Nature (philosophy) - The Survival of Metaphysics

The Survival of Metaphysics

The approach of modern science, like the approach of Aristotelianism, is apparently not universally accepted by all people who accept the concept of nature as a reality which we can pursue with reason.

Bacon and other opponents of Metaphysics claim that all attempts to go beyond nature are bound to fall into the same errors, but Metaphysicians themselves see differences between different approaches.

Immanuel Kant for example, expressed the need for a Metaphysics in quite similar terms to Aristotle.

...though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least to think them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears.

— Critique of Pure Reason pp. Bxxvi-xxvii

As in Aristotelianism then, Kantianism claims that the human mind must itself have characteristics which are beyond nature, metaphysical, in some way. Specifically Kant argued that the human mind comes ready-made with a priori programming, so to speak, which allows it to make sense of nature.