Note 28 — Chapter III · THE SUB-DIVISIONS OF METAPHYSICS
Reading edition
The name is ultimately derived from Aristotle’s definition of “First Philosophy”—which along with Mathematics and Physics constitutes according to his system, the whole of Theoretical Science—as the knowledge of ὄντα ᾖ ὄντα, i.e. of the general character of the real as real, as distinguished from the knowledge of the mathematician and the physicist, who only deal with the real in so far as it exhibits number and magnitude, and sensible change respectively.