Can someone explain what metaphysics and epistemology means? And with examples as well please.
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You’ll get the meaning from the etymology:
**Meta-physics** is Greek for “after / behind” “the physical world / nature”. So it could encompass all the “great questions” like “why is there something instead of nothing?”, “what is reality?” or even “do gods exist?”.
Personally I think it is the *woo-woo* part of philosophy, baseless speculations and word plays, and that it will shrink more and more when science gets a grip on its traditional realms (e. g. neurosciences and the mind/consciousness problem, cosmology, &c.).
You may want to read: [Stanford Metaphysics](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/), especially the “Is Metaphysics Possible?” last chapter.
Or Aristotle’s *Metaphysics*: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.html
**Epistem(e)-logy”** similarly means “discourse or reasoning about / study of” (logos) “knowledge / science” (episteme). Basically study of how we know things or the nature of knowledge.
Some interesting examples here: [Britannica’s Epistemology](https://www.britannica.com/topic/epistemology).
You may want to read Kuhn’s [The Structure of Scientific Revolutions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions) or Popper’s [The Logic of Scientific Discovery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions) about the epistemology of science.
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