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In concluding this work we want to devote some consideration to the relations between science and metaphysics, an issue that has been constantly present in the history of Western philosophy and is far from having lost its intrinsic interest in our time as well, despite the fact that it is often considered with suspicion in the "official" philosophy of science. Whereas in ancient and medieval philosophy these two notions were strictly related (indeed metaphysics was considered the best example of science) in modern times a process of separation has developed, which began as a distinction in the seventeenth century and terminated as an opposition in the twentieth century, when the view of science proposed by positivism became dominant even in the mind of general public. This was a consequence of a change occurred in the meaning of science itself, determined by the emergence of a new paradigm of knowledge, that is, of modern natural science.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-04660-0_10

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