"Metaphysics is universal and is exclusively concerned with primary substance." (Aristotle, "Metaphysics", 340 BC
"Metaphysics is the attempt of the mind to rise above the mind." (Thomas Carlyle, "Critical and Miscellaneous: Collected and Republished", 1839)
"Metaphysics. The science to which ignorance goes to learn its knowledge, and knowledge to learn its ignorance. On which all men agree that it is the key, but no two upon how it is to be put into the lock." (Augustus De Morgan, [letter to Dr. Whewell] 1850)
"[...] metaphysics is almost the last thing that one discovers." (Pierre-Simon Laplace [letter to Sylvestre F Lacroix] 1792)
"Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct." (Francis H Bradley, "Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay", 1893)
"Metaphysics is the science of the ultimate states of the universe." (Ian Hacking, "The Taming of Chance", 1990)
"Metaphysics is one of the main branches of philosophy, the branch that is concerned with the concept of being (that is, existence) and with several other closely related concepts. The study of concepts plays a central role in all of philosophy." (Michael Jubien, "Contemporary Metaphysics", 1997)
"Metaphysics is not about any of the things that exist, or their existence under certain limited conditions. It is purely about existence." (Earl Conee & Theodore Sider, "Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics", 2005)
"Metaphysics is rooted in the natural human desire to know, the longing to behold and participate in the beautiful, to find one's place within, and to conceive all one's activities in relation to, the whole. Metaphysics is at once about being, truth, goodness, and beauty." (Thomas Hibbs, "Aquinas, Ethics, and Philosophy of Religion: Metaphysics and Practice", 2007)
"Metaphysics, or ontology, is the study of the most basic and general problems about the universe and the mind." (Mario Bunge, "Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry", 2010)
"Metaphysics is concerned, first and foremost, with the nature of reality" (Kitt Fine, "What is metaphysics?", Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics, 2012)
"Metaphysics, in whatever latitude the term be taken, is a science or complement of sciences exclusively occupied with mind." (Sir William R Hamilton)
No comments:
Post a Comment