The Free Dictionary by Farlex defines metaphysics as follows:
1. …The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value. 2. …The theoretical or first principles of a particular discipline: the metaphysics of law. 3. …A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.
4. …Excessively subtle or recondite reasoning.
I have often noted that, indeed, we are all metaphysicians because at the bottom, as the very premise, of all, each and every worldview, religion, philosophy, concept, etc. there are axioms, there are principles, that are un-evidenced and unproven but are rather, assumed, presupposed and/or intuited.
I ran across a very telling statement by G. K. Chesterton on this issue which he states as follows in the last chapter of his book Heretics, chapter 20 Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy:
Every man in the street must hold a metaphysical system, and hold it firmly.
The possibility is that he may have held it so firmly and so long as to have forgotten all about its existence….I apologize to the rationalists even for calling them rationalists. There are no rationalists. We all believe fairy-tales, and live in them…
Some hold the undemonstrable dogma of the existence of God; some the equally undemonstrable dogma of the existence of the man next door.
Find Heretics and Orthodoxy at Amaon at these links.
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