What Is Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that investigates
principles of reality transcending those of any particular

experimental activity unlike the rest of philosophy, and by
the end of the eighteenth century it had begun to be called

science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of
metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental

"science" in order to distinguish it from philosophy.
Thereafter, metaphysics became the philosophical enquiry of

nature of being and the world. Someone who studies
metaphysics would be called either a "metaphysician" or a

a non-empirical character into the nature of existence.

"metaphysicist."

Metaphysics is generally taken to mean philosophical
speculation beyond the current or even seemingly possible

The word derives from the Greek words meta (meaning "beyond"
or "after") and physika (meaning "physical"), "physical"

limits of science or technology to test, the development of
systems intended to explain origins and purpose, and the

referring to those works on matter by Aristotle in
antiquity. The prefix meta- ("beyond") was attached to the

place of man in the universe. The word 'metaphysics' has its
origin simply from those books of Aristotle which were

chapters in Aristotle's work that physically followed after
the chapters on "physics," in posthumously edited

placed in sequence after his Physics. The pejorative sense
of 'obscure' and 'over-speculative' is recent, especially

collections. Aristotle himself did not call these works
Metaphysics. Aristotle called some of the subjects treated

following attempts by A. J. Ayer and others to show that
metaphysics is strictly nonsense.

there "first philosophy."

In the history of Western philosophy, metaphysics has been

A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the
investigation into what types of things there are in the

understood in various ways: as an inquiry into what basic
categories of things there are (e.g., the mental and the

physical); as the study of reality, as opposed to
appearance; as the study of the world as a whole; and as a

which people understand the world, including existence,
objecthood, property, space, time, causality, and

theory of first principles. Some basic problems in the
history of metaphysics are the problem of universals —

possibility.

i.e., the problem of the nature of universals and their
relation to so-called particulars; the existence of God; the

Before the development of modern science, scientific
questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as

mind-body problem; and the problem of the nature of
material, or external, objects. Major types of metaphysical

"natural philosophy"; the term "science" itself meant
"knowledge" of epistemological origin. The scientific

theory include Platonism, Aristotelianism, Thomism,
Cartesianism (see also dualism), idealism, realism, and