As R. G. Collingwood noted on board the Alcinous: metaphysics is not an adolescent demand for reassurance, but an attempt to understand the transcendent background to human life, against which individual propositions may be verified by observation and scientific investigation. We have different methods for this study of the form of reality, its complexity, its patterns and their interrelation. Poetry, art, religion, history, literature and comedy are all the metaphysician’s tools. They are how metaphysical animals explore, discover and describe what is real (and beautiful and good).
Rgc
