The word ‘metaphysics’ is not easy to define. It is derived from a collective title of the fourteen books by Aristotle that we use to call nowadays “Aristotle’s Metaphysics.”
However, Aristotle himself did not know the word. He had four names for the branch of philosophy that is the subject-matter of Metaphysics: ‘first philosophy’, ‘first science’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘theology’.) At least one hundred years after Aristotle’s death, an editor of his works entitled those fourteen books “Ta meta ta phusika”—“the after the physicals” or “the ones after the physical ones”.
Throughout the centuries the meaning of metaphysics has been developed and today we consider the following sections as parts of the concept:
Abstract objects and mathematics;
Cosmology and cosmogony;
Determinism and free will;
Identity and change;
Mind and matter;
Necessity and possibility;
Objects and their properties;
Religion and spirituality;
Space and time
