Definition of Metaphysics

Metaphysics

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.

Hence: The scientific knowledge of mental phenomena; mental philosophy; psychology.

Related Definitions:

Abstract, Also, And, Are, As, Being, Concrete, Determined, Distinguished, Every, First, From, General, Hence, Implied, In, Kind, Knowledge, Mental, Necessarily, Of, Ontology, Or, Phenomena, Phenomenal, Philosophy, Psychology, Real, Reference, Science, Scientific, The, To, True, Universal, Which, With

Metaphysics Quotations

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
Voltaire

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.
John Adams

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.
Immanuel Kant

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
Walt Whitman

I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.
Michel de Montaigne

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
William James

To think Being itself explicitly requires disregarding Being to the extent that it is only grounded and interpreted in terms of beings and for beings as their ground, as in all metaphysics.
Martin Heidegger

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.
Joseph Joubert

Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food.
Robert M. Pirsig

Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us.
Huston Smith

To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.
Wallace Stevens

Consequently he who wishes to attain to human perfection, must therefore first study Logic, next the various branches of Mathematics in their proper order, then Physics, and lastly Metaphysics.
Maimonides

He, however, who begins with Metaphysics, will not only become confused in matters of religion, but will fall into complete infidelity.
Maimonides

The verbal interpretation, on the other hand, i.e. the metaphysics of quantum physics, is on far less solid ground. In fact, in more than forty years physicists have not been able to provide a clear metaphysical model.
Erwin Schrodinger

So Whitehead's metaphysics doesn't fit very well on to physics as we understand the process of the world.
John Polkinghorne

Go beyond science, into the region of metaphysics. Real religion is beyond argument. It can only be lived both inwardly and outwardly.
Swami Sivananda

That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.
Boris Pasternak

Metaphysics is a science.
Gabriel Marcel

It is right that we be concerned with the scientific probity of metaphysics.
Gabriel Marcel

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.
F. H. Bradley

However, the sciences of society and of history retained their old subservient relation to metaphysics for a long time - well into the eighteenth century.
Wilhelm Dilthey

Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day.
Wilhelm Dilthey

I teach metaphysics and pastor a church.
Della Reese

The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.
Wilhelm Dilthey

A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.
William Winwood Reade

Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.
Fernando Pessoa

Algebra is the metaphysics of arithmetic.
John Ray

More Metaphysics Quotations

Metaphysics Translations

metaphysics in German is Metaphysik
metaphysics in Hungarian is metapszichika

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