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From: jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: meta-physics
Message-ID: <15903@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Jul-85 11:07:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.15903
Posted: Wed Jul 24 11:07:47 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 04:18:18 EDT
References: <455@busch.UUCP> <9161@ucbvax.ARPA>
Reply-To: jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 32

[...]

Someone may have already posted this, but here's the origin
of the term "metaphysics".

Aristotle wrote a book called "physics", describing the workings
of the physical world as he perceived it.  After that, he wrote
a book about the spiritual world, gods/faith/higher realities, and
so on.  Whether or not he put a different title on this second
book has been lost to history.  By the Middle Ages, the second
book was called "metaphyics" because it came after (in Greek "meta")
the book on physics.

Now in the same way that metaphysics is in some sense a commentary
on those things that physics can't handle, the "meta" term has often
been used for topics that other particular disciplines can't handle.
For example, Godel's Theorem is often said to be "metamathematics"
because it talks about what math can and can't handle.  Recently,
the "meta" prefix has taken an abrupt change in direction and is
also being used to refer to semi-abstract rules governing the rules
of some other system.  Metamathematics sets down rules about the
way mathematics works.  Metalinguistic theories talk about the way
language affects our thinking.  And so on.

This causes difficulties when it comes to physics and metaphysics.
Metaphysics does not bear the same relation to physics that metamathematics
bears to math.  Metamathmetics IS mathematical and rigorous.  Metaphysics,
the word that started the whole mess, is only indirectly a commentary
on physics itself, and plays little part in the actual science.

				Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo