Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The beginning of Aristotle's Metaphysics, one of the foundational texts of the discipline. Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of human ...
A prominent question in the philosophy of biology is whether biology can be reduced to lower-level sciences such as chemistry and physics. Materialism is the view that every biological system including organisms consists of nothing except the interactions of molecules; it is opposed to vitalism. As a methodology, reduction would mean that ...
Antireductionism is the position in science and metaphysics that stands in contrast to reductionism (anti-holism) by advocating that not all properties of a system can be explained in terms of its constituent parts and their interactions.
In Physics II.3 and Metaphysics V.2, Aristotle holds that there are four kinds of answers to "why" questions: [2] [5] [6] Matter The material cause of a change or movement. This is the aspect of the change or movement that is determined by the material that composes the moving or changing things.
Metaphysical naturalism is the philosophical basis of science as described by Kate and Vitaly (2000). "There are certain philosophical assumptions made at the base of the scientific method – namely, 1) that reality is objective and consistent, 2) that humans have the capacity to perceive reality accurately, and that 3) rational explanations exist for elements of the real world.
Metaphysics – traditional branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it, [1] although the term is not easily defined. [2] Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms: [3] What is ultimately there or what if it was never there?
[2] [3] Thus, while philosophy characteristically inquires into the nature of being, the reality of objects, the possibility of knowledge, the nature of truth, and so on, metaphilosophy is the self-reflective inquiry into the nature, aims, and methods of the activity that makes these kinds of inquiries, by asking what is philosophy itself, what ...
Many of Aristotle's works are extremely compressed, and many scholars believe that in their current form, they are likely lecture notes. [2] Subsequent to the arrangement of Aristotle's works by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century BC, a number of his treatises were referred to as the writings "after ("meta") the Physics" [b], the origin of the current title for the collection Metaphysics.