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Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

Name: Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Stephen Mumford

Stephen Mumford · 2012 · Short (under 150 pages)

4.5 from 2 reviews · 50 views

Existence & being Analytic

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What it is

A compact introduction to metaphysics by a philosopher best known for his work on powers and causation. Mumford starts from an ordinary table and asks what it is: a bundle of properties, or a thing that has properties? From there each short chapter takes up one of the subject's central questions: what properties are and whether one circle shares something real with another, how parts make up a whole, how a thing can change and still be the same thing, what causes are, what time is, and whether absences and nothing can be real or do anything. Rival answers are set out with the reasons for them in plain language and without logical notation. Mumford does not hide his own sympathies, but he gives the views he rejects a fair hearing and leaves the reader room to disagree.

Why read it

It shows that metaphysics grows out of questions anyone can ask about the objects in front of them, and it does so without assuming any previous reading.

Where to start

Read the opening chapter on the table first; the rest can be taken in any order.

Reviews

Rowena Abellana Aug 2026

I teach the human person to sixteen-year-olds and needed something for myself before I tried metaphysics on them. This was right. The table chapter became a lesson: I put a chair in front of the class and asked what would be left if we took away its colour, shape and hardness. Half of them said 'nothing', half said 'the chair'. Mumford gave me the vocabulary to show them both sides had a theory.

Pieter de Jong May 2026

As a programmer I liked how often the questions turned out to be about identity and types: when is a changed object still the same object, and is a property something shared or just a label we apply. Short chapters, no hand-waving. I wanted more on whether properties are fundamentally powers, which is clearly the author's own view, but that is what his longer books are for.

Rowena Abellana Aug 2026

I teach the human person to sixteen-year-olds and needed something for myself before I tried metaphysics on them. This was right. The table chapter became a lesson: I put a chair in front of the class and asked what would be left if we took away its colour, shape and hardness. Half of them said 'nothing', half said 'the chair'. Mumford gave me the vocabulary to show them both sides had a theory.
Pieter de Jong May 2026

As a programmer I liked how often the questions turned out to be about identity and types: when is a changed object still the same object, and is a property something shared or just a label we apply. Short chapters, no hand-waving. I wanted more on whether properties are fundamentally powers, which is clearly the author's own view, but that is what his longer books are for.