Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world although it is not easily defined.. Someone who studies metaphysics would be called either a metaphysicist or a metaphysician.

The word derives from the Greek words μετά (metá) (meaning "beyond" or "after") and φυσικά (physiká) (meaning "physical"), "physical" referring to those works on matter by Aristotle in antiquity. The prefix meta- ("beyond") was attached to the chapters in Aristotle's work that 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, the investigation into what types of things 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, objecthood, property, space, time, causality, and possibility.

Before the development of modern science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as "natural philosophy"; the term "science" itself meant "knowledge" of epistemological origin. The scientific method, however, made natural philosophy an empirical and experimental activity unlike the rest of philosophy, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had begun to be called "science" to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics became the philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence.

Quotes about metaphysics

Sourced

• Now these two questions — Does there exist a material reality distinct from sensible appearances? and What is the nature of reality? — do not have their source in experimental method, which is acquainted only with sensible appearances and can discover nothing beyond them. The resolution of these questions transcends the methods used by physics; it is the object of metaphysics. Therefore, if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics.
  • Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, tr. Philip P. Wiener, 1991, Princeton University Press, p. 10, ISBN 069102524X.

• Bañez, Domingo@ (1)
• La Mettrie, Julien Offray de@ (3)
• Strawson, Peter@ (4)

See also:

• Science: Math: Applications: Complex Systems: Evolution and Dynamics (18)
• Society: Philosophy: Ethics (371)
• Society: Philosophy: Philosophy of Mind (166)
• Society: Philosophy: Philosophy of Science: Physics (116)

• Online Papers on Consciousness: Free Will
  u.arizona.edu
  Section on free will from David Chalmers' site.
• Lecture Notes on Free Will and Determinism - Prof. Norman Swartz
  sfu.ca
  Discusses the various problems raised by different concepts of determinism, and presents an argument that physical determinism is compatible with free will.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Incompatibilist (Nondeterministic) Theories of Free Will
  plato.stanford.edu
  Randolph Clarke's survey of theories of freedom according to which it is inconsistent with causal determinism.