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History of Metaphysics
One of the founders of metaphysics is Parmenides of Elea. He held that the multiplicity of existing things, their changing forms and motion, are but an appearance of a single eternal reality ("Being"), thus giving rise to the Parmenidean principle that "all is one." From this concept of Being, he went on to say that all claims of change or of non-Being are illogical. Because he introduced the method of basing claims about appearances on a logical concept of Being, he is considered one of the founders of metaphysics.
Referred to as the subject of "first philosophy", the term "metaphysics" is utilized in the works of Aristotle. The editor of his works, Andronicus of Rhodes, placed the books on first philosophy right after another work, Physics, and called these books(ta meta ta physika biblia) or, "the books that come after the [books on] physics." This was misread by Latin scholiasts, who thought it meant "the science of what is beyond the physical."In the English language, the word comes by way of the Medieval Latin metaphysica, the neuter plural of Medieval Greek metaphysika. While its Greek and Latin origins are clear, various dictionaries trace its first appearance in English to the mid-sixteenth century, although in some cases as early as 1387.
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