Questions Anyone?

Did the egg come first or the chicken? Did the tree come first or the seed? What is ‘God’? Why can’t we have the cake and eat it too? How did the universe originate? These questions which seem to bring all physical explanation to an end are the fundamental problems in metaphysics. It is a branch of philosophy that takes us into a world beyond our own world in a quest to understand the ultimate truth that governs the universe.

‘Meta’ in Greek means ‘Over’ and is understood in some contexts as beyond or after. Physics is, again, a Greek word meaning nature. Hence metaphysics is a study of something that’s beyond nature. The ball was set in this direction by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. In organizing his works, he placed the section on philosophy immediately after physics. Although he called it ‘First philosophy’, the early Aristotelian philosophers called it “ta meta ta physica biblia” which literally means “that which comes after the books on physics”. Co-incidentally, the name fits the subject very aptly since metaphysics attempts to answer questions that transcend the physical world.

Let us look at some basic problems of the subject. We see so many ‘things’ around us. Pens, books, chains, mirrors and so on. What is a thing made of? We could say everything is composed of atoms and molecules having certain properties. But the question remains as to what atoms or molecules are made of. Are they just a bundle of their properties? If a certain thing exists, how did it come there? Did the egg come first or the hen? These are questions of origin. Similar questions could be raised when a thing ceases to exist. After I have eaten a cake, the cake doesn’t exist any more. Where did it go? What happened to the properties it possessed? What happened to the sweet taste? When a person dies, he is no longer the person he used to be. His body is now a corpse, a thing. But when he was ‘alive’, he had a mind, a ‘consciousness’. Where does the mind go after death? What is consciousness? If the mind and the body are two different entities, how is it that the mind controls the body? Where do thoughts come into the mind from? …………..Another barrage of questions follows. Understanding the nature of the mind is perhaps the single most challenging problem faced by philosophers and scientists.

And then there is the question of space and time. What is space? Would space exist if all the objects were taken out of it? Did space exist before the origin of the universe? Or did it take birth with it? What is time? Why can’t we stop time? Why can’t we travel back and forth in time? Did time exist before the universe?

One question leads to another and question after question can be asked endlessly. What makes things difficult is that the theories in metaphysics are generally not testable or provable. Most conclusions drawn are based on one’s perception and experience. Nobody can force one to think like himself for there is no evidence to justify his beliefs. The more data one tries to find to corroborate his theories, the more theories he finds which falsify them. Yet another reason for obscurity is that all our thoughts are controlled by our mind. Firstly, we do not understand the working of the mind. Moreover our minds can only reason what we perceive within this world. We try to model what we do not know on the basis of what we do. We are like fish in an aquarium wondering what the world outside might be like while the truth is that we can’t even find the walls.

Metaphysics is a bottomless well of assorted questions. The deeper you sink, the more questions you unearth, and somewhere at the bottom of those questions is an answer. An answer to all the questions that one could ask. An answer that could be the solution to all problems. That is the answer that metaphysicians seek….

How deep is the well? How long and how deep should we dig before we find out? Nobody knows and the quest continues…….

Amal