FAQ: What is the Objectivist View of Reality (Metaphysics)?


Kat

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FAQ: What is the Objectivist View of Reality (Metaphysics)?

(Note from MSK in May 2017: The link to The Objectivist Center in this post is no longer valid as the organization has been renamed The Atlas Society. And it seems like William Thomas might no longer be at TAS. However, for historical reasons, we are leaving the post as is. To get the current TAS information on Objectivism, please go to Objectivism 101.)

by William Thomas - The Objectivist Center

Quote
Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.  

— Ayn Rand, "Introducing Objectivism"  

The Objectivist Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 8 August, 1962 p. 35

Objectivism holds that there is one reality, the one in which we live. It is self-evident that reality exists and is what it is: our job is to discover it. Objectivism stands against all forms of metaphysical relativism or idealism. It holds it as undeniable that humans have free will, and opposes metaphysical determinism or fatalism. More generally, it holds that there is no fundamental contradiction between the free, abstract character of mental life and the physical body in which it resides. And so it denies the existence of any "supernatural" or ineffable dimension for spirits or souls.

Let's consider each of these points in turn.

Relativism and objective reality

Today, especially in university departments of literature, there are some fashionable "postmodernists" who claim that we create reality with words, in our own minds. This view is an instance of a position that has frequently reappeared in philosophy: metaphysical relativism or idealism. It is the view that, ultimately, nothing is real except in relation to our perceiving it or thinking of it.

But reality is not a function of our ideas. It exists, and it is what it is, regardless of whether we want it to be or not. Denying this is the intellectual equivalent of closing one's eyes while driving down the highway. Car crashes do not happen just because one believes they do; they often happen even when we wish them not to. Facts are facts, independently of us. This is why things happen that surprise us. It is why science has been the process of establishing the truth about nature without regard for our preconceptions. It is why babies have to learn: they are discovering the world "out there." Things in reality have real properties and exert causal powers without regard for us and our knowledge of them. Ayn Rand summed up this attitude to reality as the principle of the primacy of existence.

"The primacy of existence (of reality) is the axiom that existence exists," wrote Ayn Rand in "The Metaphysical versus the Man-Made," "i.e., that the universe exists independent of consciousness (of any consciousness), that things are what they are, that they possess a specific nature, an identity. The epistemological corollary is the axiom that consciousness is the faculty of perceiving that which exists—and that man gains knowledge by looking outward." Consciousness (i.e., the mind) is in essence a faculty of awareness. We are aware of the world around us through sense-perceptions, of course, but even in our abstract and theoretical knowledge we function primarily through identification of how things are. To give a simple example, we decide whether to say "that is a yellow house," but we know that what makes that statement knowledge, rather than hot air, is whether or not it identifies a house that really is yellow.

Free will vs. determinism

Through our senses we see and feel a material world. It has physical characteristics such as form and mass. But our thoughts seem free: we choose by our own lights what we should do, even how we should move our bodies, and we can rove with our minds into worlds of fantasy and imagination that never existed. Our legs can be made to flinch by the tap of a hammer on our knees. But we can make our minds up unflinchingly to do whatever we must, even if it costs us our lives.

Many philosophers and scientists believe in metaphysical determinism. This is the idea that everything in existence proceeds ineluctably from cause to effect, like a computer program, the orbits of the planets, or the motion of billiard-balls on a pool table. According to determinism, the universe was set in motion somehow, perhaps in a Big Bang, perhaps by God, and everything that has happened since has had to happen: nothing else was possible, the outcome is determined. In this view, we may feel like we make choices, but underneath our choices there lies some process that proceeds like clockwork: our genetic development, social and environmental factors, or perhaps something else or all of the above. Whatever the causal story given, in this view our actions and even our thoughts happen in the one and only way they can.

Objectivism holds, in contrast, that man has free will. We have the ability of choice, not over every aspect of existence, of course, but over a range of actions within our power. Every day we do things that we might have done differently. Our freedom to choose our actions is of the essence of what it means to be human: it underlies our need for moral guidance and is a major cause of our fallibility, but is also at the root of our ability to progress by imagining and creating improvements on the brute forms of nature.

The fact of free will is self-evident: each of knows we have the ability to control our own minds, to focus our thoughts on one issue or another, and to direct our own actions. Some fear that admitting the existence of free will is not compatible with science, that it involves denying causality. After all, science has ably demonstrated that most things in reality function deterministically. Mechanistic theories of physics and chemistry, for example, work brilliantly because they are true: planets do not choose their orbits, and DNA molecules do not recombine out of delight in making life.

But the idea of free will doesn't deny causality or science, it just points out that for at least some of the things you do, you are the cause. We may not yet understand scientifically how the chemicals in the brain and nervous system give rise to this capacity, but science can no more explain away the fact of free will than the germ theory of disease could explain away diphtheria. Science doesn't eliminate real features of existence, ones that we experience in every moment; it explains them.

Mind and Body

Free will is just one way in which the mind seems quite different from physical matter. The spiritual realm of thought, imagination, values, and aspirations seems far removed from the realm of material objects, physical forces, and biological need. Many philosophers have puzzled over questions such as whether a thought has weight or what the size of the mind is. One simple solution to these questions is that the mind is somehow radically distinct from the body.

In different forms, the mind-body dichotomy underlies many traditional ideas about human nature. Religious thinkers, for example, see the mind as an immortal soul that transcends the mortal husk of the body. They posit a spiritual life that is higher, freer, and better than material existence. This dichotomy has led to the tradition of asceticism, i.e., abusing the body for the sake of spiritual purity, and to the ideal of chastity, the experience of love unconnected to sex and the other lusts of the body. It also exists in secular forms, such as the division between reason and emotion symbolized by Star Trek's unemotional Vulcans: the rational self is the mind, in this view, which must struggle to be free of the irrational passions that arise from our physical nature. In sum, it projects a view of man at war with himself, an angel imprisoned in the body of a beast, at once both Dr. Jekyl and Mister Hyde.

Like many classical Greek philosophies, including Aristotelianism, Objectivism rejects this entire conception of man. There is a difference between the mind and body, to be sure, but no dichotomy or conflict. They are both aspects of human nature. We are living organisms, and all our faculties, mental as well as physical, work together to keep us alive.

What we call the mind is the set of capacities to be aware, to perceive the world, to think about it, to feel, to value, to make choices. How do these capacities arise? In many respects, the answer to that question must come from science, not philosophy. But everything we know indicates that they are the product of biological evolution and that they depend on our physical sense organs and brain, as well as on the many other support structures that the body provides.

What we call our spiritual needs, moreover, are not in conflict with our physical or biological needs. They are rooted in the same basic need to maintain our lives through purposeful action. Human beings lack sufficient instinctive drives to survive without thinking, learning, and making choices. Reason is our most important tool for survival. But it is a complex and highly demanding tool. According to Objectivism, our spiritual needs for values, principles, ideals, aesthetic experience, and love are requirements for the healthy functioning of a rational, volitional mode of cognition.

In the course of life, we all encounter specific conflicts between our spiritual and our physical values (as well as conflicts within each category), but there is no inherent, global conflict between these aspects of our nature. Indeed, our most important activities serve the needs of body and soul, together. We live best when our reason and emotion are in harmony, for example. We know true love when we combine mental esteem with physical passion. Productive work is both a means of earning our daily bread and an expression of our creative powers.

Natural vs. Supernatural

The idea of exalting the spirit over the material existence of the body has long been tightly connected in religious thought to the idea that there exists some reality beyond the material world we know through our senses, a world our spirits long for as an escape from the needs of the body and the constraints of physical reality. In many traditions, this is a heaven, a place beyond all physical law to which the spirit can travel and in which many or even all things are possible. Many religions attribute this supernatural kind of existence, this existence beyond nature, to their God or gods.

Objectivism holds that it is simply nonsense to speak of anything "supernatural"—literally beyond or above nature. The term "nature," in the broadest sense refers to the world we perceive, the world of objects that interact in accordance with causal law. If we discovered some dimension or universe that had radically different properties from the environment we live in, it would still be part of nature. If we could discover it or it could affect us, it would have some real, specific properties and would interact with our world in some way. However strange it might be, its characteristics could be compared in meaningful ways with things we already know, and it could be measured somehow. In fact, science has already explored some very weird and alien realms, as compared with the level of reality we see and hear. To pick just one example, light functions in ways so strange that we are not sure how to describe it: wave or particle? But even so, we know a tremendous amount about it, and use it to banish the night and communicate around the globe in the blink of an eye.

The supernatural is supposed to be beyond human comprehension, to exist in no particular way, to affect our reality miraculously, beyond any and all physical laws. And indeed, supernaturalists make great hay out of the areas where science is silent either because the question is not really scientific or because the scientific jury is still out. It is as if they resent science for not yet explaining every single issue to their satisfaction, and yet insist that their most precious beliefs be immune to rational scrutiny.

In effect, the supernaturalists want to have their cake and eat it too. They claim that gods, angels, and devils exist, but are not anything in particular. They hope to go to a heaven by some means, but not any specific means. And heaven must be a real place (some even say it is a lush garden stocked with virgins or a cheerful land in the clouds), but it isn't anywhere real. The Buddhists even go so far as to deny that the realm beyond—nirvana—is any place at all. In fact, supernaturalism amounts to a brazen advocacy of contradictions. But, as Ayn Rand pointed out over and over, contradictions can exist only in the human mind, not in reality as such. No fact is essentially contradictory.

So there is no world beyond nature, nor any life beyond this one. But in contrast to the supernaturalists' view of nature as a vale of tears, an oppressive prison for the soul, Objectivism holds that we live in a "benevolent universe." We are beings well-adapted to the real world in which we live, with the free will to carve our own path and the ability to achieve happiness and even exaltation. Reality does not watch out for us, and there is no reason to think any deity does so either. In fact, we must watch out for reality, as Rand recognized when she summed up her metaphysics with Francis Bacon's dictum "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." But command nature we can, and this is what makes the universe essentially benevolent: it is propitious to beings like us.

© Copyright 2005 - The Objectivist Center, reprinted with permission

http://www.objectivistcenter.org

The Atlas Society (formerly The Objectivist Center)

A very special thank you to our friends at The Objectivist Center for allowing us to reprint their summaries on Objectivist philosophy.

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  • 1 year later...

I would like to explore some ideas of general semantics and objectivism and contrast and compare them as I

see similar goals in these disciplines, at least potentially. So to begin with I'll use this introductory overview by Kat.

Objectivism holds that there is one reality, the one in which we live. It is self-evident that reality exists and is what it is: our job is to discover it.

GS also holds that there is an unpeakable environment in which we are immersed but it doesn't use the term 'reality'. In general semantics there is a notion called 'multiordinality' which states that many words we use regularly, like 'reality' mean different things on different levels of abstraction. So for example, someone who is hallucinating may 'really' see something which is not there and this is THEIR reality, so even though we live in something independent of our nervous system our only exposure to it is through our nervous system, none the less. Because our knowledge of this 'reality' (some call it WIGO - What Is Going On) comes to us mainly through science, we call this level the event level to denote that it is in a constant state of change as modern science has discovered. Our perceptual process of the event is called the objective level so 'reality' can mean the event level or the objective level and of course these are two very different things.

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I would like to explore some ideas of general semantics and objectivism and contrast and compare them as I

see similar goals in these disciplines, at least potentially. So to begin with I'll use this introductory overview by Kat.

Objectivism holds that there is one reality, the one in which we live. It is self-evident that reality exists and is what it is: our job is to discover it.

GS also holds that there is an unpeakable environment in which we are immersed but it doesn't use the term 'reality'. In general semantics there is a notion called 'multiordinality' which states that many words we use regularly, like 'reality' mean different things on different levels of abstraction. So for example, someone who is hallucinating may 'really' see something which is not there and this is THEIR reality, so even though we live in something independent of our nervous system our only exposure to it is through our nervous system, none the less. Because our knowledge of this 'reality' (some call it WIGO - What Is Going On) comes to us mainly through science, we call this level the event level to denote that it is in a constant state of change as modern science has discovered. Our perceptual process of the event is called the objective level so 'reality' can mean the event level or the objective level and of course these are two very different things.

In other words there is the -real- reality and the -unreal- reality. Did I get this right?

Ba'al Chatzaf

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In other words there is the -real- reality and the -unreal- reality. Did I get this right?

Ba'al Chatzaf

You could say that, :)

Well, you could say that science is an attempt to differentiate just that - what structure is independent of the observer, in other words, what structure is repeatable by other observers, and what is 'subjective', or personal.

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  • 1 year later...
FAQ: What is the Objectivist View of Reality (Metaphysics)?

by William Thomas - The Objectivist Center

But the meaning of "metaphysics" is the exact opposite of "reality". The Greek prefix "meta" means 'beyond', therefore 'meta'physics refers to what is beyond, what transcends (the physical) reality. Religions for example are based on a metaphysical concept (transcendence). Edited by Xray
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Natural vs. Supernatural

The idea of exalting the spirit over the material existence of the body has long been tightly connected in religious thought to the idea that there exists some reality beyond the material world we know through our senses, a world our spirits long for as an escape from the needs of the body and the constraints of physical reality. In many traditions, this is a heaven, a place beyond all physical law to which the spirit can travel and in which many or even all things are possible. Many religions attribute this supernatural kind of existence, this existence beyond nature, to their God or gods.

Objectivism holds that it is simply nonsense to speak of anything "supernatural"—literally beyond or above nature. The term "nature," in the broadest sense refers to the world we perceive, the world of objects that interact in accordance with causal law. If we discovered some dimension or universe that had radically different properties from the environment we live in, it would still be part of nature. If we could discover it or it could affect us, it would have some real, specific properties and would interact with our world in some way. However strange it might be, its characteristics could be compared in meaningful ways with things we already know, and it could be measured somehow. In fact, science has already explored some very weird and alien realms, as compared with the level of reality we see and hear. To pick just one example, light functions in ways so strange that we are not sure how to describe it: wave or particle? But even so, we know a tremendous amount about it, and use it to banish the night and communicate around the globe in the blink of an eye.

The supernatural is supposed to be beyond human comprehension, to exist in no particular way, to affect our reality miraculously, beyond any and all physical laws. And indeed, supernaturalists make great hay out of the areas where science is silent either because the question is not really scientific or because the scientific jury is still out. It is as if they resent science for not yet explaining every single issue to their satisfaction, and yet insist that their most precious beliefs be immune to rational scrutiny.

Very good article. As is my trend, I'm going to challenge the "supernatural" judgment and seek a level of understanding.

"I've seen Angels! They are everywhere, there are in church! They watch over all of us!" I would argue the person perceived something and interpreted that experience through a Christian Faith. Maybe they didn't see real angels per se, but that doesn't invalidate their perception - it only suggests that the symbols used to define that perception are unique to the observer. Angels are supernatural.... but supernatural here reflects perceptions out of the ordinary. I've suggested in several epistemological threads that ordinary perception is not necessarily the definition of absolute-accurate perception.

Anyway,...

Chris

.

.

.

"Reality" as such may exist, but perception of reality depends on more than just 5-sense perception and logic. Perceptions change with state-changes of the mind. Different states focus on different aspects of reality, which in turn change the appearance of what is perceived. On top of that, logic functions according to specific categorizations and conceptualizations. These categorizations are man-made, as Rand proposed. Categorizations and attributions vary according to culture, a function of both the way in which one is raised and how one uses different parts of the mind. For example, Japanese categorize according to groups of people. This occurs because Japanese adults teach their children to pay attention to group interactions, nurturing empathic and interpersonal mechanisms that are already biologically hardwired in the mind. Conversely, U.S. adults raise their children to pay attention to individual signals and create individual boundaries, up-playing independent boundary-related brain circuits and downplaying interpersonal brain circuits.

So already we can see that perceived "reality" is always a function of the observer (even though we can all agree existence exists). If someone claims that something "supernatural" exists, they might be off their rocker, true. However, they might also be describing a mental state-change (like spiritual enlightenment) which leads them to perceive new and different relationships for a brief time. These new relationships are not common to the individual's everyday experience, so the individual claims these new perceptions and related categorizatons to be "supernatural."

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FAQ: What is the Objectivist View of Reality (Metaphysics)?

by William Thomas - The Objectivist Center

But the meaning of "metaphysics" is the exact opposite of "reality". The Greek prefix "meta" means 'beyond', therefore 'meta'physics refers to what is beyond, what transcends (the physical) reality. Religions for example are based on a metaphysical concept (transcendence).

Xray:

meta- Variant(s): or met-

prefix

Etymology:

New Latin & Medieval Latin, from Latin or Greek; Latin, from Greek, among, with, after, from meta among, with, after; akin to Old English mid, mith with, Old High German mit

1 a: occurring later than or in succession to : after <metestrus> b: situated behind or beyond <metencephalon> <metacarpus> c: later or more highly organized or specialized form of <metaxylem>2: change : transformation <metaplasia>3 [metaphysics] : more comprehensive : transcending <metapsychological> —usually used with the name of a discipline to designate a new but related discipline designed to deal critically with the original one <metamathematics>4 a: involving substitution at or characterized by two positions in the benzene ring that are separated by one carbon atom <meta-xylene> b: derived from by loss of water <metaphosphoric acid>

The way I learned it from Greek Aristotelian rhetoric scholars was that the only reason it was meta physics was that it was the book Ari wrote after the physics.

Adam

Edited by Selene
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The way I learned it from Greek Aristotelian rhetoric scholars was that the only reason it was meta physics was that it was the book Ari wrote after the physics.

Adam

Correct. Philosophers refer to it as First Philosophy. It is the philosophy of being as such.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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The way I learned it from Greek Aristotelian rhetoric scholars was that the only reason it was meta physics was that it was the book Ari wrote after the physics.

Adam

Philosophers refer to it as First Philosophy. It is the philosophy of being as such.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Correct. The history of the term 'metaphysical' goes back to a classification of Aritstotle's writings.

But in the course of philosophical history, the term took on a new meaning.

This Wikepedia article sums it up quite well:

Before the development of modern science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as "natural philosophy"; the term "science" itself meant "knowledge" of epistemological origin. The scientific method, however, made natural philosophy an empirical and experimental activity unlike the rest of philosophy, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had begun to be called "science" in order to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics became the philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence. Thus the original situation of metaphysics being integral with (Aristotelian) physics and science, has, in the West, become reversed so that scientists often consider metaphysics antithetical to the empirical sciences.
Edited by Xray
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Xray:

I can work with that as an agreed to definition, but that does modify:

"But the meaning of 'metaphysics' is the exact opposite of 'reality'. The Greek prefix 'meta' means 'beyond', therefore 'meta'physics refers to what is beyond, what transcends (the physical) reality. Religions for example are based on a metaphysical concept (transcendence)."

Yes?

Adam

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Xray:

I can work with that as an agreed to definition, but that does modify:

"But the meaning of 'metaphysics' is the exact opposite of 'reality'. The Greek prefix 'meta' means 'beyond', therefore 'meta'physics refers to what is beyond, what transcends (the physical) reality. Religions for example are based on a metaphysical concept (transcendence)."

Yes?

Adam

Modified insofar as the problem of mutually exclusive definitions complicates issues.

For instance, you may hear e. g. an atheist tell you "I reject any metaphysical concepts", meaning it in the sense of the above quote (= I reject the idea of transcendence).

Whereas Rand uses the term in the sense of "that which pertains to reality".

Objectivism stands against all forms of metaphysical relativism or idealism.

What is Rand's idea of metaphysical relativism?

Edited by Xray
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  • 1 year later...

The fact that existence exists doesn't prove that existence exists independently of any mind. Thoughts exist, but they aren't mind-independent.

Jackie,

The fact that existence exists is not yet the recognition of that fact in the statement “existence exists.” A consciousness capable of that statement recognizes and implies that existence exists independently of any consciousness.

There is no evidence for the existence of consciousness capable of the recognition of fact in a statement, where that consciousness has not already attained perceptual consciousness. In perceptual consciousness, objects of consciousness are given in the consciousness as independently of the current episode of consciousness. No perceptual consciousness without the given-as-independent object of that immediate occasion of perception. The same will hold for perception of one’s episodes of consciousness. That I have the awareness that I have the awareness of peach-taste still in my mouth is not the same as the object of that sequent awareness, namely, the earlier awareness of the peach-taste.

Then too, there is no evidence for the existence of consciousness capable of the recognition of fact in a statement, where that consciousness is not capable of error and surprise and not capable of awareness of them.* And those objects of such a higher level of consciousness show it again that fundamentally the facts of existence are independent of consciousness. The statement “existence exists” in its entry into Rand’s philosophy (1957) contains assertion of the independence of existence from consciousness at both its perceptual and conceptual levels. And that general statement is prelude to recognition of the general possibility of consciousness succeeding or failing to accurately apprehend independent existence.

* – The point about surprise is from Peirce (1903).

Stephen

Edited by Stephen Boydstun
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The fact that existence exists doesn't prove that existence exists independently of any mind. Thoughts exist, but they aren't mind-independent.

Awareness of existence is only possible through the mind.

Stating that "thoughts exist" implies the existence of a living entity capable of producing these thoughts.

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—Exclusions of Non-Contradiction: Actions

. . .

Beyond the Axiomatic

In Rand’s scope of the concept action for metaphysics, include as actions the phenomena dealt with in dynamics. Include also the phenomena of statics and strength of materials. Include the formation of stars, planets, oceans, and organisms. Include chemical reactions and phase changes. Include as actions, too, organic growth, locomotion, and the activities that are consciousness.

Rand writes “Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists” (AS 1015). Grasps in acts of consciousness are actions. Making statements are actions. The fact of consciousness is implicitly affirmed in making and grasping statements about existence. The fact of consciousness is the fact of an activity, a fact of living activity. One does not wait on education in biology to know one is alive, to know the self of self-awareness is a living being and that awareness of existence is a living action. Implied in the act of grasping any statement about existence is the fact of living action. Further, when Rand writes “I am, therefore I’ll think,” the existence of the thinking self is a living existence (AS 1058).

If existence and consciousness are axiomatic concepts, why are not living existence and living action also axiomatic concepts? (Cf.) Well, in part, they are. Consciousness is living action from the inside, from the side of the intender. Self-consciousness is living existence from the inside, from the side of the intender.

What about living action and living existence from the side of the intended, living action and existence when these are not acts of consciousness, but contents of consciousness? Are these concepts implied in the act of grasping the statement “existence exists”? No. In the immediate corollary (E2),* the existing conscious one is known axiomatically to be living from its living acts of consciousness. The “I am” of “I am, therefore I’ll think” contains an identification of the particular live thinking self with something known additionally (not from acts on content, but) in informational content: one having life as an object in the world (and requiring thought for protection and sustenance).

*[E2 – One exists and possesses consciousness of existing things.]

. . .

Edited by Stephen Boydstun
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  • 3 years later...

FAQ: What is the Objectivist View of Reality (Metaphysics)?

by William Thomas - The Objectivist Center

But the meaning of "metaphysics" is the exact opposite of "reality". The Greek prefix "meta" means 'beyond', therefore 'meta'physics refers to what is beyond, what transcends (the physical) reality. Religions for example are based on a metaphysical concept (transcendence).

Actually 'meta' also refers to the written 'beyond' as well. For his editors, the book after 'physics' (nature) was called meta---- .

Our assumption that Aristotle intended to conjoin them into a whole is unfounded. These is no notation from him other than the four causes being obviously about science.

EM

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