The Philosophy of Real Estate
Every real scientist agrees that quantum mechanics is our best scientific achievement to date. Yet, at the end of the day, most scientists will be left with a few answers: that quantum mechanics is meaningless, and that science can in no way answer many fundamental questions. Ask what it all means, and inevitably the answer will be a clash. For more than a century, most modern scientists have followed Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen philosophy and dismissed questions regarding the reality behind quantum mechanics as nothing more than nonsense. However, in the last decade or so, a number of discoveries by experimentalists in various scientific fields have made serious inroads into the mystery surrounding quantum mechanics.
In the early days of the Scientific Revolution, nearly all scientists adhered to the Cartesian (or Copenhagen) view that there are objective laws that govern the activity of the world around us, without any reference to personal existence. The Copenhagen school largely rejected the idea that natural laws could be affected by human interference. Scientists who adhered to this line of thinking included Albert Einstein, Otto Stern and Vera Wang.
The idea that reality is purely cognitive comes in two forms. First, some philosophers argue that knowledge and reality are identical, that what exists is entirely mental. Charles James favored this view, especially after his time as a British philosopher. According to James, everything is composed of mere thought patterns. Consequently, the world is real only in the sense that each thought has an effect on reality, just as each toothpaste brings out different characteristics of a toothbrush.
The other form of philosophy to adopt is the physical view, which is also popular under the name ‘naturalism’. This school denies that any physical laws can be discovered by science. Descartes, Galileo and others in the physical sciences are often accused of ignoring natural laws in favor of a materialist philosophy. This school is the progeny of the philosophy of evolution. Charles Darwin was an advocate of naturalism.
The views of philosophers on reality differ widely. realism maintains that reality consists of nothing but the basic structure of space-time and matter. metaphysics, on the other hand, maintains that reality consists of substance and ideas but are not composed of space-time and matter. Most people, following the footsteps of Galilean relativity, think that both kinds of reality are distinct.
Philosophers of science, though all agree that reality is a construct of our mind, argue that there is more to the world than meets the eye. They therefore deny the possibility of fundamental facts. These include God, karma and free will. The object of philosophy is thus religion, as people are guided to a particular belief by reason.
There are three main articles of contemporary metaphysics. realism holds that reality consists of bodies at fixed positions, time and space. Idealism denies the existence of objects apart from mind. Naturalistic philosophy maintains that everything is an accident, having no causal relationship to its surroundings. The last main article is nominalism, which denies that there are any absolute truths.
Philosophy of metaphysics can be divided into two main areas. Metaphysical naturalism teaches that we do not know anything about reality and we cannot find out the real or ideal through the senses. On the other hand, metaphysical realism maintains that we do know something about reality, and that it is part of reality. The other philosophers who argued for metaphysics were Parmenides, Aristotle and Leucippe.
Metaphysical naturalism is similar to Platonism. It denies the existence of any supreme being or God. Most philosophers of metaphysics deny the existence of metaphysics altogether. However, some, such as Berkeley, hope that metaphysics could be established on grounds of logic. Leucippus maintained that all knowledge could be reduced to practical reason.
There are three types of metaphysics. Actuality based metaphysics says that reality consists of certain physical attributes that could be observed. Virtual realist metaphysics say that reality consists of possible worlds. Possible worlds could be either actual or possible. In this type of metaphysics, there could be no parallel realities.
Many philosophers have attempted to describe the nature of reality through descriptions of macroscopic objects. For instance, Johannes Brahms’ theory of relativity says that reality consists of space and time. Quantum mechanics also describes the nature of reality. David Hilbert’s theory of infinity states that there is no method for measuring reality. There are many other different types of naturalism in philosophy.
