Meaning of METAPHYSICS
| Pronunciation: | | `metu'fiziks
|
 WordNet Dictionary |
| |
| | Definition: | | [n] the philosophical study of being and knowing |
| |
| | Websites: | |
|
| |
| | See Also: | | cosmology, ontology, philosophy | |
| Products Dictionary |
| |
| | Definition: | | Metaphysics
Always passionately interested in natural phenomena, Aristotle eventually dissented from Plato`s idealist premise that what we perceive is just a pale reflection of the true reality. The Metaphysics is Aristotle`s first mature statement of his own philosophical understanding of reality. An extraordinary synthesis; integrating the natural and rational aspens of the world, Aristotle`s Metaphysics probes some of the deepest questions of philosophy: What is existence? How is change possible? What makes something the same thing at different times? Are there things that must exist for anything else to exist at all? Furthermore, with his notion of substance and his associated concepts of matter and form, essence and accident, and potentiality and actuality, Aristotle laid the foundations for Western speculative thought on the nature of reality. Hugh Lawson-Tancred`s translation achieves a readability absent from earlier versions, and in a stimulating introductory essay he highlights the central themes of one of philosophy`s supreme masterpieces. more details ... |
| |
| | Websites: | |
|
| |
| Webster's 1913 Dictionary |
| |
| | Definition: | | \Met`a*phys"ics\, n. [Gr. ? ? ? after those things
which relate to external nature, after physics, fr. ? beyond,
after + ? relating to external nature, natural, physical, fr.
? nature: cf. F. m['e]taphysique. See {Physics}. The term was
first used by the followers of Aristotle as a name for that
part of his writings which came after, or followed, the part
which treated of physics.]
1. The science of real as distinguished from phenomenal
being; ontology; also, the science of being, with
reference to its abstract and universal conditions, as
distinguished from the science of determined or concrete
being; the science of the conceptions and relations which
are necessarily implied as true of every kind of being;
phylosophy in general; first principles, or the science of
first principles.
Note: Metaphysics is distinguished as general and special.
{General metaphysics} is the science of all being as
being. {Special metaphysics} is the science of one kind
of being; as, the metaphysics of chemistry, of morals,
or of politics. According to Kant, a systematic
exposition of those notions and truths, the knowledge
of which is altogether independent of experience, would
constitute the science of metaphysics.
Commonly, in the schools, called metaphysics, as
being part of the philosophy of Aristotle, which
hath that for title; but it is in another sense:
for there it signifieth as much as ``books
written or placed after his natural philosophy.''
But the schools take them for ``books of
supernatural philosophy;'' for the word
metaphysic will bear both these senses. --Hobbes.
Now the science conversant about all such
inferences of unknown being from its known
manifestations, is called ontology, or
metaphysics proper. --Sir W.
Hamilton.
Metaphysics are [is] the science which determines
what can and what can not be known of being, and
the laws of being, a priori. --Coleridge.
2. Hence: The scientific knowledge of mental phenomena;
mental philosophy; psychology.
Metaphysics, in whatever latitude the term be taken,
is a science or complement of sciences exclusively
occupied with mind. --Sir W.
Hamilton.
Whether, after all, A larger metaphysics might not
help Our physics. --Mrs.
Browning.
|
| |
| | Websites: | |
|
| |
| Thesaurus Terms |
| |
| | Related Terms: | | aesthetics, axiology, casuistry, cosmology, epistemology, ethics, existentialism, first philosophy, gnosiology, hyperphysics, logic, mental philosophy, moral philosophy, ontology, phenomenology, philosophastry, philosophic doctrine, philosophic system, philosophic theory, philosophical inquiry, philosophical speculation, philosophy, school of philosophy, school of thought, science of being, sophistry, the first philosophy, theory of beauty, theory of knowledge, value theory |
| |
|
|
|