Mĕt′a-phȳs′ies, n. sing.
n. sing.;—rarely used as plural. [Gr. μετά τὰ φυσικά, after those things which relate to external nature, after physics, from μετά, beyond, after, and φυσικός, relating to external nature, natural, physical, from φύσις, nature; N. Lat. metaphysica, Fr. métaphysique, It. & Sp. metafisica. It is said that this name was given to the science by Aristotle or his followers, who considered the science of natural bodies, physics, to be the first in the order of studies, and the science of mind, or intelligence, to be the second.] [See Note under MATHEMATICS.]
Sense 1. The science of real as distinguished from phenomenal being; ontology; also, the science of being, as such, as distinguished from the science of determined or concrete being; the science of the conceptions and relations which are necessarily implied to be true of every kind of being; philosophy in general; first principles, or the science of first principles.
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.
[This] is 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 signified 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.
Sense 2. Hence, in popular language, 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. E. B. Browning.