Economics and Physical Science

Modern physical science has moved a considerable distance from the deterministic materialism of the nineteenth century. Even then, the inclusion of fields (gravitational, magnetic, and electric) complemented the massy, solid atoms in making up the world-picture of physics. But in the twentieth century, science replaced the earlier ontology entirely. Quantum mechanics, the crowning achievement of modern physics, has re-opened ages-old questions about the nature of reality, causation, and the connection between consciousness and the external world. The fundamental ground of modern physics is at the epistemological level — what we can know about physical systems is basic, rather than an onto-logical account of the world as it ‘really is.’