¶ Metaphysics
Index Entry
Metaphysics:
"But in developing their now rigorously accountable discipline for dealing with all ponderables the physicists said, ‘there are also a great many earnest men who are engaged in scholarly exploration but are not dealing in ponderables (weighables). The mathematician himself is dealing in unweighable phenomena. So also do psychologists and other have weightless information to explore. These men cannot belong to our Physics Club. They must remain outside our club in the metaphysics world.’
“The word metaphysics was, at that historical moment, somewhat of an affront for it seemed to imply magic and questionable concepts. Metaphysics had been connected by literary men with inexplicables: nonexperimentally demonstrable phenomena. So there was a great deal of resentment on the part of the no-hard-science scholars who were excluded from the Physics Club and were relegated to the Metaphysics Club. However the economists and most of the other metaphysicists failed to understand the full significance of the new physics and went on thinking in classic concepts of instant Universe and its seemingly inherent self-annihilation. They as-yet abhor ‘spending’ because ignorant of the new physics.”
¶ Citations
- NASA Speech, p.30, Jun’66
