 Here Fârâbî is referring to the discussion, which Arabic writers had inherited from late ancient Greek commentators, about the aim of the Metaphysics, or equivalently about what the science of metaphysics is about: Aristotle himself does not use the word or phrase  “metaphysics”,[4]  but he speaks both of “wisdom  [sophia]”[5]  and of “first philosophy”, and Greek and Arabic commentators assume that “wisdom” and “first philosophy” are different names for the same science, and that the Metaphysics as a whole is dedicated to this science, which can therefore also be called “metaphysics”. For two reasons, there is an inherited problem about what this science is about. The first reason is that Aristotle in different places says different, not obviously compatible, things about what this science is about: notably, in the Metaphysics I,1–2 he says that wisdom is the science of first causes and principles; in Metaphysics VI,1 and in several texts outside the Metaphysics he says that first philosophy is the science of divine things (which he calls “theology”) or the science of eternally unchangeable separately existing  things;[6]  in Metaphysics IV,1–2 he says that there is a science of being as such and its attributes, and in Metaphysics VI,1 he apparently identifies that science with first philosophy or theology; and in Metaphysics IV,2 he also identifies the science of being as such with the science of substance. So the commentators try in different ways to reconcile these different things that Aristotle says about wisdom or first philosophy. The second reason that there is a problem is that what Aristotle actually does in the different books of the Metaphysics does not obviously fit with what he says that wisdom or first philosophy will do. If, as Fârâbî says here, “most people” have concluded that “the meaning and content of this treatise is the account of the Creator … and the intelligence and the soul and the other things that are related to these”—i.e., an account of things that can be argued to be eternal and separable from matter—this is not because (as Fârâbî puts it here) they have simply “followed their fancy”, or because they have confused Greek metaphysics with Islamic kalâm. Rather, it is because Aristotle repeatedly says that first philosophy is a science of separate eternally unchanging things. The problem is that, as Fârâbî says, most of the Metaphysics outside of Book XII (indeed, outside of roughly the second half of Book XII) does not seem to be talking about such things, except inasmuch as Metaphysics XIII–XIV try to refute other philosophers’ candidates for separate eternally unchanging things, namely Platonic Forms and mathematical objects. So Fârâbî’s problem in On the Aims of the Metaphysics will not be simply to find a way of reconciling the different things Aristotle says about wisdom or first philosophy and show how these can all be referring to the same science, but also to say what Aristotle actually does in each book of the Metaphysics and to show how it contributes to this science.