Table of Contents
What is the origin of metaphysics?
The word “metaphysics” derives from the Greek words μετά (metá, “after”) and φυσικά (physiká, “physics”). It was first used as the title for several of Aristotle’s works, because they were usually anthologized after the works on physics in complete editions.
What is the nature of metaphysics?
METAPHYSICS Is BoRN Nature of judgment. ” The intellect,” says Aquinas, ” has two operations, one called ‘ the understanding of indivisibles ‘ by which it knows ‘ what ‘ a thing is; and another by which it composes and divides, that is to say, by forming affirmative and negative enunciations.
What is the nature of the universe?
The Nature of the Universe The universe as a whole is an interacting community of beings inseparably related in space and time. From its beginning the universe has had a psychic-spiritual dimension. The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.
What is the history of metaphysics?
The history of metaphysics in Western philosophy (taking “metaphysics” in the contemporary sense) began with speculations by the Ionian cosmologists in the sixth century BCE about the origin of the physical universe, the matter or stuff from which it is made, and the laws or uniformities everywhere present in nature.
What is the meaning of the Greek word metaphysics?
The word “metaphysics” comes from the Greek words that literally mean “beyond nature”. “Nature” in this sense refers to the nature of a thing, such as its cause and purpose. Metaphysics then studies questions of a thing beyond or above questions of its nature, in particular its essence or its qualities of being.
Is metaphysics supernatural?
In critical philosophical discourse, metaphysics has perhaps been tarnished by its Latinate translation as “supernatural,” with its strong theological implications. But from the beginning, Aristotle’s books on “First Philosophy” considered God among the possible causes of the fundamental things in the universe.
Does metaphysics provide a theory of first principles?
Metaphysics could be said to provide a theory of first principles if it furnished men with a set of concepts in the light of which they could arrive at the connected account of experience as a whole just spoken of, and the two descriptions of the subject would thus be two sides of a single coin.