section_path: Definition
section_name: Definition
paragraph_text: Definition
  
  Metaphysics is the study of the most general features of reality, including existence, objects and their properties, possibility and necessity, space and time, change, causation, and the relation between matter and mind. It is one of the oldest branches of philosophy.
  
  The precise nature of metaphysics is disputed and its characterization has changed in the course of history. Some approaches see metaphysics as a unified field and give a wide-sweeping definition by understanding it as the study of "fundamental questions about the nature of reality" or as an inquiry into the essences of things. Another approach doubts that the different areas of metaphysics share a set of underlying features and provides instead a fine-grained characterization by listing all the main topics investigated by metaphysicians. Some definitions are descriptive by providing an account of what metaphysicians do while others are normative and prescribe what metaphysicians ought to do.
  
  Two historically influential definitions in ancient and medieval philosophy understand metaphysics as the science of the first causes and as the study of being qua being, that is, the topic of what all beings have in common and to what fundamental categories they belong. In the modern period, the scope of metaphysics was extended to cover topics such as the distinction between mind and body and free will. Some philosophers follow Aristotle in describing metaphysics as "first philosophy", implying that it is the most basic inquiry while all other branches of philosophy depend on it in some way.
  
  Metaphysics is traditionally understood as a study of mind-independent features of reality. Starting with Immanuel Kant 's critical philosophy, an alternative conception gained prominence that focuses on conceptual schemes rather than external reality. Kant distinguishes transcendent metaphysics, which aims to describe the objective features of reality beyond sense experience, from critical metaphysics, which outlines the aspects and principles underlying all human thought and experience. Regarding the analysis of conceptual schemes, philosopher P. F. Strawson contrasts descriptive metaphysics, which articulates conceptual schemes commonly used to understand the world, with revisionary metaphysics, which aims to produce better conceptual schemes.
  
  Metaphysics differs from the individual sciences by studying very general and abstract aspects of reality. The individual sciences, by contrast, examine more specific and concrete features and restrict themselves to certain classes of entities, such as the focus on physical things in physics, living entities in biology, and cultures in anthropology. It is disputed to what extent this contrast is a strict dichotomy rather than a gradual continuum.
  
  Philosophers engaged in metaphysics are called metaphysicians or metaphysicists. Outside the academic discourse, the term metaphysics is sometimes used in a different sense for the study of occult and paranormal phenomena, like metaphysical healing, auras, and the power of pyramids.