Definition of Metaphysics (from the Webster's Unabridged)
"[The term was first used, is is believed, by Andronicus of Rhodes, the editor of Aristotle's works, as a name for that part of his writings which came after the Physics.] That division of philosophy which includes ontology, the science of being, and cosmology, or the science of the fundamental causes and processes in things; in a looser serse, all of the more abstruse philosophical diciplines, in a narrower sense, ontology alone."
"The primary meaning of metaphysics is derived from those discussions by Aristotle, which he himself called the Fifst Philosophy, or Theology, and which deal with the nature of being, with cause or genisis, and with the existence of God. Later metaphysics was understood as the science of the supersensible. By Albertus Magnus it was called the 'transphysical science', and Aquinas considered it to be concerned with the cognition of God."
"Scholastic philosophy in general understood it as the science of being in itself, that is, as 'ontology', a meaning which, with some difference of interpretation is still retained."
"The Rennaisance resulted in two developments. in Germany, Cristian Wolff divided metaphysics into ontology, psychology, cosmology, and natural or rational theology. In England Bacon defined it as the quest or study of formal and final causes, contrasting with it natural philosophy as treating efficient and material causes."
"As philosophy recieved from Descartes its peculiarly epistemological character, the conception of metaphysics altered from the science of being to the science of the conditions of knowledge. In England, owing to the prevalence of psychological problems, it became pratically identified with the analytical psychology of the time; while in Germany Kant's 'Critique' asserted its trancendental province as the science of pure, or apriori, reason."
"The notion that metaphysics is concerned with that which transcends experience led to the positivistic denial of the possibility of metaphysical knowledge, while the critical spirit and logical point of view of Kant cuased metaphysics to be identified with the logic by Hegel. Schopenhauer and later writers have insisted that metaphysics is concerned with analysis of experience in the broad sense, and this empirical view is largely held by modern writers."
![[Optimized for PinealWeb]](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tilt/pinealweb/pineal.gif)
| Mission Statement | | Bylaws | | Essays | | Intellectual Values | | Metaphysical Cartoons |
|Three Step Program | |Fred Wolf info | |Mars Rover Pictures | |Consult the I Ching
|An organization for discussion of the Ideas of Fuller, Reich, Korzybski, and related topics.
Get your own Free Home Page--------