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Elements of Metaphysics
Exploring reality with clear, rigorous thinking — a foundational guide to what reality is, and how we know it.
This accessible introduction lays out the big questions of metaphysics, showing how the study differs from science, logic, and religion while offering a precise, analytical method. It explains how reality is understood through experience, and how a complete view of existence could look, even as it maps the limits of our knowledge today. The book also clarifies how metaphysical inquiry relates to other major subdivisions like ontology, cosmology, and rational psychology, making a complex topic approachable for curious readers.
What reality means for human experience and how it shapes scientific inquiry The idea of a universal criterion of reality that guides metaphysical analysis How metaphysical method is analytical, critical, and a priori in character The structure of reality and how our knowledge approximates a complete experience Ideal for readers of philosophy, this edition helps you grasp the aims, scope, and methods of metaphysics without getting lost in jargon.
This accessible introduction lays out the big questions of metaphysics, showing how the study differs from science, logic, and religion while offering a precise, analytical method. It explains how reality is understood through experience, and how a complete view of existence could look, even as it maps the limits of our knowledge today. The book also clarifies how metaphysical inquiry relates to other major subdivisions like ontology, cosmology, and rational psychology, making a complex topic approachable for curious readers.
What reality means for human experience and how it shapes scientific inquiry The idea of a universal criterion of reality that guides metaphysical analysis How metaphysical method is analytical, critical, and a priori in character The structure of reality and how our knowledge approximates a complete experience Ideal for readers of philosophy, this edition helps you grasp the aims, scope, and methods of metaphysics without getting lost in jargon.
- GenresPhilosophy
487 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1903
About the author
A.E. Taylor
92 books13 followersAlfred Edward Taylor was a British idealist philosopher. He was born in 1869, the son of a Wesleyan minister. Among many distinguished appointments, he held the chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh from 1924 to 1941. His main interests were Platonic philosophy and the theology of Christianity, and his contributions in both these fields have been of far-reaching importance. "Does God Exist?" was his last considerable work on the philosophy of religion before his death in 1945.
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September 20, 2019
The systematic unity of reality is a single principle in and through multiplicity. The whole system is a single experience, and its consistents are also experiences. A systematic whole is not an aggregate, nor a mechanical whole of parts, nor an organism. The whole exists for its parts and they for it (p. 85).
Reality is a systematic whole forming a simple individual experience. The systematic whole is composed of constituents, which are their individual experiences. In each of these constituents, the nature of the whole system manifests itself with each one contributing its distinct content to the whole system; suppression of any of them alters the character of the whole. The nature of the whole determines the character of each of its constituents. The whole and its constituent members are in complete interpenetration and form a systematic unity (p. 104).
Reality is a systematic whole forming a simple individual experience. The systematic whole is composed of constituents, which are their individual experiences. In each of these constituents, the nature of the whole system manifests itself with each one contributing its distinct content to the whole system; suppression of any of them alters the character of the whole. The nature of the whole determines the character of each of its constituents. The whole and its constituent members are in complete interpenetration and form a systematic unity (p. 104).
Displaying 1 of 1 review