[Note: As July quickly approaches, I will not be making many posts on this blog. I will have my two beautiful daughters with me for the month and much of my time will be spent with my family. These are the times I rediscover that love is the primary matter which holds our family together.]

At any rate, here are some initial and unfinished thoughts regarding physics and metaphysics. The more I delve into the concept of Being, the further I seem to go into the philosophy of science and the existential import of what it means to be and become in this temporal world. I remain impressed by how the classical categories of Western thought (specifically, act and potency, accepted by both neo-Platonists and Aristotelians) hold up and have stood the test of time.

Part two of my essay on Heisenberg’s appeal to Aristotelian metaphysics can be found here.

I probably won’t be able to explicate these further until August, but here are a few rough and undeveloped reflections that came to me when thinking about the intersection of science and the philosophical first principles of reality. Post below if you have anything to add or something which you think needs further discussion.

1. The Copenhagen School interpretation of quantum mechanics seems to indicate that we can say nothing about the properties of an atom or sub-atomic particles. All scientists can do is provide the results of experiments on them. Would it be better to say that the strange behavior of quantum mechanics demonstrates the classical nature of potential waiting to be put into act? Perhaps that is the nature or essence of quantum physics?

2. The mystery of causality. Predictability in the quantum realm may not hold in particular cases. That does not mean, however, that there is no efficient cause or sufficient reason for its action. An efficient cause may be unpredictable but that does not mean it does not exist.

3. The actual world we live in is alive with potentialities from the smallest elements of matter to human individuals. This is what we mean when we speak of “human potential.” Our world is charged with real potentialities, relationships, and interactions between real beings.

4. Many of the early scientists and mathematicians working on quantum phenomena such as Planck, Heisenberg, and Bohr were not strict materialists. Neither were other influential thinkers of the time such as Bergson, Einstein, Whitehead, and Hardy. They all understood that something more is going on in our world than matter, energy, and motion. In other words, they would have rejected the undue and uncritical acceptance of the scientific method as it is applied to every other field of inquiry such as philosophy, history, or the humanities.

5. Perhaps Einstein’s formula regarding the convertibility of matter and energy (Energy = the mass x the speed of light squared), points to Aristotle’s “primary matter”? (It may of itself have no form but must always be structured by some form or essence?)

6. The classic question of the one and many. Heraclitus was only half correct when he stated that all reality is in flux. Our world is not in total or complete flow or chaos. Even Heisenberg’s Indeterminacy Principle is not infinite. There must be something that perdures or there would be no sense of continuity. In this regard, quantum physics point to the classical question of the one and many (which also speaks to the nature of relationships).

7. The great conversation regarding act and potency which was started by Aristotle, accepted by Plotinus, elaborated by Aquinas, and rediscovered by Heisenberg needs to be explored, developed, and integrated for our time. Metaphysics is about recovering the first principles of Being.