Chapter 1 Summary
Introduction
This introductory chapter complements the account already given in the opening
web pages of the website
It opens by making it clear that my approach to physics presupposed the
existence of a broader framework -an overview of the larger reality that was
largely complete save for the presence of the Natural Sciences. At
the point at which the speculations filling this volume were to enter, a place, an empty room
as it were, within the edifice of my Weltanschauung had been
studiously set aside in readiness.
Most of the needed services -the connecting infra-structure- had already been roughed-in -to the extent that the needs of the new tenant could be anticipated.
Among other things, the raison d'être of the realm of physical reality had
already been assigned. This been the case, it immediately follows that the
canon of the lex naturalis must be such as to fulfill its mission.
It hardly needs to be said that any such intrusion of meaning and justification
into Natural Science must be taken by mainstream intelligentsia as the very
antithesis of the spirit of the scientific/empirical enterprise.
However, my intension here is not to impugn the sovereignty of natural law
which, as ever, will be driven by the unforgiving discipline of empirical
verification, and in no other way. Yet, what might seem to be a burdensome and
gratuitous constraint should, I am convinced, turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
This is because
the difference in mind set of those entering into the enquiry will suggest
avenues of approach -of what to keep an eye open for- in terms of things as yet undiscovered, that
would never have occurred to the orthodox-minded. And in proportion as my
suggested regrounding of physics is on the right track, so some of these
otherwise risky speculations will get themselves proved-out in the
laboratory, observatory or perhaps in some elaborate installation.
My first step was to conduct a survey of Physics to find out just how things
stood at the present moment -no easy task for the non-expert. .What -among
other things- I was to discover that what, in fact, were metaphysical
interpretations were being passed off as empirical discoveries. I could
not initiate my task of physics' accommodation until I had first purged the
discipline of these gratuitous and damaging embellishments.
What I ended up with, as presented in the final chapter 6, was an overview of
natural science that seemed to me to make sense, and to have the merit of
coherence -in the way in which much was explained by little- with a minimum of
'ad hocery' called for in smoothing down the rough edges. Chapter 6 also
includes some very concrete suggestions concerning needed additions to the canon
of Natural Law to account for the manifest phenomena of Life and Mind.
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