Physics and metaphysics

In the recent debate scholars again discuss vividly the relation between physics and metaphysics (see DiSalle, 2006, pp. 57-58, Ladyman and Ross, 2007, Calosi, 2010 and Dorato, 2010). This is also consequence of the diffusion in contemporary philosophy of a metaphysical way of thinking, which either does not consider results of empirical sciences, or it uses them in a partial and distort manner (Lowe 2002 and 2006, Sider, 2001 and Varzi, 2001). The issue according to which there is a metaphysics before empirical sciences is an ancient new, if it already is in Aristotle (Met. E, 1026a, 10ss.), when he states that there is a proto-episteme (first science) concerning what is motionless and separated. Indeed Aristotle pays attention in avoiding that the proto-episteme neither coordinates nor contains in itself all the other disciplines . It follows that his “physics” – in our terms physics, biology and psychology – could not be deduced from the first science. In the Cartesian perspective, on the contrary, physics is the trunk of philosophy’s tree, whose roots are metaphysics (Descartes, Principes, 1647, AT, IX - 2, 14). Hence, in a certain sense, physics must be derived from metaphysics. Contemporary perspective is different. Scholars maintain that metaphysics is a conceptual (a priori) activity independent of physics. Nevertheless this does not mean the latter is derivable from the former. Ladyman and Ross (2007) and Dorato (2010) are against the contemporary perspective.