In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to
professionalize and specialize. Since then, various areas of investigation that were traditionally part of
philosophy have become separate academic disciplines, such as psychology.
Metaphysics is the study of the most general features of reality, such as existence, time, objects and their
properties, wholes and their parts, events, processes and causation and the relationship between mind and body.