The Principles of Metaphysics as the Foundations of Physics

Abstract

The author’s generation was taught a negative attitude towards metaphysics, which was interpreted as an idealistic, outdated, even harmful teaching. At pre­sent, the attitude towards metaphysics is changing significantly. Moreover, the modern development of fundamental physics forces metaphysics to return a key role in the understanding of the world. The article presents arguments in­dicating the relevance of the revision of ideas about the foundations of funda­mental physics. The solution to this problem corresponds to a topic that has long been attributed to metaphysics. Nowadays there is little recognition of the importance of metaphysics – the time has come to formulate the key principles of metaphysics on the basis of the achievements of physics (and not only) and follow them in the formation of new foundations of fundamental physics. The text of this article provides a justification for this statement in connection with the urgent problem of revising the foundations of physics according to an “unusual plan for many”. The analysis of the current state of physics made it possible to identify key metaphysical principles, and also forced us to ad­dress the problem within the framework of a relational approach to physics, the ideas of which were laid down in the works of G. Leibniz and E. Mach. It is noted that by now a mathematical apparatus has already been developed, which made it possible to begin solving the problem on the basis of a rela­tional-metaphysical approach to physical reality. The main features of this ap­paratus are briefly characterized and the results of a fundamental nature al­ready obtained are shown.