Metaphysical Implications

Perhaps the most solid metaphysical observation that we should make at this point is that anyone who is bored with the universe just doesn’t get the picture.

The world is full of libraries, universities, institutes and … facts. We put these facts together in different ways. “Getting it right” is a big order. Discovery over the last few centuries has been explosively successful. The question asked at the beginning bears repeating: have we discovered our body only to lose our soul? Our project in PsyQuest is to provide a framework for thought, though it is openended.

The universe exists. There are two components to that sentence. What the universe is like is the object of scientific study and observation. And experience teaches that the universe has proven to be vastly different from what we thought it was.

The second component, existence, is its own dimension. It is our position, not original, to be sure, that a science of existence is not only possible, but necessary for seeing life and reality whole. We all know in a crude way what we mean by being real. Some things exist, others don’t. But, for it to take place in a system of real knowledge, our crude way of knowing reality needs to be refined.

We needed to move away from the Medieval mindset in order to discover what the first component in the sentence, the universe, was really like. But, buried within the riches of scholastic thinking, they got a lot about the second part, existence, right. The core of the insight is very simple, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to comprehend or fit in with the rest of our knowledges.

None of the existing things we know exists necessarily. It is the nature of individual things to exist in a certain way, not to exist, simply. Existence is the most fundamental aspect of real things. For anything to be real in a real universe, there must be some mode of existing which exists necessarily in itself. Stated otherwise, if everything were contingent, nothing would be necessary and nothing would be real.

The conclusion: the most fundamental reality in the world is subsistent Being, and the external reality we know is causally derived from it. And it is this self-subsistent being that men throughout history have referred to as God.

Thomas Aquinas had this figured out as he walked down the paths of the University of Paris in the thirteenth century, perhaps kicking stones as he moved from refectory to study to chapel. There is question about what God is like, or how he (she, it) has expressed himself (herself, itself) in human history. There is question how God fits in our lives or how we can or should relate to him (etc.). But God as the origin of things is entailed by the existence of anything at all.

We come full circle. PsyQuest believes that the world is real and intelligible. We believe that a general framework for knowledge is both real and possible, and that it is capable of being stated.

There is an ongoing dialogue. Our voice in it is small. Where we go with this project depends on our energies and the internal dynamism of the project itself. But, it will also depend on your interest. There are certainly other web sources which deal with similar issues. Our interest is in being universal enough to be inclusive, but structured and focused enough to be workable.

As we go, we will create linkages to other valuable sources on the net. Godspeed!