697: metaphysician and physicist Nov 4, 2016

Someone who studies physics is a physicist, but someone who studies metaphysics is a metaphysician, not a metaphysicist. Even though Aristotle was a terrible physicist, believing that the reason objects move is due to what are essentially spirits he called 'movers', both of those words are based on his studies. 'Metaphysics' means 'after physics' referring to the work that came after the his book which was interpreted concerning ‘the science of things transcending what is physical or natural’. 'Physics' also denotes the work of Aristotle, but in this case, what was written in his actual books. These words, as well as 'physic' which is specific to medicine and has the adjectival form 'physician' all come from 'phusika' meaning ‘natural things’ in Greek. The different adjectival forms would not have always carried specific meanings, but over time the conventional ways became standard.