This essay marks the transition from the Reality & Cosmology Series into a broader exploration of metaphysics. Essentially, we move from asking "What is reality?" (which is the study of ontology) to asking "Why is reality?" (which is the study of metaphysics). In this study we will not so much seek to provide final answers, as to invite exploration and participation in the search for reality, meaning, and understanding.
I.
Every search eventually arrives at a horizon.
The Reality & Cosmology Series began with a simple question: What is reality? Across many essays, that question led into explorations of relation, coherence, embodiment, persistence, identity, meaning, direction, possibility, culture, ethics, religion, and human becoming. Along the way, a recurring insight emerged. Reality appears neither static nor isolated. It is relational, participatory, and continually unfolding through processes of becoming.
Yet every answer or solution generated a new set of questions.
The more deeply reality was explored, the more difficult it became to ignore a second set of inquiries. If relation appears fundamental, then why relation? If coherence emerges repeatedly from fragmentation, then why coherence? If meaning, value, consciousness, and possibility arise within reality, then why should reality possess such capacities at all?
These are not merely ontological questions. They are metaphysical questions.
A similar realization emerged in the preceding essays on Christianity's historical ecclesial traditions. Diverse churches, communities, and theological movements often disagreed profoundly with one another. Yet beneath their disagreements lay a deeper observation. Difference does not necessarily imply contradiction. Distinct perspectives may arise from participation in a reality larger than any single perspective can fully describe. This was the observation made in the concluding essay, Measuring Christianity Through Its Many Dimensions (6)
This same possibility extends beyond ecclesial traditions. Human beings have always encountered reality through differing languages, cultures, philosophies, sciences, religions, and experiences. Some emphasize reason. Others emphasize revelation. Some emphasize observation. Others emphasize contemplation. Their conclusions may differ, yet all remain attempts to understand and participate in the same reality.
This observation provides the doorway into metaphysics.
The purpose of this series is not to defend a particular doctrine, ideology, religion, or philosophical school. Nor is it to dismiss them. Rather, it is to ask a more fundamental question:
What kind of reality permits such diversity of experience, understanding, creativity, meaning, and becoming?
It is a question that belongs to everyone.
It belongs to believers and skeptics.
It belongs to scientists and philosophers.
It belongs to those who have found faith and to those who have lost it.
It belongs to those who remain certain and to those who now live with questions.
II.
For many readers, the modern world has complicated older certainties. Historical criticism, scientific discovery, religious conflict, cultural change, and philosophical skepticism have challenged inherited assumptions.
Yet the human search itself has not disappeared.
People continue seeking meaning, truth, beauty, purpose, belonging, hope, and understanding. The questions remain even when the answers become uncertain.
Perhaps this persistence of searching is itself a clue. Before systems, doctrines, or conclusions, there is wonder. Before certainty, there is curiosity. Before metaphysics, there is participation in reality itself.
This introductory essay therefore begins not with answers but with an invitation. It invites readers to step beyond familiar boundaries and reconsider the questions that have accompanied humanity throughout history. It asks neither agreement nor belief. It asks only a willingness to continue the search.
And lest we be unnecessarily vague, let us describe "The Search" as humanity's enduring effort to understand the reality we experience, our place within it, and the possibilities toward which life continually calls us.
Usually when searching for answers we begin with knowledge, intellect, and the mind. Yet this is often where philosophers begin - not where human beings begin.
Human beings feel long before they think.
The search may be as simple as a child asking, "Why?" A grieving parent searching for meaning. A scientist pursuing a question. A monk at prayer. A lover seeking union. An artist pursuing beauty. A refugee seeking refuge. A migrant seeking opportunity. The oppressed seeking justice. A skeptic wrestling with uncertainty. Or a believer struggling to reconcile faith and experience.
Searching is fundamental to human existence.
For every horizon that is reached reveals yet another horizon beyond it
in endless pastels of color and arrangement.
And it is toward those horizons that this series now turns.
Humanity is the condition of asking why?
The search did not begin in libraries, universities, laboratories, temples, churches, mosques, or monasteries. It began wherever human beings first became aware of themselves and the world around them. It began in wonder, curiosity, fear, hope, suffering, love, and imagination. It began whenever someone first looked toward the stars, stood before the sea, mourned the loss of a loved one, celebrated the birth of a child, or asked questions for which no immediate answer could be found.
In this sense, the search is older than philosophy and older than religion. It is woven into the fabric of human existence itself.
Every culture possesses stories explaining who we are, where we came from, and what kind of world we inhabit. Every civilization has developed symbols, myths, sciences, philosophies, rituals, and systems of understanding. Though these differ greatly from one another, they share a common origin: the human desire to understand reality and our place within it.
This search has taken many forms.
Some have sought understanding through observation and reason. Others through contemplation and prayer. Some have pursued knowledge through science, others through art, literature, music, or spiritual practice. Some have sought meaning in communities and traditions, while others have questioned those same traditions and searched beyond them.
Yet beneath these many paths lies a common impulse. Human beings continually ask questions.
Why are we here?
Why does anything exist at all?
Why is there beauty and suffering?
Why do love, meaning, morality, and consciousness arise within the world we inhabit?
Why do we continue searching even when certainty remains elusive?
Such questions appear repeatedly throughout history because they arise repeatedly within human experience.
The search therefore belongs neither to believers nor skeptics alone. It belongs to all who find themselves confronted by reality and compelled to ask what it means.
Indeed, one of the most remarkable features of human existence is that the search persists. Answers are proposed, challenged, revised, abandoned, rediscovered, and reimagined. Civilizations rise and fall. Religions emerge and transform. Scientific paradigms expand and evolve. Yet the questions endure.
Perhaps this persistence tells us something important:
Perhaps the search itself is not a problem to be solved but a condition of participation in reality.
For if reality continually reveals new depths, new possibilities, and new horizons, then searching may not be a temporary activity awaiting completion. It may be one of the fundamental ways human beings participate in the ongoing unfolding of reality itself.
And if this is so, then the search is not merely about finding answers.
It is also about becoming the kinds of persons capable of asking deeper questions.
If the search is one of humanity's oldest activities,then wonder may be one of its oldest companions.
Wonder arises whenever reality confronts us with something greater than our present understanding. It is the recognition that there is more to the world, more to existence, and more to ourselves than we presently comprehend. Wonder does not begin with answers. It begins with awareness.
A child looking at the night sky experiences wonder before learning astronomy.
A philosopher encounters wonder before constructing a system of thought.
A scientist experiences wonder before formulating a hypothesis.
A believer experiences wonder before expressing faith.
Wonder precedes explanation.
For this reason, wonder should not be confused with ignorance. Nor should it be mistaken for superstition. Wonder is neither the absence of knowledge nor the rejection of reason. Rather, it is the recognition that reality continually exceeds what is already known.
The history of human thought may be viewed as an extended response to wonder. Religions emerged as communities sought to understand the sacred dimensions of existence. Philosophies emerged as thinkers sought coherent explanations of reality. Sciences emerged as observers sought to understand the patterns and structures of the natural world. Art, literature, and music emerged as expressions of humanity's encounter with beauty, suffering, hope, and meaning.
Though these pursuits often differ in method and conclusion, they share a common beginning:
They begin with wonder.
This observation is important because modern discussions frequently place certainty at the center of human inquiry. Religious certainty, scientific certainty, ideological certainty, and philosophical certainty are often treated as markers of confidence and success. Yet certainty may be less fundamental than wonder.
Certainty tends to close questions.
Wonder opens them.
Certainty often seeks conclusions.
Wonder invites exploration.
Certainty asks whether a matter has been settled.
Wonder asks what remains undiscovered.
This does not mean certainty has no value. Human beings require stable knowledge in order to live, build, create, and cooperate. Yet when certainty becomes absolute, inquiry often diminishes. Wonder, by contrast, preserves openness toward new possibilities, new perspectives, and deeper understandings.
Throughout history, many of humanity's greatest discoveries emerged not from certainty but from curiosity. The desire to know what lies beyond the next horizon has repeatedly expanded human understanding. Exploration, scientific inquiry, artistic creativity, philosophical reflection, and spiritual seeking have all depended upon a willingness to ask questions whose answers were not yet known.
Wonder therefore serves as a bridge between experience and understanding.
It transforms observation into inquiry.
It transforms curiosity into exploration.
It transforms questions into journeys.
And perhaps most importantly, it reminds us that reality is always greater than our descriptions of it.
For every explanation reveals new questions.
Every discovery uncovers new mysteries.
Every horizon reached reveals another horizon beyond it.
Thus wonder is not the end of inquiry but its beginning. It is the posture from which the search continues.
If wonder gives rise to inquiry,
it also gives rise to diversity.
Instead, humanity has generated a remarkable variety of interpretations. Some have approached reality through religion. Others through philosophy. Others through science. Others through art, poetry, mythology, contemplation, or lived experience.
Each approach attempts to illuminate some aspect of the world we inhabit. Each asks questions concerning truth, meaning, purpose, identity, morality, beauty, suffering, and existence itself. Yet their conclusions often differ, sometimes profoundly.
Throughout history, such differences have frequently been interpreted as evidence of error, conflict, or contradiction. Entire traditions have sometimes defined themselves against one another. Philosophical schools have debated competing explanations. Religions have defended differing visions of the sacred. Scientific theories have replaced earlier understandings of the natural world.
Yet another possibility exists.
Differences may not always arise because reality is fragmented. They may arise because reality is deeper than any single perspective can fully contain.
A mountain appears differently from the valley than from the summit. A forest reveals different features to the botanist, the artist, the hiker, and the ecologist. The ocean appears differently to the sailor, the scientist, the fisherman, and the child standing upon the shore.
Though the object observed remains the same.
The perspectives differ.
This does not mean that every perspective is equally accurate. Nor does it mean that all interpretations are identical. Some descriptions prove more useful, more coherent, or more comprehensive than others. Nevertheless, differing perspectives may still reveal genuine aspects of the same reality.
This curious observation emerged in our previous exploration of Christianity's many ecclesial traditions. Distinct communities often emphasized different dimensions of faith, scripture, worship, doctrine, and practice. Their differences were real. Yet those differences did not necessarily eliminate their participation in a larger religious reality when being identified in the shared faith of Christianity.
The same observation may be extended more broadly.
Humanity's religions, philosophies, sciences, and cultural traditions may be understood as ongoing attempts to interpret experiences of reality that exceed any single explanation. Their disagreements remain important. Their differences should not be ignored. Yet neither should difference be automatically mistaken for absolute opposition.
Reality may be more expansive than the frameworks used to describe it.
Indeed, one of the enduring lessons of history is that no civilization, religion, philosophy, or scientific paradigm has ever exhausted reality's depths. New discoveries continually emerge. New questions arise. New perspectives appear. Reality repeatedly proves larger than the systems constructed to explain it.
This recognition need not produce skepticism or despair.
Instead, it may encourage humility.
If reality continually exceeds our descriptions of it, then inquiry remains necessary. Curiosity remains valuable. Dialogue remains possible. Learning remains unfinished.
The search therefore continues not because reality is absent, but because reality remains richer than any single account of it.
And it is precisely this richness that invites us toward a deeper question.
What kind of reality permits such diversity while remaining one reality?
It is here that the path from ontology toward metaphysics begins to emerge.
Is reality one? Or is it diverse?
Perhaps, it is both.
This distinction is subtle but important.Participation does not require agreement.But it is a common experience to all investigators.
Agreement concerns interpretation.Participation concerns involvement.
We are born into relationships.We encounter beauty and suffering.We experience time, change, memory, hope, love, loss, growth, and mortality.We participate in communities, cultures, ecosystems, histories, and worlds not of our own making.
If human beings are participants before they are interpreters, then reality itself precedes our descriptions of it. Our philosophies, sciences, religions, and worldviews do not create reality. Rather, they arise as responses to our participation within it.
Differences remain important because they often illuminate dimensions of reality that other perspectives overlook. Diverse viewpoints may challenge assumptions, expose limitations, and reveal new possibilities. At their best, differences contribute to understanding rather than merely generating conflict.
The same principle may extend beyond religion. Science, philosophy, ethics, art, culture, and spirituality may all be viewed as differing modes of participation in reality's ongoing disclosure. Each offers perspectives. None offers exhaustive possession. Reality remains greater than the frameworks used to interpret it.
The deeper question becomes why reality possesses the character that it does.
Why does reality permit relation, participation, meaning, creativity, consciousness, and becoming?
And beyond that horizon lies the philosophy of metaphysics.
Ontology asks what is.
Metaphysics asks why it is.
Ontology seeks to identify the structures, patterns, relationships, and characteristics that constitute reality as it is experienced and observed. Ontology asks questions concerning existence, identity, relation, coherence, embodiment, meaning, possibility, and becoming. It seeks to understand what reality is and how it appears to operate.
Such questions have guided the Reality & Cosmology Series from its beginning.
Across those explorations, certain observations repeatedly emerged. Reality appears relational rather than isolated. Coherence emerges amid fragmentation. Embodiment gives form to persistence and identity. Meaning, value, direction, and possibility arise within lived experience. Reality appears dynamic, participatory, and continually unfolding.
Yet every ontological description eventually encounters a boundary. For no matter how carefully we describe reality, another question inevitably follows.
Why?
Why relation rather than isolation?
Why coherence rather than perpetual fragmentation?
Why embodiment rather than mere abstraction?
Why consciousness, meaning, beauty, morality, creativity, and possibility?
Why does reality possess the capacities it does?
At this point ontology begins to encounter its own limits.
The task of ontology is to describe reality as accurately as possible. Yet description alone cannot fully address the deeper questions that naturally arise from those descriptions. One may describe a river's course, measure its flow, and analyze its composition. Yet another question remains: Why does such a river exist at all?
The same movement occurs across every field of inquiry.
Science investigates how natural processes operate. Philosophy asks what those processes imply. Religion asks questions concerning purpose, meaning, value, and transcendence. Art explores dimensions of experience that resist straightforward explanation. Each discipline approaches reality differently, yet each eventually encounters questions that extend beyond simple description.
These questions do not arise because ontology has failed. They arise because ontology has succeeded. The more carefully reality is examined, the more remarkable reality appears.
Description generates wonder.
Understanding generates new questions.
Knowledge expands horizons rather than eliminating them.
Thus metaphysics should not be understood as a rejection of ontology but as its continuation. Where ontology asks: What is reality? Metaphysics asks: Why is reality?
Ontology investigates the structures of becoming.Metaphysics asks why becoming occurs at all.
Ontology explores relation, coherence, embodiment, meaning, and possibility.Metaphysics asks why reality gives rise to such phenomena.
In this sense, metaphysics emerges naturally from the search itself. The transition is neither abrupt nor artificial. It occurs whenever human beings move beyond describing what is present and begin asking why reality possesses the character it does.
This movement has appeared repeatedly throughout history.
Philosophers have asked why existence exists.
Religious traditions have asked why the world is meaningful.
Scientists have wondered why the universe possesses intelligible order.
Poets and artists have asked why beauty moves the human spirit.
Ordinary people have asked why love, suffering, hope, and loss possess such power within their lives.
The questions differ yet the movement remains the same.
Where ontology reaches a horizon.
Metaphysics begins beyond it.
This series therefore begins not by abandoning ontology, but by carrying its questions farther. For every answer concerning what reality is eventually invites a deeper inquiry concerning why reality is.
And it is precisely this question of why that now lies before us.
The journey of realityis never ending.
Every journey reaches moments when familiar landscapes begin giving way to unfamiliar terrain. The movement from ontology to metaphysics represents such a moment.
The questions explored throughout the Reality & Cosmology Series have brought us to an important threshold. We have examined reality's structures, patterns, relationships, and processes. We have considered relation, coherence, embodiment, persistence, identity, meaning, direction, possibility, culture, ethics, and participation. Yet beyond these inquiries new horizons now begin to appear.
Metaphysics does not begin with certainty - it begins with questions:
What kind of reality gives rise to relation?
Why does coherence emerge repeatedly from apparent fragmentation?
Why do increasingly complex forms of participation arise throughout nature and experience?
Why does consciousness emerge?
Why do meaning, value, beauty, and purpose appear within reality?
Why does reality seem capable of novelty, creativity, and becoming?
Why do human beings continually search beyond what is immediately present?
And why do questions of transcendence, ultimacy, and the sacred repeatedly emerge throughout human history?
Some of these horizons may lead toward questions of consciousness and experience. Others may lead toward the nature of emergence, possibility, complexity, creativity, and becoming. Some may explore the relationship between matter and mind, or the visible and the hidden dimensions of reality. Others may eventually encounter questions concerning value, morality, beauty, purpose, freedom, and transcendence.
Still others may lead toward theology.
Yet theology itself must wait.
For before asking questions concerning God, revelation, faith, salvation, or the sacred, it is first necessary to ask what kind of reality could make such questions possible.
The present series therefore proceeds cautiously. It seeks neither to affirm nor deny conclusions prematurely. Rather, it seeks to follow questions wherever they lead. And in the exploration, to approach reality from as broad a perspective as possibility allows.
This requires both discipline and humility. Discipline, because speculation must remain grounded in reality. Humility, because reality repeatedly proves larger than the frameworks used to describe it.
The goal is not certainty. The goal is understanding. Nor is the goal to construct a final system that eliminates mystery. The goal is to participate more deeply in reality's ongoing disclosure. For every horizon reached reveals another horizon beyond it. And every answer worthy of consideration eventually gives rise to new questions.
Such questions need not be feared.
They are signs that the search remains alive.
The chapters and essays that follow will explore these horizons one by one. Some paths may converge. Others may diverge. Some questions may generate provisional answers. Others may remain open. Yet all share a common origin - they arise from the enduring human desire to understand the reality in which we already participate.
It is toward these horizons that the journey now turns.
Every journey begins with a question.
The first question is why reality existed before anything else?
The second is how reality became what it is?
The journey undertaken throughout the Reality & Cosmology Series began with a simple yet profound inquiry: What is reality?
That question led through explorations of relation, coherence, embodiment, persistence, identity, meaning, direction, possibility, culture, ethics, religion, and human becoming. Along the way, reality revealed itself to be more relational, participatory, dynamic, and open than many traditional descriptions had assumed.
Yet the deeper the exploration became, the more another question emerged.
Why?
Why does reality possess the characteristics it does?
Why does relation arise?
Why does coherence emerge?
Why do consciousness, meaning, beauty, morality, creativity, and possibility appear within existence?
Why does reality continually open toward new horizons?
These questions mark the transition from ontology to metaphysics.
They do not replace the questions that came before them. They build upon them. Ontology remains essential because metaphysics must always remain grounded in reality as it is encountered and experienced. Yet once ontology has described reality as carefully as possible, the deeper question of why inevitably appears. This then lies in the realm of metaphysics.
This introduction to metaphysics has therefore sought to establish neither conclusions nor doctrines, but a posture. The posture of search, wonder, participation, and openness toward realities not yet fully understood.
Such a posture belongs neither to religion nor philosophy alone. It belongs to anyone willing to engage reality honestly and humbly. It belongs to the scientist and the philosopher, the artist and the theologian, the believer and the skeptic. It belongs to all who continue asking questions even when certainty remains beyond reach.
The chapters and essays that follow will explore many horizons. Some will investigate consciousness, emergence, complexity, creativity, dimensionality, and becoming. Others will examine meaning, value, freedom, transcendence, and the possibility of realities not yet fully understood. Still others may eventually lead toward questions traditionally associated with theology and faith.
Yet all such inquiries begin from the same place. Reality. For before there are philosophies, there is reality. Before there are religions, there is reality. Before there are theories, doctrines, systems, or explanations, there is reality. And it is within that reality that human beings find themselves searching, wondering, participating, and becoming.
The purpose of this series is not to close that search.
Its purpose is to continue it.
For every horizon reached reveals another horizon beyond it. And beyond every horizon lies the possibility of deeper understanding, deeper participation, and deeper wonder. The journey therefore continues. Let us proceed.
Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated by W. D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924.
Blackburn, Simon. Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Loux, Michael J. Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. 4th ed. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Rescher, Nicholas. Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected Edition. Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: Free Press, 1978.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press, 1967.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Modes of Thought. New York: Free Press, 1968.
II. Process Philosophy and Process Thought
Cobb, John B., Jr., and David Ray Griffin. Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976.
Mesle, C. Robert. Process Philosophy: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum, 2008.
Rescher, Nicholas. Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000.
III. Reality, Meaning, and Human Inquiry
Frankl, Viktor E. Man's Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.
Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind. New York: Ballantine Books, 1991.
IV. Science, Wonder, and the Search for Understanding
Davies, Paul. The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Einstein, Albert. Ideas and Opinions. New York: Crown Publishers, 1954.
Gleiser, Marcelo. The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning. New York: Basic Books, 2014.
Nurse, Paul. What Is Life? Five Great Ideas in Biology. New York: W. W. Norton, 2021.
V. Religion, Wonder, and Human Experience
Heschel, Abraham Joshua. God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955.
Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by John W. Harvey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.
Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.
VI. Previous Essays in the Reality & Cosmology Series
Slater, R. E. Embodied Process Realism Manifesto. Reality & Cosmology Series, Essay 57.
Slater, R. E. Reality & Cosmology Series Index and Reference Essays. Essays 1–61.
Slater, R. E. Measuring Christianity Through Its Many Dimensions. Historic Christianity Series, Essay 6.
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