People’s beliefs about being can impact how the approach life. In addition, Ontology addresses whether reality is orderly and stable. However, ontology deals with such ideas as whether reality is physical or spiritual, or a combination of the two. This is probably one of the harder positions to understand. When these two sides meet they cannot agree because they have different assumptions or beliefs about origins and interpret what they see based on these beliefs. However, a theist would see the same evidence in nature and be led to the conclusion that God has created a beautiful climate. For example, an atheist scientist see nature and is awed by the random movement of natural selection to create such beauty. The beliefs an individual has about cosmology affects other aspects of their life, education, and how they interpret what they experience. A middle ground along this continuum would be theistic evolution, which states that a divine being used evolution to create the world. The main views of the origins of the universe can be seen as a continuum from the universe was created or design by God or the other extreme that everything about the universe has happened by accident as is commonly viewed by evolution. We will look at each of these and then try to examine how metaphysics manifest itself in education.Ĭosmology deals with the origins of the universe.

There are at least four sub-branches of metaphysics that attempt to address the question of the nature of reality. However, different people answer this question in different ways based on what they believe about the nature of reality and how we come to know it.

This may seem like an obvious question with an obvious answer. This branch of philosophy deals primarily with what is real. Metaphysics is the study of reality and the nature or character of it.

Definition of metaphysics in philosophy