Metaphysics and the Scholastics
For medieval philosophers, metaphysics was understood as the science of the supersensible. Albertus Magnus called it science beyond the physical.
Thomas Aquinas narrowed it to the cognition of God. John Duns Scotus disagreed, arguing that only study of the world can yield knowledge of God. Scholastic philosophers mostly returned metaphysics to the study of being in itself, that is, ontology, which again today is the core area of metaphysical arguments. In renaissance Germany, Christian Wolff broadened metaphysics to include psychology, along with ontology, cosmology, and natural or rational theology. In renaissance England, Francis Bacon narrowed metaphysics to the Aristotelian study of formal and final causes, separating it from natural philosophy which he saw as the study of efficient and material causes.
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