metaphysics

The word metaphysics come from the Greek, after the physical. Just like supernatural means beyond the natural, metaphysics simply means "After Physics". Aristotle thought that the wisdom for which all philosophers search is the knowledge of first principles and the causes of things. To look into the nature of these things is to seek after and explain God. Aristotle himself uses at various times three different names for metaphysics: sometimes he refers to it as "first philosophy, sometimes as theologia, and occasionally he speaks of it simply as sophia or "intellectual wisdom", it can equally well be called theology.

Each man, each animal, each plant, each mono-cellular organism, each particle of matter exists by itself, in its impenetrable individuality. The individual alone exists. Such is the fundamental doctrine of scholastic metaphysics and it was inherited from the 12th century. It belongs to natural science, and not to philosophy, to tell us what the individual is.
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