Epistemology involves the search for knowledge distilled from many sources. No one source is more... more Epistemology involves the search for knowledge distilled from many sources. No one source is more sacrosanct. The early Greek philosophers were materialists. In their expositions, physical elements were named as being the source of existence. Plato made a shift away from the predominant opinion of the predecessors, as he held the view that physical realities are mere representations of the archetypes existing in the world of form. The modern philosophers that operated during the renaissance held metaphysics in contempt. They held that natural phenomena are merely an outcome of the workings of natural law. After presenting the views of the naturalists, it was affirmed that the merit of naturalism lies only in it's methodological perspective. The research relies solely on secondary data, and is analyzed by adopting the tool of content analysis. In line with critics of the naturalistic model, the paper identifies a common stand with the view that reality is far beyond what only natural science would comprehend. If naturalism is adopted, philosophy will engage in reductionism, thus limiting its epistemic outlook. In conclusion, philosophy is seen not as a servant of science, but science as one of its many approaches in the study of all that are in existence. The merit of this study is that it nullifies the foundational argument of naturalism, based on the fact that the whole of reality is composed of Matter and Form, and cannot be known completely through the scientific method, which is the main stay of naturalism. Both the argument and conclusion of this study provide recipe for further research towards finding a unified theory of nature, since naturalism has failed to explain what lies outside of physics. A unified theory will be able to gain from the inputs of both physics and metaphysics, through which a composite knowledge is possible.
Epistemology involves the search for knowledge distilled from many sources. No one source is more... more Epistemology involves the search for knowledge distilled from many sources. No one source is more sacrosanct. The early Greek philosophers were materialists. In their expositions, physical elements were named as being the source of existence. Plato made a shift away from the predominant opinion of the predecessors, as he held the view that physical realities are mere representations of the archetypes existing in the world of form. The modern philosophers that operated during the renaissance held metaphysics in contempt. They held that natural phenomena are merely an outcome of the workings of natural law. After presenting the views of the naturalists, it was affirmed that the merit of naturalism lies only in it's methodological perspective. The research relies solely on secondary data, and is analyzed by adopting the tool of content analysis. In line with critics of the naturalistic model, the paper identifies a common stand with the view that reality is far beyond what only natural science would comprehend. If naturalism is adopted, philosophy will engage in reductionism, thus limiting its epistemic outlook. In conclusion, philosophy is seen not as a servant of science, but science as one of its many approaches in the study of all that are in existence. The merit of this study is that it nullifies the foundational argument of naturalism, based on the fact that the whole of reality is composed of Matter and Form, and cannot be known completely through the scientific method, which is the main stay of naturalism. Both the argument and conclusion of this study provide recipe for further research towards finding a unified theory of nature, since naturalism has failed to explain what lies outside of physics. A unified theory will be able to gain from the inputs of both physics and metaphysics, through which a composite knowledge is possible.
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Papers by Alo Modesta