“Naturalism” is a term that is frequently bandied about with such carefree disregard for clarity and meaning that one is left rather breathless at the speed with which so many largely meaningless labels are confidently announced to the world. Naturalism is frequently associated with (physical) science. But regardless of how justified such an association is, it frankly tells us absolutely nothing about either nature or science. Scientific results only seem to tell us what nature is, in a pure and simple way, when the metaphysical presuppositions of science are thoroughly suppressed and the large-scale interpretive commitments that exercise their unexamined domination over the particular reading of this or that scientific theory are permitted to operate not only unchallenged, but altogether without so much as a first, much less a second thought. Scientific theories – most particularly those in theoretical physics, where abstract mathematics is so profoundly important and influential – do not come with their interpretations “on their sleeve,” as it were. I will be exploring this problem in greater detail in the not-too-distant future, when I spend a few posts on the problematic issue of what I call “Model Centrism.”

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