21 Jan 2026
Can metaphysical models be proven? The crux of this question is a confusion of terms, purpose, and, in the end, yet another paradox that escapes the logic that seems to govern popular discourse. As I understand it, Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that inquires into the structure of reality, things like time, space, the relationship between matter and consciousness, the particular vs universal, and even free will. Metaphysics is the theoretical foundation that physics stands on. If philosophy is the love of knowledge, then metaphysics is the love of knowing how we know, and for those with a truly anxious mind (such as myself) this is the principal question: How do we know we know?
For most, the answer to this question is found in science alone. Science is often taken as a practice of discovering true things about the world; however, this is a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding that separates Science from Popular Science. Popular Science being what everyone takes to be proven true by scientists, and Science being the actual practice and purpose of the Scientific Method.
The scientific method is first and foremost a process of determining whether or not an answer to a question (hypothesis) is true or not, by means of fallibility. A scientific question is not scientific at all if it cannot be proven false. The scientific method therefore, never arrives at truth; it moves away from unproven claims. The outcome of this process are not divine truths, but instead reasonable answers to predictable outcomes. The Theory of Falsifiability came from Sir Karl Popper in his 1934 book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Under this view, any system that claims to explain everything including itself, is pseudoscience. The problem with any self referential systems is that it they are closed loops, there is no room for discovery or upheaval, only re-interpretation.
Take bad therapy for example; A client struggling with depression decides to go to therapy. The client might say that they are depressed because of their boss at work, the therapist, being taken over by some trauma-informed therapy might oblige the client to believe that the source of the ennui is an unresolved trauma surrounding an authority figure from their childhood. The issue here is that any evidence that would contradict the hypothesis, childhood trauma = depression, is reframed as being a symptom of trauma, leading both of them to spend countless hours trying to rediscover the source of the trauma when, in fact, the real solution is for the client to find a healthier work environment.
Hopefully this example has made my, and possibly Sir Karl Poppers point clear: When truth replaces discovery, you lose both.
Regardless of how we get to knowing, whether by scientific process, intuition, or logical deduction, the answers we are left with are mere glimpses of a greater totality. Theories, mental models that describe experience, are limited to the experiences that produced them. How we define these glimpses is a matter of preference and utility. For most, popular science holds a certain pedigree that is fashionable; to be up to date with recent findings is the means by which status is obtained and truth is found, whereas for engineers, experience speaks the loudest, the laws of physics are helpful guidelines but can never replace the truth found where rubber meets pavement. Truth than is a moving goalpost, defined by the context in which it is being applied.
Now that we cleared up some existing preconception and somewhat defined what truth could possible mean we can now more accurately answer whether or not a theory of metaphysics can be true or not. The ‘meta’ in metaphysics denotes something of a higher order, something beyond what already is, it doesn’t take to long to wonder, then, what could possibly be beyond physics? More physics? or perhaps nothing at all? The context that we find ourselves in, is a precarious one, one where we understand reality to be a certain thing, and behave a certain way. Imagine you are standing next to a tall tree, you see it’s trunk towering above you with its branches stretching out in all directions overhead, dark green leaves blocking the sun. Your head lowers, following the trunk until your eyes stop where the base of the tree meets the grass and dirt. It might be reasonable to make the judgment that trees do not grow underground, after all, all the trees you’ve ever seen are above ground, growing towards the sky. You yourself do not live underground, and since all the fruit on the branches is above you anyway, you can’t imagine the utility of digging into the ground. You don’t have a shovel anyway, and so you never do.
Metaphysics is a lot like the example above. We cannot go beyond the context of our own existence, and yet we feel a nagging intuition that perhaps trees do grow underground, and we are merely fooled into thinking the trunk and branches are all that really matters, and that the roots don’t exist at all. While the theoretical models of metaphysics are, very much unprovable in the Karl Poppers sense of the word, their worth is not in whether or not they provide another rigid structure to be beholden to, but in whether or not they help us understand our own understanding, to help us reflect on and navigate this strange and beautiful world we live in, both the seen, and unseen.