Metaphysics

Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy (along with epistemology, logic, and ethics), which studies the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter. The word “metaphysics” comes from two Greek words that mean “after or behind or among [the study of] the natural.” It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first-century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle’s works into the treatise we now know by the name Metaphysics (μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, meta ta physika, lit. ‘after the Physics,’ another of Aristotle’s works).

Parapsychology

Parapsychology is concerned with investigating events that cannot be accounted for by currently known natural law and knowledge that cannot have been obtained through the usual sensory abilities. Parapsychology studies the cognitive phenomena often called extrasensory perception (ESP), in which a person acquires knowledge of other people’s thoughts or of future events through channels apparently beyond the five senses. It also examines physical phenomena such as the levitation of objects and the bending of metal through psychokinesis. Though belief in such phenomena may be traced to the earliest times, parapsychology as a subject of serious research originated in the late 19th century, partly in reaction to the growth of the spiritualist movement.

The Society of Psychical Research (SPR) was established in London in 1882, and similar societies were later founded in the U.S. and in many European countries. In the 20th-century, research into parapsychology was also conducted at some universities, notably at Duke University under J. B. Rhine.