It was first constructed by Aristotle and called "the first philosophy" and "the first science".
It was originally an ontological system to study "existence", and its theoretical principle was Plato's "duality of the world"; Since13rd century, it has been used as a philosophical term to refer to the study of transcendental things.
From the epistemological point of view, metaphysics is similar to basic mathematics, and it is also non-empirical. For questions that can't be answered directly by perception, it is based on the assumption of prior conditions, and the answer is deduced through rational analysis and careful logical thinking, and there can be no contradiction.
"Metaphysical refers to the Tao, while physical refers to the device."
Metaphysics was translated into Chinese by Tetsujiro Inoue, a famous Japanese philosopher in Meiji period, according to the sentence "Metaphysics refers to Tao and Metaphysics refers to utensil" in Yijing. Yan Fu, a scholar in the late Qing Dynasty, adopted metaphysical translation. After the students studying in China brought a large number of Japanese-made Japanese back to China in the late Qing Dynasty, metaphysics gradually replaced metaphysics.
Yan Fu refused to use Inoue Tetsujiro's translation method, and translated the word "metaphysics" into metaphysics according to "Mystery is the Gate of Wan Qi" in Laozi's Tao Te Ching. Although some words in Japanese translation are not appropriate, they are often easier to understand and accepted by people with low education in China at that time, so the word "metaphysics" is rooted in Chinese.