Feeds:
Posts
The question is old and has many historical answers that are unsatisfactory from any scientific viewpoint.  With the S4 picture metaphysical can be made precise.  At any given time, the entire physical universe is a hypersurface of a scaled 4-sphere, and electromagnetism can be described (with the mathematical similarity between the total space of a circle-bundle that might be used to formulate electromagnetic theory as a gauge theory and the 4-sphere) as a potential 1-form $A$ defined on the entire 4-sphere.  Therefore we have not only a model of the usual concerns of physics but we have a concretely addressable notion of ‘metaphysical’:  four-dimensional electromagnetic phenomena with a precise notion for extent of functioning.  The fundamental issue here is to begin exploration of metaphysical through objective scientific means rather than rely only on ‘subjective experiences’ which generally produce mythological descriptions.  Just as the S4 picture allows us to consider the proposition: ‘all quantum phenomena are due to the 4-sphere geometry of the universe’ we have a rational approach to metaphysics.