meta phys ict (metafizik)

t. [= F. méta physiquer = Pg. meta phys i car = It. metafisicare, discourse metaphysically; from the noun: see metaphysic, n.] To make metaphysical. Wal pole, Letters (1782), IV. 306. ( Davies.) metaphysical (met-a-fiz'i-kal), a. [ ic + -al.] 1. Of or pertaining to metaphysic or metaphysics; in a loose sense, philosophical; hence, highly abstruse; apart from ord i nary or practical modes of thought. Hobbes had, in language more precise and luminous than has ever been employed by any other metaphysical writer, maintained that the will of Prince was the standard of right and wrong. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., ii. 2. Relating to real being, and not merely to appearance; transcendental; hence, pertaining to unverifiable hypotheses. Both ideas and words may be said to be true in a meta physical sense of the word "truth," be such as they exist. i. e., really to Locke, Human Understanding, II. xxxii. 2. 3. Pertaining to abstractions, or modes thought of as objects, and named as if they were things; abstract. Truth and Falsehood are odd kind of Metaphysical things to them, which they do not care to trouble their heads with. Stilling fleet , Sermons, II. i. 44. Preternatural or supernatural. The golden round, Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crown'd withal. Shak., Macbeth, i. 5. 30. The eclipse of the sunne that darkened all the earth at Christes pa ion, happening altogether prodigiously and metaphysically in plenilunis. G. Hervey, Letter to Ed. Spenser (1580). metaphysician (meta-fi-zish'an), n . [= F. métaphysicien ; metaphysic + -ian.] 1. One who is versed in the science of metaphysics. -2. One who practises the mind-cure. [Recent and vulgar.] metaphysicist (met-a-fiz'i-sist), n. [ meta physic + -ist.] Same as metaphysician . metaphysics (met-a-fiz'iks), n. [Pl. of metaphysic: see- ics .] 1. The science of the inward and e ential nature of things. (a) As the subject of the books of Aristotle so called, first philosophy; ontology; the analysis of the nature of being in general; the doctrine of first principles. (b) [The prefix meta- being understood as meaning beyond.') Supernatural science the doctrine of that which transcends all human experience. (c) The science of the mind treated by means of introspection and analysis, and not by experiment and scientific observation; rational psychology. (d) Any doctrine based upon presumption and not upon inductive reasoning and observation be abstract and abstruse body of doctrine supposed to be virtually taken for granted in some science: as, "the metaphysics of geometry." [Used frequently with the definite article, and generally connected with unpleasant a ociations, as being a study very dry and at the same time of doubtful truth. The mathematics and the metaphysics , Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you. Shak., T. of the S., I. 1. 37. "How," she cried, "you love The metaphysics!" Tennyson, Prince , iii.] 2. Philosophy in general; especially, the philosophical study of mind; psychology: so used from the time of Des cartes, and especially by the Scotch school. Metaphysics was a word formerly appropriated to the ontology and pneumatology of the schools, but now understood as equally applicable to all those inquiries which have for their object to trace the various branches of human knowledge to their first principles in the human mind. D. Stewart, Di ertations, ii. 475. 3. In the Kantian terminology, the science of God, freedom, and immortality. Abbreviated metaph . meta physiological (met-a-fiz i-o-loj'i-kal), a. [