Metaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science.

Cosmology and ontology are

traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world.[1] Someone
who studies metaphysics would be called either a "metaphysician"[2] or a "metaphysicist".[3]

The word derives from the Greek words μετά (metá) (meaning "beyond" or "after") and φυσικά (physiká) (meaning "physical"),
"physical" referring to those works on matter by Aristotle in antiquity. The prefix meta- ("beyond") was attached to the
chapters in Aristotle's work that physically followed after the chapters on "physics", in posthumously edited collections.
Aristotle himself did not call these works Metaphysics. Aristotle called some of the subjects treated there "first philosophy".

A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into what types of things there are in the world and what
relations these things bear to one another. The metaphysician also attempts to clarify the notions by which people understand
the world, including existence, objecthood, property, space, time, causality, and possibility.

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.

Religion and spirituality

Theology is the study of a God or gods and the nature of the divine. Whether there is a God (monotheism), many gods
(polytheism) or no gods (atheism), or whether it is unknown or unknowable whether any gods exist (agnosticism), and whether
the Divine intervenes directly in the world (theism), or its sole function is to be the first cause of the universe (deism); these
and whether a God or gods and the World are different (as in panentheism and dualism), or are identical (as in pantheism), are
some of the primary metaphysical questions concerning philosophy of religion.

Within the standard Western philosophical tradition, theology reached its peak under the medieval school of thought known as
scholasticism, which focused primarily on the metaphysical aspects of Christianity. While the work of the scholastics has been
largely eclipsed in the wake of modern philosophy, key figures such as Thomas Aquinas still play an important role in the
philosophy of religion.

Criticism
Metaphysics has been continuously contended in history as vague or untrue.
David Hume argued with his empiricist principle that all knowledge involves either relations of ideas or matters of fact:
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract
reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and
existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Hume's assertion is self-defeating if it itself is not self-evident or empirically verifiable.[8]

Immanuel Kant prescribed a limited role to the subject and argued against knowledge progressing beyond the world of our
representations, except to knowledge that the noumena exist:

...though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least to think them as things in
themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that
appears.

— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason pp. Bxxvi-xxvii

Proceeding from Kant's statement about antimony, A.J. Ayer in "Language, Truth and Logic" using the verifiability theory of
meaning concluded that metaphysical propositions were neither true nor false but strictly meaningless, as were religious views.
However, Karl Popper argued that metaphysical statements are not meaningless statements, but rather not fallible, testable or
provable statements[citation needed] i.e. neither empirical observations nor logical arguments could falsify metaphysical statements to
show them to be true or false. Hence, a metaphysical statement usually implies an idea about the world or about the universe,
which may seem reasonable but is ultimately not empirically testable.