerning wave-descriptions. As more complicated structures have a more
complex wave configuration, they could connect to more delicate fields and would thus be able to ”see” their
environment in a clearer way.
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