Metaphysics
/ˌmɛtəˈfɪzɪks/noun
The branch of philosophy that asks what exists and what it means for anything to be.
The Greek roots
Literally: “after the natural things”
The story of the word
The grandest word in philosophy started as a shelf label. When Andronicus of Rhodes edited Aristotle around the first century BC, a bundle of untitled treatises on being and substance came after the Physics in the order of the rolls, so they were called τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, the ones after the physics. Later readers heard μετά as beyond rather than after and concluded the subject was whatever lies past the physical world. English has it from the 1560s.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Medieval Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1560s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
Two hours in, the argument had slid from physics into metaphysics.
She writes on the metaphysics of time, which sounds restful and is not.