Wolfgang Smith’s Legacy: Smith observed that while the sciences’ blind adherence to a flat material reality permits a certain utility, it does not account for the multidimensional world in which we actually live. (Scott Ventureyra, 7/18/25, Crisis)
One of Smith’s most profound distinctions was between the corporeal and the physical, not merely as empirical categories but as ontological realities. The corporeal refers to the fully realized world of lived experience, rich with quality, meaning, and symbols of what we truly encounter as beings-in-the-world. The physical, by contrast, lacks intrinsic being; it is not a full level of existence but something ontologically deficient. Drawing from the metaphysical insight of St. Thomas Aquinas, Smith described the physical as akin to materia signata quantitate—matter designated by quantity, which is something that lies midway between being and non-being. It is not yet actualized by form and thus lacks full existence.
This “sub-existential” status explains why modern physics, which focuses solely on this domain, provides only a fragmented account of reality rather than a complete one, abstracted from the concrete and meaningful whole. In Smith’s view, this is precisely what makes quantum mechanics both fascinating and ontologically unstable, since it operates in a realm of semi-reality that permits technological utility but cannot account for the fullness of existence. Without the reintegration of the corporeal, modern science remains blind to the symbolic and spiritual dimension of the cosmos.
In Smith’s view, this is precisely what makes quantum mechanics both fascinating and ontologically unstable, since it operates in a realm of semi-reality that permits technological utility but cannot account for the fullness of existence.For Smith, quantum theory itself hinted at a metaphysical order that science could not account for. The collapse of the wave function, for instance, required an ontology that distinguished between the corporeal and physical domains
Physics depends on the Observer and then denying one existed.