METAPHYSICS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does metaphysics mean? 

• METAPHYSICS (noun)
  The noun METAPHYSICS has 1 sense:

1. the philosophical study of being and knowing

  Familiarity information: METAPHYSICS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• METAPHYSICS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The philosophical study of being and knowing

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("metaphysics" is a kind of...):

philosophy (the rational investigation of questions about existence and knowledge and ethics)

Domain member category:

hypostasis ((metaphysics) essential nature or underlying reality)

entelechy ((Aristotle) the state of something that is fully realized; actuality as opposed to potentiality)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "metaphysics"):

ontology (the metaphysical study of the nature of being and existence)

cosmology (the metaphysical study of the origin and nature of the universe)

Derivation:

metaphysical (pertaining to or of the nature of metaphysics)

 Context examples 

This is one of the three major branches of philosophy, alongside metaphysics and logic.

(Ethics, NCI Thesaurus)

Walt Irvine drew himself away with a jerk from the metaphysics and poetry of the organic miracle of blossom, and surveyed the landscape.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

The medieval metaphysics of Kant had given him the key to nothing, and had served the sole purpose of making him doubt his own intellectual powers.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Jo knew nothing about philosophy or metaphysics of any sort, but a curious excitement, half pleasurable, half painful, came over her as she listened with a sense of being turned adrift into time and space, like a young balloon out on a holiday.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

If the boy had replied like Alcibiades, By the gods, Socrates, I cannot tell, his grandfather would not have been surprised, but when, after standing a moment on one leg, like a meditative young stork, he answered, in a tone of calm conviction, In my little belly, the old gentleman could only join in Grandma's laugh, and dismiss the class in metaphysics.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)