Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a worldview that sees things as isolated and static. It is the opposite of dialectics. Metaphysicists believe that everything in the universe has been the same as long as it has existed. The feudal aristocracy promoted idealist metaphysics and the early bourgeoisie promoted mechanical materialism, a metaphysical form of materialism distinct from dialectical materialism.

Etymology

The word meta is a Greek word that essentially means beyond, and is today usually used to mean something on something. Physics originally referred to the study of nature in Ancient Greece, which can be understood as the natural world, i.e. the physical, material world in which we live.

Metaphysics, therefore, would refer to "nature of nature" or "beyond nature". Therefore, metaphysics is the study of everything which is found beyond nature. As dialectics prove that nature is always in movement and never exactly the same as it was before, it follows that any world beyond nature would be something that is not dialectical, and thus immutable and static. It can also be called the supernatural world (super meaning above in Latin: above the natural world).

Historically, especially in Aristotle, metaphysics was the study of the being which is found beyond nature.