☞ Metaphysics is distinguished as general and special. General metaphysics is the science of all being as being. Special metaphysics is the science of one kind of being; as, the metaphysics of chemistry, of morals, or of politics. According to Kant, a systematic exposition of those notions and truths, the knowledge of which is altogether independent of experience, would constitute the science of metaphysics. [ 1913 Webster ]

Commonly, in the schools, called metaphysics, as being part of the philosophy of Aristotle, which hath that for title; but it is in another sense: for there it signifieth as much as “books written or placed after his natural philosophy.” But the schools take them for “books of supernatural philosophy;” for the word metaphysic will bear both these senses. Hobbes. [ 1913 Webster ]

Now the science conversant about all such inferences of unknown being from its known manifestations, is called ontology, or metaphysics proper. Sir W. Hamilton. [ 1913 Webster ]

Metaphysics are [ is ] the science which determines what can and what can not be known of being, and the laws of being, a priori. Coleridge. [ 1913 Webster ]

2. Hence: The scientific knowledge of mental phenomena; mental philosophy; psychology. [ 1913 Webster ]

Metaphysics, in whatever latitude the term be taken, is a science or complement of sciences exclusively occupied with mind. Sir W. Hamilton. [ 1913 Webster ]

Whether, after all,
A larger metaphysics might not help
Our physics. Mrs. Browning. [ 1913 Webster ]