Ontological and Empirical Structures

Abstract

This final chapter is an attempt to see empirical relations from an ontological point of view. To do this, empirical reality and empirical structures will be translated into variants of ontological structures. It is, in other words, an attempt to grasp the rationality implicit in empirical reality, to apprehend categorially that which is not itself immediately categorial. The suggestion is that observed “correlations” between events in diverse strata of being and the unity of different levels of scientific laws are ultimately to be understood through basic categorial relations. In a sense, we are about to attempt (in programmatic form) a modern dress philosophy of nature and mind, a categorial analysis of the necessary notional structure ingredient in the fabric of empirical reality.¹ But just as truly, this is a special variety of philosophical problem-solving — an attempt to bring metaphysical problems into a context homogeneous to thought and thus amenable to solution in terms of thought. Or since this entire work has been such an attempt, this chapter more specifically endeavors to bring empirical consequences of categorial relations within the scope of ontolorical thought.