Metaphysics investigates principles of reality Reality, in everyday usage, means "the state of things as they actually exist." In a sense it is what is real. The term reality, in its widest sense, includes everything that is, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. Reality in this sense includes being and sometimes is considered to include nothingness, where existence is transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology Cosmology is the branch of philosophy and metaphysics that deals with the world as the totality of all phenomena in space and time. Pre-socratic philosophers from the Ionian School are sometimes called cosmologists and ontology Ontology (from the Greek ὄν, genitive ὄντος: of being and -λογία, -logia: science, study, theory) is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being Being is the object of study of metaphysics, and more specifically ontology. In its most indeterminate sense, being could be understood as anything that can be said to be, which is opposed to nonexistence. For example one could ask: “why is there something instead of nothing?” (Leibniz, Heidegger, Wittgenstein). Where “something” implies and the world In philosophy, the World is everything that makes up reality. While clarifying the concept of world has arguably always been among the basic tasks of Western philosophy, this theme appears to have been raised explicitly only at the start of the twentieth century and has been the subject of continuous debate. The question of what the world is has.[1] Someone who studies metaphysics would be called either a "metaphysician"[2] or a "metaphysicist".[3]
The word derives from the Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of words μετά (metá Meta- , is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter) (meaning "beyond" or "after") and φυσικά (physiká) (meaning "physical"), "physical" referring to those works on matter The term matter traditionally refers to the substance that all objects are made of. One common way to identify this "substance" is through its physical properties; a common definition of matter is anything that has mass and occupies a volume. However, this definition has to be revised in light of quantum mechanics, where the concept of & by Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most in antiquity. The prefix meta- ("beyond") was attached to the chapters in Aristotle's work that physically followed after the chapters on "physics", in posthumously edited collections. Aristotle himself did not call these works Metaphysics. Aristotle called some of the subjects treated there "first philosophy".
A central branch of metaphysics is ontology Ontology (from the Greek ὄν, genitive ὄντος: of being and -λογία, -logia: science, study, theory) is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics,, the investigation into what types of things In metaphysics , the different kinds or ways of being are called categories of being or simply categories. According to the Aristotelian tradition, a being is anything that can be said to be in the various senses of this word. Hence, to investigate the categories of being is to determine the most fundamental senses in which things can be said to there are in the world and what relations these things bear to one another. The metaphysician also attempts to clarify the notions by which people understand the world, including existence In common usage, existence is the world of which we are aware through our senses, but in philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, and is often contrasted with essence. Philosophers investigate questions such as "What exists?" "How do we know?" "To what extent are the senses a reliable guide to existence?" &, objecthood In philosophy, an object is a thing, an entity, or a being. This may be taken in several senses. In its weakest sense, the word "object" is the most all-purpose of nouns, and can replace a noun in any sentence at all. Thus objects are things as diverse as the pyramids, Alpha Centauri, the number seven, my disbelief in predestination, and, property In modern philosophy, mathematics, and logic, a property is an attribute of an object; thus a red object is said to have the property of redness. The property may be considered a form of object in its own right, able to possess other properties. If, however,for every predicate there is a corresponding property, then properties are subject to, space Space is the boundless, three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of the boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. In mathematics one examines ', time Time is a component of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify the motions of objects. Time has been a major subject of religion, philosophy, and science, but defining it in a non-controversial manner applicable to all fields of study has consistently eluded, causality Causality refers to the relationship between an event and a second event (the effect), where the second event is a direct consequence of the first, and possibility Possibility is the condition or fact of being possible. The Latin origins of the word hint at ability. Possibility also refers to something that "could happen", that is not precluded by the facts, but usually not probable. Impossible denotes that something literally cannot happen or be done.
Before the development of modern science Science is a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world, produced by a global community of researchers making use of scientific methods, which emphasize the observation, explanation, and adequate prediction of real world phenomena by experiment. Given the dual status of science as objective knowledge and as a, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as "natural philosophy Natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature , is a term applied to the study of nature and the physical universe that was dominant before the development of modern science. It is considered to be the precursor of natural sciences such as physics"; the term "science" itself meant "knowledge" of epistemological Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions: origin. The scientific method Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of, however, made natural philosophy an empirical The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment. A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. It is usually differentiated from the philosophic and experimental In scientific research, an experiment is a method of investigating causal relationships among variables, or to test a hypothesis. An experiment is a cornerstone of the empirical approach to acquiring data about the world and is used in both natural sciences and social sciences. An experiment can be used to help solve practical problems and to activity unlike the rest of philosophy, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had begun to be called "science" in order to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics became the philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence.
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Boston Globe
Not really, though its merry clash of ideas does suggest that, theatrically speaking, a spoonful of sugar helps the metaphysics go down. But is it funny? ...
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Andy Grieser
Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:40:01 GM
ABC's new serial drama is a lot like Lost, but needs to find a sense of wonder.
