Metaphysics vs. Alchemy — What's the Difference?
Difference Between Metaphysics and Alchemy
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Compare with Definitions
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter.
Alchemy
Alchemy (from Arabic: al-kīmiyā; from Ancient Greek: khumeía) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first attested in a number of pseudepigraphical texts written in Greco-Roman Egypt during the first few centuries CE.Alchemists attempted to purify, mature, and perfect certain materials.
Metaphysics
(used with a sing. verb) Philosophy The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, possibility and actuality.
Alchemy
The medieval forerunner of chemistry, concerned with the transmutation of matter, in particular with attempts to convert base metals into gold or find a universal elixir
Occult sciences, such as alchemy and astrology
Metaphysics
(used with a pl. verb) The theoretical or first principles of a particular discipline
The metaphysics of law.
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Alchemy
A medieval chemical philosophy having as its asserted aims the transmutation of base metals into gold, the discovery of the panacea, and the preparation of the elixir of longevity.
Metaphysics
(used with a sing. verb) A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.
Alchemy
A seemingly magical power or process of transmuting
"He wondered by what alchemy it was changed, so that what sickened him one hour, maddened him with hunger the next" (Marjorie K. Rawlings).
Metaphysics
(used with a sing. verb) Excessively subtle or recondite reasoning.
Alchemy
(uncountable) The premodern and early modern study of physical changes, particularly in Europe, Arabia, and China and chiefly in pursuit of an elixir of immortality, a universal panacea, and/or a philosopher's stone able to transmute base metals into gold, eventually developing into chemistry.
The purpose of physical alchemy—as opposed to its various spiritual pursuits—was to treat the supposed leprosity of base metals such as lead, refining and purifying them into gold.
Metaphysics
The branch of philosophy which studies fundamental principles intended to describe or explain all that is, and which are not themselves explained by anything more fundamental; the study of first principles; the study of being insofar as it is being (Latin: ens in quantum ens).
Philosophers sometimes say that metaphysics is the study of the ultimate nature of the universe.
Alchemy
(countable) The causing of any sort of mysterious sudden transmutation.
Metaphysics
The view or theory of a particular philosopher or school of thinkers concerning the first principles which describe or explain all that is.
The metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas holds that all real beings have both essence and existence.
In Aristotelian metaphysics physical objects have both form and matter.
In his Pensées, Pascal mentioned some first principles recognized within his metaphysics: space, time, motion, and number.
Alchemy
Any elaborate transformation process or algorithm.
Metaphysics
The metalogic of physics; the logical framework of physics.
Even other universes should be a result of different physics. Without rules, these universes wouldn't exist, because they will have an undefined, thus impossible, nature. We will never understand or guess all possible forms of physics. That's why we have to understand the generic metaphysics.
Alchemy
An imaginary art which aimed to transmute the baser metals into gold, to find the panacea, or universal remedy for diseases, etc. It led the way to modern chemistry.
Metaphysics
Any fundamental principles or rules.
Alchemy
A mixed metal composed mainly of brass, formerly used for various utensils; hence, a trumpet.
Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy.
Metaphysics
(uncountable) The study of a supersensual realm or of phenomena which transcend the physical world.
I have a collection of books on metaphysics, covering astral projection, reincarnation, and communication with spirits.
Alchemy
Miraculous power of transmuting something common into something precious.
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.
Metaphysics
Displeasingly abstruse, complex material on any subject.
This political polemic strikes me as a protracted piece of overwrought, fog-shrouded metaphysics!
Alchemy
A pseudoscientific forerunner of chemistry in medieval times
Metaphysics
Plural of metaphysic
Alchemy
The way two individuals relate to each other;
Their chemistry was wrong from the beginning -- they hated each other
A mysterious alchemy brought them together
Metaphysics
The science of real as distinguished from phenomenal being; ontology; also, the science of being, with reference to its abstract and universal conditions, as distinguished from the science of determined or concrete being; the science of the conceptions and relations which are necessarily implied as true of every kind of being; philosophy in general; first principles, or the science of first principles.
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.
Now the science conversant about all such inferences of unknown being from its known manifestations, is called ontology, or metaphysics proper.
Metaphysics are [is] the science which determines what can and what can not be known of being, and the laws of being, a priori.
Metaphysics
The scientific knowledge of mental phenomena; mental philosophy; psychology.
Metaphysics, in whatever latitude the term be taken, is a science or complement of sciences exclusively occupied with mind.
Whether, after all,A larger metaphysics might not helpOur physics.
Metaphysics
The philosophical study of being and knowing
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