Research Of Complex Relationship Between Science And Metaphysics

The relationship between science and metaphysics, one of the core contents in the realm of scientific philosophy, should be continuously rethought profoundly, and keep on developing and advancing with the passing of time. In the background where mode of thinking is changing and science moving fast, it's very necessary to examine closely the relationship between science and metaphysics again with contemporary mode of thinking.Its former popular points are simple and one-sided remarks. The positivism and empiricism adhered to scientific absolutism and the line of demarcation between science and metaphysics, denied metaphysical contribution to science;while the postmodernism and relativism held the other extreme, unfairly overstated the metaphysical function, and denied the objectivity and truthfulness of science. This paper criticizes these two erroneous lines with contemporary complex thinking as the main mode of thinking, and tries to expound a new true relationship between science and metaphysics.This paper discusses the complex relationship level by level in depth. A clear explanation is given, which contains four sections. The first section reviews the relationship in ancient, modern and contemporary age, criticizes its two former erroneous points. The complexity of its relationship is expounded primarily in the critiques. The second section analyzes in detail the two-way interactions, which contain not only scientific harmful influence and positive contribution but also metaphysical ones, and sets up special parts to expound their complex interactions. The two-way interactions, important parts of the complex relationship, explain their more complex relationship. In order to expound their complex relationship on the whole, the third section analyzes basic traits of the complex relationship between science and metaphysics, which contain diversity, contradictoriness, randomness, dynamic, etc. The forth section is a case analysis, in which Albert Einstein and his related ideas are discussed. Einstein gained a fairly deep understanding of this problem, and correctly handled contradictions between science and metaphysics.This paper advances that metaphysics is a subjective condition makes science possible, at the same time it always holds scientific development back. But scienceneither simply opposes against metaphysics nor simply merges with it, their relationship is complex: they are interdependent, interpenetrated, mutually conditional, mutually conductive, and work in coordination, at the same time, they are mutually exclusive, and hold each other back. Besides these harmful influence and positive contribution, there're more other interactions in varied dimensions, which are determined by specific scientific theory and specific metaphysical one. There're all kinds of relationships between science and metaphysics, which have formed a multidimensional network.