HYPOTHESIS • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Hypothesis

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/haɪpˈɑθəsəs/ Listen

noun

Hypothesis n. (pl. hypotheses)

A supposition; a proposition or principle which is supposed or taken for granted, in order to draw a conclusion or inference for proof of the point in question; something not proved, but assumed for the purpose of argument, or to account for a fact or an occurrence; as, the hypothesis that head winds detain an overdue steamer. "An hypothesis being a mere supposition, there are no other limits to hypotheses than those of the human imagination."

(Natural Science) A tentative theory or supposition provisionally adopted to explain certain facts, and to guide in the investigation of others; hence, frequently called a working hypothesis.

Synonyms: Supposition; assumption. See Theory.

Nebular hypothesis. See under Nebular.

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Etymology of 'Hypothesis'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Hypothesis" Quotes from Famous Books

... possibility of these great boulders heaped on the Himalayan-ward face of the Khasia range, having been transported hither by ice at some former period; especially as the Mont Blanc granite, in crossing the lake of Geneva to the Jura, must have performed a hardly less wonderful ice journey: but this hypothesis is clearly untenable; and unparalleled in our experience as the results appear, if attributed to denudation and weathering alone, we are yet compelled to refer them to these causes. The further we travel, and the longer we study, the more positive ...

— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... that the reflected rays pass through the focus. Most chains of physical deduction are of this more complicated type; and even in mathematics such are abundant, as in all propositions where the hypothesis includes numerous conditions: "If a circle be taken, and if within that circle a point be taken, not the centre, and if straight lines be drawn from that point to ...

— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... absurdum is a variety of analysis. Starting from a hypothesis, namely the contradictory of what we desire to prove, we use the same process of analysis, carrying it back until we arrive at something admittedly false or absurd. Aristotle describes this method in various ways as ...

— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... observers, or to the imperfection of instruments. But, if the observation can be made at the Pole, the difference between the first degree of the meridian nearest the equatorial line, and, for example, the sixty-sixth degree, which crosses the polar circle, will be great enough, even by Huyghens' hypothesis, to show itself irresistibly, and beyond the possibility of miscalculation, because the difference would be repeated just as many times ...

— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... consult for himself in any good public library, it is my belief that in Swedenborg we have a preeminent illustration both of dissociation and of subliminal action, and that it is therefore equally unnecessary to stigmatize him as insane or to adopt the spiritistic hypothesis in explanation of his utterances. The records show that from his father he inherited a tendency to hallucinations, checked for a time by the nature of his studies, but fostered as these expanded into pursuit of the absolute and the infinite. They further ...

— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

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