The term “metaphysics” comes from Aristotle’s work by that name. Actually, he named that work “Τὰ Μετὰ Τὰ Φυσικά,” which means “The things after the Physics.” Actually actually, he probably didn’t name it that, rather that title was a description of that particular work’s position in an anthology of Aristotle’s works not even compiled by Aristotle himself. So what we call Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” is just the stuff that comes after Aristotle’s work called “The Physics” in some Alexandrian scholar’s compilation of Aristotle’s writing. It is, however, a serendipitous title, because the content of “Τὰ Μετὰ Τὰ Φυσικά” deals with the philosophy of what lies beyond the physical world. Ever since this weirdly meta title choice, the branch of philosophy that speculates about the grounding of reality, the theoretical foundation of the physical world, has been called Metaphysics.

While it is perfectly reasonable for someone to dismiss such speculation as unnecessary and superfluous, the history of the word itself offers a good illustration of why I think it’s an interesting and worth-while pursuit. What we think is normal, mundane, or predictable often has a history that is surprising, strange, and unpredictable. In my mind the word “metaphysics” is an analogy for every thing. We think we know all there is to know about a thing, when really we probably just know what we need to know. If we try to look at the thing itself, instead of merely treating it like a convenient tool that can be used and then disregarded, we find that thing to be strange and imbued with a life of its own. Metaphysics as a discipline does this. It asks some of the most basic questions of the world. What does it mean to exist? How does change work? If you completely rebuild a ship piece by piece, is it still the same ship? You may scoff at such simple questions, but if you really try to answer them, you may find that you understand some of our most basic assumptions less than you first believed. Let’s consider some of those questions.