A History of Anti-metaphysics

Abstract

The hostility to metaphysics began as the hostility to scholastic metaphysics and to that of Aristotle. It rested on Bacon’s doctrine of prejudice that led to the recommendation never to advocate an unproven theory: make no hypothesis. The hostility was thus to the speculative method of metaphysics. Russell’s hostility was to Plato’s metaphysics and Wittgenstein’s was more general.