metaphysics

(noun)

A branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it.

Related Terms

(noun)

A traditional branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, it attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms: "Ultimately, what is there?" and "What is it like?"

Related Terms

Examples of metaphysics in the following topics:

  • Supply of Blood and Nerves to Bone

    • Near the epiphysis, they anastomose with the metaphyseal and epiphyseal arteries.
    • Epiphyseal and metaphyseal arteries enter on both sides of the growth cartilage, with anastamoses between them being few or absent.
    • Young periosteum is more vascular, has more metaphyseal branches, and its vessels communicate more freely with those of the shaft than adult periosteum .

  • The Song Dynasty

    • However, unlike the Buddhists and Taoists, who saw metaphysics as a catalyst for spiritual development, religious enlightenment, and immortality, the Neo-Confucianists used metaphysics as a guide for developing a rationalist ethical philosophy.
    • Mahayana Buddhism influenced Fan Zhongyan and Wang Anshi through its concept of ethical universalism, while Buddhist metaphysics had a deep impact upon the pre-Neo-Confucian doctrine of Cheng Yi.

  • Religious Symbols

    • There are many benefits to such a course of inquiry, but in general the comparative study of religion yields a deeper understanding of the fundamental philosophical concerns of religion, including ethics, metaphysics and the nature and form of salvation.

  • Pragmatism

    • Its direction was determined by The Metaphysical Club members Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and Chauncey Wright, as well as John Dewey and George Herbert Mead.

  • Rationalism

    • The philosophers who held this view most clearly were Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, whose attempts to grapple with the epistemological and metaphysical problems raised by Descartes led to a development of the fundamental approach of rationalism.
    • During the mature Enlightenment period, Immanuel Kant attempted to explain the relationship between reason and human experience and to move beyond the failures of traditional philosophy and metaphysics.

  • History

    • The second was the metaphysical stage where people understood society as natural (not supernatural).
    • The effect of employing the scientific method and stressing empiricism was the distinction of sociology from theology, philosophy, and metaphysics.

  • Sociology and Science

    • The effect of employing the scientific method and stressing empiricism was the distinction of sociology from theology, philosophy, and metaphysics.

  • Surrealism

    • Meeting the young writer Jacques Vaché, Breton felt that Vaché was the spiritual son of writer and metaphysical thinker Alfred Jarry.

  • Neue Sachlichkeit

    • The sources of their art include 19th-century art, the Italian metaphysical painters, the artists of Novecento Italiano, and Henri Rousseau.

  • Philosophy and Art of the Han Dynasty

    • Confucianism originated as an "ethical-sociopolitical teaching" during the Spring and Autumn Period, but during the Han Dynasty it developed metaphysical and cosmological elements.