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Hypothesis   /haɪpˈɑθəsəs/   Listen
Hypothesis

noun
(pl. hypotheses)
1.
A proposal intended to explain certain facts or observations.
2.
A tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena.  Synonyms: possibility, theory.  "He proposed a fresh theory of alkalis that later was accepted in chemical practices"
3.
A message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence.  Synonyms: conjecture, guess, speculation, supposition, surmisal, surmise.



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"Hypothesis" Quotes from Famous Books



... read Suarez and has totally misrepresented him—a hypothesis which, I hope I need hardly say, I do not for a moment entertain: or, he has got his information at second hand, and has himself been deceived. But in that case, it is surely an imprudence on his part, to reproach me with having "read Suarez ad hoc, and evidently ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... As a working hypothesis, correspondence is adequate to all life, through the whole range of phenomena. The flash of thought and its swiftness explain the lightning flash and the sweep of a comet through the heavens. My mental sky opens to me the vast celestial spaces, and ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... burden now as any one woman ought to take upon herself, with me and the house and the children and Granny. And here is this crazy nephew of mine proposing the addition to the family of a stranger who hasn't any past and whose future seems wrapped mostly in a nebular hypothesis. It is rather a large ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... this opening might well have been that of discharge of a stream, now choked, for the Baumes Chauds and its adjoining fissures, one is led at first to suppose that water had brought down these logs that had fallen into some pot-hole. But this hypothesis is untenable, for it can be seen that these poles have been artificially pointed at each end, and that they have been made firm by cross pieces of metal, either bronze or iron. This may be the remains of a roof or a floor destined ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... involved, they must, if possible, institute experiments. I say therefore to those whose observation has not satisfied them concerning the phenomenon Christianity,—"Where is your experiment? Why do you not thus try the utterance claiming to be the law of life? Call it a hypothesis, and experiment upon it. Carry into practice, well justified of your conscience, the words which the Man spoke, for therein he says himself lies the possibility of your acceptance of his mission; and if, after reasonable time thus spent, you are ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... to observe that the opposition of the heart to the intelligence is Comte's key to the whole history of the past, especially in relation to religion. Theology is to him a system growing out of a natural, though partially erroneous, hypothesis, a hypothesis which in its first appearance was well suited to excite the nascent intelligence and satisfy the primary affections of man, but which, in its further development, tended to secure moral and social ends at the expense of truth, and ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... another interview Lieut. Col. Barnardiston and I studied the combined operations to take place in the event of a German offensive with Antwerp as its object and under the hypothesis of the German troops marching through our country in order to reach the ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... fuller or tailor, unless he is solvent, that is to say, unless he is able to fully indemnify the owner; if he is insolvent, the owner cannot recover from him, and so can maintain an action against the thief, being, on this hypothesis, interested in the recovery of the property. Where the fuller or tailor is only partly instead of wholly solvent the ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... out the hypothesis of the matrimonial offer as he would have reasoned out the probabilities in a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... must surely be a promontory connected with the continent. The conclusion was that, as it could not turn to north or south, this current, ever flowing in one direction, must pass through a strait. The argument was perfectly sound except in one point—the continental character of Cuba was an hypothesis, not an ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... implicit Altruria, and Bellamy's future Boston, Comte's great Western Republic, Hertzka's Freeland, Cabet's Icaria, and Campanella's City of the Sun, are built, just as we shall build, upon that, upon the hypothesis of the complete emancipation of a community of men from tradition, from habits, from legal bonds, and that subtler servitude possessions entail. And much of the essential value of all such speculations lies in this assumption of emancipation, lies in that regard towards human freedom, in the undying ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... me last night,' he said, 'when I went up there after dinner, the hypothesis which he puts forward in regard to the crime. A very remarkable young man, Trent. His meaning is occasionally obscure, but in my opinion he is gifted with a clearheaded knowledge of the world quite unusual in one of his ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... of examining your hypothesis before you proceed to decide by it, is probably unknown to you," Sir William observed, after bestowing a considerate smile on his brother, who muffled himself up from the chilling ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Tom Brown at Oxford, and watching their old favorite's course through undergraduate days to that haven and final goal of fiction-writers, marriage. But there he is lost to view for good and all, and one is left to the amiable hypothesis that he lived happy all his days, without being either shown how he managed to do so, or taught how we might manage to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... is not a theory. In this question of practical morality, as in the others, life has preceded hypothesis, and there is no room to believe that she ever yields it place. This liberty—relative, I admit, like everything we are acquainted with, for that matter—this duty whose existence we question, is none the less the basis ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... expressions of European genera, 'European' special, 'growing wild in Asia', etc., it has been in consequence of the old botanical language, which, instead of the idea of a large dissemination, or, rather, of the coexistence of organic productions, has dogmatically substituted the false hypothesis of a migration, which, from predilection for Europe, is further assumed to have been from ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... Ext. Orient., IV., 1904, p. 159) proposed to regard the unexplained name Jang as the Mongol transcription of Ts'uan, the ancient Chinese designation of the Lo-lo, taken from the family name of one of the chiefs of the latter; he gave his opinion, however, merely as an hypothesis which should await confirmation. I now believe that Yule was correct in his conception, and that, in accordance with his suggestion, Jang indeed represents the phonetically exact transcription of a Tibetan proper name. This is the Tibetan ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... of place here to dwell upon this publication, suffice it to say, that all the information I have since collected, tends to confirm the hypothesis advanced. One extract from this brochure will show the connexion that existed between ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various

... could perceive that she brought herself with difficulty to frame the dread hypothesis—"the dinner is not good?" Her voice sank. She waited, tense, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... which he makes mention. It is perhaps fortunate for us that the Doctor did not live in our day, as he would have found in the excitement which has recently prevailed here in relation to the Mill Dam, Theatre, &c., new proofs of the correctness of his hypothesis. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... possible method in inductive science," he added, "than to embrace some hypothesis, the most attractive that one can ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... in the wild mountain regions of India, human couples have been discovered living alone, and who, ape-like, fled to the trees as soon as they were met; but there is no further knowledge on the subject. If verified, these claims would only confirm the previous superstition and hypothesis concerning the development of the human race. The probability is that, wherever human beings sprang up, there were, at first, single couples. Certain it is, however, that so soon as a larger number of beings existed, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... mad," he said. "But on the other hand, Dumnoff, it is my conviction that you are exceedingly drunk. No other hypothesis can account for your very singular ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... XXIV. Hypothesis of periodical mutations. 686 Discovering mutable strains. Periods of mutability and constancy. Periods of mutations. Genealogical trees. Limited life-time of the ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... any, even the slightest, additional clue to the fate of Jernam, confirmed that astute person in the conviction, which he had reached early in the course of his confabulations with Harker, that the convict was the guilty man. There was, on this hypothesis, nothing for it but to wait until the worthy exile should have worked out his time and once more returned to grace his mother-country, and then to resume the close watch which, though hitherto ineffectual, might in time bring some of his ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... large however knew nothing about the evidence, and merely accepted the judgment as final and indisputable. By a single ruthless act, Henry had practically established his own right to judge cases of treason on the hypothesis not that guilt had to be demonstrated but that the accused must prove his own loyalty or suffer the extreme penalty. For the King to entertain an accusation was tantamount to condemnation. Even to plead on behalf of such a one was dangerous: ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... retreat, an island in the middle of that vast ocean, where he could put into port, was only a hypothesis; and the colleagues reserved to themselves the right of making inquiries on the subject later on. The grand experiment which the Weldon Institute had been preparing for so long was at last to take place. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne

... coast. In fact the crying seagull suggested that the shore was fairly close at hand. This so exactly fitted in with our calculations that I made up my mind definitely and at once to start with it as a working hypothesis and behave accordingly. ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... the Darwinian hypothesis, and the Colonel had maintained a profound silence, which was sufficient evidence that he did not believe in the development of man from the lower animals. Some one, however, asked him plumply his opinion of Darwinianism, and he ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... privileges and status of man as a child of God, to the higher science of Scholastic Theology. Had God so willed it, there might have been no supernatural at all. Philosophy shows the world as it would have been on that hypothesis. In that case, then, man would have been, as Aristotle represents him, a being incapable of perfect happiness; but he who is man could have become perfectly happy in a state other than human, that is, as a disembodied spirit. Peter is man: the soul of Peter, after separation, is man no ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... more willing to concede that these are handsome fancies, Mother Sereda. But they make my head ache. Moreover, two people are needed to play chess, and your hypothesis does not provide anybody with an antagonist. Lastly, and above all, how do I know there is a word of ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... these views, J.R. Mayer warmly attacked them, throwing out the hypothesis that all muscular action is due to the combustion of food, and not to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... disease or health in the domain of physiology and psychology, and to note the modifications which can be brought about by altering the conditions of the experiments. The authors possess the great scientific virtue of never dogmatising. In the entire book not a single law is laid down, not a single hypothesis is advanced, which is not reached by the most approved inductive processes. A great service of the book lies in its enunciation of new and trustworthy methods for studying the physiology of the brain in health and disease, while it brings into ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various

... against witchcraft, struggles doubtless very common amongst early Christians. Indeed, the devils who were cast out must sometimes have been baffled hypnotists confronted by One who was stronger than they; the departing into the swine is much more intelligible on this hypothesis than on Dean Farrar's, of the swine's terror, which ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris

... at which we may look in two different humours. We may pass it by with a sneer, and a hypothesis (which will be probably true) that the post was of old heart-of-oak, which is burnt with extreme difficulty; or we may pause a moment in reverence before the noble figure of the good old man, ending a life of unselfish toil without a roof beneath which to lay his head; penniless and comfortless ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... others, existed only in the imagination, AND HAD NO BASIS OF FACT? For this astounding suggestion, what explanation is possible? That there was a deliberate purpose to mislead the public by an affirmation that cruel and unjustifiable experiments were a myth, the creation of imagination, is an hypothesis we must reject. But there must have been a stupendous ignorance concerning the past history of animal experimentation. Simply because of their utter lack of knowledge regarding history, distinguished scientists became responsible for suggesting to the public that the story of ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... reasoning entirely unfamiliar and unlike his publicly acknowledged work, for the express purpose of hiding his authorship of the protocols—which, if we credit the story that they were presented to a secret conference of the leaders of the alleged conspiracy, is an impossible hypothesis—we are warranted in saying that, whoever wrote them, it was not Theodor Herzl. It would be as reasonable to ascribe a Walt Whitman chant to Emerson, or a Bernard Shaw satire to Jonathan Edwards, as to ascribe these crude, meandering pages to the crystalline intellect of Theodor ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo

... mode of talking idle and childish, and unworthy the consideration of a serious man; else, there would be no end of speculation, no hope of certainty and unanimity in anything. Is a man to be allowed to say what he will, and bring no reasons for it? Even if his hypothesis fitted into the facts of the case, still it would be but an hypothesis, and might be met, perhaps, in the course of time, by another hypothesis, presenting as satisfactory a solution of them. But if it would not be necessarily true, though it were adequate, much less is it entitled ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... we know not "as it were." Away with such shuffling phraseology. There is nothing either of reference, or of inference, or of quasi-truthfulness in our apprehension of the material universe. It is ours with a certainty which laughs to scorn all the deductions of logic, and all the props of hypothesis. What we wish to know is, how our subjective affections can be, not as it were, but in God's truth, and in the strict, literal, earnest, and unambiguous sense of the words, real independent, objective existences. This is what the cosmothetical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... occurrence of dancers among varieties of mice which are known to be unmixed with true dancers is established, and further, until the inheritance of this peculiar deviation from the normal is proved, Saint Loup's account of the origin of the dancing mouse race must be regarded as an hypothesis. ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... on which I observed Mr. Lawley's eyebrows rise perceptibly. "I am a man of facts, not an advocate, and if I found it impossible to entertain the hypothesis of your innocence, I should not be willing to expend time and energy in searching for evidence to prove it. Nevertheless," he continued, seeing the light of hope break out on the face of the unfortunate young man, ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... her to have put a paper she took such pains to gain possession of; and, secondly, for the reason that these scraps were twisted as if they had been used for curl papers, or something of that kind; a fact hard to explain by your hypothesis." ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green

... treatment with condensing acids to split off formic acid in relatively large quantity [Ber. 1895, 1940]; the condensation of the oxycelluloses to furfural; the non-formation of the normal hydroxy-dicarboxylic acids by nitric acid oxidations. Indirectly we may point out that any hypothesis which retains the polyaldose view of cellulose, and so fails to differentiate its constitution from that of starch, has little promise of progress. The above formula, moreover, concerns the assumed unit group, with no suggestion as to ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross

... neighbors give, it might be remarked, an original hypothesis of their own, regarding the death of the man; viz: that in passing along over this spot he was either drowned or swallowed up in the mire and ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.

... characteristic of the other sex. But such inversion of character can be expected with some regularity only in inverted women; in men the most perfect psychic manliness may be united with the inversion. If one firmly adheres to the hypothesis of a psychic hermaphroditism, one must add that in certain spheres its manifestations allow the recognition of only a very slight contrary determination. The same also holds true in the somatic androgyny. According to Halban, the appearance ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... facts in view Dodge made an experiment to test the hypothesis of anaesthesia. He proceeded as follows (ibid., p. 458): "A disc of black cardboard thirteen inches in diameter, in which a circle of one-eighth inch round holes, one half inch apart, had been punched close to the periphery all around, was made to revolve at such a velocity that, while ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... by making progress against it. None of them was his "affair." Young, old, short, tall, blond, brunette, they were without exception of the class indiscriminately lumped as ladies. Since you couldn't go to the devil because you had married a lady, even on the wild hypothesis that one of these sophisticated beings would without introduction or formality marry him, it would be better not to let himself in for the absurdity of the proposal. When there was a break in the procession, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... luminous crosses which appeared in the air in the reigns of Constantine and Constantius were merely natural solar halos; and that under Julian, which appeared in the night, a lunar halo, or circle of colors, usually red, round those celestial bodies. But in opposition to this hypothesis we must observe that those natural phenomena do not ordinarily appear in the figure of a cross, but of a ring or circle, as both experience and the natural cause show. We ought also to take nonce, that this prodigy ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... to offer in reply? He must either, as a philosopher, have sacrificed his hypothesis, or, as a father, have sacrificed his son. Like all philosophers, he preferred what he considered as the less important of the two, he sacrificed his son; but—we will do him justice—he ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... elsewhere in Donatello's work.[51] Moreover, the rich Renaissance decoration is quite sufficient to demonstrate that the work must be much later than 1406, though whether immediately before or after the second Roman visit must be founded on hypothesis. The precise date of the particular decoration is too nebular to permit any exact statement on the subject. There was never any line of demarcation between one school and another. One can find Gothic ideas long after the Renaissance had established its principles,[52] ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford

... electricity; and in 1845 he gave the first mathematical development of Faraday's notion, that electric induction takes place through an intervening medium, or 'dielectric,' and not by some incomprehensible 'action at a distance.' He also devised an hypothesis of electrical images, which became a powerful agent in solving problems of electrostatics, or the science which deals with the forces of ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... needs guidance, and it needs authoritative guidance. Into the business of forming literary taste faith enters. You probably will not specially care for a particular classic at first. If you did care for it at first, your taste, so far as that classic is concerned, would be formed, and our hypothesis is that your taste is not formed. How are you to arrive at the stage of caring for it? Chiefly, of course, by examining it and honestly trying to understand it. But this process is materially helped by an act of faith, ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett

... the working hypothesis which the Juge d'Instruction had formed within himself to account for the general conduct and proceedings ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... supposed himself, through patient and exhaustive study, to have accounted for the rich variety of life without the supposition of a special creation for each form. But the time was ripe and longing for what he supplied and his hypothesis was quickly taken and applied in almost every field of thought. Nor does it greatly matter that Darwinism has been and may be still greatly modified. We have come under the spell of evolution. Our universe is no longer a static thing; it is growing and changing. Our imaginations are impressed ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... acquisition of at least TWO new factors; for if the acquisition of a single factor caused sterility the line would then end. Moreover each factor must be separately acquired by distinct individuals, for if both were present together, the possessors would by hypothesis be sterile. And in order to imitate the case of species each of these factors must be acquired by distinct breeds. The factors need not, and probably would not, produce any other perceptible effects; they might, like ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... a theory, half-formed, it is true, but still a theory," said Taxiing. "In fact, it's hardly so much a theory as an hypothesis." ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... Returning home after dark, the wayfarer was apt to be startled to the edge of flight by the grunting upheaval of what had seemed a black shadow under the moon. Bob in especial acquired concentrated practice in horsemanship for the simple reason that his animal refused to dismiss his first hypothesis of bears. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... but were bought by the Etruscans of the Greeks of Southern Italy, who imported them from the famous potteries of Athens. The Greek inscriptions on some of these vases, and the Greek subjects from which the decorations are taken, tend strongly to confirm this hypothesis. It is, however, altogether a mystery why the Etruscans surrounded their dead with these vases. They were not used to hold human bones, nor to contain food for the deceased; but that the Etruscans held them in high estimation as sepulchral ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... preacher, and he has told us expressly that Ghosts 'preaches nothing at all.' This pursuit of truth to its most secret hiding-place is not a sermon against sin; it sets a scientific dogma visibly to work, and watches the effect of the hypothesis. As the dogma is terrible and plausible, and the logic of its working-out faultless, we get one of the deeper thrills that modern art has to give us. I would take A Doll's House, Ghosts, and The Wild Duck as Ibsen's three central plays, the plays ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... unnoticed by ordinary eyes—once allow this, and there is nothing to cause an outcry in such phenomena, no violent exception to nature's laws, but the operation of a recognized faculty; possibly a kind of mental somnambulism, as it were. If, therefore, the hypothesis upon which the various ways of divining the future are based seem absurd, the facts remain. Remark that it is not really more wonderful that the seer should foretell the chief events of the future than that ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... sacrifice, the power to face death) belong exclusively to the most primitive, the least happy, the least intelligent of peoples, those which are least capable of reasoning, of taking danger into account." It was the common hypothesis among moralists that, as men's nerves grew more sensitive and the means of destruction more cruel and irresistible, no human being would be able to support the strain of actual fighting. It seemed inevitable that soldiers would rapidly become demoralized, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... great impulse occasioned by the Revolution of France, before Europe can recover its long-lost order and repose. Had the subjects of Austria been as disaffected as they are loyal, the world might have witnessed such a terrible event, and been enabled to judge whether the hypothesis was the production of an ingenious schemer or of a profound statesman. Our armies under Bonaparte have never before penetrated into the heart of a country where subversion was not prepared, and where ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... honesty, finance, or business may seem an insult. Has he figured in the Divorce Court? How are you to talk about the last new play without seeming personal? This explains why exposed persons are cut: they have made conversation impossible by cutting away the common ground of it, the hypothesis of perfection. Even with persons who have merely lost relatives one has to be careful to avoid references to mortality. The complete diner-out has to be equipped with a knowledge of his fellows to the third and ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... have been technical theorists of the very highest order, basing their theories and working out their problems on the experience furnished by previous wars and of course it is difficult for them to realize that nearly every hypothesis which they have assumed in working out their theories has been proved false. They can not believe that "fire control" of infantry, as taught in the school of fire, has no place in modern trench warfare. It will break the ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... been interested, too. Very likely, Marjorie's hypothesis is the true one. They had been reading the note when the newcomers arrived on the scene and the General stuck it in his belt until their greetings had been ended. Neither of them now know of its whereabouts; that ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... sight, therefore, the existence of flowers such as the violet, the buttercup, and the honeysuckle in an island south of the equator, and surrounded by vegetation of a totally different order, appeared to be so inexplicable that the hypothesis of a separate and distinct origin was advanced. A more satisfactory explanation has, however, been furnished by Darwin, which is now generally accepted. Very briefly, this is as follows. It is supposed that at the time of the glacial epoch the depression ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... and when he awakes, does it make contacts and switch the impulses evoked by sense stimuli on to one or other tract of the axons, or axis cylinder processes, which form the association pathways? Such a hypothesis is no explanation; it simply puts back the whole question a step further, and leaves it wrapped in mystery. It cannot be fatigue that produces the hypothetical interruptions of the dendritic synapses and then ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various

... distinguished amongst all the burghers of Laon by their opposition to the power of the lords; perhaps they had sullied by deeds of violence this patriotic opposition; perhaps they had been taken at haphazard to suffer alone for the crimes of their fellow-citizens." The second hypothesis appears the most probable; for that deeds of violence and cruelty had been committed alternately by the burghers and their foes is an ascertained fact, and that the charter of 1128 was really a work of liberal pacification ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... there has been no report of Indians having been seen in proximity to the place. If there had, the mestizo's conduct might be accounted for, upon an hypothesis that would certainly cause apprehension ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... pebbles were probably derived from the large lenses of quartz in the Catoctin schist, for no other formation above water at the time contained quartz in large enough masses to furnish such pebbles. On the hypothesis that they were of local origin and merely worked over during submergence, they might be connected with the quartz veins of the Piedmont plain. That theory, however, with difficulty accounts for their well-rounded condition, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... New Philosophical Journal".)) is this passage: "Once grant to Agassiz that his deepest valleys of Switzerland, such as the enormous Lake of Geneva, were formerly filled with snow and ice, and I see no stopping place. From that hypothesis you may proceed to fill the Baltic and the northern seas, cover southern England and half of Germany and Russia with similar icy sheets, on the surfaces of which all the northern boulders might have been shot off. So long as ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... the circumstances which prompted their fabrication. Their origin, like that of many other writings of the same description, cannot be satisfactorily explored; and we must in vain attempt a solution of all the objections which may be urged against almost any hypothesis framed to elucidate their history. It is, however, pretty clear that, in their original form, they first saw the light in the early part of the third century. About that time there was evidently something ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen

... it as a working hypothesis. We will suppose, then, that something was burned in each case which produced an atmosphere causing strange toxic effects. Very good. In the first instance—that of the Tregennis family—this substance was placed in the fire. Now the window was shut, but the fire would ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle

... as to the philosophy of these things, the cause of the saltness of the sea, of its ebbing and flowing, and of the original and nature both of the heavens and the earth, they dispute of them partly as our ancient philosophers have done, and partly upon some new hypothesis, in which, as they differ from them, so they do not in all things ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... with his men down Liddel water. But here we get into a maze of topographical conjecture, including the hypothesis that perhaps the Liddel came down in flood, and caused the English to make for Kershope ford instead of Ritterford, and here they were met by Martin's men on the Hermitage line of advance. I cannot find this elegant combined movement in the ballad; all this seems ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang

... called to apprise her of the fact? Or that he was some sort of an adventurer, who had manufactured a plausible yarn to gain him access to her home? Or—harking back to her original theory—that he was an emissary from Scotland Yard? ... Probably she distrusted him on the latter hypothesis. The reflection left him more ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... sense—the sense of fact which in his art stands him in such good stead—that he has even been prepared to sacrifice his art to the main practical necessities of life. At any rate, it is upon this hypothesis that we must explain some of the very poor books which he perpetrated before it became worth his while to protect his reputation—the only other possible explanation being that, as he writes at all times and in all moods, much of his work might be expected ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... What was the stanchest code of ethics but a trunk with a series of false bottoms? Now and then one had the illusion of getting down to absolute right or wrong, but it was only a false bottom—a removable hypothesis—with another false bottom underneath. There was no ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... her, after a few days' absence, I discover a new charm, and find something new I like in her. How she satisfies my every taste, and I am deeply conscious that she is my type,—my only affinity. This consciousness gives me a belief, half mystic, half approaching the natural hypothesis, that she was meant for me. When hearing the sound of wheels, I ran down to meet her, and again had the sensation one might call falling under the spell; again the reality seemed to me more perfect than the picture I carry in my heart. She was dressed in a dust-cloak of Chinese silk; ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... such a state, whether voluntarily induced (which is very improbable) or not, thought fit to withdraw himself, for the purpose of secretly watching, from some retreat, the behaviour of his heir, if he has made Mr. Logan his heir? Is that hypothesis absolutely out of keeping with ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... spoke as the intelligible, although in the search after it the soul is compelled to use hypotheses; not ascending to a first principle, because she is unable to rise above the region of hypothesis, but employing the objects of which the shadows below are resemblances in their turn as images, they having in relation to the shadows and reflections of them a greater distinctness, ...
— The Republic • Plato

... in examples 2 and 3 to be the oblique case of the first pers. pron., and treats it as "a ludicrous expletive." It is difficult to say how he would have parsed example 2 on such a hypothesis. ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various

... mind on that first evening of gloom, doubts as to whether I had any right to the priest's office, had utterly vanished, slain by the effort to perform the priest's duty. I never thought about the matter now.—And how can doubt ever be fully met but by action? Try your theory; try your hypothesis; or if it is not worth trying, give it up, pull it down. And I hoped that if ever a cloud should come over me again, however dark and dismal it might be, I might be able, notwithstanding, to rejoice that the sun was shining on others though not on me, and to say with all my heart to ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... the shells and seed of the prickly pear, on which we conclude they chiefly subsist. The musquitoes are uncommonly troublesome. The wind was again high from the southwest: these winds are in fact always the coldest and most violent which we experience, and the hypothesis which we have formed on that subject is, that the air coming in contact with the Snowy mountains immediately becomes chilled and condensed, and being thus rendered heavier than the air below it descends into the rarified air below or into the vacuum formed by the constant action of the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... assuming, first, the existence of volcanoes there; secondly, their possessing sufficient force to throw such masses to a distance, according to their own theory, of between 200,000 and 300,000 miles; and this through regions, the nature of which is wholly unknown. This hypothesis cannot be maintained according to the Ptolemaic system; indeed, it is in direct ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... ingenious hypothesis has been offered to account for the phenomenon. It has been suggested that every object is perpetually throwing off radiations in all directions, similar in some respects to, though infinitely finer than, rays of light, and that clairvoyance is nothing but the power to see by means ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater

... might be penetrated, would entirely depend on the breadth and extent of these once submarine plains, which in such case would now separate the available parts of the continent from each another, as when covered with water they formerly separated the islands. This hypothesis, if I may so call it, was based on observations which, however erroneous they may appear to be, were made with an earnest desire on my part to throw some light on the apparently anomalous structure of the Australian interior. No one could have watched the changes of the country ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... thirteen Deronda had associated the deepest experience of his affections with what was a pure supposition, namely, that Sir Hugo was his father: that was a hypothesis which had been the source of passionate struggle within him; by its light he had been accustomed to subdue feelings and to cherish them. He had been well used to find a motive in a conception which might be disproved; and he had been also used to think of some revelation that might influence his ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... reason to believe that it was written by Vasco da Gama. An officer in such high authority would not be likely to write his narrative anonymously. The faulty and variable orthography of the roteiro also renders improbable the hypothesis that Vasco da Gama was ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont

... No, this hypothesis must be rejected. Margaret Capella had drifted apart from her husband almost as soon as they reached England on their return as man and wife. Capella, miserable and disillusioned, buried alive in a country place—for such must existence in Beechcroft ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... large and vital subjects, and the Hull-House residents themselves at one time, with only partial success, undertook to give a series of lectures on the history of the world, beginning with the nebular hypothesis and reaching Chicago itself in the twenty-fifth lecture! Absurd as the hasty review appears, there is no doubt that the beginner in knowledge is always eager for the general statement, as those wise old teachers of the people well knew, when they put the history of creation on the stage ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... Arnold! Wouldn't he have enjoyed being a civil engineer, and laying out railroads in wild country! He'd have been a good one too! The same amount of energy he puts into his polo playing would make him fight his way through darkest Thibet." She meditated over this hypothesis for a moment and then added with a nod of her head, "Oh yes, I like Arnold ever so much ... one ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... natural condition, its return to that condition being declared by the current observed at breaking the circuit. He called this hypothetical state of the wire the electro-tonic state: he afterwards abandoned this hypothesis, but seemed to return to it in after life. The term electro-tonic is also preserved by Professor Du Bois Reymond to express a certain electric condition of the nerves, and Professor Clerk Maxwell has ably defined and illustrated the hypothesis in the Tenth Volume of the "Transactions ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... your capital of Benevolence; precisely the worst, indeed, which human ingenuity could select for you? "Laws are unjust, temptations great," &c. &c.: alas, I know it, and mourn for it, and passionately call on all men to help in altering it. But according to every hypothesis as to the law, and the temptations and pressures towards vice, here are the individuals who, of all the society, have yielded to said pressure. These are of the worst substance for enduring pressure! The others yet stand and make resistance to temptation, to the law's injustice; ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... necessary in every decent establishment? while the barbarous Mussulman dispenses with knives and forks altogether, and eats his meal, like a savage as he is, with his fingers. Nor can it be deemed an objection to this hypothesis, that the Turk, who rejects all the refinements of European civilization, excepting only gunpowder, esteems four wives to be necessary to a decent establishment; while the most clear-sighted Englishmen think one more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various

... remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember especially that for the efficient management of your common interest in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... climactic consequence of innumerable improvements of the monkey; the negro as he now exists being the result of the Fifteenth Amendment. These philosophers erect a sort of pyramid of progress, placing an Ape at the base and a Caucasian at the Apex. This wild hypothesis of a monkey apotheosis can of coarse only be regarded Jockolarly, in other words, with a grin. Nevertheless the Marmozet is sufficiently like a little Frenchwoman to be called a Ma'amoiselle, and there are (in New-Zealand ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... [448] Some of these writers may appear to be travelling rather too fast or too far, and their assumptions may wear more of the aspect of plausibility than of probability. But on their atmospheric and aqueous hypothesis, vegetation in abundance is confessedly a legitimate consequence. If a recent writer has liberty to condense into a sentence the conclusion from the negative premiss in the argument by saying, "As there is but a little appearance of water ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... straying from my subject; as I have embarked in this fanciful hypothesis, I shall multiply my proofs and examples, as far ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... wife and the innocent brats had the four-roomed home to themselves. The Clothing Emporium knew him no more. Some whispered suicide, others America. Benjamin Beckenstein, the cutter of the Emporium, who favoured the latter hypothesis reported a significant saying: 'I have lived with two angels; I can't live with ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... suppose its principles formed his private opinions. Thus LEIBNITZ, we are told, laughed at the fanciful system revealed in his Theodicee, and acknowledged that he never wrote it in earnest; that a philosopher is not always obliged to write seriously, and that to invent an hypothesis is only a proof ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... doubt that what Krishna says here is that no form of worship is unacceptable to him. Whatever the manner of the worship, it is I who is worshipped. After K. T. Telang's exhaustive and effective reply to Dr. Lorinser's strange hypothesis of the Gita having been composed under Christian influences, it is scarcely necessary to add that such toleration would ill accord with the theory of the Christian ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... ihm Eichendorff die Fassung 'Lorelei' lieferte, und das ihm erst Loebens Auffassung der Sage zur Gestaltung verhelfen hat." It sounds like a case of ceterum censeo, but Thorn's argument as to Brentano and Heine is so thin that this statement too can be looked upon only as a weakly supported hypothesis. ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield

... just here, a little disquisition on Crises. I should show how all nature moves ever on and on toward certain cataclysmic events, each of which marks a point of departure for new ascents in progression. I should begin, of course, with the Nebular Hypothesis, its crash of suns, followed by the evolution of the star and its system of planets, its life, cooling, death, and a fresh crisis forming a new nebula. I should end with either Revolutions or Malaria, depending on whether I should last consider the subject in its relation to sociology ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... same time, as I think, to verify my hypothesis, let me give you an example—fictitious, it is true, but probable fact nevertheless; because it is patched up of many fragments of actual fact: and let us see how, in following it out, we shall pass through almost every possible ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... fixture, eternally here. But doubtless there are theories which may be true, though the face of things belie them. Hence, in such cases, to the ignorant, disbelief would seem more natural than faith; though they too often reject the testimony of their own senses, for what to them, is a mere hypothesis. And thus, my lord, is it, that the masts of Mardians do not believe because they know, but because they know not. And they are as ready to receive one thing as another, if it comes from a canonical source. My lord, Mardi is as an ostrich, which will swallow augh ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... contemporary documents; but even the inexhaustible diligence of that most laborious, accurate, and valuable writer has been baffled in the hope of obtaining certainty as its reward; and he has been compelled to content himself with the addition of one hypothesis more to those already proposed in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various

... that war, on the fairest prospects, is still exposed to uncertainties, I weigh against this the greater uncertainty of the duration of a peace bought with money, from such a people, from a Dey eighty years old, and by a nation who, on the hypothesis of buying peace, is to have no power on the sea to enforce an ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... exists as such, is also there. But the theoretical conclusion I think has no more degree of certainty than any other thing the mind can deal with. To say 'I think' is to assert the truth of an hypothesis which MAY be true, but not necessarily so. And then to conclude, 'Therefore I am,' is to advance one of the most shaky conclusions of all time. Underneath that so-called logical conclusion lies a metaphysics of being, a theory of Wholes, a recognition by differentiation of parts, with a denial ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips

... rapidly over my startled soul. The facts were clear, the hypothesis definite, the sequence certain; there was no ambiguity, no supposititious hinge upon which I could hang a hope; no, not one. I could not even expect that I should be missed and sought for; there was no ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... loved so dearly. He was also a typical peasant in his views on religion, never thinking about metaphysical questions, about the origin of all origin, or the future life. God was to him, as also to Arago, an hypothesis, which he had had no need of up to now. He had no business with the origin of the world, whether Moses or Darwin was right. Darwinism, which seemed so important to his fellows, was only the same kind of plaything ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... his horse, and at dawn he was at the place of ambush with his horse hidden in the bushes. The rocks for the ambush were waist high, and the twigs that had been thrust in the crevices between them were withered. And there, on the hypothesis that the Red Fox was the assassin, Hale tried to put himself, after the deed, into the Red Fox's shoes. The old man had turned up on guard before noon—then he must have gone somewhere first or have ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... the two stages in the interpretative part of perception, distinguished as the passive stage of preperception, and the active stage of perception proper, we may, in the absence of certain knowledge, fall back on the hypothesis put forward by Dr. J. Hughlings Jackson, in the articles in Brain already referred to, namely, that the former answers to an action of the right hemisphere of the brain, the latter to a subsequent action of the left hemisphere. The expediting of the process of preperception in those ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... contains a variety of subjects, but principally treats of the Hindoo, Greek, and Roman mythology; and endeavours to deduce all the fables and symbols of the ancients from the starry sphere. It also contains a singular hypothesis of the author's upon the celebrated island of Atlantis, mentioned by Plato and other Greek authors; and some very curious speculations concerning the doctrine of the change in the angle which the plane of the ecliptic makes with the plane of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various

... babies are round, yielding, weak, timid, and soft And I shall say 'damn it,' for I shall then be grown up He Would Have Been Forty Now How many things have not people been proud of I am not wandering through life, I am marching on I do not accept the hypothesis of a world made for us I would give two summers for a single autumn In his future arrange laurels for a little crown for your own It (science) dreams, too; it supposes Learned to love others by embracing their own children Life is not so sweet for us to risk ourselves in it singlehanded ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger

... a station in the upper middle-class, thought Houston. It checked. Every bit of evidence that came his way seemed to check perfectly and fit neatly into the hypothesis which he had formed. Soon it would be time to test that theory—but the ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)

... not really want to secede, but were in some mysterious fashion "intimidated" by a disloyal minority. How, in the absence of any special means of coercion, one man can "intimidate" two was never explained any more than it is explained when the same absurd hypothesis is brought forward in relation to Irish agrarian and English labour troubles. At any rate in this case there is not, and never has been, the slightest justification for doubting that Secessionism was from the first a genuine popular movement, that it ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all sperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he multiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would prove to be the hated one he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be indeed exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which, though not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling passion, yet were by no means incapable of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... that we arrived at Jaffa on 24th May, and stayed there the 25th, 26th, and 27th. We left it on the 28th. Thus the rear-guard, which, according to these writers; left-on the 29th, did not remain, even according to their own hypothesis, three days after the army to see the sick die. In reality it left on the 29th of May, the day after we did: Here are the very words of the Major-General (Berthier) in his official account, written under the eye and under ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... lank, white hair, leant over the taffrail, gazing at the numberless flashing lights of the surface. As he gazed, he talked on in his clear, rapt voice to a stranger by his side. The voice and the ring of enthusiasm were unmistakable. "Oh, no," he was saying, as we stole up behind him, "that hypothesis, I venture to assert, is no longer tenable by the light of recent researches. Death and decay have nothing to do directly with the phosphorescence of the sea, though they have a little indirectly. The light is due in the main to numerous minute living organisms, ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... follow, of such persons as figure principally in the story, will help to show to those who wish to read it intelligently, how much of it is genuine history. They will see that the tale is mainly constructed on a succession of hypotheses, but that every hypothesis rests on a substratum of fact, however slender, and in many cases on careful weighing and comparison of a number of facts together. Some of these conjectures are perhaps the only ones which will fully and satisfactorily ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... unraveling the mystery was often very pressing, for we have had three great epidemics of yellow fever in our own country since 1790, and scientists have been eager to apply themselves to the problem. Yet a specific purpose, in the form of a definite hypothesis of some sort, was felt to be necessary before the study could ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... evident stupidity, and one who, by the exercise of his inner life, has acquired the gift of some power, allows us to suppose that there is as great a difference between men of genius and other beings as there is between the blind and those who see. This hypothesis, since it extends creation beyond all limits, gives us, as it were, the clue to heaven. The beings who, here on earth, are apparently mingled without distinction, are there distributed, according to their inner perfection, in distinct spheres whose speech and manners have ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... faith in the evidence of his own senses, and being as truly conscientious a man as ever breathed, and accustomed to the closest reasoning, what was he to do? There were the facts. They were not to be controverted; they could not be explained; they could not be reconciled to any hypothesis in physics. If he was given over to delusion, to be buffeted by Satan, whose fault was it? That he was by nature somewhat credulous, and, though patient enough in his investigations, rather too fond of the marvellous, may be acknowledged; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... Forrest could not have more than four thousand cavalry, and my own movement would give employment to every other man of the rebel army not immediately present with him, so that he (General Smith) might safely act on the hypothesis ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... a critic whose eyelids, like the Lady Lisa's, are a little weary, "promises to develop into a principle as adequate to universal application as was the theory of Evolution. This latter theory, from being a technical biological hypothesis, became an inspiring guide to workers in practically every branch of knowledge: manners and customs, morals, religions, philosophies, arts, steam engines, electric tramways—everything had 'evolved.' 'Evolution' became a very general ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... scarcely to be imagined, yet Samuel Adams imagined it perfectly. Before there was any material evidence of the fact, he was able, by reasonable inference, to erect well-grounded suspicions into a kind of working hypothesis. Mr. Hutchinson, Governor of the Province, was an Enemy of Liberty with many English friends; he would be required by official duty and led by personal inclination to maintain a regular correspondence with high officials in England; from which the conclusion ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... This hypothesis threw me into a fever of excitement, without the stimulus of which I do not believe I should have had the courage and patience to collect, classify, and weave into one fabric the enormous number of facts and opinions contained within the covers of Romantic Love and Personal Beauty. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... far from convinced. Not one of the servants would go into that wing at night unless driven by dire necessity. And a billiard cue! As a weapon of either offense or defense it was an absurdity, unless one accepted Liddy's hypothesis of a ghost, and even then, as Halsey pointed out, a billiard-playing ghost would be a very modern ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... latter, in these days of scientific quackery, it would be quite too harsh to make any great complaint about such peccadilloes. The writer has taken up almost every questionable fact and startling hypothesis, that have been promulgated by proficients or pretenders in science during the present century, except animal magnetism; and for this omission we have reason to be thankful. The nebular hypothesis, Laplace's or Compte's theory ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... render all our principles as universal as possible, by tracing up our experiments to the utmost, and explaining all effects from the simplest and fewest causes, 'tis still certain we cannot go beyond experience; and any hypothesis that pretends to discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature, ought at first to be rejected ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... promulgation of Christianity, all Oracles had suddenly drooped; or, to tie up their language to the rigor of their theory, had suddenly expired. All this Van Dale peremptorily denies; and, in these days, it is scarcely requisite to add, triumphantly denies; the whole hypothesis of the fathers having literally not a leg to stand upon; and being, in fact, the most audacious defiance to historical records that, perhaps, the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... about the human type, about pleasure and pain, perhaps, and the association of ideas, or the influence of habit. He is told that these are selected from the other facts of human nature in order that he may think clearly on the hypothesis of there being no others. What the others may be he is left to discover for himself; but he is likely to assume that they cannot be the subject of effective scientific thought. He learns also a few empirical ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... critic himself. It is of course obvious that, until all critics are agreed upon some common principles of artistic valuation, aesthetic criticism can lay no claim to scientific precision, but must be classed as a department of Art itself. The other, an application of the Darwinian hypothesis to literature, which owes its existence almost entirely to the great French critic before mentioned, but which has since rejected as unscientific many of the laws he formulated, may be called historical or sociological criticism. ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... loyalty and allegiance among the people of those States,—a matter which he valued far more highly than other persons were inclined to do. Such were his views and such his wishes. To discuss their practicability and soundness would only be to wander in the unprofitable vagueness of hypothesis, for in spite of all his efforts they were never tested by trial. It must be admitted that general opinion, both at that day and ever since, has regarded them as visionary; compensation seemed too costly, colonization probably was ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... let us make answer to him that the student of humane letters only, will, at least, know also the great general conceptions brought in by modern physical science: for science, as Professor Huxley says, forces them upon us all. But the student of the natural sciences only, will, by our very hypothesis, know nothing of humane letters; not to mention that in setting himself to be perpetually accumulating natural knowledge, he sets himself to do what only specialists have in general the gift for doing genially. And so he will probably ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... weather clouded, but afterwards cleared up with a change of wind from the South-East, which, from its heat, and from the listless sensations it caused, resembled the hot land-wind of Port Jackson: this seems to afford additional ground for the hypothesis that the interior of this immense island is occupied ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... Was he fit for nothing but to be employed as a messenger, as a common tipstaff? Was he not fit to try these rights, or to decide upon them? He has told you here, indeed, negatively, that he did not know any title Mr. Hastings had to seize upon the property of the Begums, except upon his hypothesis of the rebellion. He was asked if he knew any other. He answered, No. It consequently appears that Mr. Hastings, though he had before him his doctors of all laws, who could unravel for him all the enigmas of all the laws in the world, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... I shall never get you to believe the number of things she saw and the number of secrets she discovered! Why in the world, for instance, couldn't Sir Claude have kept it from her—except on the hypothesis of his not caring to—that, when you came to look at it and so far as it was a question of vested interests, he had quite as much right in her as her stepmother, not to say a right that Mrs. Beale was in no position to dispute? He failed at all events of any such successful ambiguity ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... broken by the shock, and the hands had stopped at two in the morning. By the middle of March (the date of the murder) daylight dawns between five and six o'clock. To whatever distance the gold had been carried, Tascheron could not possibly, under any apparent hypothesis, ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... convinced him that this was the case, though it also a little favoured the other hypothesis of her selfish ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... use of transcribing these things is to shew what absurdities men for ever run into, when they lay down an Hypothesis, and afterward seek for arguments in the support of it. What else could induce this man, by no means a bad scholar, to doubt whether Truepenny might not be derived from {GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU}{GREEK ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... everything, except the perfection of the singing and the dramatic action, to the imagination of the audience? The prices of admission would be proportionately lowered, and the numbers admitted, in all probability, would be trebled, on which hypothesis a calculation may be based. What an exercise it would be for the imagination of the audience, were the Statue Scene from Don Giovanni to be given with the Basso Profondo in evening dress, who represents ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various

... and hour, and yet one missed the connection which could make it all intelligible—the connection, that is, between God, as man in his heart conceived of Him, and God as He wrote Himself large in every field and wood. On what hypothesis of pure benevolence and perfect justice could all these restless lives, so full of pain and suffering, and all alike ending in death and disappearance, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... first to spread abroad a spirit of scepticism respecting the established facts of Shakespeare's career, died insane on September 2, 1859. {372} Mr. William Henry Smith, a resident in London, seems first to have suggested the Baconian hypothesis in 'Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays?—a letter to Lord Ellesmere' (1856), which was republished as 'Bacon and Shakespeare' (1857). The most learned exponent of this strange theory was Nathaniel ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... produce an equality of swiftness. This consideration naturally produced another, which is, that the blood of all Horses may be merely ideal; and if so, a word of no meaning. But before I advance any thing more on this hypothesis, and that I may not be guilty of treason against the received laws of jockey-ship, I do here lay it down as a certain truth, that no Horses but such as come from foreign countries, or which are of extraction totally foreign, can race. In this opinion every man will ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer

... word of her—bar quoting some of her words—that wasn't utterly gentle. You could see that he loved her with his whole soul. And—it's my belief—he gave her the benefit of the doubt. In killing himself, he acted on the hypothesis that she had been right. It was the one thing he could do ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... This probably does injustice to reality (females were treated the same way), but it should be noted that any error introduced in this way was almost certain to have increased the number of "subadults" in the samples. Thus, the hypothesis above based on age-ratios is not automatically invalid ...
— Natural History of the Salamander, Aneides hardii • Richard F. Johnston

... during the day was fairly explainable on the former hypothesis. If Jackson was passing towards Culpeper, he would naturally send flanking parties out every road leading from the one his own columns were pursuing, towards our lines, for strictly defensive purposes. The several attacks ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... hypothesis," asked Harley, "are we to cover the facts of your own case as stated by yourself? Now," he consulted his pencilled notes, "there is another point. I gather that these African sorcerers rely largely upon what I may term intimidation. In other words, they claim the power ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... woman. Milton, in whose mind the rigidity of Puritan doctrine was now contending with the freer spirit of culture and romance, shows on the present occasion a like conflict of doctrine with sentiment. While he adopts the oriental hypothesis of woman for the sake of man, he modifies it by laying more stress upon mutual affection, the charities of home, and the intercommunion of intellectual and moral life, than upon that ministration of woman to the appetite and comforts of man, which makes up the ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... way surreptitiously into the text of all the other copies in existence. But let me ask,—Is it at all likely, or rather is it any way credible, that in a matter like this, all the MSS. in the world but nine should have become corrupted? No hypothesis is needed to account for one more instance of omission in copies which exhibit a mutilated text in every page. But how will men pretend to explain an interpolation universal as the present; which may be traced as far back as the second century; which has ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... conception of a self-evolved universe;" but, he adds, "really to conceive self-creation, is to conceive potential existence passing into actual existence by some inherent necessity, which we cannot do." (p. 32). The Theistic theory, he says, is equally untenable. "Whoever agrees that the atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves the impossible idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that the theistic hypothesis is untenable if it contains the same impossible idea." (p. 38). The origin of the universe is, therefore, ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge

... had been shown in Rome and Constantinople, it was stated that hippopotami could not be transported alive to a foreign country; but the progress of civilisation has refuted this erroneous hypothesis, and the harsh, heavy sound of its voice, since May, 1850, has been familiar to the frequenters of ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... not last long enough to test Trollope's hypothesis. Mr. Hutton, critic for the Spectator, recognized Trollope as the author and so stated in his review. Trollope did ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... and (to all appearances) contentedly fixed where she is. I suppose I am insinuating that appearances are deceptive; that she may be unhappy with her husband, and desire to leave him. Well, there is no technical evidence in support of such an hypothesis; but, again, in a matter of this kind, it is not so much the technical as the indirect evidence that tells—the cadences of the voice, the breathing, the silences, the atmosphere. There is no denying ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... queen apart, telling her his suspicions, which fell directly upon Charles of Durazzo; but Joan lost no time in persuading him of the improbability of his hypothesis: first of all, Charles had never once set his foot in Castel Nuovo since the day of his stormy interview with the queen, but had made a point of always leaving Andre by the bridge when he came ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... (Luke 3:38; Rom. 8:14; Gal. 3:26); (4) has a historical basis in the fact that Seth was regarded by his mother as a (the) son of from God, (5) in the circumstance that already the Sethites had begun to call themselves by the name of Jehovah (Gen. 4:26); (6), finally, it is sufficient as a hypothesis, and is therefore entitled to ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... no certain scientific decision, but there is the possibility of working in the scientific spirit, with breadth of comparison; consistency of logic; economy of conjecture; abstinence from the piling of hypothesis on hypothesis. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... of the Roman treatises on farm management is profitable to the modern farmer however practical and scientific he may be. He will not find in them any thing about bacteria and the "nodular hypothesis" in respect of legumes, nor any thing about plant metabolism, nor even any thing about the effects of creatinine on growth and absorption; but, important and fascinating as are the illuminations of modern science upon practical agriculture, the intelligent farmer with imagination ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... services, and similar easy labors. Where Mr. Palmer means to stop in supplying bodily losses it would be premature to say. We suppose the accidents happening occasionally from the use of the guillotine are beyond his skill, and spare our readers the lively remark suggested by the contrary hypothesis. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... explanation was indeed the simple one; in most cases it would have been accepted without demur; or recourse would have been had to the hypothesis of a sudden change in the Professor's opinion; indeed Marchmont broached this solution in an off-hand way. Neither view was explicitly rejected, but a third possibility was in their minds, one which would not and could not have been there, had any one of the three had the settling of ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... assume an impassable barrier. That is an inadmissible hypothesis. There is no such thing as a line of ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... distinct, a perfect cone, reaching far up into the sky among the western stars. No one seemed to observe it, though it faced them evening after evening. Here was an instance in the opposite direction—a curious phenomenon, even now rather the subject of hypothesis than of demonstration, entirely overlooked. The common phenomenon made a marvel, and the unexplained phenomenon unnoticed. Both in the eyes of a thoughtful person are equally wonderful; but that point of view is apart from my present object, which is to show that ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... the present order of Nature, with all its laws and processes, its tribes and races, whether of vegetable or animal life; and affirms that the world, as now constituted, never had a beginning, and that it will never have an end. This has been called the Aristotelian Hypothesis, because Aristotle, while he spoke of a Supreme Mind or Reason, maintained not only the eternity of matter, but also the eternity of "substantial ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... Nights, flies over "seven Waddys, seven Seas, and seven Mountains." It is difficult to understand that such a remarkable phrase should recur accidentally in Bagdad and in the West Highlands. Without some actual intermediation, oral or literary, the hypothesis of universal human tendency can ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs



Words linked to "Hypothesis" :   gemmule, view, proposal, speculation, assumption, construct, historicism, hypothesize, opinion, framework, divination, supposal, theoretical account, conception, hypothecate, model, concept, hypothetical



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