metafisica

Note: Metaphysics is distinguished as general and special. {General metaphysics} is the science of all being as
being. {Special metaphysics} is the science of one kind
of being; as, the metaphysics of chemistry, of morals,
or of politics. According to Kant, a systematic
exposition of those notions and truths, the knowledge
of which is altogether independent of experience, would
constitute the science of metaphysics.
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Commonly, in the schools, called metaphysics, as being part of the philosophy of Aristotle, which
hath that for title; but it is in another sense:
for there it signifieth as much as ``books
written or placed after his natural philosophy.
But the schools take them for ``books of
supernatural philosophy; for the word
metaphysic will bear both these senses. --Hobbes.
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Now the science conversant about all such inferences of unknown being from its known
manifestations, is called ontology, or
metaphysics proper. --Sir W.
Hamilton.
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Metaphysics are is the science which determines what can and what can not be known of being, and
the laws of being, a priori. --Coleridge.
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2. Hence: The scientific knowledge of mental phenomena; mental philosophy; psychology.
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Metaphysics, in whatever latitude the term be taken, is a science or complement of sciences exclusively
occupied with mind. --Sir W.
Hamilton.
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Whether, after all, A larger metaphysics might not help
Our physics. --Mrs.
Browning.
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Source: The Collaborative International Dictionary of English