Gary Rosenkrantz

It seems that Andronicus named this book the Metaphysics just because he made it the next volume after the Physics.

However, the subsequent mistranslation of the Greek prefix meta- to mean “transcending” or “beyond” fostered the misconception that metaphysics is the study of the supernatural.

a comprehensive inquiry into the ultimate nature of reality.

As such, metaphysics consists of a systematic study of the more general categories of being, and of the more general ways of relating entities.

Thus, metaphysics includes ontology, the science of being, concerned with the general categorization of what exists and of what could exist, and (metaphysical) cosmology, the science of reality as an orderly whole, concerned with the general characterization of reality as an ordered law-governed system

A primary ontological presupposition of our ordinary conceptual scheme is the reality of enduring things, or individual substances, continuants such as people, horses, boulders, trees, and bridges.

This first goal of metaphysics is to provide a kind of inventory of the actual world.

Second, a complete ontological taxonomy would provisionally include every category whose instantiation we do not know to be impossible.

Hence, metaphysics also seeks to specify and organize all of the possible categories of being, that is, those categories whose instantiation is epistemically possible.

According to the system in question, the most general category is entity.