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Supplement toAnalysis

Definitions and Descriptions of Analysis

The older a word, the deeper it reaches. (WittgensteinNB, 40) {§6.5}

This supplement collects together various definitions and descriptionsof analysis that have been offered in the history of philosophy(including all the classic ones), to indicate the range of differentconceptions and the issues that arise. (There are also some remarks onrelated topics such as analyticity, definition, and methodology moregenerally.) In most cases, abbreviated references are given; fulldetails can be found in the Annotated Bibliography on Analysis, in thesection mentioned in curly brackets after the relevant definition ordescription. Where there is more than one passage quoted from aparticular author, passages are numbered in chronological order ofcomposition (as far as that can be determined).

1. Definitions of Analysis

Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed., 1999, ed. Robert Audi

the process of breaking up a concept, proposition, linguistic complex,or fact into its simple or ultimate constituents. {§1.1}

Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1976, ed. J. B. Sykes

1. Resolution into simpler elements by analysing (opp.synthesis); statement of result of this; … 2. (Math.)Use of algebra and calculus in problem-solving. {§1.1}

Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, 1925, ed. James Mark Baldwin, Vol. I

The isolation of what is more elementary from what is more complex bywhatever method. {§1.1}

A Kant Dictionary, 1995, by Howard Caygill

Kant combines two senses of analysis in his work, one derived fromGreek geometry, the other from modern physics and chemistry. Bothremain close to the original Greek sense of analysis as a‘loosening up’ or ‘releasing’, but eachproceed in different ways. The former proceeds‘lemmatically’ by assuming a proposition to be true andsearching for another known truth from which the proposition may bededuced. The latter proceeds by resolving complex wholes into theirelements. {§4.5}

Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 1996, by Simon Blackburn

The process of breaking a concept down into more simple parts, so thatits logical structure is displayed. {§1.1}

Philosophielexikon, 1997, ed. A. Hügli and P. Lübcke

Auflösung, Zerlegung in Bestandteile, im Gegensatz zu Synthese. {§1.1}

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1998, entry under ‘Analytical Philosophy’ by Thomas Baldwin

Philosophical analysis is a method of inquiry in which one seeks toassess complex systems of thought by ‘analysing’ them intosimpler elements whose relationships are thereby brought into focus. {§1.1}

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1998, entry under ‘Conceptual Analysis’ by Robert Hanna

The theory of conceptual analysis holds that concepts – generalmeanings of linguistic predicates – are the fundamental objectsof philosophical inquiry, and that insights into conceptual contentsare expressed in necessary ‘conceptual truths’ (analyticpropositions). {§1.1}

Annotated Bibliography, §1.1

2. Descriptions of Analysis

Alexander of Aphrodisias

And he [Aristotle] called themAnalytics because theresolution of every compound into those things out of which thesynthesis [is made] is calledanalysis. For analysis is theconverse of synthesis. Synthesis is the road from the principles tothose things that derive from the principles, and analysis is thereturn from the end to the principles. For geometers are said toanalyze when, beginning from the conclusion they go up to theprinciples and the problem, following the order of those things whichwere assumed for the demonstration of the conclusion {1}. But he alsouses analysis who reduces composite bodies into simple bodies {2}, andhe analyzes who divides the word into the parts of the word {3}; alsohe who divides the parts of the word into the syllables {4}; and hewho divides these into their components {5}. And they are severallysaid to analyse who reduce compound syllogisms into simple ones {6},and simple ones into the premisses out of which they get their being{7}. And further, resolving imperfect syllogisms into perfect ones iscalled analyzing {8}. And they call analysis the reducing of the givensyllogism into the proper schemata {9}. And it is especially in thismeaning of analysis that these are entitledAnalytics, for hedescribes for us a method at the end of the first book with which weshall be able to do this. (Commentary on Aristotle’s PriorAnalytics, §1.2.1 (7, lines 11–33); tr. in Gilbert1960, 32; the square brackets are in the original translation, thecurly brackets have been added here to highlight the nine senses thatAlexander distinguishes) {§2.4,§3.2}

Al-Fārābī, Abū Naṣr Muḥammad

Transfer from the observed to the unobserved is of two kinds: oneis by the method of Synthesis and the other is by the method ofAnalysis. With Analysis the reasoning starts with the unobserved,while with Synthesis it starts with the observed. If we want to usethe method of Analysis to infer to the unobserved by means of theobserved, we have to know the content that we are seeking [to transferto] the unobserved thing, and then we study the question which are thesense-perceived things that satisfy that content. Then when we knowsomething sense-perceived that satisfies that content, we use it totake those concepts that make the unobserved thing similar to thesense-perceived thing. Then we study the question which of thoseconcepts is such that the whole of it satisfies the content that isobserved in the sense-perceived thing. When we find such a concept,the content transfers necessarily from the thing observed by thesenses to the unobserved thing. So therefore the inference to theunobserved by means of the observed, using this method, is inpotential a question, i.e. aquaesitum, which a syllogism inthe first figure is able to resolve. (SY, 19.3; translationmodified) {3.3}

Aristotle

it is not the same thing to take an argument in one’s hand andthen to see and solve its faults, as it is to be able to meet itquickly while being subjected to questions; for what we know, we oftendo not know in a different context. Moreover, just as in other thingsspeed or slowness is enhanced by training, so it is with argumentstoo, so that supposing we are unpractised, even though a point isclear to us, we are often too late for the right moment. Sometimes tooit happens as with diagrams; for there we can sometimes analyse thefigure, but not construct it again: so too in refutations, though weknow on what the connexion of the argument depends, we still are at aloss to split the argument apart. (SR, 16, 175a20–30) {§2.4}
We must next explain how to reduce syllogisms to the figures previouslydescribed; this part of our inquiry still remains. For if we examinethe means by which syllogisms are produced, and possess the ability todiscover them, and can also analyse [analuoimen] thesyllogisms when constructed into the figures previously described, ouroriginal undertaking will be completed. ((PrA, I, 32,46b40–47a6; Tredennick tr. slightly modified) {§2.4}
Thus it is evident (1) that the types of syllogism which cannot beanalysed in these figures [viz., second figure syllogisms into thethird figure, and third figure syllogisms into the second figure] arethe same as those which we saw could not be analysed into the firstfigure; and (2) that when syllogisms are reduced to the first figurethese alone are establishedper impossibile.
It is evident, then, from the foregoing account [taken as includingthe discussion prior to chapter 45] how syllogisms should be reduced;and also that the figures can be analysed into one another.(PrA, I, 45, 51a40–b5; Tredennick tr., substituting‘analysed’ for ‘resolved’) {§2.4}
If it were impossible to prove truth from falsehood, it would be easy tomake analyses [analuein]; for then the propositions wouldconvert from necessity. LetA be something that is the case;and ifA is the case, thenthese things are the case(things which I know to be the case—call themB). Fromthe latter, then, I shall prove that the former is the case. (Inmathematics conversion is more common because mathematicians assumenothing incidental—and in this too they differ from those whoargue dialectically—but only definitions.) (PoA, I, 12,78a6–13) {§2.4}
We deliberate not about ends but about means. For a doctor does notdeliberate whether he shall heal, nor an orator whether he shallconvince, nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and order, nordoes any one else deliberate about his end. Having set the end, theyconsider how and by what means it is to be attained; and if it seemsto be produced by several means they consider by which it is mosteasily and best produced, while if it is achieved by one only theyconsider how it will be achieved by this and by what meansthis will be achieved, till they come to the first cause,which in the order of discovery is last. For the person whodeliberates seems to inquire and analyse in the way described asthough he were analysing a geometrical construction (not all inquiryappears to be deliberation—for instance mathematicalinquiries—but all deliberation is inquiry), and what is last inthe order of analysis seems to be first in the order of becoming. Andif we come on an impossibility, we give up the search, e.g. if we needmoney and this cannot be got; but if a thing appears possible we tryto do it. (NE, III, 3, 1112b8–27) {§2.4}

Arnauld, Antoine and Nicole, Pierre

The art of arranging a series of thoughts properly, either fordiscovering the truth when we do not know it, or for proving to otherswhat we already know, can generally be called method.
Hence there are two kinds of method, one for discovering the truth,which is known asanalysis, or themethod ofresolution, and which can also be called themethod ofdiscovery. The other is for making the truth understood by othersonce it is found. This is known assynthesis, or themethod of composition, and can also be called themethodof instruction.
Analysis does not usually deal with the entire body of a science, butis used only for resolving some issue. (LAT, 233–4) {§4.1}
Now analysis consists primarily in paying attention to what is knownin the issue we want to resolve. The entire art is to derive from thisexamination many truths that can lead us to the knowledge we areseeking.
Suppose we wondered whether the human soul is immortal, and toinvestigate it we set out to consider the nature of the soul. First wewould notice that it is distinctive of the soul to think, and that itcould doubt everything without being able to doubt whether it isthinking, since doubting is itself a thought. Next we would ask whatthinking is. Since we would see nothing contained in the idea ofthought that is contained in the idea of the extended substance calledbody, and since we could even deny of thought everything belonging tobody — such as having length, width, and depth, having differentparts, having a certain shape, being divisible, etc. — withoutthereby destroying the idea we have of thought, from this we wouldconclude that thought is not at all a mode of extended substance,because it is the nature of a mode not to be able to be conceivedwhile the thing of which it is a mode is denied. From this we infer,in addition, that since thought is not a mode of extended substance,it must be the attribute of another substance. Hence thinkingsubstance and extended substance are two really distinct substances.It follows from this that the destruction of one in no way bringsabout the destruction of the other, since even extended substance isnot properly speaking destroyed, but all that happens in what we calldestruction is nothing more than the change or dissolution of severalparts of matter which exist forever in nature. Likewise it is quiteeasy to judge that in breaking all the gears of a clock no substanceis destroyed, although we say that the clock is destroyed. This showsthat since the soul is in no way divisible or composed of parts, itcannot perish, and consequently is immortal.
This is what we callanalysis orresolution. Weshould notice, first, that in this method — as in the one calledcomposition — we should practice proceeding from whatis better known to what is less known. For there is no true methodwhich could dispense with this rule.
Second, it nevertheless differs from the method of composition in thatthese known truths are taken from a particular examination of thething we are investigating, and not from more general things as isdone in the method of instruction. Thus in the example we presented,we did not begin by establishing these general maxims: that nosubstance perishes, properly speaking; that what is called destructionis only a dissolution of parts; that therefore what has no partscannot be destroyed, etc. Instead we rose by stages to these generalnotions.
Third, in analysis we introduce clear and evident maxims only to theextent that we need them, whereas in the other method we establishthem first, as we will explain below.
Fourth and finally, these two methods differ only as the route onetakes in climbing a mountain from a valley differs from the routetaken in descending from the mountain into the valley, or as the twoways differ that are used to prove that a person is descended from St.Louis. One way is to show that this person had a certain man for afather who was the son of a certain man, and that man was the son ofanother, and so on up to St. Louis. The other way is to begin with St.Louis and show that he had a certain child, and this child had others,thereby descending to the person in question. This example is all themore appropriate in this case, since it is certain that to trace anunknown genealogy, it is necessary to go from the son to the father,whereas to explain it after finding it, the most common method is tobegin with the trunk to show the descendants. This is also what isusually done in the sciences where, after analysis is used to findsome truth, the other method is employed to explain what has beenfound.
This is the way to understand the nature of analysis as used bygeometers. Here is what it consists in. Suppose a question ispresented to them, such as whether it is true or false that somethingis a theorem, or whether a problem is possible or impossible; theyassume what is at issue and examine what follows from that assumption.If in this examination they arrive at some clear truth from which theassumption follows necessarily, they conclude that the assumption istrue. Then starting over from the end point, they demonstrate it bythe other method which is calledcomposition. But if theyfall into some absurdity or impossibility as a necessary consequenceof their assumption, they conclude from this that the assumption isfalse and impossible.
This is what may be said in a general way about analysis, whichconsists more in judgment and mental skill than in particular rules.(LAT, 236–8) {§4.1}

Ayer, A. J.

It is advisable to stress the point that philosophy, as we understandit, is wholly independent of metaphysics, inasmuch as the analyticmethod is commonly supposed by its critics to have a metaphysicalbasis. Being misled by the associations of the word‘analysis’, they assume that philosophical analysis is anactivity of dissection; that it consists in ‘breaking up’objects into their constituent parts, until the whole universe isultimately exhibited as an aggregate of ‘bareparticulars’, united by external relations. If this were reallyso, the most effective way of attacking the method would be to showthat its basic presupposition was nonsensical. For to say that theuniverse was an aggregate of bare particulars would be as senseless asto say that it was Fire or Water or Experience. It is plain that nosuch possible observation would enable to verify such an assertion.But, so far as I know, this line of criticism is in fact neveradopted. The critics content themselves with pointing out that few, ifany, of the complex objects in the world are simply the sum of theirparts. They have a structure, an organic unity, which distinguishesthem, as genuine wholes, from mere aggregates. But the analyst, so itis said, is obliged by his atomistic metaphysics to regard an objectconsisting of partsa,b,c, andd, in a distinctive configuration as being simplya+b +c +d, and thus gives an entirelyfalse account of its nature.
If we follow the Gestalt psychologists, who of all men talk mostconstantly about genuine wholes, in defining such a whole as one inwhich the properties of every part depend to some extent on itsposition in the whole, then we may accept it as an empirical fact thatthere exist genuine, or organic, wholes. And if the analytic methodinvolved a denial of this fact, it would indeed be a faulty method.But, actually, the validity of the analytic method is not dependent onany empirical, much less any metaphysical, presupposition about thenature of things. For the philosopher, as an analyst, is not directlyconcerned with the physical properties of things. He is concerned onlywith the way in which we speak about them.
In other words, the propositions of philosophy are not factual, butlinguistic in character – that is, they do not describe thebehaviour of physical, or even mental, objects; they expressdefinitions, or the formal consequences of definitions. Accordingly,we may say that philosophy is a department of logic. For we shall seethat the characteristic mark of a purely logical inquiry is that it isconcerned with the formal consequences of our definitions and not withquestions of empirical fact.
It follows that philosophy does not in any way compete with science.The difference in type between philosophical and scientificpropositions is such that they cannot conceivably contradict oneanother. And this makes it clear that the possibility of philosophicalanalysis is independent of any empirical assumptions. That it isindependent of any metaphysical assumptions should be even moreobvious still. For it is absurd to suppose that the provision ofdefinitions, and the study of their formal consequences, involves thenonsensical assertion that the world is composed of bare particulars,or any other metaphysical dogma.
What has contributed as much as anything to the prevalentmisunderstanding of the nature of philosophical analysis is the factthat propositions and questions which are really linguistic are oftenexpressed in such a way that they appear to be factual. A strikinginstance of this is provided by the proposition that a material thingcannot be in two places at once. This looks like an empiricalproposition, and is constantly invoked by those who desire to provethat it is possible for an empirical proposition to be logicallycertain. But a more critical inspection shows that it is not empiricalat all, but linguistic. It simply records the fact that, as the resultof certain verbal conventions, the proposition that two sense-contentsoccur in the same visual or tactual sense-field is incompatible withthe proposition that they belong to the same material thing. And thisis indeed a necessary fact. But it has not the least tendency to showthat we have certain knowledge about the empirical properties ofobjects. For it is necessary only because we happen to use therelevant words in a particular way. There is no logical reason why weshould not so alter our definitions that the sentence ‘A thingcannot be in two places at once’ comes to express aself-contradiction instead of a necessary truth. (1936, 75–7) {§6.7}
From our assertion that philosophy provides definitions, it must notbe inferred that it is the function of the philosopher to compile adictionary, in the ordinary sense. For the definitions whichphilosophy is required to provide are of a different kind from thosewhich we expect to find in dictionaries. In a dictionary we lookmainly for what may be calledexplicit definitions; inphilosophy, for definitionsin use. ...
We define a symbolin use, not by saying that it issynonymous with some other symbol, but by showing how the sentences inwhich it significantly occurs can be translated into equivalentsentences, which contain neither thedefiniendum itself, norany of its synonyms. A good illustration of this process is providedby Bertrand Russell’s so-called theory of descriptions, which isnot a theory at all in the ordinary sense, but an indication of theway in which all phrases of the form ‘the so-and-so’ areto be defined. (Ibid., 80–1) {§6.7}
[A serious mistake in my account inLanguage, Truth andLogic] was my assumption that philosophical analysis consistedmainly in the provision of ‘definitions in use’. It is,indeed, true that what I describe as philosophical analysis is verylargely a matter of exhibiting the inter-relationship of differenttypes of propositions; but the cases in which this process actuallyyields a set of definitions are the exception rather than the rule....
... Thus, when Professor Moore suggests that to say that‘existence is not a predicate’ may be a way of saying that‘there is some very important difference between the way inwhich “exist” is used in such a sentence as “Tametigers exist” and the way in which “growl” is usedin “Tame tigers growl”’, he does not develop hispoint by giving rules for the translation of one set of sentences intoanother. What he does is to remark that whereas it makes good sense tosay ‘All tame tigers growl’ or ‘Most tame tigersgrowl’ it would be nonsense to say ‘All tame tigersexist’ or ‘Most tame tigers exist’. Now this mayseem a rather trivial point for him to make, but in fact it isphilosophically illuminating. For it is precisely the assumption thatexistence is a predicate that gives plausibility to ‘theontological argument’; and the ontological argument is supposedto demonstrate the existence of a God. Consequently Moore by pointingout a peculiarity in the use of the word ‘exist’ helps toprotect us from a serious fallacy; so that his procedure, thoughdifferent from that which Russell follows in his theory ofdescriptions, tends to achieve the same philosophical end. (1946,31–3) {§6.7}

Beaney, Michael

In analytic geometry, the geometrical problems are solved by‘translating’ them into the language of arithmetic andalgebra. And here we can also see how ‘interpretive’analysis plays a role. Lines, circles, curves, and so on, must firstbe ‘interpreted’ as equations, and the geometricalproblems correspondingly reformulated, before arithmetic and algebracan be applied in solving them. The idea here can be generalized:problems need to be interpreted in some form before the resources of arelevant theory or conceptual framework can be brought to bear. Andthis is exactly what is involved in analytic philosophy: thepropositions to be analysed—those that give rise to thephilosophical problems to be solved or dissolved—need to berephrased in a richer conceptual framework or formalized in anappropriate logical theory. Analytic philosophy, then, is‘analytic’ much more in the sense that analytic geometryis analytic than in any crude decompositional sense. (2017, 96.)

Bentham, Jeremy

By the word paraphrasis may be designated that sort of expositionwhich may be afforded by transmuting into a proposition, having forits subject some real entity, a proposition which has not for itssubject any other than a fictitious entity. (EL, 246) {§5.6}

Bergson, Henri

By intuition is meant the kind ofintellectual sympathy bywhich one places oneself within an object in order to coincide withwhat is unique in it and consequently inexpressible. Analysis, on thecontrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elementsalready known, that is, to elements common both to it and otherobjects. To analyse, therefore, is to express a thing as a function ofsomething other than itself. All analysis is thus a translation, adevelopment into symbols, a representation taken from successivepoints of view from which we note as many resemblances as possiblebetween the new object which we are studying and others which webelieve we know already. In its eternally unsatisfied desire toembrace the object around which it is compelled to turn, analysismultiplies without end the number of its points of view in order tocomplete its always incomplete representation, and ceaselessly variesits symbols that it may perfect the always imperfect translation. Itgoes on, therefore, to infinity. But intuition, if intuition ispossible, is a simple act. (1903, 6–7) {§5.1}
[Analysis] operates always on the immobile, whilst intuition placesitself in mobility, or, what comes to the same thing, in duration.There lies the very distinct line of demarcation between intuition andanalysis. The real, the experienced and the concrete are recognised bythe fact that they are variability itself, the element by the factthat it is invariable. And the element is invariable by definition,being a diagram, a simplified reconstruction, often a mere symbol, inany case a motionless view of the moving reality. (1903, 40–1) {§5.1}
Modern science is neither one nor simple. It rests, I freely admit, onideas which in the end we find clear; but these ideas have graduallybecome clear through the use made of them; they owe most of theirclearness to the light which the facts, and the applications to whichthey led, have by reflection shed on them — the clearness of aconcept being scarcely anything more at bottom than the certainty, atlast obtained, of manipulating the concept profitably. At its origin,more than one of these concepts must have appeared obscure, not easilyreconcilable with the concepts already admitted into science, andindeed very near the borderline of absurdity. This means that sciencedoes not proceed by an orderly dovetailing together of conceptspredestined to fit each other exactly. True and fruitful ideas are somany close contacts with currents of reality, which do not necessarilyconverge on the same point. However the concepts in which they lodgethemselves manage somehow, by rubbing off each other's corners, tosettle down well enough together. (1903, 74) {§5.1}

Black, Max

It may help to be reminded that many philosophers who might allowthemselves to be described as “analysts” have beenstrongly influenced by the work of Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein.For while all three have been engaged in “clarification ofmeaning” they have done so in different and distinctive ways;and the resulting divergences in conceptions of philosophical methodhave not yet been reconciled. This makes it hard to give any simpleaccount of what is meant today by “philosophicalanalysis”. (1950a, 2) {§6.1}
A man who had to describe “philosophical analysis” mightresort to talking about a climate of opinion. The weather, he mightsay, is congenial to empiricists, naturalists, agnostics; the wellacclimatized have admired the twoPrincipia’s and theTractatus and have read a hundred pages of Hume for one ofKant. Here rhetoric is viewed with suspicion and enthusiasm barelytolerated; this is a land of “prose writers, hoping to beunderstood” [J. M. Keynes,A Treatise on Probability,1921, preface].
... If a formula or a slogan is wanted, it is easy enough to say thatthese writers (like Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein before them) areengaged inclarification of meaning. ... And if those who arebest at the work of clarification might feel embarrassed to provide asatisfactory analysis of “analysis”, that is perhaps nocause for apology or alarm. For it is a mark of life to resistarbitrary confinement, and “philosohical analysis” isstill much alive. (1950a, 12–13) {§6.1}

Bos, Henk J. M.

Analysis comprises mathematical methods for finding thesolutions (in geometry: the constructions) of problems or the proofsof theorems, doing so by introducing unknowns. (2001, 129) {§4.2}

Bradley, F. H.

It is a very common and most ruinous superstition to suppose thatanalysis is no alteration, and that, whenever we distinguish, we haveat once to do with divisible existence. It is an immense assumption toconclude, when a fact comes to us as a whole, that some parts of itmay exist without any sort of regard for the rest. Such naiveassurance of the outward reality of all mental distinctions, suchtouching confidence in the crudest identity of thought and existence,is worthy of the school which so loudly appeals to the name ofExperience. ... If it is true in any sense (and I will not deny it)that thought in the end is the measure of things, yet at least this isfalse, that the divisions we make within a whole all answer toelements whose existence doesnot depend on the rest. It iswholly unjustifiable to take up a complex, to do any work we pleaseupon it by analysis, and then simply predicate as an adjective of thegiven these results of our abstraction. These products were neverthere as such, and in saying, as we do, that as such they are there,we falsify the fact. You can not always apply in actual experiencethat coarse notion of the whole as the sum of its parts into which theschool of ‘experience’ so delights to torture phenomena.If it is wrong in physiology to predicate the results, that arereached by dissection, simply and as such of the living body, it ishere infinitely more wrong. The whole that is given to us is acontinuous mass of perception and feeling; and to say of this whole,that any one element would be what it is there, when apart from therest, is a very grave assertion. We might have supposed it not quiteself-evident, and that it was possible to deny it without openabsurdity. (PL, §64/WLM, 77–8) {§5.6}
judgement is the differentiation of a complex whole, and hence alwaysis analysis and synthesis in one. (AR, 149/WLM, 158) {§5.6}
At any moment my actual experience, however relational its contents,is in the end non-relational. No analysis into relations and terms canever exhaust its nature or fail in the end to belie its essence. Whatanalysis leaves for ever outstanding is no mere residue, but is avital condition of the analysis itself. Everything which is got outinto the form of an object implies still the felt background againstwhich the object comes, and, further, the whole experience of bothfeeling and object is a non-relational immediate felt unity. Theentire relational consciousness, in short, is experienced as fallingwithin a direct awareness. This direct awareness is itselfnon-relational. It escapes from all attempts to exhibit it by analysisas one or more elements in a relational scheme, or as that schemeitself, or as a relation or relations, or as the sum or collection ofany of these abstractions. And immediate experience not only escapes,but it serves as the basis on which the analysis is made. Itself isthe vital element within which every analysis still moves, while, andso far as, and however much, that analysis transcends immediacy.(ETR, 176/WLM, 280–1) {§5.6}
I would rather now lay more stress on the logical vice of all Analysisand Abstraction – so far as that means taking any feature in theWhole of Things as ultimately real except in its union with the Whole.(Collected Works of F.H. Bradley: Selected Correspondence1905–1924, Bristol, Thoemmes Press, 1999, 275)
Analysis and synthesis I take in the end to be two aspects of oneprinciple … Every analysis proceeds from and on the basis of aunity ... The point before us is the question as to how, withoutseparation in its existence, we can discriminate ideally in analysis.(ETR, 300)

Brandom, Robert B.

Socratic method is a way of bringing our practices under rationalcontrol by expressing them explicitly in a form in which they can beconfronted with objections and alternatives, a form in which they canbe exhibited as the conclusions of inferences seeking to justify themon the basis of premises advanced as reasons, and as premises infurther inferences exploring the consequences of accepting them.(2000, 56) {§6.9}
I think of analytic philosophy as having at its center a concern withsemantic relations between what I will call‘vocabularies’. … Its characteristic form ofquestion is whether and in what way one can make sense of the meaningsexpressed by one kind of locution in terms of the meanings expressedby another kind of locution. So, for instance, two early paradigmaticprojects were to show that everything expressible in the vocabulary ofnumber-theory, and again, everything expressible using definitedescriptions, is expressible already in the vocabulary of first-orderquantificational logic with identity.
The nature of the key kind of semantic relation between vocabularieshas been variously characterized during the history of analyticphilosophy: as analysis, definition, paraphrase, translation,reduction of different sorts, truth-making, and various kinds ofsupervenience—to name just a few contenders. In each case,however, it is characteristic of classical analytic philosophy thatlogical vocabulary is accorded a privileged role inspecifying these semantic relations. It has always been taken at leastto belicit to appeal to logical vocabulary in elaboratingthe relation betweenanalysandum andanalysans—target vocabulary and basevocabulary—and, according to stronger versions of this thesis,that may be theonly vocabulary it is licit to employ in thatcapacity. I will refer to this aspect of the analytic project as itscommitment to ‘semantic logicism’. (2006, LectureOne, §1) {§6.9}
What I want to call the “classical project of analysis”,then, aims to exhibit the meanings expressed by various targetvocabularies as intelligible by means of the logical elaboration ofthe meanings expressed by base vocabularies thought to be privilegedin some important respects—epistemological, ontological, orsemantic—relative to those others. This enterprise is visible inits purest form in what I have called the “core programs”of empiricism and naturalism, in their various forms. In my view themost significant conceptual development in this tradition—thebiggest thing that ever happened to it—is thepragmatistchallenge to it that was mounted during the middle years of thetwentieth century. Generically, this movement of thought amounts to adisplacement from the center of philosophical attention of the notionofmeaning in favor of that ofuse: in suitablybroad senses of those terms, replacing concern withsemanticsby concern withpragmatics. (Ibid., Lecture One,§2) {§6.9}

Carnap, Rudolf

the analysis or, more precisely, quasi-analysis of an entity that isessentially an indivisible unit into several quasi-constituents meansplacing the entity in several kinship contexts on the basis of akinship relation, where the unit remains undivided. (1928a, §71;English tr. by Rolf A. George slightly altered) {§6.7}
The logical analysis of a particular expression consists in thesetting-up of a linguistic system and the placing of that expressionin this system. (1936, 143) {§6.7}
That part of the work of philosophers which may be held to be scientificin its nature—excluding the empirical questions which can bereferred to empirical science—consists of logical analysis. Theaim of logical syntax is to provide a system of concepts, a language,by the help of which the results of logical analysis will be exactlyformulable.Philosophy is to be replaced by the logic ofscience—that is to say, by the logical analysis of theconcepts and sentences of the sciences, forthe logic of scienceis nothing other than the logical syntax of the language ofscience. (1937, xiii) {§6.7}
The task of making more exact a vague or not quite exact concept used ineveryday life or in an earlier stage of scientific or logicaldevelopment, or rather of replacing it by a newly constructed, moreexact concept, belongs among the most important tasks of logicalanalysis and logical construction. We call this the task ofexplicating, or of giving anexplication for, the earlierconcept … (1947, 8–9) {§6.7}
By the procedure ofexplication we mean the transformation ofan inexact, prescientific concept, theexplicandum, into anew exact concept, theexplicatum. Although the explicandumcannot be given in exact terms, it should be made as clear as possibleby informal explanations and examples. ...
The term ‘explicatum’ has been suggested by the followingtwo usages. Kant calls a judgement explicative if the predicate isobtained by analysis of the subject. Husserl, in speaking about thesynthesis of identification between a confused, nonarticulated senseand a subsequently intended distinct, articulated sense, calls thelatter the ‘Explikat’ of the former. (For both uses seeDictionary of philosophy [1942], ed. D. Runes, p. 105). WhatI mean by ‘explicandum’ and ‘explicatum’ is tosome extent similar to what C.H. Langford calls‘analysandum’ and ‘analysans’: “theanalysis then states an appropriate relation of equivalence betweenthe analysandum and the analysans” [Langford 1942, 323 {§6.4}]; he says that the motive of an analysis “is usually that ofsupplanting a relatively vague idea by a more precise one”(ibid., p. 329).
(Perhaps the form ‘explicans’ might be considered insteadof ‘explicatum’; however, I think that the analogy withthe terms ‘definiendum’ and ‘definiens’ wouldnot be useful because, if the explication consists in giving anexplicit definition, then both the definiens and the definiendum inthis definition express the explicatum, while the explicandum does notoccur.) The procedure of explication is here understood in a widersense than the procedures of analysis and clarification which Kant,Husserl, and Langford have in mind. The explicatum (in my sense) is inmany cases the result of analysis of the explicandum (and this hasmotivated my choice of the terms); in other cases, however, itdeviates deliberately from the explicandum but still takes its placein some way; this will become clear by the subsequent examples. (1950,3) {§6.7}

Cassirer, Ernst

[T]he sense of all objective judgments reduces to a final originalrelation, which can be expressed in different formulations as therelation of “form” to “content”, as therelation of “universal” to “particular”, asthe relation of “validity [Geltung]” to“being [Sein]”. Whatever designation one mayfinally choose here, what is alone decisive is that the basic relationitself is to be retained as a strictlyunitary relation,which can only be designated through the two opposed moments thatenter into it – but never constructed out of them, as if theywere independent constituents present in themselves. The originalrelation is not to be defined in such a way that the“universal” somehow “subsists” next to orabove the “particular” – the form somehow separatefrom the content – so that the two are then melded with oneanother by means of some or another fundamental synthesis ofknowledge. Rather, the unity of mutualdeterminationconstitutes the absolutely first datum, behind which one can go backno further, and which can only be analyzed via the duality of two“viewpoints” in an artificially isolating process ofabstraction. It is the basic flaw of all metaphysical epistemologiesthat they always attempt to reinterpret this duality of“moments” as a duality of “elements”. (1913,13–14; cited and tr. by Friedman 2000, 34) {§5.4}

Cohen, L. Jonathan

conceptual analysis typically relates one kind of reason for using acertain word to another. (1986, 51) {§6.9}
When philosophical analysis proceeds from intuitively sanctionedpremisses to a reasoned conclusion, it may be described as moving fromanalysandum to analysans. It seeks to ensure that any muddles orinconsistencies in our unreasoned inclinations and passive prejudicesare replaced by an explicitly formulated, consciously co-ordinated,adequately reasoned, and freely adopted system of acceptableprinciples. (1986, 96) {§6.9}

Collingwood, R. G.

Socrates was essentially the inventor of a method. ... His revoltagainst the study of nature was essentially a revolt againstobservation in favour of thought; and whereas mathematical method, asan example of thought, had already been discovered by hispredecessors, his own discovery was that a similar method, for whichhe invented an appropriate technique, could be applied to ethicalquestions. This technique, as he himself recognized, depended on aprinciple which is of great importance to any theory of philosophicalmethod: the principle that in a philosophical inquiry what we aretrying to do is not to discover something of which until now we havebeen ignorant, but to know better something which in some sense weknew already; not to know it better in the sense of coming to knowmore about it, but to know it better in the sense of coming to know itin a different and better way—actually instead of potentially,or explicitly instead of implicitly, or in whatever terms the theoryof knowledge chooses to express the difference: the difference itselfhas been a familiar fact ever since Socrates pointed it out. (1933,10–11) {§5.6}
[The] work of disentangling and arranging questions, which ... I[call] analysis, may be alternatively described as the work ofdetecting presuppositions. ... The analysis which detects absolutepresuppositions I call metaphysical analysis; but as regards procedureand the qualifications necessary to carry it out there is nodifference whatever between metaphysical analysis and analysis pureand simple ... (1940, 39–40) {§5.6}
It is only by analysis that any one can ever come to know either thathe is making any absolute presuppositions at all or what absolutepresuppositions he is making.
Such analysis may in certain cases proceed in the following manner. Ifthe inquirer can find a person to experiment upon who is well trainedin a certain type of scientific work, intelligent and earnest in hisdevotion to it, and unaccustomed to metaphysics, let him probe intovarious presuppositions that his ‘subject’ has been taughtto make in the course of his scientific education, and invite him tojustify each or alternatively to abandon it. If the‘inquirer’ is skilful and the ‘subject’ theright kind of man, these invitations will be contemplated withequanimity, and even with interest, so long as relativepresuppositions are concerned. But when an absolute presupposition istouched, the invitation wil be rejected, even with a certain degree ofviolence.
The rejection is a symptom that the ‘subject’,co-operating with the work of analysis, has come to see that thepresupposition he is being asked to justify or abandon is an absolutepresupposition; and the violence with which it is expressed is asymptom that he feels the importance of this absolute presuppositionfor the kind of work to which he is devoted. This is what ... I calledbeing ‘ticklish in one’s absolute presuppositions’;and the reader will see that this ticklishness is a sign ofintellectual health combined with a low degree of analytical skill. Aman who is ticklish in that way is a man who knows,‘instinctively’ as they say, that absolute presuppositionsdo not need justification. (Ibid., 43–4) {§5.6}
metaphysical analysis, the discovery that certain presuppositionsactually made are absolute presuppositions, is an integral part or anindispensable condition, you can put it whichever way you like, of allscientific work.(Ibid., 84) {§5.6}

Dai Zhen

“Pattern” [lǐ] is a term that makesreference to the close examination of things for the subtle and minutecharacteristics that should be distinguished in order to separatethings. This is why it is called “the Pattern for separatingthings” [fēnlǐ 分理]. Whenapplied to concrete materials, it appears in the expressions“the pattern of the folds in the skin”[jīlǐ 理], “the pattern ofcapillary pores” [còulǐ 腠理]and “refined patterns”[wénlǐ 文理].
When things are successfully separated so that the individual strands[tiáo 條] are not intertwined, this is called“WellOrdered”[tiáolǐ 條理].Mengzi declared that “Kongzi is [like] a completeorchestra”, explaining, “it is the work of wisdom to begin[a concert] in Good Order and is the work of the sage to maintain thatGood Order through to the end”. To account for the supremesageliness and wisdom of Kongzi, this description simply holds up his[capacity for] Good Order. (An Evidential Commentary on theMeanings of Terms in the Mengzi, Section 1; tr. Justin Tiwald, inTiwald and Van Norden 2014, 319–20) {§4.7}
The word ‘principle’ [lǐ 理] is a nameassigned to the arrangement of the parts of anything which gives thewhole its distinctive property or characteristic, and which can beobserved by careful examination and analysis of the parts down to theminutest detail. This is why we speak of the principle ofdifferentiation (fen-li). With reference to the substance ofthings, there are such expressions as the principle governing thefibres (ji-li), the principle governing the arrangementbetween skin and flesh (cou-li), and pattern(wen-li). ... When proper differentiation is made, there willbe order without confusion. This is called ‘order andarrangement’ (tiao-li). (An Evidential Commentaryon the Meanings of Terms in the Mengzi, Section 1; tr. in Chinand Freeman 1990, 69; cited in Cheng Chung-yi 2009, 461) {§4.7}
It has been said that there is Han classical learning and there isSong classical learning: the former emphasizes the ancient glosses(gu-xun) and the latter is concerned with [understanding] thereason and meaning [of things] (yi-li). I am greatly puzzledby this statement. If one can understand the reason and meaning [ofthings] by sheer speculation, then anyone can grab them out ofemptiness. If that is so, what can we hope to gain from classicallearning? It is precisely because sheer speculation cannot lead us tothe reason and meaning [of things] as intended by the sages andworthies that one has to seek it from the ancient Classics. Whenseeking from the ancient Classics, we are facing the huge distancebetween the ancient and the present that lies in the texts, and thenwe have to resort to the ancient glosses [so as to fill the distanceup]. Only when the ancient glosses are clear can the Classics beunderstood, and only when the Classics are understood can the reasonand meaning [of things] as intended by the sages and worthies begrasped. (Works of Dai Zhen, 1980, 168; tr. in Chin andFreeman 1990, 12; cited (modified) in Cheng 2009, 460) {§4.7}

Davidson, Donald

In philosophy we are used to definitions, analyses, reductions.Typically these are intended to carry us from concepts betterunderstood, or clear, or more basic epistemologically orontologically, to others we want to understand. The method I havesuggested fits none of these categories. I have proposed a looserrelation between concepts to be illuminated and the relatively morebasic. (‘Radical Interpretation’, 1972,Inquiries intoTruth and Interpretation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001,137)

De Chardin, Teilhard

Unlike the primitives who gave a face to every moving thing, or theearly Greeks who defined all the aspects and forces of nature, modernman is obsessed by the need to depersonalise (or impersonalise) allthat he most admires. There are two reasons for this tendency. Thefirst isanalysis, that marvellous instrument of scientificresearch to which we owe all our advances but which, breaking downsynthesis after synthesis, allows one soul after another to escape,leaving us confronted with a pile of dismantled machinery, andevanescent particles. The second reason lies in the discovery of thesidereal world, so vast that it seems to do away with all proportionbetween our own being and the dimensions of the cosmos around us.(The Phenomenon of Man, 1955, 282; tr. Bernard Wall, Fontana,1965; tr. first publ. 1959)

Derrida, Jacques

Up until now the idea of philosophy remained defined in a formal wayas an idea of an infinite tasktheoria. Could a history ofthis infinite theoretical life, which merges itself in its efforts andfailures with a simplerealization of the self, take on thevalue of a genetic description? Will the history of the“transcendental motive” through all the stages of Europeanphilosophy, enlighten us at last on the genesis of transcendentalsubjectivity? But such a history presupposes the possibility of such agoing backward, the possibility of finding again the originary senseof the former presents as such. It implies the possibility of atranscendental “regression” (Ruckfrage) through ahistory that is intelligible and transparent to consciousness, ahistory whose sedimentations can be unmade and remade withoutalteration. (The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy,The University of Chicago Press, 2003, 161; tr. Marian Hobson)

Descartes, René

[discussing his ‘Rule Four’: “We need a methodif we are to investigate the truth of things”] … thehuman mind has within it a sort of spark of the divine, in which thefirst seeds of useful ways of thinking are sown, seeds which, howeverneglected and stifled by studies which impede them, often bear fruitof their own accord. This is our experience in the simplest ofsciences, arithmetic and geometry: we are well aware that thegeometers of antiquity employed a sort of analysis which they went onto apply to the solution of every problem, though they begrudgedrevealing it to posterity. At the present time a sort of arithmeticcalled ‘algebra’ is flourishing, and this is achieving fornumbers what the ancients did for figures. (Rules for theDirection of the Mind, inPW, I, 16–17) {§4.2}
As for the method of demonstration, this divides into two varieties:the first proceeds by analysis and the second by synthesis.
Analysis shows the true way by means of which the thing in questionwas discovered methodically and as it werea priori, so thatif the reader is willing to follow it and give sufficient attention toall points, he will make the thing his own and understand it just asperfectly as if he had discovered it for himself. But this methodcontains nothing to compel belief in an argumentative or inattentivereader; for if he fails to attend even to the smallest point, he willnot see the necessity of the conclusion. Moreover there are manytruths which — although it is vital to be aware of them —this method often scarcely mentions, since they are transparentlyclear to anyone who gives them his attention.
Synthesis, by contrast, employs a directly opposite method where thesearch is, as it were,a posteriori (though the proof itselfis often morea priori than it is in the analytic method). Itdemonstrates the conclusion clearly and employs a long series ofdefinitions, postulates, axioms, theorems and problems, so that ifanyone denies one of the conclusions it can be shown at once that itis contained in what has gone before, and hence the reader, howeverargumentative or stubborn he may be, is compelled to give his assent.However, this method is not as satisfying as the method of analysis,nor does it engage the minds of those who are eager to learn, since itdoes not show how the thing in question was discovered.
It was synthesis alone that the ancient geometers usually employed intheir writings. But in my view this was not because they were utterlyignorant of analysis, but because they had such a high regard for itthat they kept it to themselves like a sacred mystery.
Now it is analysis which is the best and truest method of instruction,and it was this method alone which I employed in myMeditations. As for synthesis, which is undoubtedly what youare asking me to use here, it is a method which it may be verysuitable to deploy in geometry as a follow-up to analysis, but itcannot so conveniently be applied to these metaphysical subjects.
The difference is that the primary notions which are presupposed forthe demonstration of geometrical truths are readily accepted byanyone, since they accord with the use of our senses. Hence there isno difficulty there, except in the proper deduction of theconsequences, which can be done even by the less attentive, providedthey remember what has gone before. Moreover, the breaking down ofpropositions to their smallest elements is specifically designed toenable them to be recited with ease so that the student recalls themwhether he wants to or not.
In metaphysics by contrast there is nothing which causes so mucheffort as making our perception of the primary notions clear anddistinct. Admittedly, they are by their nature as evident as, or evenmore evident than, the primary notions which the geometers study; butthey conflict with many preconceived opinions derived from the senseswhich we have got into the habit of holding from our earliest years,and so only those who really concentrate and meditate and withdrawtheir minds from corporeal things, so far as is possible, will achieveperfect knowledge of them. Indeed, if they were put forward inisolation, they could easily be denied by those who like to contradictjust for the sake of it. (‘Second Set of Replies’, inPW, II, 110–11) {§4.2}

De Staël, Germaine

Anatomical study cannot be undertaken on a living body withoutdestroying it. Analysis, when one tries to apply it to indivisibletruths, destroys them, because its first attempts are directed againsttheir unity. We need to divide our mind in two so that one half maycontemplate the other. However this division takes place, itdeprives our being of that sublime identity without which we wouldlack sufficient strength to believe in that which consciousness alonecan affirm. (1813, 44)

Euclid

[interpolated into the text of theElements] What is analysisand what is synthesis. Analysis is the assumption of that which issought as if it were admitted [and the arrival] by means of itsconsequences at something admitted to be true. Synthesis is anassumption of that which is admitted [and the arrival] by means of itsconsequences at something admitted to be true. (E, Book XIII,Prop. 1; Vol. III, 442, where Heath comments on the interpolation) {§2.2}

Fazang

Explaining the Emptiness of Appearances
This means that the characteristic of the lion is empty. There isreally only gold. There is no lion present. The Substance of the goldis never absent. This is the doctrine of “the emptiness ofappearances”. Nonetheless, the emptiness has no characteristicof its own. It requires the appearance in order to become apparent.This does not prevent appearances from having an illusory existence,which is called “the emptiness of appearances”.
(Fazang, ‘Essay on the Golden Lion’, tr. by Bryan W. VanNorden, in Tiwald and Van Norden 2014, 87.)
To recap, wholeness is the building; particularity is the conditions.Identity is [building and conditions] not opposing each other.Difference is each condition considered separately. Integration is theresult of the various conditions. Disintegration is each maintainingits own character. Alternatively, put in verse:
That the one is identical with the many is called wholeness.
That the many are not the same as the one is called particularity.
The various kinds are identical in constituting the whole.
Each has its particular difference manifested in the identity.
The wondrous integration is the Pattern of the dependent originationof one and many.
Disintegration is that each resides in its own character and does notcreate the whole.
This belongs to the sphere of wisdom, not discriminatoryconsciousness.
Through this expedient device one understands the one vehicle [ofHuayan].
(Fazang, ‘The Rafter Dialogue’, tr. by David Elstein, inTiwald and Van Norden 2014, 86.)

Frege, Gottlob

[In replying to the objections that Husserl had raised in hisPhilosophie der Arithmetik (1891) to Frege’sGrundlagen definitions] If words and combinations of wordsrefer to [bedeuten] ideas, then for any two of them there areonly two possibilities: either they designate the same idea or theydesignate different ideas. In the former case it is pointless toequate them by means of a definition: this is ‘an obviouscircle’; in the latter case it is wrong. These are also theobjections the author raises, one of them regularly. A definition isalso incapable of analysing the sense, for the analysed sense just isnot the original one. In using the word to be explained, I eitherthink clearly everything I think when I use the defining expression:we then have the ‘obvious circle’; or the definingexpression has a more richly articulated sense, in which case I do notthink the same thing in using it as I do in using the word to beexplained: the definition is then wrong. One would think that adefinition was unobjectionable in the case where the word to beexplained had as yet no sense at all, or where we were askedexplicitly to regard its sense as non-existent so that it was firstgiven a sense by the definition. But in the last case too, the authorrefutes the definition by reminding us of the difference between theideas (p. 107). To evade all objections, one would accordingly have tocreate a new verbal root and form a word out of it. This reveals asplit between psychological logicians and mathematicians. What mattersto the former is the sense of the words, as well as the ideas whichthey fail to distinguish from the sense; whereas what matters to thelatter is the thing itself: theBedeutung of the words. Thereproach that what is defined is not the concept but its extensionactually affects all mathematical definitions. For the mathematician,it is no more right and no more wrong to define a conic as the line ofintersection of a plane with the surface of a circular cone than todefine it as a plane curve with an equation of the second degree inparallel coordinates. His choice of one or the other of theseexpressions or of some other one is guided solely by reasons ofconvenience and is made irrespective of the fact that the expressionshave neither the same sense nor evoke the same ideas. I do not intendby this that a concept and its extension are one and the same, butthat coincidence in extension is a necessary and sufficient criterionfor the occurrence between concepts of the relation that correspondsto identity [Gleichheit] between objects. (RH,319–20/FR, 225–6) {§6.2}
We come todefinitions. Definitions proper must bedistinguished fromelucidations[Erläuterungen]. In the first stages of any disciplinewe cannot avoid the use of ordinary words. But these words are, forthe most part, not really appropriate for scientific purposes, becausethey are not precise enough and fluctuate in their use. Science needstechnical terms that have precise and fixedBedeutungen, andin order to come to an understanding about theseBedeutungenand exclude possible misunderstandings, we provide elucidations. Ofcourse in so doing we have again to use ordinary words, and these maydisplay defects similar to those which the elucidations are intendedto remove. So it seems that we shall then have to provide furtherelucidations. Theoretically one will never really achieve one’sgoal in this way. In practice, however, we do manage to come to anunderstanding about theBedeutungen of words. Of course wehave to be able to count on a meeting of minds, on others’guessing what we have in mind. But all this precedes the constructionof a system and does not belong within a system. In constructing asystem it must be assumed that the words have preciseBedeutungen and that we know what they are. (LM,224/FR, 313) {§6.2}
We have ... to distinguishtwo quite different cases:
1. We construct a sense out of its constituents and introduce anentirely new sign to express this sense. This may be called a‘constructive definition’ [‘aufbauendeDefinition’], but we prefer to call it a‘definition’tout court.
2. We have a simple sign with a long-established use. We believe thatwe can give a logical analysis [Zerlegung] of its sense,obtaining a complex expression which in our opinion has the samesense. We can only allow something as a constituent of a complexexpression if it has a sense we recognize. The sense of the complexexpression must be yielded by the way in which it is put together.That it agrees with the sense of the long established simple sign isnot a matter for arbitrary stipulation, but can only be recognized byan immediate insight. No doubt we speak of a definition in this casetoo. It might be called an ‘analytic definition’[‘zerlegende Definition’] to distinguish it fromthe first case. But it is better to eschew the word‘definition’ altogether in this case, because what weshould here like to call a definition is really to be regarded as anaxiom. In this second case there remains no room for an arbitrarystipulation, because the simple sign already has a sense. Only a signwhich as yet has no sense can have a sense arbitrarily assigned to it.So we shall stick to our original way of speaking and call only aconstructive definition a definition. According to that a definitionis an arbitrary stipulation which confers a sense on a simple signwhich previously had none. This sense has, of course, to be expressedby a complex sign whose sense results from the way it is puttogether.
Now we still have to consider the difficulty we come up against ingiving a logical analysis when it is problematic whether this analysisis correct.
Let us assume thatA is the long-established sign(expression) whose sense we have attempted to analyse logically byconstructing a complex expression that gives the analysis. Since weare not certain whether the analysis is successful, we are notprepared to present the complex expression as one which can bereplaced by the simple signA. If it is our intention to putforward a definition proper, we are not entitled to choose the signA, which already has a sense, but we must choose a fresh signB, say, which has the sense of the complex expression only invirtue of the definition. The question now is whetherA andB have the same sense. But we can bypass this questionaltogether if we are constructing a new system from the bottom up; inthat case we shall make no further use of the signA –we shall only useB. We have introduced the signBto take the place of the complex expression in question by arbitraryfiat and in this way we have conferred a sense on it. This is adefinition in the proper sense, namely a constructive definition.
If we have managed in this way to construct a system for mathematicswithout any need for the signA, we can leave the matterthere; there is no need at all to answer the question concerning thesense in which – whatever it may be – this sign had beenused earlier. In this way we court no objections. However, it may befelt expedient to use signA instead of signB. Butif we do this, we must treat it as an entirely new sign which had nosense prior to the definition. We must therefore explain that thesense in which this sign was used before the new system wasconstructed is no longer of any concern to us, that its sense is to beunderstood purely from the constructive definition that we have given.In constructing the new system we can take no account, logicallyspeaking, of anything in mathematics that existed prior to the newsystem. Everything has to be made anew from the ground up. Evenanything that we may have accomplished by our analytical activities isto be regarded only as preparatory work which does not itself make anyappearance in the new system itself.
Perhaps there still remains a certain unclarity. How is it possible,one may ask, that it should be doubtful whether a simple sign has thesame sense as a complex expression if we know not only the sense ofthe simple sign, but can recognize the sense of the complex one fromthe way it is put together? The fact is that if we really do have aclear grasp of the sense of the simple sign, then it cannot bedoubtful whether it agrees with the sense of the complex expression.If this is open to question although we can clearly recognize thesense of the complex expression from the way it is put together, thenthe reason must lie in the fact that we do not have a clear grasp ofthe sense of the simple sign, but that its outlines are confused as ifwe saw it through a mist. The effect of the logical analysis of whichwe spoke will then be precisely this – to articulate the senseclearly. Work of this kind is very useful; it does not, however, formpart of the construction of the system, but must take placebeforehand. Before the work of construction is begun, the buildingstones have to be carefully prepared so as to be usable; i.e. thewords, signs, expressions, which are to be used, must have a clearsense, so far as a sense is not to be conferred on them in the systemitself by means of a constructive definition.
We stick then to our original conception:a definition is anarbitrary stipulation by which a new sign is introduced to takethe place of a complex expression whose sense we know from the way itis put together. A sign which hitherto had no sense acquires the senseof a complex expression by definition. (LM,227–9/FR, 317–8) {§6.2}

Ganeri, Jonardon

Whereas in Europe the emergence of the new philosophy was inextricablyinterwoven with the emergence of natural science, in India this wasnot so. The failure to appreciate that the two developments arenevertheless distinct is another important reason why there has notbeen a proper diagnosis of early modernity in the philosophy.Generally speaking, what we can say is that early modern forms ofphilosophical inquiry in India are governed by data drawn from logicalform and linguistic practice rather than the microscope and distalobservation of natural phenomenon. Philosophy in early modern Indiamade the discipline rest instead on the sort of linguistic turn thatcharacterized, much later, the origins of analytical philosophy inEuropean thought. Bearing this point in mind, it is no surprise thatprofound affinities should have been discovered between early moderntheory in India and twentieth century analytical philosophy. (2011, 6) {§4.6}

Gautama

The highest good is reached through an understanding of the truenature of [the distinction between] honest, dishonest and destructivedebate, of false reasoning, tricks and checks in debate, of [thepattern of sound investigation, whose components are] doubt, purpose,examples, assumed principles, syllogisms, suppositional reasoning anddecision, and [initially] of the ways of gaining knowledge and theknowables. (Cited in Ganeri 2011, 122) {§4.6}

Geertz, Clifford

Analysis … is sorting out the structures of signification… and determining their social ground and import. (TheInterpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, 1973, 9)

Cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessingthe guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the betterguesses, not discovering the Continent of Meaning and mapping out itsbodiless landscape. (Ibid., 20)

Günderrode, Karoline von

Now, when a person is dead, their mixture returns to the substance of theearth...But once these elements have been driven to life in theorganism, they become different from what they were before theyentered into this organic connection. They have become livelier andincrease the earth's life in returning to the earth, like two who haveincreased their strength in long struggle are now stronger when thestruggle has ended than they were before. (GSW, 447;IE, 82)

Hegel, Georg W.F.

Theanalysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, was,in fact, nothing else than ridding it of the form in which it hadbecome familiar. To break an idea up into its original elements is toreturn to its moments, which at least do not have the form of thegiven idea, but rather constitute the immediate property of the self.This analysis, to be sure, only arrives atthoughts which arethemselves familiar, fixed, and inert determinations. But what is thusseparated and non-actual is an essential moment; for it isonly because the concrete does divide itself, and make itself intosomething non-actual, that it is self-moving. The activity ofdissolution is the power and work of theUnderstanding, themost astonishing and mightiest of powers, or rather the absolutepower. The circle that remains self-enclosed and, like substance,holds its moments together, is an immediate relationship, onetherefore which has nothing astonishing about it. But that an accidentas such, detached from what circumscribes it, what is bound and isactual only in its context with others, should attain an existence ofits own and a separate freedom—this is the tremendous power ofthe negative; it is the energy of thought, of the pure‘I’. Death, if that is what we want to call thisnon-actuality, is of all things the most dreadful, and to hold fastwhat is dead requires the greatest strength. Lacking strength, Beautyhates the Understanding for asking of her what it cannot do. But thelife of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keepsitself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures itand maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utterdismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as somethingpositive, which closes its eyes to the negative, as when we say ofsomething that it is nothing or is false, and then, having done withit, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, Spiritis this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarryingwith it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power thatconverts it into being. This power is identical with what we earliercalled the Subject, which by giving determinateness an existence inits own element supersedes abstract immediacy, i.e. the immediacywhich barely is, and thus is authentic substance: that being orimmediacy whose mediation is not outside of it but which is thismediation itself. (PS, ‘Preface’, §32,18–19)
[Summary of above passage offered by J.N. Findlay] The analysis of anidea is the removal of its familiarity, its reduction to elements thatare the true possessions of the thinking self. In such reduction theidea itself changes and renders itself unreal. The force which effectsanalysis is that of the Understanding, the most remarkable andabsolute of powers, the power of the thinking self and also of death.It is above all marvellous that this thinking self should be able toisolate, and to look at apart, what can only exist as an aspect or‘moment’ in a living whole. Thinking Spirit can, however,only grasp such a whole by first tearing it into parts, each of whichit must look at separately for a while, before putting them back inthe whole. The thinking self must destroy an immediate, existent unityin order to arrive at a unity which includes mediation, and is in factmediation itself. (‘Analysis of the Text’, §32, inPS, 499) {§5.2}

Heidegger, Martin

What we are trying to bring to light here by means of phenomenologicalanalysis in regard to the intentional structure of production is notcontrived and fabricated but already present in the everyday,pre-philosophical productive behaviour of the Dasein. In producing,the Dasein lives in such an understanding of being without conceivingit or grasping it as such. (1927, §12, 114–15) {§5.8}

Hobbes, Thomas

every method by which we investigate the causes of things is eithercompositive, or resolutive, or partly compositive, partly resolutive.And the resolutive is usually called analytic, while the compositiveis usually called synthetic. (Logica, ‘OnMethod’, §1, 289) {§4.1}
What philosophers seek to know. Philosophers seek scientificknowledge either simply or indefinitely, that is, they seek to know asmuch as they can when no definite question is proposed or the cause ofsome definite phenomenon or at least to discover something definite,such as what the cause of light is, or of heat, or gravity, of afigure which has been proposed, and similar things; or in what subjectsome proposed accident inheres; or which of many accidents is aboveall conducive to the production of some proposed effect; or in whatway particular proposed causes ought to be conjoined in order toproduce a definite effect. Because of the variety of the things soughtfor, sometimes the analytic method, sometimes the synthetic method,and sometimes both ought to be applied.
The first part, by which principles are found, is purelyanalytic. Seeing that the causes of all singulars are composedfrom the causes of universals or simples, it is necessary for thosewho are looking simply for scientific knowledge, which consists of theknowledge of the causes of all things insofar as this can be achieved,to know the causes of universals or those accidents which are commonto all bodies, that is, to every material thing, before they know thecauses of singular things, that is, of the accidents by which onething is distinguished from another. Again, before the causes of thosethings can be known, it is necessary to know which things areuniversals. But since universals are contained in the nature ofsingular things, they must be unearthed by reason, that is, byresolution. For example, let any conception or idea of a singularthing be proposed, say a square. The square is resolved into:plane, bounded by a certain number of lines equal to one another,and right angles. Therefore we have these universals orcomponents of every material thing:line, plane (in which asurface is contained),being bounded, angle, rectitude, andequality. If anyone finds the causes or origin of these, hewill put them together as the cause of the square. Again, if heproposes to himself the conception of gold, the ideas of being solid,visible, and heavy (that is, of tending to the center of the earth orof motion downwards) and many others more universal than gold itself,which can be resolved further until one arrives at the most universal,will come from this by resolution. And by this same method ofresolving things into other things one will know what those thingsare, of which, when their causes are known what those things are, ofwhich, when their causes are known and composed one by one, the causesof all singular things are known. We thus conclude that the method ofinvestigating the universal notions of things is purely analytic.(Ibid., §§ 3–4, 291–5) {§4.1}
The method of scientific knowledge, civil as well as natural,[starting] from sense-experience and [going] to principles isanalytic; while [starting] from principles is synthetic.(Ibid., §7, 301) {§4.1}
it is obvious that in the investigation of causes there is a needpartly for the analytic method, partly for the synthetic method. Theanalytic method is needed for understanding the circumstances of theeffect one by one; the synthetic method for putting together thosethings which, single in themselves, act as one. (Ibid.,§10, 311) {§4.1}
that art of geometers which they call logistic is ... the methodaccording to which by supposing that the thing asked about is truethey come upon in reasoning either things known [to be true], fromwhich they can prove the truth of the thing sought, or [they comeupon] impossibilities, from which it can be understood that what wassupposed [to be true] was false. (Ibid., §19, 329) {§4.1}

Hodges, Wilfrid

[Logical analysis] stands somewhere between translating andparaphrasing. (Logic, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977, 86)

Holton, Gerald

The terms “analysis” and “synthesis” bring tomind, on the one hand, certain methodological practices in the worksof Plato, Descartes, Newton, Kant, Hegel, and others and, on the otherhand, techniques in fields as disparate as chemistry and logic,mathematics and psychology. The width of this spectrum of associationsalerts us to the realization that at the base of these two relatedterms there lies a specific methodological thema-antithema ... pair.Indeed, it is one of the most pervasive and fundamental ones, inscience and outside. This chapter attempts to uncover and identifythis thematic content, to clarify the meanings and uses of the terms“analysis” and “synthesis”, and especially todistinguish among four general meanings: (1) Analysis and Synthesis,and particularly synthesis, used in the grand,culturalsense, (2) Analysis and Synthesis used in thereconstitutional sense (e.g., where an analysis, followed bya synthesis, re-establishes the original condition), (3) Analysis andSynthesis used in thetransformational sense (e.g., where theapplication of Analysis and Synthesis advances one to a qualitativelynew level), and (4) Analysis and Synthesis used in thejudgmental sense (as in the Kantian categories and theirmodern critiques). (1998, 111) {§5.5}

Husserl, Edmund

The point of view of function is the central one for phenomenology;the investigations radiating from it comprise almost the wholephenomenological sphere, and in the end all phenomenological analysessomehow enter into its service as component parts or preliminarystages. In place of analysis and comparison, description andclassification restricted to particular experiences[Erlebnisse], the particulars are considered from the“teleological” point of view of their function, to makepossible “synthetic unity”. (IPP, I, §86;Kersten’s tr. modified) {§5.8}
Explication is penetration of the internal horizon of the objectby the direction of perceptual interest. In the case of theunobstructed realization of this interest, the protentionalexpectations fulfill themselves in the same way; the object revealsitself in its properties as that which it was anticipated to be,except that what was anticipated now attains original givenness. Amore precise determination results, eventually perhaps partialcorrections, or—in the case of obstruction—disappointmentof the expectations, and partial modalization. (EJ, §22,105) {§5.8}
The process of explication in its originality is that in which anobject given at first hand is brought to explicit intuition. Theanalysis of its structure must bring to light how atwofoldconstitution of sense [Sinngebung] is realized in it:“object as substrate” and “determination α...”; it must show how this constitution of sense is realized inthe form of a process which goes forward in separate steps, throughwhich, however, extends continuously aunity ofcoincidence—a unity of coincidence of a special kind,belonging exclusively to these sense-forms. (EJ, §24a,114) {§5.8}

Ibn Rushd, Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad

What we carry out by means of these topoi, inasmuchas they are instruments, proceeds in the following way: we placebefore our consideration all the topoi when weexamine a given quaesitum; then we analysethis quaesitum into its predicate and its subjectand we review inductively each ofthe topoi intended for establishing or refuting it.If we find this quaesitum falling under one ofthe topoi, we have there and then found the syllogismwhich allows us to establish or refute it. Indeed it is from thisaction that this part of logic is called “analysis”.(SL, §6) {3.3}

Ibn Sinān, Ibrāhim

Analysis is the inquiry [directed] towards finding the premissesfrom which the quaesitum follows, on condition thatthey include a middle term which shows that the analyst, when hereaches the goal of his analysis, has found the premisses by means ofthe analysis and accomplished what Aristotle inhis Analytics called the acquisition of thepremisses. When he has found the premisses in his analysis their termsare necessarily, for [analyst], existent, known and identifiable. Inthe analysis one must therefore name the terms, identify and describethem. {§3.3}

Kant, Immanuel

§1. MATHEMATICS ARRIVES AT ALL ITS DEFINITIONS SYNTHETICALLY,WHEREAS PHILOSOPHY ARRIVES AT ITS DEFINITIONS ANALYTICALLY
There are two ways in which one can arrive at a general concept:either by thearbitrary combination of concepts, or byseparating out that cognition which has been rendereddistinct by means of analysis. Mathematics only ever draws up itsdefinitions in the first way. For example, think arbitrarily of fourstraight lines bounding a plane surface so that the opposite sides arenot parallel to each other. Let this figure be called atrapezium. The concept which I am defining is not given priorto the definition itself; on the contrary, it only comes intoexistence as a result of that definition. Whatever the concept of acone may ordinarily signify, in mathematics, the concept is theproduct of the arbitrary representation of a right-angled trianglewhich is rotated on one of its sides. In this and in all other casesthe definition obviously comes into being as a result ofsynthesis.
The situation is entirely different in the case of philosophicaldefinitions. In philosophy, the concept of a thing is always given,albeit confusedly or in an insufficiently determinate fashion. Theconcept has to be analysed; the characteristic marks which have beenseparated out and the concept which has been given have to be comparedwith each other in all kinds of contexts; and this abstract thoughtmust be rendered complete and determinate. For example, everyone has aconcept of time. But suppose that that concept has to be defined. Theidea of time has to be examined in all kinds of relation if itscharacteristic marks which have been abstracted have to be combinedtogether to see whether they yield an adequate concept; they have tobe collated with each other to see whether one characteristic markdoes not partly include another within itself. If, in this case, I hadtried to arrive at a definition of time synthetically, it would havehad to have been a happy coincidence indeed if the concept, thusreached synthetically, had been exactly the same as that whichcompletely expresses the idea of time which is given to us.(IDP, 2: 276–7/TP, 248–9) {§4.5}
The true method of metaphysics is basically the same as thatintroduced byNewton into natural science and which has beenof such benefit to it.Newton’s method maintains thatone ought, on the basis of certain experience and, if need be, withthe help of geometry, to seek out the rules in accordance with whichcertain phenomena of nature occur. (IDP, 2: 286/TP,259) {§4.5}
What I am chiefly concerned to establish is this: in metaphysics onemust proceed analytically throughout, for the business of metaphysicsis actually the analysis of confused cognitions. If this procedure iscompared with the procedure which is adopted by philosophers and whichis currently in vogue in all schools of philosophy, one will be struckby how mistaken the practice of philosophers is. With them, the mostabstracted concepts, at which the understanding naturally arrives lastof all, constitute their starting point, and the reason is that themethod of the mathematicians, which they wish to imitate throughout,is firmly fixed in their minds. This is why there is a strangedifference to be found between metaphysics and all other sciences. Ingeometry and in the other branches of mathematics, one starts withwhat is easier and then one slowly advances to the more difficultoperations. In metaphysics, one starts with what is the mostdifficult: one starts with possibility, with existence in general,with necessity and contingency, and so on – all of them conceptswhich demand great abstraction and close attention. And the reason forthis is to be sought chiefly in the fact that the signs for theseconcepts undergo numerous and imperceptible modifications in use; andthe differences between them must not be overlooked. One is told thatone ought to proceed synthetically throughout. Definitions are thusset up right at the beginning, and conclusions are confidently drawnfrom them. Those who practise philosophy in this vein congratulateeach other for having learnt the secret of thorough thought from thegeometers. What they do not notice at all is the fact that geometersacquire their concepts by means ofsynthesis, whereasphilosophers can only acquire their concepts by means ofanalysis – and that completely changes the method ofthought. ...
Metaphysics has a long way to go yet before it can proceedsynthetically. It will only be when analysis has helped us towardsconcepts which are understood distinctly and in detail that it will bepossible for synthesis to subsume compound cognitions under thesimplest cognition, as happens in mathematics. (IDP, 2:289–90/TP, 262–3) {§4.5}
Such a system of pure (speculative) reason I hope myself to deliverunder the titleMetaphysics of Nature, which will benot half so extensive but will be incomparably richer in content thanthis critique, which had first to display the sources and conditionsof its possibility, and needed to clear and level a ground that wascompletely overgrown. Here I expect from my reader the patience andimpartiality of ajudge, but there I will expect thecooperative spirit and assistance of afellow worker;for however completely theprinciples of the systemmay be expounded in the critique, the comprehensiveness of the systemitself requires also that noderivative conceptsshould be lacking, which, however, cannot be estimatedapriori in one leap, but must be gradually sought out; likewise,just as in the former the wholesynthesis of conceptshas been exhausted, so in the latter it would be additionally demandedthat the same thing should take place in respect of theiranalysis, which would be easy and more entertainmentthan labor. (CPR, Axxi) {§4.5}
I understand by an analytic of concepts not their analysis, or theusual procedure of philosophical investigations, that of analyzing[zergliedern] the content of concepts that present themselvesand bringing them to distinctness, but rather the much less frequentlyattemptedanalysis [Zergliederung] of the faculty ofunderstanding itself, in order to research the possibility ofa priori concepts by seeking them only in the understandingas their birthplace and analyzing its pure use in general; for this isthe proper business of a transcendental philosophy; the rest is thelogical treatment of concepts in philosophy in general. We willtherefore pursue the pure concepts into their first seeds andpredispositions in the human understanding, where they lie ready,until with the opportunity of experience they are finally developedand exhibited in their clarity by the very same understanding,liberated from the empirical conditions attaching to them.(CPR, A65–6/B90–1) {§4.5}
[in offering a refutation of Mendelssohn’s proof of thepersistence of the soul] If we take the above propositions in asynthetic connection, as valid for all thinkingbeings, as they must be taken in rational psychology as a system, andif from the category of relation, starting with the proposition“All thinking beings are, as such, substances” we gobackward through the series of propositions until the circle closes,then we finally come up against the existence of thinking beings,which in this system are conscious of themselves not only asindependent of external things but also as being able to determinethemselves from themselves (in regard to the persistence belongingnecessarily to the character of a substance). But from this it followsthatidealism, at least problematic idealism, isunavoidable in that same rationalistic system, and if the existence ofexternal things is not at all required for the determination ofone’s own existence in time, then such things are only assumed,entirely gratuitously, without a proof of them being able to begiven.
If, on the contrary, we follow theanalyticprocedure, grounded on the “I think” given as aproposition that already includes existence in itself, and hencegrounded on modality, and then we take it apart so as to cognize itscontent, whether and how this I determines its existence in space ortime merely through it, then the propositions of the rational doctrineof the soul begin not from the concept of a thinking being in generalbut from an actuality; and from the way this is thought, aftereverything empirical has been detached from it, it is concluded whatpertains to a thinking being in general ... (CPR,B416–19) {§4.5}
Give a philosopher the concept of a triangle, and let him try to find outin his way how the sum of its angles might be related to a rightangle. He has nothing but the concept of a figure enclosed by threestraight lines, and in it the concept of equally many angles. Now hemay reflect on this concept as long as he wants, yet he will neverproduce anything new. He can analyze [zergliedern] and makedistinct the concept of a straight line, or of an angle, or of thenumber three, but he will not come upon any other properties that donot already lie in these concepts. But now let the geometer take upthis question. He begins at once to construct a triangle. Since heknows that two right angles together are exactly equal to all of theadjacent angles that can be drawn at one point on a straight line, heextends one side of his triangle, and obtains two adjacent angles thattogether are equal to two right ones. Now he divides the external oneof these angles by drawing a line parallel to the opposite side of thetriangle, and sees that here there arises an external adjacent anglewhich is equal to an internal one, etc. In such a way, through a chainof inferences that is always guided by intuition, he arrives at afully illuminating and at the same time general solution of thequestion. (CPR, A716–7/B744–5) {§4.5}
But although a mere plan that might precede the Critique of PureReason would be unintelligible, undependable, and useless,it is by contrast all the more useful if it comes after. For one willthereby be put in the position to survey the whole, to test one by onethe main points at issue in the science, and to arrange many things inthe exposition better than could be done in the first execution of thework.

Here then is such a plan subsequent to thecompleted work, which now can be laid out according tothe analytic method, whereasthe work itself absolutely had to be composedaccording to the synthetic method, so that the sciencemight present all of its articulations, as the structural organizationof a quite peculiar capacity of cognition, in their naturalconnection. (PFM, 4: 263; translation modified)
In theCritique of Pure Reason I worked on this question [Ismetaphysics possible at all?]synthetically, namely byinquiring within pure reason itself, and seeking to determine withinthis source both the elements and the laws of its pure use, accordingto principles. This work is difficult and requires a resolute readerto think himself little by little into a system that takes nofoundation as given except reason itself, and that therefore tries todevelop cognition out of its original seeds without relying on anyfact whatever.Prolegomena should by contrast be preparatoryexercises; they ought more to indicate what needs to be done in orderto bring a science into existence if possible, than to present thescience itself. They must therefore rely on something already known tobe dependable, from which we can go forward with confidence and ascendto the sources, which are not yet known, and whose discovery not onlywill explain what is known already, but will also exhibit an area withmany cognitions that all arise from these same sources. Themethodological procedure of prolegomena, and especially of those thatare to prepare for a future metaphysics, will therefore beanalytic. (PFM, 4: 274–5/ 25–6) {§4.5}

Lakatos, Imre

[interpreting the method of analysis in ancient Greek geometry] Ruleof analysis and synthesis:Draw conclusions from your conjecture,one after the other, assuming that it is true. If you reach a falseconclusion, then your conjecture was false. If you reach anindubitably true conclusion, your conjecture may have been true. Inthis case reverse the process, work backwards, and try to deduce youroriginal conjecture via the inverse route from the indubitable truthto the dubitable conjecture. If you succeed, you have proved yourconjecture. (1978a, 72–3) {§2.2}

Lambert, Johann Heinrich

If a proposition is to be proven, it occurs according to either theanalytic or synthetic method, which are already defined in almost alllogics. According to the analytic method, one starts with aproposition. One proves it through a syllogism. If the premises arenot axioms, they must be proved through new conclusions until onefinally arrives at nothing but axioms, definitions, and experiences.If this happens, one considers the proposition proved. According tothe synthetic method, by contrast, one starts with definitions,principles, and experiences and derives the proof of the propositionin question from them. The inferences are the same in both methods,and the difference lies exclusively in the order, which is completelyreversed. (1761, §28)

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm

Synthesis is when, beginning from principles and running through truths inorder, we discover certain progressions and form tables, as it were,or sometimes even general formulae, in which the answers to whatarises later can be discovered. Analysis, however, goes back toprinciples solely for the sake of a given problem, just as if nothinghad been discovered previously, by ourselves or by others. It isbetter to produce a synthesis, since that work is of permanent value,whereas when we begin an analysis on account of particular problems weoften do what has been done before. However, to use a synthesis whichhas been established by others, and theorems which have already beendiscovered, is less of an art than to do everything by oneself bycarrying out an analysis; especially as what has been discovered byothers, or even by ourselves, does not always occur to us or come tohand. There are two kinds of analysis: one is the common typeproceeding by leaps, which is used in algebra, and the other is aspecial kind which I call ‘reductive’. This is much moreelegant, but is less well-known. In practice, analysis is morenecessary, so that we may solve the problems which are presented tous; but the man who can indulge in theorising will be content topractice analysis just far enough to master the art. For the rest, hewill rather practise synthesis, and will apply himself readily only tothose questions to which order itself leads him. For in this way hewill always progress pleasantly and easily, and will never feel anydifficulties, nor be disappointed of success, and in a short time hewill achieve much more than he would ever have hoped for at theoutset. (USA, 16–17) {§4.4}
Primary truths are those which either state a term of itself, or deny anopposite of its opposite. For example, ‘A is A’, or‘A is not not-A’ ...
All other truths are reduced to primary truths by the aid ofdefinitions—i.e. by the analysis of notions; and thisconstitutesa priori proof, independent of experience....
The predicate or consequent, therefore, is always in the subject orantecedent, and this constitutes the nature of truth in general, or,the connexion between the terms of a proposition, as Aristotle alsohas observed. In identities this connexion and inclusion of thepredicate in the subject is express, whereas in all other truths it isimplicit and must be shown through the analysis of notions, in whicha priori demonstration consists. (PT, 87–8) {§4.4}
There are two kinds oftruths, those ofreason and thoseoffact. Truths of reason are necessary and their opposite isimpossible; truths of fact are contingent and their opposite ispossible. When a truth is necessary, its reason can be found byanalysis, resolving it into simpler ideas and truths, until we come tothose that are primitive. (M, §33; tr. R. Latta) {§4.4}

Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph

Our whole philosophy is rectification of colloquial linguistic usage.(Aphorisms, 115) {§4.5}
Writing is an excellent means of awakening in every man the systemslumbering within him; and everyone who has ever written will havediscovered that writing always awakens something which, though it laywithin us, we failed clearly to recognize before. (Ibid.,119) {§4.5}
Whichever way you look at it, philosophy is always analyticalchemistry. The peasant employs all the propositions of the mostabstract philosophy, only he employs them enveloped, concealed,compounded, latent, as the chemist and physicist says; the philosophergives us the propositions pure. (Ibid., 162) {§4.5}

Locke, John

There are thereforethree ways whereby we get the complexIdeasof mixed Modes. 1. By Experience andObservation of things themselves. Thus by seeing two Menwrestle, or fence, we get theIdea of wrestling or fencing.2. ByInvention, or voluntary putting together of severalsimpleIdeas in our own Minds: So he that first inventedPrinting, or Etching, had anIdea of it in his Mind, beforeit ever existed. 3. Which is the most usual way, byexplaining thenames of Actions we never saw, or Notions we cannot see; and byenumerating, and thereby, as it were, setting before our Imaginationsall thoseIdeas which go to the making them up, and are theconstituent parts of them. For having bySensation andReflection stored our Minds with simpleIdeas, andby use got the Names, that stand for them, we can by those Namesrepresent to another any complexIdea, we would have himconceive; so that it has in it no simpleIdea, but what heknows, and has, with us, the same name for. For all our complexIdeas are ultimately resolvable into simpleIdeas,of which they are compounded, and originally made up, though perhapstheir immediate Ingredients, as I may so say, are also complexIdeas. Thus themixed Mode, which the wordLye stands for, is made of these simpleIdeas: 1.Articulate Sounds. 2. CertainIdeas in the Mind of theSpeaker. 3. Those words the signs of thoseIdeas. 4. Thosesigns put together by affirmation or negation, otherwise than theIdeas they stand for, are in the mind of the Speaker. I thinkI need not go any farther in theAnalysis of that complexIdea, we call aLye: What I havesaid is enough to shew, that it is made up of simpleIdeas:And it could not be an offensive tediousness to my Reader, to troublehim with a more minute enumeration of every particular simpleIdea, that goes to this complex one; which, from what hasbeen said, he cannot but be able to make out to himself. The same maybe done in all our complexIdeas whatsoever; which howevercompounded, and decompounded, may at last be resolved into simpleIdeas, which are all the Materials of Knowledge or Thought wehave or can have. (Essay, II, xxii, 9) {§4.3}

Lodge, David

Analysis has a way of unravelling the self: the longer you pull on thethread, the more flaws you find. (Therapy, London, 31)

Matilal, Bimal Krishna

It is commonplace in logic to talk about the analysis of propositions.In the context of logic in Sanskrit, we have to talk about theanalysis of Sanskrit propositions. A Sanskrit proposition is what isexpressed in a Sanskrit sentence. It will appear that the analysisproposed by the early Sanskrit writers would not be entirelyunfamiliar to one accustomed to the usual subject-predicate analysisof modern or traditional Western logic, nor is it unrelated to it.However, the logical as well as grammatical analysis of Sanskritsentences presents some significant contrasts with the usualsubject-predicate analysis. Unless these points of contrast are noted,it will be difficult to appreciate fully some of the concerns of theSanskrit logicians.
A sentence in Sanskrit is regarded as the expression of a“thought” or what is called a cognitive state(jñāna), or, to be precise, a qualificativecognitive state (viśiṣṭa-jñāna).A simple qualificative cognitive state is one where the cognizercognizes something (or some place or some locus, as we will have tocall it) asqualified by a property or a qualifier. It isclaimed by most Sanskrit writers that to say that something or someplace is qualified by a qualifier is equivalent to saying that it is alocus of some property or “locatable”. (1998,201–2)
In a specific sense, the philosophy of language was part of Indianphilosophical activity from the beginning of its history. One reasonwas to recognize the Scriptures’(Vedas’)authority in certain areas of our belief system. The Indians do notalways talk about ‘revelation’ in the way it is understoodin the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The Scriptures were regarded bytradition as embodying certain truths derived from the supposedly‘revealed’ insights of the sages called‘seers’ (=rṣi).Veda thus means abody of knowledge, in fact, a source or ‘means’ ofknowledge. The Scriptures are in fact a body of statements. Thislinguistic nature of the Scriptures (in the case of the Buddhists, thedialogues of the Buddha fulfil the same purpose, and the same is trueof Jainism and Mahāvīra) reveals gradually the fact thatlanguage or ‘verbal testimony’ is an important source ofknowledge, like perception and inference. This has led to the generalinquiry about how a bit of language, a word or a sentence, impartsknowledge to the hearer. Therefore, what we call the philosophy oflanguage in India has always formed a part of the classicalphilosophers’ general epistemological inquiry, part of thepramāṇa-śāstra, the theory of‘evidence’ for belief or knowledge. The question was: howdoes a linguistic utterance, through the communication of its meaning,impart knowledge to the hearer? For it is observed that not simply theScriptural statements but also any ordinary statement can and doesimpart knowledge. Strictly speaking, most of our knowledge today isderived from reading and listening, hence we can say that it islinguistically communicated.
In particular, however, analysis of sentences and words intosignificant components, the relationship between word and meaning,classification of words according to semantic contribution, divisionof words with reference to the division of ontological categories,logical and psychological factors in knowing the meaning of asentence, philosophical significance of grammatical analysis, andprinciples of linguistics—all these have been repeatedlydiscussed by the philosophers in India over the centuries. Thisdiscussion constitutes the vast amount of writing which we can veryprofitably explore to talk about the classical Indian philosophy oflanguage. (2001, 4–5)

Mendelssohn, Moses

The certainty of mathematics is based upon the general axiom thatnothing can be and not be at the same time. In this science eachproposition such as, for example, “A is B”, is proven inone of two ways. Either one unpacks the concepts of A and shows“A is B”, or one unpacks the concepts of B and infers fromthis that not-B must also be not-A. Both types of proof are thus basedupon the principle of contradiction, and since the object ofmathematics in general ismagnitude and that of geometry inparticularextension, one can say that in mathematics ingeneral our concepts of magnitude are unpacked and analyzed, while ingeometry in particular our concepts of extension are unpacked andanalyzed. In fact, since geometry lays nothing else as its basis thanthe abstract concept of extension and derives all its conclusions fromthis single source – deriving them, to be sure, in such a waythat one recognizes distinctly that everything maintained in it isnecessarily connected by the principle of contradiction with theabstracted concept of extension, there is no doubt that all geometrictruths that geometry teaches us tounpack oruntangle from the concept of extension must be encounteredalltangled up in it. For what else can the profoundestinferences do but analyze a concept and make distinct what wasobscure? Such inferences cannot bring in what is not to be found inthe concept, and it is easy to see that it is also not possible, bymeans of the principle of contradiction, to derive from the conceptwhat is not to be found in it. In the concept of extension, forexample, there lies the inner possibility that a space is limited bythree straight lines in such a way that two of them include a rightangle. For it follows from the essence of extension that it is capableof many sorts of limitations and that the assumed sort of limitationof one of its level planes contains no contradiction. If onesubsequently shows that the concept of this assumed limitation or of aright-angled triangle necessarily entails that the square of thehypotenuse is such-and-such, then it must have also been possible tofind this truth originally and implicitly in the initial concept ofextension. Otherwise it could never have been derived from it by meansof the principle of contradiction. The idea of extension isinseparable from the idea of the possibility of such a limitation, aswas previously assumed, and the limitation is in turn necessarilyconnected to the concept of the equality of the aforesaid square.Thus, this truth also lay tangled up, as one might say, in theoriginal concept of extension, but it escaped our attention and couldnot be distinctly known and distinguished until, through analysis, weunpacked all the parts of this concept and separated them from oneanother. The analysis of concepts is for the understanding nothingmore than what the magnifying glass is for sight. It does not produceanything that was not to be found in the object. But it spreads outthe parts of the object and makes it possible for our senses todistinguish much that they would otherwise not have noticed. Theanalysis of concepts does nothing different from this; it makes theparts and members of these concepts, which were previously obscure andunnoticed, distinct and recognizable, but it does not introduceanything into the concepts that was not already to be found in them.(1763, §1/PW, 257–8) {§4.5}

Moore, G. E.

It seems necessary, then, to regard the world as formed of concepts.These are the only objects of knowledge. They cannot be regardedfundamentally as abstractions either from things or from ideas; sinceboth alike can, if anything is to be true of them, be composed ofnothing but concepts. A thing becomes intelligible first when it isanalysed into its constituent concepts. (NJ, 8) {§6.4}
It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies,the difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, aremainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answerquestions, without first discovering precisely what question it iswhich you desire to answer. I do not know how far this source of errorwould be done away, if philosophers would try to discover whatquestion they were asking, before they set about to answer it; for thework of analysis and distinction is often very difficult: we may oftenfail to make the necessary discovery, even though we make a definiteattempt to do so. But I am inclined to think that in many cases aresolute attempt would be sufficient to ensure success; so that, ifonly this attempt were made, many of the most glaring difficulties anddisagreements in philosophy would disappear. (PE, vii) {§6.4}
My point is that ‘good’ is a simple notion, just as‘yellow’ is a simple notion; that, just as you cannot, byany manner of means, explain to any one who does not already know it,what yellow is, so you cannot explain what good is. Definitions of thekind that I was asking for, definitions which describe the real natureof the object or notion denoted by a word, and which do not merelytell us what the word is used to mean, are only possible when theobject or notion in question is something complex. You can give adefinition of a horse, because a horse has many different propertiesand qualities, all of which you can enumerate. But when you haveenumerated them all, when you have reduced a horse to his simplestterms, then you no longer define those terms. They are simplysomething which you think of or perceive, and to any one who cannotthink of or perceive them, you can never, by any definition, maketheir nature known. (PE, 7) {§6.4}

Newton, Isaac

As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation ofdifficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede theMethod of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experimentsand Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them byInduction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, butsuch as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. ForHypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy. Andalthough the arguing from Experiments and Observations by Induction beno Demonstration of general Conclusions; yet it is the best way ofarguing which the Nature of Things admits of, and may be looked uponas so much the stronger, by how much the Induction is more general.And if no Exception occur from Phænomena, the Conclusion may bepronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any Exceptionshall occur from Experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced withsuch Exceptions as occur. By this way of Analysis we may proceed fromCompounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producingthem; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and fromparticular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in themost general. This is the Method of Analysis: and the Synthesisconsists in assuming the Causes discover’d, andestablish’d as Principles, and by them explaining thePhænomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations.(Opticks, Book Three, Part I, 404–5) {§4.1}

Nietzsche, Friedrich

All concepts in which an entire process is semiotically telescopedelude definition. (On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887, tr.Walter Kaufmann, New York: Random House, 1968, 80)
the most valuable insights aremethods. (TheAntichrist, 1895, §13)

Pappus

The so-called Treasury of Analysis [analuomenos] .. is, inshort, a special body of doctrines furnished for the use of those who,after going through the usual elements, wish to obtain the power ofsolving theoretical problems, which are set to them, and for thispurpose only is it useful. It is the work of three men, Euclid theauthor of theElements, Apollonius of Perga, and Aristaeusthe Elder, and proceeds by the method of analysis and synthesis.
Now analysis is the way from what is sought—as if it wereadmitted—through its concomitants [akolouthôn] inorder to something admitted in synthesis. For in analysis we supposethat which is sought to be already done, and we inquire from what itresults, and again what is the antecedent[proêgoumenon] of the latter, until we on our backwardway light upon something already known and being first in order. Andwe call such a method analysis, as being a solution backwards[anapalin lysin].
In synthesis, on the other hand, we suppose that which was reachedlast in analysis to be already done, and arranging in their naturalorder as consequents [epomena] the former antecedents[proêgoumena] and linking them one with another, we inthe end arrive at the construction of the thing sought. And this wecall synthesis.
Now analysis is of two kinds. One seeks the truth, being calledtheoretical. The other serves to carry out what was desired to do, andthis is called problematical. In the theoretical kind we suppose thething sought as being and as being true, and then we pass through itsconcomitants [akolouthôn] in order, as though they weretrue and existent by hypothesis, to something admitted; then, if thatwhich is admitted be true, the thing sought is true, too, and theproof will be the reverse of analysis. But if we come upon somethingfalse to admit, the thing sought will be false, too. In theproblematic kind we suppose the desired thing to be known, and then wepass through its concomitants [akolouthôn] in order, asthough they were true, up to something admitted. If the thing admittedis possible or can be done, that is, if it is what the mathematicianscall given, the desired thing will also be possible. The proof willagain be the reverse of analysis. But if we come upon somethingimpossible to admit, the problem will also be impossible.(PAC, tr. in Hintikka and Remes 1974, 8–10) {§2.2}

Plato

For we should remember that if a person goes on analyzing names intowords, and inquiring also into the elements out of which the words areformed, and keeps on always repeating this process, he who has toanswer him must at last give up the inquiry in despair … But ifwe take a word which is incapable of further resolution, then we shallbe right in saying that we at last reached a primary element, whichneed not be resolved any further. (‘Cratylus’, BenjaminJowett (trans.), in Hamilton and Cairns (ed.),CollectedDialogues, New York: Pantheon Books, 421e)
Then, said I, is not dialectic the only process of inquiry thatadvances in this manner, doing away with hypotheses, up to the firstprinciple itself in order to find confirmation there? And it isliterally true that when the eye of the soul is sunk in the barbaricslough of the Orphic Myth, dialectic gently draws it forth and leadsit up, employing as helpers and cooperators in this conversation thestudies and sciences which we enumerated, which we called sciencesoften from habit, though they really need some other designation,connoting more clearness than opinion and more obscurity than science.‘Understanding’ I believe was the term we employed. But, Ipresume we shall not dispute about the name when things of such momentlie before us for consideration. (‘Republic VII’, PaulShorey (trans.),Ibid., 533d)
Understand then, said I, that by the other section of the intelligibleI mean that which the reason lays hold of by the power of dialectic,treating its assumptions not as absolute beginnings but literally ashypotheses, underpinnings, footings and springboards so to speak, toenable it to rise to that which requires no assumption and is thestarting point of all, and after attaining to that again taking holdof the first dependencies from it, so to proceed downward to theconclusion, making no use whatever of any object of sense but only ofpure ideas moving on through ideas to ideas and ending with ideas.(‘Republic VI’, Paul Shorey (trans.),Ibid.,511b)

Poincaré, Jules Henri

In mathematics logic is calledanalysis, and analysis meansdivision,dissection. It can have, therefore, notool other than the scalpel and the microscope. (‘Intuition andLogic in Mathematics’, 1900, in William Ewald, ed.,FromKant to Hilbert, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, 1018)

Polya, George

Nonmathematical illustration [of the method of analysis describedby Pappus]. A primitive man wishes to cross a creek; but hecannot do so in the usual way because the water has risen overnight.Thus, the crossing becomes the object of a problem; ‘crossingthe creek’ is thex of this primitive problem. The manmay recall that he has crossed some other creek by walking along afallen tree. He looks around for a suitable fallen tree which becomeshis new unknown, hisy. He cannot find any suitable tree butthere are plenty of trees standing along he creek; he wishes that oneof them would fall. Could he make a tree fall across the creek? Thereis a great idea and there is a new unknown; by what means could hetilt the tree over the creek?
This train of ideas ought to be called analysis if we accept theterminology of Pappus. If the primitive man succeeds in finishing hisanalysis he may become the inventor of the bridge and of the axe. Whatwill be the synthesis? Translation of ideas into actions. Thefinishing act of the synthesis is walking along a tree across thecreek.
The same objects fill the analysis and the synthesis; they exercisethe mind of the man in the analysis and his muscles in the synthesis;the analysis consists in thoughts, the synthesis in acts. There isanother difference; the order is reversed. Walking across the creek isthe first desire from which the analysis starts and it is the last actwith which the synthesis ends. (1957, 145) {§2.2}

Proclus

beauty and order are common to all branches of mathematics, as are themethod of proceeding from things better known to things we seek toknow and the reverse path from the latter to the former, the methodscalled analysis and synthesis. (CEE, 8/6–7) {§2.2}
as Nous is set over understanding and dispenses principles to it fromabove, perfecting it out of its own riches, so in the same waydialectic, the purest part of philosophy, hovers attentively overmathematics, encompasses its whole development, and of itselfcontributes to the special sciences their various perfecting,critical, and intellective powers—the procedures, I mean, ofanalysis, division, definition, and demonstration. Being thus endowedand led towards perfection, mathematics reaches some of its results byanalysis, others by synthesis, expounds some matters by division,others by definition, and some of its discoveries binds fast bydemonstration, adapting these methods to its subjects and employingeach of them for gaining insight into mediating ideas. Thus itsanalyses are under the control of dialectic, and its definitions,divisions, and demonstrations are of the same family and unfold inconformity with the way of mathematical understanding. It isreasonable, then, to say that dialectic is the capstone of themathematical sciences. It brings to perfection all the intellectualinsight they contain, making what is exact in them more irrefutable,confirming the stability of what they have established and referringwhat is pure and incorporeal in them to the simplicity andimmateriality of Nous, making precise their primary starting-pointsthrough definitions and explicating the distinctions of genera andspecies within their subject-matters, teaching the use of synthesis tobring out the consequences that follow from principles and of analysisto lead up to the first principles and starting-points. (CEE,42–3/35–6) {§2.2}
Magnitudes, figures and their boundaries, and the ratios that arefound in them, as well as their properties, their various positionsand motions—these are what geometry studies, proceeding from thepartless point down to solid bodies, whose many species anddifferences it explores, then following the reverse path from the morecomplex objects to the simpler ones and their principles. It makes useof synthesis and analysis, always starting from hypotheses and firstprinciples that it obtains from the science above it and employing allthe procedures of dialectic—definition and division forestablishing first principles and articulating species and genera, anddemonstrations and analyses in dealing with the consequences thatfollow from first principles, in order to show the more complexmatters both as proceeding from the simpler and also conversely asleading back to them. (CEE, 57/46) {§2.2}
[Euclid’sElements] contains all the dialecticalmethods: the method of division for finding kinds, definitions formaking statements of essential properties, demonstrations forproceeding from premises to conclusions, and analysis for passing inthe reverse direction from conclusions to principles. (CEE,69/57) {§2.2}
there are certain methods that have been handed down, the best beingthe method of analysis, which traces the desired result back to anacknowledged principle. Plato, it is said, taught this method toLeodamas, who also is reported to have made many discoveries ingeometry by means of it. A second is the method ofdiaeresis,which divides into its natural parts the genus proposed forexamination and which affords a starting-point for demonstration byeliminating the parts irrelevant for the establishment of what isproposed. This method also Plato praised as an aid in all thesciences. A third is the reduction to impossibility, which does notdirectly show the thing itself that is wanted but by refuting itscontradictory indirectly establishes its truth. (CEE,211–12/165–6) {§2.2}
for problems one common procedure, the method of analysis, has beendiscovered, and by following it we can reach a solution; for thus itis that even the most obscure problems are pursued. (CEE,242/189) {§2.2}
In general we must understand that all mathematical arguments proceedeither from or to the starting-points, as Porphyry somewhere says.Those that proceed from the starting-points are themselves of twokinds, as it happens, for they proceed either from common notions,that is, from self-evident clarity alone, or from things previouslydemonstrated. Those that proceed to the starting-points are eitheraffirmative of them or destructive. But those that affirm firstprinciples are called “analyses”, and their reverseprocedures “syntheses” (for it is possible from thoseprinciples to proceed in orderly fashion to the thing sought, and thisis called “synthesis”); when they are destructive, theyare called “reductions to impossibility”, for it is thefunction of this procedure to show that something generally acceptedand self-evident is overthrown. There is a kind of syllogism in it,though not the same as in analysis ... (CEE, 255/198–9) {§2.2}

Quine, W.V.O.

Amaxim of shallow analysis prevails:expose no morelogical structure than seems useful for the deduction or otherinquiry at hand. In the immortal words of Adolf Meyer, where itdoesn’t itch don't scratch.
On occasion the useful degree of analysis may, conversely, be such asto cut into a simple word of ordinary language, requiring itsparaphrase into a composite term in which other terms are compoundedwith the help of canonical notation. When this happens, the line ofanalysis adopted will itself commonly depend on what is sought in theinquiry at hand; again there need be no question of the uniquely rightanalysis, nor of synonymy. (1960, §33, 160–1) {§6.9}
This construction [of the ordered pair as a class, such asWiener’s identification of the ordered pairx,y> with the class {{x}, {y, Λ}}]is paradigmatic of what we are most typically up to when in aphilosophical spirit we offer an “analysis” or“explication” of some hitherto inadequately formulated“idea” or expression. We do not claim synonymy. We do notclaim to make clear and explicit what the users of the unclearexpression had unconsciously in mind all along. We do not exposehidden meanings, as the words ‘analysis’ or‘explication’ would suggest; we supply lacks. We fix onthe particular functions of the unclear expression that make it worthtroubling about, and then devise a substitute, clear and couched interms to our liking, that fills those functions. Beyond thoseconditions of partial agreement, dictated by our interests andpurposes, any traits of the explicans come under the head of“don’t-cares” … Under this head we are freeto allow the explicans all manner of novel connotations neverassociated with the explicandum. …
Philosophical analysis, explication, has not always been seen in thisway. Only the reading of a synonymy claim into analysis could engenderthe so-called paradox of analysis, which runs thus: how can a correctanalysis be informative, since to understand it we must already knowthe meanings of its terms, and hence already know that the terms whichit equates are synonymous? The notion that analysis must consistsomehow in the uncovering of hidden meanings underlies also the recenttendency of some of the Oxford philosophers to take as their businessan examination of the subtle irregularities of ordinary language. Andthere is no mistaking the obliviousness of various writers to thepoint about the don’t-cares. …
...explication is elimination. We have, to begin with, anexpression or form of expression that is somehow troublesome. Itbehaves partly like a term but not enough so, or it is vague in waysthat bother us, or it puts kinks in a theory or encourages one oranother confusion. But also it serves certain purposes that are not tobe abandoned. Then we find a way of accomplishing those same purposesthrough other channels, using other and less troublesome forms ofexpression. The old perplexities are resolved.
According to an influential doctrine of Wittgenstein’s, the taskof philosophy is not to solve problems but to dissolve them by showingthat there were really none there. This doctrine has its limitations,but it aptly fits explication. For when explication banishes a problemit does so by showing it to be in an important sense unreal; viz., inthe sense of proceeding only from needless usages. (1960, §53,258–60) {§6.9}
This brings us to the second of the five turning points, the shiftfrom terms to sentences. The medievals had the notion ofsyncategorematic words, but it was a contemporary of John Horne Tookewho developed it into an explicit theory of contextual definition;namely, Jeremy Bentham. He applied contextual definition not just togrammatical particles and the like, but even to some genuine terms,categorematic ones. If he found some term convenient but ontologicallyembarrassing, contextual definition enabled him in some cases tocontinue to enjoy the services of the term while disclaiming itsdenotation. He could declare the term syncategorematic, despitegrammatical appearances, and then could justify his continued use ofit if he could show systematically how to paraphrase as wholes allsentences in which he chose to imbed it. Such was his theory offictions: what he called paraphrasis, and what we now call contextualdefinition. The term, like the grammatical particles, is meaningful asa part of meaningful wholes. If every sentence in which we use a termcan be paraphrased into a sentence that makes good sense, no more canbe asked. (1975, 68–9) {§5.6}

Rorty, Richard

The issue is: is there such an activity as “conceptualanalysis” or can philosophers do no more than describe usageand, perhaps, make recommendations for change in usage? One’sanswer to this question will determine whether one thinks thatWittgenstein was wrong to give up on the idea of a systematic theoryof meaning, and Quine right to suggest that the very notion of“meaning” was a hangover of Aristotelean essentialism. Ifthey were right, it is hard to hang on to the idea that“conceptual clarity” is a goal of philosophical inquiry… Metaphilosophical issues hover in the wings of the debatesover whether the content of an assertion varies from utterer toutterer and from audience to audience. If it does not, if somethingremains invariable – the concepts expressed by the words thatmake up the sentence – then perhaps there really are entitieswith intrinsic properties which philosophical analysis can hope to pindown. But, if content does vary in this way, then concepts are likepersons — never quite the same twice, always developing, alwaysmaturing. You can change a concept by changing usage, but you cannotget a concept right, once and for all. (‘Analytic andConversational Philosophy’,Philosophy as CulturalPolitics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007,122–3)

Rosen, Stanley

Analysis, to be sure, is articulation rather than dissolution. (1980,8) {§1.2,§5.8}
we must seewhere we are going, or what will“count” as the successful resolution to the given exerciseof analysis. … Analysis is the admittedly indispensable road toour destination, but it is no more the destination than it is theintention to begin the voyage. One could perhaps say that thedestination is an articulated structure. But we know that we havereached the destination only when we recognize a given articulation astheexplanation of that structure. We cannot see that ananalysis explains a structure by performing an additional step in theanalysis. At some point we must see that we are finished. And to seean analysis is not to analyze. It is rather to see an articulatedstructure as a unity, whole, or synthesis. (Ibid., 9) {§1.2,§5.8}
If to understand is to possess an explanation, and if an explanationis an analysis, it remains the case that an analysis is intelligiblebecause it is also a synthesis. Explanation may be called“recollection” in the Platonic sense because it is theprocess of retracing, by the method of counting and measuring, thejoints of an internally articulated unity, one prefigured within theinitial formulation of the entire analytical exercise. In slightlymore prosaic terms, analysis is never merely the application of rules.It is also at once a seeing of which rules to apply and how to applythem. This is what it means to say that analysis is also synthesis.And this is why it is false to say, as is at least implied by so muchcontemporary analytical philosophy, that we begin with intuitions andthen replace them with ever more sophisticated analyses. Not only isit false to say this, but strictly speaking, it is meaningless. If“to mean” is “to provide an analysis”, thereis no analysis of analysis without ingredient intuition. Withoutintuition, there is at each stage nothing to analyze. Intuition (ofsyntheses or unities) without analysis is mute, but analysis withoutintuition is inarticulate as well as blind: the sounds it utterscannot be distinguished from noise. (Ibid., 9–10) {§1.2,§5.8}
analysis is a cognitive activity and it cannot be coherentlyunderstood except by recourse to intuition. There is a non-discursivecontext of analysis. (Ibid., 27) {§1.2,§5.8}
conceptual analysis is rooted in intuitions which cannot be replacedby the process of analysis but whichregulate that process.(Ibid., 48) {§1.2,§5.8}

Russell, Bertrand

That all sound philosophy should begin with an analysis ofpropositions, is a truth too evident, perhaps, to demand a proof. ThatLeibniz’s philosophy began with such an analysis, is lessevident, but seems to be no less true. (PL, 8) {§6.3}
It is necessary to realize that definition, in mathematics, does notmean, as in philosophy, an analysis of the idea to be defined intoconstituent ideas. This notion, in any case, is only applicable toconcepts, whereas in mathematics it is possible to define terms whichare not concepts. Thus also many notions are defined by symbolic logicwhich are not capable of philosophical definition, since they aresimple and unanalyzable. (POM, ch. 2, §31, 27) {§6.3}
For the comprehension of analysis, it is necessary to investigate thenotion of whole and part, a notion which has been wrapped inobscurity—though not without certain more or less valid logicalreasons—by the writers who may be roughly called Hegelian.(POM, ch. 16, §133, 137) {§6.3}
I have already touched on a very important logical doctrine, which thetheory of whole and part brings into prominence—I mean thedoctrine that analysis is falsification. Whatever can be analyzed is awhole, and we have already seen that analysis of wholes is in somemeasure falsification. But it is important to realize the very narrowlimits of this doctrine. We cannot conclude that the parts of a wholeare not really its parts, nor that the parts are not presupposed inthe whole in a sense in which the whole is not presupposed in theparts, nor yet that the logically prior is not usually simpler thanthe logically subsequent. In short, though analysis gives us thetruth, and nothing but the truth, yet it can never give us the wholetruth. This is the only sense in which the doctrine is to be accepted.In any wider sense, it becomes merely a cloak for laziness, by givingan excuse to those who dislike the labour of analysis. (POM,ch. 16, §138, 141) {§6.3}
We are sometimes told that things are organic unities, composed ofmany parts expressing the whole and expressed in the whole. Thisnotion is apt to replace the older notion of substance, not, I think,to the advantage of precise thinking. The only kind of unity to whichI can attach any precise sense—apart from the unity of theabsolutely simple—is that of a whole composed of parts. But thisform of unity cannot be what is called organic; for if the partsexpress the whole or the other parts, they must be complex, andtherefore themselves contain parts; if the parts have been analyzed asfar as possible, they must be simple terms, incapable of expressinganything except themselves. A distinction is made, in support oforganic unities, between conceptual analysis and real division intoparts. What is really indivisible, we are told, may be conceptuallyanalyzable. This distinction, if the conceptual analysis be regardedas subjective, seems to me wholly inadmissible. All complexity isconceptual in the sense that it is due to a whole capable of logicalanalysis, but is real in the sense that it has no dependence upon themind, but only upon the nature of the object. Where the mind candistinguish elements, there mustbe different elements todistinguish; though, alas! there are often different elements whichthe mind does not distinguish. The analysis of a finite space intopoints is no more objective than the analysis (say) of causality intotime-sequence + ground and consequent, or of equality into sameness ofrelation to a given magnitude. In every case of analysis, there is awhole consisting of parts with relations; it is only the nature of theparts and the relations which distinguishes different cases. Thus thenotion of an organic whole in the above sense must be attributed todefective analysis, and cannot be used to explain things.
It is also said that analysis is falsification, that the complex isnot equivalent to the sum of its constituents and is changed whenanalyzed into these. In this doctrine, as we saw in Parts I and II,there is a measure of truth, when what is to be analyzed is a unity. Aproposition has a certain indefinable unity, in virtue of which it isan assertion; and this is so completely lost by analysis that noenumeration of constituents will restore it, even though itself bementioned as a constituent. There is, it must be confessed, a gravelogical difficulty in this fact, for it is difficult not to believethat a whole must be constituted by its constituents. For us, however,it is sufficient to observe that all unities are propositions orpropositional concepts, and that consequently nothing that exists is aunity. If, therefore, it is maintained that things are unities, wemust reply that no things exist. (POM, ch. 53, §439,466–7) {§6.3}
What we want to be clear about is the twofold method of analysis of aproposition,i.e., first taking the proposition as it standsand analyzing it, second taking the proposition as a special case of atype of propositions. Whenever we use variables, we arealready necessarily concerned with atype of propositions.E.g. “p ⊃q” stands for anyproposition of a certain type. When values are assigned topandq, we reach a particular proposition by a different roadfrom that which would have started with those values plus implication,and have so built up the particular proposition without reference to atype. This is how functions come in. (‘FundamentalNotions’, 1904, in 1994, 118) {§6.3}
We ought to say, I think, that there are different ways of analysingcomplexes, and that one way of analysis is into function and argument,which is the same as type and instance. (Ibid., 256) {§6.3}
The fundamental epistemological principle in the analysis ofpropositions containing descriptions is this:Every propositionwhich we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents withwhich we are acquainted. (KAKD, 159) {§6.3}
when we say ‘the author of Waverley was Scott’ we mean‘one and only one man wrote Waverley, and he was Scott’.Here the identity is between a variable, i.e. an indeterminate subject(‘he’), and Scott; ‘the author of Waverley’has been analysed away, and no longer appears as a constituent of theproposition. (KAKD, 165) {§6.3}
Analysis may be defined as the discovery of the constituents and the manner ofcombination of a given complex. The complex is to be one with which weare acquainted; the analysis iscomplete when we becomeacquainted with all the constituents and with their manner ofcombination, and know that there are no more constituents and thatthat is their manner of combination. We may distinguishformal analysis as the discovery of the manner ofcombination, andmaterial analysis as the discovery of theconstituents. Material analysis may be calleddescriptivewhen the constituents are only known by description, not byacquaintance. (TK, 119) {§6.3}
Philosophy, if what has been said is correct, becomesindistinguishable from logic as that word has now come to be used. Thestudy of logic consists, broadly speaking, of two not very sharplydistinguished portions. On the one hand it is concerned with thosegeneral statements which can be made concerning everything withoutmentioning any one thing or predicate or relation, such for example as‘ifx is a member of the classα andevery member ofα is a member ofβ, thenx is a member of the classβ, whateverx,α, andβ may be.’. Onthe other hand, it is concerned with the analysis and enumeration oflogicalforms, i.e. with the kinds of propositions that mayoccur, with the various types of facts, and with the classification ofthe constituents of facts. In this way logic provides an inventory ofpossibilities, a repertory of abstractly tenable hypotheses.(SMP, 84–5) {§6.3}
The essence of philosophy as thus conceived is analysis, notsynthesis. To build up systems of the world, like Heine’s Germanprofessor who knit together fragments of life and made an intelligiblesystem out of them, is not, I believe, any more feasible than thediscovery of the philosopher’s stone. What is feasible is theunderstanding of general forms, and the division of traditionalproblems into a number of separate and less baffling questions.‘Divide and conquer’ is the maxim of success here aselsewhere. (SMP, 86) {§6.3}
Kant, under the influence of Newton, adopted, though with somevacillation, the hypothesis of absolute space, and this hypothesis,though logically unobjectionable, is removed by Occam’s razor,since absolute space is an unnecessary entity in the explanation ofthe physical world. Although, therefore, we cannot refute the Kantiantheory of ana priori intuition, we can remove its groundsone by one through an analysis of the problem. Thus, here as in manyother philosophical questions, the analytic method, while not capableof arriving at a demonstrative result, is nevertheless capable ofshowing that all the positive grounds in favour of a certain theoryare fallacious and that a less unnatural theory is capable ofaccounting for the facts.
Another question by which the capacity of the analytic method can beshown is the question of realism. Both those who advocate and thosewho combat realism seem to me to be far from clear as to the nature ofthe problem which they are discussing. If we ask: ‘Are ourobjects of perceptionreal and are theyindependentof the percipient?’ it must be supposed that we attach somemeaning to the words ‘real’ and ‘independent’,and yet, if either side in the controversy of realism is asked todefine these two words, their answer is pretty sure to embodyconfusions such as logical analysis will reveal. (SMP,90–1) {§6.3}
The supreme maxim in scientific philosophizing is this:
Wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted forinferred entities.
Some examples of the substitution of construction for inference in therealm of mathematical philosophy may serve to elucidate the uses ofthis maxim. Take first the case of irrationals. In old days,irrationals were inferred as the supposed limits of series ofrationals which had no rational limit; but the objection to thisprocedure was that it left the existence of irrationals merelyoptative, and for this reason the stricter methods of the present dayno longer tolerate such a definition. We now define an irrationalnumber as a certain class of ratios, thus constructing it logically bymeans of ratios, instead of arriving at it by a doubtful inferencefrom them. Take again the case of cardinal numbers. Two equallynumerous collections appear to have something in common: thissomething is supposed to be their cardinal number. But so long as thecardinal number is inferred from the collections, not constructed interms of them, its existence must remain in doubt, unless in virtue ofa metaphysical postulatead hoc. By defining the cardinalnumber of a given collection as the class of all equally numerouscollections, we avoid the necessity of this metaphysical postulate,and thereby remove a needless element of doubt from the philosophy ofarithmetic. A similar method, as I have shown elsewhere, can beapplied to classes themselves, which need not be supposed to have anymetaphysical reality, but can be regarded as symbolically constructedfictions.
The method by which the construction proceeds is closely analogous inthese and all similar cases. Given a set of propositions nominallydealing with the supposed inferred entities, we observe the propertieswhich are required of the supposed entities in order to make thesepropositions true. By dint of a little logical ingenuity, we thenconstruct some logical function of less hypothetical entities whichhas the requisite properties. The constructed function we substitutefor the supposed inferred entities, and thereby obtain a new and lessdoubtful interpretation of the body of propositions in question. Thismethod, so fruitful in the philosophy of mathematics, will be foundequally applicable in the philosophy of physics, where, I do notdoubt, it would have been applied long ago but for the fact that allwho have studied this subject hitherto have been completely ignorantof mathematical logic. I myself cannot claim originality in theapplication of this method to physics, since I owe the suggestion andthe stimulus for its application entirely to my friend andcollaborator Dr Whitehead, who is engaged in applying it to the moremathematical portions of the region intermediate between sense-dataand the points, instants and particles of physics.
A complete application of the method which substitutes constructionsfor inferences would exhibit matter wholly in terms of sense-data, andeven, we may add, of the sense-data of a single person, since thesense-data of others cannot be known without some element ofinference. This, however, must remain for the present an ideal, to beapproached as nearly as possible, but to be reached, if at all, onlyafter a long preliminary labour of which as yet we can only see thevery beginning. (RSDP, 115–6) {§6.3}
In the special sciences, when they have become fully developed, themovement is forward and synthetic, from the simpler to the morecomplex. But in philosophy we follow the inverse direction: from thecomplex and relatively concrete we proceed towards the simple andabstract by means of analysis, seeking, in the process, to eliminatethe particularity of the original subject-matter, and to confine ourattention entirely to the logicalform of the factsconcerned. (OKEW, 189–90) {§6.3}
The nature of philosophic analysis … can now be stated ingeneral terms. We start from a body of common knowledge, whichconstitutes our data. On examination, the data are found to becomplex, rather vague, and largely interdependent logically. Byanalysis we reduce them to propositions which are as nearly aspossible simple and precise, and we arrange them in deductive chains,in which a certain number of initial propositions form a logicalguarantee for all the rest. (OKEW, 214) {§6.3}
the chief thesis that I have to maintain is the legitimacy ofanalysis. (PLA, 189) {§6.3}
it is very important to distinguish between a definition and ananalysis. All analysis is only possible in regard to what is complex,and it always depends, in the last analysis, upon direct acquaintancewith the objects which are the meanings of certain simple symbols. Itis hardly necessary to observe that one does not define a thing but asymbol. (PLA, 194) {§6.3}
Analysis is not the same thing as definition. You can define a term bymeans of a correct description, but that does not constitute ananalysis. (PLA, 196) {§6.3}
The business of philosophy, as I conceive it, is essentially that oflogical analysis, followed by logical synthesis. (LA, 341) {§6.3}
Ever since I abandoned the philosophy of Kant and Hegel, I have soughtsolutions of philosophical problems by means of analysis; and I remainfirmly persuaded, in spite of some modern tendencies to the contrary,that only by analysing is progress possible. (MPD, 11) {§6.3}

Ryle, Gilbert

Philosophy must then involve the exercise of systematic restatement.But this does not mean that it is a department of philology orliterary criticism.
Its restatement is not the substitution of one noun for another or oneverb for another. That is what lexicographers and translators excelin. Its restatements are transmutations of syntax, and transmutationsof syntax controlled not be desire for elegance or stylisticcorrectness but by desire to exhibit the forms of the facts into whichphilosophy is the enquiry.
I conclude, then, that there is, after all, a sense in which we canproperly enquire and even say “what it really means to say soand so”. For we can ask what is the real form of the factrecorded when this is concealed or disguised and not duly exhibited bythe expression in question. And we can often succeed in stating thisfact in a new form of words which does exhibit what the other failedto exhibit. And I am for the present inclined to believe that this iswhat philosophical analysis is, and that this is the sole and wholefunction of philosophy. (1932, 100) {§6.8}
I have no special objection to or any special liking for the fashion ofdescribing as ‘analysis’ the sort or sorts of conceptualexamination which constitute philosophizing. But the idea is totallyfalse that this examination is a sort of garage inspection of oneconceptual vehicle at a time. On the contrary, to put it dogmatically,it is always a traffic inspector’s examination of a conceptualtraffic-block, involving at least two streams of vehicles hailing fromthe theories, or points of view or platitudes which are atcross-purposes with one another. (1953, 32) {§6.8}
It is certain that when I wrote “Systematically MisleadingExpressions” I was still under the direct influence of thenotion of an “ideal language”—a doctrine accordingto which there were a certain number of logical forms which one couldsomehow dig up by scratching away at the earth which covered them. Ino longer think, especially not today, that this is a good method. Ido not regret having traveled that road, but I am happy to have leftit behind me. (In Rorty 1967, 305) {§6.8}

Schiller, Friedrich

alas! intellect must first destroy the object of Inner Sense if itwould make it its own. Like the analytical chemist, the philosophercan only discover how things are combined by analysing them, only laybare the workings of spontaneous Nature by subjecting them to thetorment of his own techniques. In order to lay hold of the fleetingphenomenon, he must first bind it in the fetters of rule, tear itsfair body to pieces by reducing it to concepts, and preserve itsliving spirit in a sorry skeleton of words. Is it any wonder thatnatural feeling cannot find itself again in such an image, or that inthe account of the analytical thinker truth should appear as paradox?(AE, I, 4) {§5.2}

Sellars, Wilfrid

analysis without synopsis must be blind. (‘Time and the WorldOrder’, in Herbert Feigl and Grover Maxwell, (eds.),Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science III,Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962, 527)

Soames, Scott

[in discussing Ryle 1953 {Quotation}] Personally, I have no axe to grind about what it takes to analyze aconcept. Very likely, there are different sorts of cases. It may wellbe that sometimes what we want from an analysis is the tracing of thesort of intricate web of conceptual relations in which Ryle delights.But there is little reason for thinking that this is alwaysso—at least, if analysis is construed as whatever it is thatphilosophers do to solve their problems. What strikes me as worrisomeis Ryle’ tendency to use the web metaphor as a rationale forrejecting the old, Russellian conception of analysis, with itsemphasis on precisely formulated logical forms, and replacing it withmethodology which, in some cases, may degenerate into a recipe forgenerating a conceptual fog. It is all well and good to recognize thatsometimes the concepts philosophers deal with will be vague,imprecise, and open-ended, with close conceptual connections to otherconcepts of the same sort. We do have to be able to deal with suchcases—perhaps along the lines Ryle suggests. What is not good isa prior ideological commitment to blurred edges, indirectness, and anunwillingness to separate tangential from central issues. SometimesRyle and other ordinary language philosophers seem to go too far inthis direction; substituting one confining orthodoxy about analysisfor another. When this happens, central philosophical points getmissed ... (2003, II, 80–1) {§6.1}
Philosophical analysis is a term of art. At different timesin the twentieth century, different authors have used it to meandifferent things. What is to be analyzed (e.g., words and sentencesversus concepts and propositions), what counts as a successfulanalysis, and what philosophical fruits come from analysis arequestions that have been vigorously debated since the dawn of analysisas a self-conscious philosophical approach. Often, different views ofanalysis have been linked to different views of the nature ofphilosophy, the sources of philosophical knowledge, the role oflanguage in thought, the relationship between language and the world,and the nature of meaning—as well to more focused questionsabout necessary and apriori truth. Indeed the variety of positions isso great as to make any attempt to extract a common denominator fromthe multiplicity of views sterile and not illuminating.
Nevertheless analytic philosophy—with its emphasis on what iscalled “philosophical analysis”—is a clear andrecognizable tradition. Although the common core of doctrine unitingits practitioners scarcely exceeds the platitudinous, a pattern ofhistorical influence is not hard to discern. The tradition begins withG.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (as well asGottlob Frege, whose initial influence was largely filtered throughRussell and Wittgenstein). These philosophers set the agenda, first,for logical positivists such as Rudolf Carnap, Carl Hempel, and A.J.Ayer and then later for Wittgenstein, who in turn ushered in theordinary language school led by Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin. Morerecently the second half of the twentieth century has seen a revivalof Russellian and Carnapian themes in the work of W.V. Quine, DonaldDavidson, and Saul Kripke. Analytic philosophy, with its changingviews of philosophical analysis, is a trail of influence ... (2005,144) {§6.1}

Staal, J. F.

the mathematical method is characteristic of much of Westernphilosophy, whereas the grammatical method is characteristic of muchof Indian philosophy. (1965, 99) {§2.6}
Discoveries of this kind [of the dependence of systems of categorieson the language in which they are formulated] open up new vistas. Theyemphasize the desirability that philosophers should take full accountof linguistics. With the help of linguistics, philosophy is in aposition to enter a fruitful area of research. In this respect,philosophers are in a more favourable position thatmathematicians—for the latter investigate what they have firstcreated, while the former face the richness and variety of naturallanguages, where reality surpasses the boldest imagination.Mathematicians can never enter other spaces than the one in which theywere born, not even with the advancement of space travel. At most,they can propose to physicists that they should describe physicalspace with the help of another geometry. Philosophers, on the otherhand, can learn a language and thereby enter a new world ofexperience: the linguistic categories of a newly learned language maynot segment reality in the same way as do the categories Westernphilosophers are accustomed to. Philosophers obtain passports fornon-Aristotelian worlds as soon as they begin to study the syntax of alanguage which is sufficiently different from Greek. Of course, thefruitfulness of such research increases if the language studiedbelongs to a civilization which has also produced philosophy, logic,and linguistics or related fields of study. (1965, 105) {§2.6}
Historically speaking, Pāṇini’s method has occupied aplace comparable to that held by Euclid’s method in Westernthought. Scientific developments have therefore taken differentdirections in India and in the West. Pāṇini’s systemproduced at an early date such logical distinctions as those betweenlanguage and metalanguage, theorem and metatheorem, use and mention,which were discovered much later in Europe. In other Indian sciences,e.g., in mathematics and astronomy, as well as in later grammaticalsystems of Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil, systematic abbreviations areused which not only are ingenious but also constitute new adaptationsof the same method. In India, Pāṇini’s perfection andingenuity have rarely been matched outside the realm of linguistics.In the West, this corresponds to the belief that mathematics is themost perfect among the sciences. Just as Plato reserved admission tohis Academy for geometricians, Indian scholars and philosophers areexpected to have first undergone a training in scientific linguistics.In India, grammar was called the Veda of the Vedas, the science ofsciences. Renou declares: ‘To adhere to Indian thought meansfirst of all to think like a grammarian’ ... This has determinedthe form and method of a large part of Indian philosophy, an importantfeature which is generally lost when Sanskrit originals are translatedinto Western languages. It seems almost unavoidable that translationsof an accurate original should therefore appear vague. (1965, 114) {§2.6}

Stebbing, L. Susan

In my opinion Logical Positivism fails in its treatment of analysis.Wittgenstein and the other Logical Positivists talk much aboutanalysis, but they do not consider the various kinds of analysis, nordo they show in what sense philosophy is the analysis of facts. Theymake use of analytic definition of a symbolic expression, and of theanalytic clarification of a concept, but they do not distinguishbetween them. They also employ postulational analysis. But they do notseem to understand directional analysis, and, accordingly, they failto apprehend the need for it. In this way they depart, in my opinion,from the practice of Moore. Not only is their conception of analysisdefective, but, further, their conception of thekinds offacts to be analysed is inadequate. They treat all facts aslinguistic facts. Hence, they suppose that the first problemof philosophy is to determine the principles of symbolism, andfrom these principles to draw limits with regard to what wecan think. This assumption has two important consequences.First, it leads to the view that philosophy is ‘the activity offinding meaning’, to quote Schlick’s statement. The secondconsequence is that they are apt to place too much reliance upon theconstruction of postulational systems. (1933b, 82–3) {§6.6}

Strawson, Peter F.

An analysis, I suppose, may be thought of as a kind of breaking downor decomposing of something. So we have the picture of a kind ofintellectual taking to pieces of ideas or concepts; the discovering ofwhat elements a concept or idea is composed and how they are related.Is this the right picture or the wrong one—or is it partly rightand partly wrong? That is a question which calls for a consideredresponse … (Analysis and Metaphysics, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1992, 2)
If we took this notion [of analysis as decomposition] completelyseriously for the case of conceptual analysis—analysis ofideas—we should conclude that our task was to find ideas thatwere completely simple, that were free from internal conceptualcomplexity; and then to demonstrate how the more or less complex ideasthat are of interest to philosophers could be assembled by a kind oflogical or conceptual construction out of these simple elements. Theaim would be to get a clear grasp of complex meanings by reducingthem, without remainder, to simple meanings. Thus baldly stated, thismay seem a rather implausible project. And so it is. Nevertheless it,or some close relation of it, has been, and is, taken seriously. Evenwhen not taken to the lengths I have just described, it continues toexercise a certain influence on the philosophical mind.(Ibid. 18)

Urmson, J. O.

Among the philosophers who were most influential in England in theperiod between the two world wars were the analysts. Their analytictheories were sometimes associated with the metaphysical view whichRussell called logical atomism, sometimes with the supposedlyanti-metaphysical doctrines of logical positivism, and sometimes, asin the case of G. E. Moore, the analytic practice had no clearlydefined dogmatic background at all. But they were united at least inthe view that analysis was at least one of the most important tasks ofthe philosopher; and by analysis they meant something which, whateverprecise description of it they chose, at least involved the attempt torewrite in different and in some way more appropriate terms thosestatements which they found philosophically puzzling. (1956, vii) {§6.1}
analysis is a familiar philosophical method. I shall not attempt tooffer you a complete historical account of analytic philosophy. Eventhe minute examination of a particular analytic philosopher, or groupof analytic philosophers, would not be of great interest. I proposerather to sketch, in broad strokes, four major forms of philosophicalanalysis which I think important to distinguish carefully from oneanother. I shall call the first of these: classical analysis. Itcorresponds, roughly, to the traditional method of analysis used byEnglish philosophers, a method which Russell did so much to develop. Ishall then examine three other, more recent forms of philosophicalanalysis: (1) the type of analysis which involves the construction ofartificial languages; (2) the type of analysis practiced byWittgenstein in his later period; (3) the type of analysis whichcharacterizes present-day Oxford Philosophy.
The fundamental notion of classical analysis is that propositionscouched in ordinary language are correct, in the sense that they arenot objectionable in principle. They are neither logically normetaphysically absurd. On the other hand, insofar as the form of thesepropositions of ordinary language hides their true meaning, they areneither metaphysically nor logically satisfactory. The task of theanalyst is, therefore, to reformulate them so that this meaning willbe clearly and explicitly presented, rather then to reject them. Toanalyze, is to reformulate,—to translate into a better wording.(1962, 294–5) {§6.1}
The logical positivism of the Vienna Circle did not modify themethodology of classical analysis. However, because of theanti-metaphysical standpoint which was characteristic of positivism,it could not accept the notion of the goal of analysis as metaphysicaldiscovery. For the positivists of this school, the goal ofphilosophical analysis is to clarify the language of science, aclarification which would result from, for example, elucidating therelationships between observation and theory, or between scientificconcepts at different levels of abstraction. (Ibid., 296) {§6.1}
A second school [or third school, after ‘classicalanalysis’ and logical positivism] was inspired (largely, but notentirely) by the thought of Wittgenstein in his later period.Wittgenstein had himself been led to this new point of view in hiscriticism of his ownTractatus Logico-Philosophicus(Logische-Philosophische Abhandlung), a book which itselfespoused implicitly a certain form of classical analysis. According toWittgenstein, classical analysis rested upon a false conception oflanguage and of thought. ...
... for an analyst of this sort, philosophical problems do not resultfrom ignorance of the precise meaning of a concept, but from anentirely false conception of its function. ... Such a false conceptionis what Ryle calls a “category mistake”. To resolve aphilosophical problem, one should exhibit the generic character of theconcepts involved in it, rather than attempting to give a perfectdefinition or explication of these concepts. ...
This conception of philosophical analysis—of analysis as theresolution of conceptual enigmas—has sometimes beencondescendingly called “therapeutic positivism”.(Ibid., 297–9) {§6.1}
The fourth method of analysis ... is that of Oxford Philosophy....
The analytic philosophers of the Cambridge School—for example,Russell and Wittgenstein—came to philosophy after considerablework in the sciences and in mathematics. Philosophy of mathematics wasthe first topic to which Russell applied his classical method ofanalysis. But the Oxford philosophers came to their subject, almostwithout exception, after extensive study of classics. Thus they werenaturally interested in words, in syntax, and in (idioms. They did notwish to use linguistic analysis simply to resolve philosophicalproblems; they were interested in the study of language for its ownsake. Therefore these philosophers are, perhaps, both more given tomaking linguistic distinctions, and better at finding suchdistinctions, than most.Ibid., 299) {§6.1}
Many English philosophers (including many who owe allegiance to OxfordPhilosophy) would place themselves at a position between that ofWittgenstein and the view I have just sketched. It may therefore be inpoint to indicate briefly the principal differences between the twoschools:
(1) Wittgensteinian analysis has, for its sole end, the resolution ofphilosophical enigmas. If there were no such enigmas, there would beno need for analysis. For Oxford, on the other hand, analysis has anintrinsic value.
(2) According to Wittgenstein and his disciples, all that is necessaryis to exhibit thegeneric character of the concepts which weanalyze. For Oxford, a minute analysis is indispensable.
(3) For Wittgenstein, analysis is the only useful method inphilosophy. For Oxford, it is only one among others, and no one claimsthat it is sufficient, by itself, to resolve all philosophicalproblems. (Ibid., 301) {§6.1}
It is not sensible to ask forthe method of makingone‘s fortune (or of ruining oneself); there are many. It is nomore sensible to ask “What is the analytical method?”There is not one “analytic philosophy”. There are several.(Ibid., 301 [closing sentences]) {§6.1}

Westerhoff, Jan

For explaining Dharmakīrti’s approach it is necessary todistinguish four levels of philosophical analysis in ascending orderof sophistication. At the lowest level we begin with theperspective of ordinary, unenlightened beings. Their view ofthe world is not to be faulted to the extent to which it is largelypragmatically successful: it allows them to successfully interact withthe world. However, from a philosophical perspective it leaves much tobe desired, as it is characterized by the chief fault ofsatkāyadrṣṭi, the mistakensuperimposition of a substantial self where there is none, both in thecase of persons, as well as in the case of other phenomena. At thesecond level of the scale we come to thereductionist viewthat we find exemplified in the Abhidharma. Both persons as well asother partite objects are analysed and found to be nothing butconvenient verbal designations sitting on top of what is ultimatelyreal, namely conglomerations of fundamentally existingdharmas. At this level, some elements are still characterizedby spatial, temporal, or conceptual extension. Some objects, such ascolours, are spread out in space, some objects have temporalextension, and most importantly, some qualities of objects are sharedacross different instances of them: all earth-atoms are solid, allwater-atoms wet, and so on. By and large this perspective accords withthe Sarvāstivāda view we find in Vasubandhu’sAbhidharmakośa. At the third level the reductionistperspective is further refined into a form ofparticularism.According to this position all three forms of extension are given upbecause they are considered to be the products of cognitive errors. Weperceive objects as spatially extended because we confuse qualities ofthe mental image of the object with the qualities of what gives riseto the mental image. The assumption of temporal extension is anartefact of the slowness of our perceptual system. Because we cannotkeep up with the rapid succession that marks the change of things, wesimply group together various successive phenomena that form part of asingle causal chain and construe it as one temporally persistingobject. The same happens in the case of shared objects in general orobject-types. Even though every particular is different from any otherparticular, we are often not able to register the differences betweendistinct things. As in the case of temporal resolution, thecomparative coarseness of our conceptual resolution causes us to lumptogether various distinct, though similar things. So despite the factthat all there is out there in the world is a variety of things suchas earth-atoms that are distinct from one another, on account of somesimilarity we put them all together and argue that they allinstantiate the same object-type of solidity. This view is oftenreferred to as a Sautrāntika position, and the emphasis on theextremely short-lived nature of all objects seems to justify this,even though, as noted before, it is difficult to be precise about thedistinction between this form of Sautrāntika, the form that wefind in Vasubandhu, and those coming from sources precedingVasubandhu. This particularist stance is the philosophical positionfrom which Dharmakīrti constructs most of his arguments. This isa curious fact, since it does not represent his final view, theposition he wants to endorse after discussing various other positionsthat are all in some way defective. For if we push our philosophicalanalysis yet further we get to a fourth level, anidealisttheory, according to which the duality between the perceivingsubject and the non-material perceived object is illusory. Allphenomena have only one nature, and this nature is mental. Theaffinity of this view with Yogācāra positions is obvious.Despite the fact that this is the position Dharmakīrti wantsto endorse, in the end it does not dominate his philosophicalexposition. In fact there is only one substantial section of thePramāṇavārttika where he employs itconsistently as a background for his argumentation.
This sequence of four positions along the sliding scale of analysis isinteresting for a number of reasons. On the one hand it mirrors thehistorical development of Buddhist thought in India, from theconfrontation with non-Buddhist believers in a substantialātman through Abhidharma reductionism, a thoroughgoingform of particularism, up to the idealism of Yogācāra. Yetthis sequence is at the same time considered to be a conceptualhierarchy, an ascent to better and better philosophical theories or,what amounts to the same thing in the Buddhist context, a hierarchy ofviews that result in less and less erroneous superimposition(samāropa). It is obvious how the Abhidharmareductionism is supposed to remove clinging to the mistaken belief ina substantial self where there is none. Yet, as the partcularist stageargues, the reductionist is still bound by superimposing spatial,temporal, and conceptual extension to a world consisting ofnon-extended, momentary, and utterly distinct particulars. Removingthose frees us from further superimpositions, and thereby from thepotential for further clinging, clinging that in turn leads tosuffering and continuing entanglement in cyclic existence. Furthersuperimposition takes place when the appearance of external objects issuperimposed on some purely mental phenomena, thereby causing theparticularist picture in the first place. A thoroughgoing removal ofsuperimpositions must also dispense with the erroneous distinctionbetween perceiving subject and perceived object.
A single argumentative pattern can be understood as the driving forcebehind the movement through the four levels. This is theneither-one-nor-many argument, well known throughout the history ofBuddhist philosophy. When applied to the perspective of ordinarybeings, this argument begins with the question whether an object andits parts are identical or different. It appears that they cannot beidentical (since the object is one and the parts are many, and onething cannot have contradictory properties), and that they cannot bedifferent (as the whole is never found as a separate entity distinctfrom the parts). The reductionist argues that we should conclude fromthis that wholes are not real in the first place, but merelyconceptually constructed pseudo-entities. the same considerations canthen be applied to particulars and properties they supposedly share(here a key argument is that distinct shared properties wouldhave to be permanent, conflicting with the principle ofmomentariness), and to the perceiving object and perception (if theyare distinct, why do we never encounter one without the other?).(The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2018, 253–5)

Whitehead, Alfred North

The primary weapon is analysis. And analysis is the evocation ofinsight by the hypothetical suggestions of thought, and the evocationof thought by the activities of direct insight. In this process thecomposite whole, the interrelations, and the things related,concurrently emerge into clarity. (Essays in Science andPhilosophy, New York: Philosophical Library, 1947, 157)

Wilson, John Cook

Analysis is often understood to imply a whole of which the parts areexplicitly known before the analysis; but logical elements are for ourordinary consciousness only implicit: we use them without reflectingon them, just as we use grammatical distinctions long before we haveany knowledge of grammar. Logic does not merely analyse: it makesexplicit what was implicit. (Statement and Inference, Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1926, 49)
The hypothetical process therefore combines in itself both the methodof discovery and the proof, and is the proper scientific exposition.The non-hypothetical proof to which we are accustomed is a sort ofscientific pedantry, and it is consequently a great mistake first togive what is called analysis, which corresponds to the hypotheticalprocess, and then to follow it by a synthesis, which is thenon-hypothetical part, thus putting aside analysis as if it were asort of accident. It is an error because it conceals the true processof thinking. (Ibid., 560)

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

I have changed my views on “atomic” complexes: I now thinkthat qualities, relations (like love) etc. are all copulae! That meansI for instance analyse a subject-predicate proposition, say,“Socrates is human” into “Socrates” and“something is human”, (which I think is not complex). Thereason for this is a very fundamental one. I think that there cannotbe different Types of things! In other words whatever can besymbolized by a simple proper name must belong to one type. Andfurther: every theory of types must be rendered superfluous by aproper theory of symbolism: For instance if I analyse the propositionSocrates is mortal into Socrates, mortality and (∃x,y)∈₁ (x,y) I want a theory of types to tell me that“mortality is Socrates” is nonsensical, because if I treat“mortality” as a proper name (as I did) there is nothingto prevent me to make the substitution the wrong way round.But if I analyse (as I do now) into Socrates and (∃x).xis mortal or generally into x and (∃x) φx it becomesimpossible to substitute the wrong way round because the two symbolsare now of a differentkind themselves. What I ammost certain of is not however the correctness of my presentway of analysis, but of the fact that all theory of types must be doneaway with by a theory of symbolism showing that what seem to bedifferent kinds of things are symbolized by different kindsof symbols whichcannot possibly be substituted in oneanother’s places. I hope I have made this fairly clear!
Propositions which I formerly wrote ∈₂ (a,R,b) I nowwrite R(a,b) and analyse them into a,b and (∃x,y)R(x,y) [with(∃x,y)R(x,y) marked in the text as “not complex”](NB, 121–2) {§6.5}
How is it reconcilable with the task of philosophy, that logic shouldtake care of itself? If, for example, we ask: Is such and such a factof the subject-predicate form?, we must surely know what we mean by“subject-predicate form”. We must knowwhetherthere is such a form at all. How can we know this? “From thesigns”. But how? For we haven’t got anysigns ofthis form. We may indeed say: We have signs that behave like signs ofthe subject-predicate form, but does that mean that there really mustbe facts of this form? That is, when those signs are completelyanalysed? And here the question arises again: Does such a completeanalysis exist?And if not: then what is the task ofphilosophy?!!? (NB, 2) {§6.5}
Our difficulty now lies in the fact that to all appearancesanalysability, or its opposite, is not reflected in language. That isto say: We cannot, as it seems, gather from language alonewhether for example there are real subject-predicate facts or not. Buthow COULD weexpress this fact or its opposite?Thismust beshewn. (NB, 10) {§6.5}
The trivial fact that a completely analysed proposition contains justas many names as there are things contained in its reference[Bedeutung]; this fact is an example of the all-embracingrepresentation of the world through language. (NB, 11) {§6.5}
The completely analysed proposition must image its reference[Bedeutung]. (NB, 18) {§6.5}
A question: can we manage without simple objects in LOGIC?
Obviously propositions are possible which contain no simplesigns, i.e. no signs which have an immediate reference[Bedeutung]. And these are reallypropositionsmaking sense, nor do the definitions of their component parts have tobe attached to them.
But it is clear that components of our propositions can be analysed bymeans of a definition, and must be, if we want to approximate to thereal structure of the proposition.At any rate, then, there is aprocess of analysis. And can it not now be asked whether thisprocess comes to an end? And if so: What will the end be?
If it is true that every defined sign signifiesvia itsdefinitions then presumably the chain of definitions must some timehave an end. [Cf.TLP 3.261.]
The analysed proposition mentions more than the unanalysed.
Analysis makes the proposition more complicated than it was, but itcannot and must not make it more complicated than its meaning[Bedeutung] was from the first.
When the proposition is just as complex as its reference[Bedeutung], then it iscompletely analysed.
But the reference [Bedeutung] of our propositions is notinfinitely complicated. (NB, 46) {§6.5}
But it also seems certain that we do not infer the existence of simpleobjects from the existence of particular simple objects, but ratherknow them—by description, as it were—as the end-product ofanalysis, by means of a process that leads to them. (NB, 50) {§6.5}
Let us assume that every spatial object consists of infinitely manypoints, then it is clear that I cannot mention all these by name whenI speak of that object. Here then would be a case in which Icannot arrive at the complete analysis in the old sense atall; and perhaps just this is the usual case.
But this is surely clear: the propositions which are the only onesthat humanity uses will have a sense just as they are and do not waitupon a future analysis in order to acquire a sense.
Now, however, it seems to be a legitimate question:Are–e.g.–spatial objects composed of simple parts; inanalysing them, does one arrive at parts that cannot be furtheranalysed, or is this not the case?
—But what kind of question is this?—
Is it, A PRIORI,clear that in analysing we must arriveat simple components—is this, e.g., involved in the concept ofanalysis—, or is analysisad infinitumpossible?—Or is there in the end even a third possibility?(NB, 62) {§6.5}
In a proposition a thought can be so expressed that to the objects ofthe thought correspond elements of the propositional sign.
I call these elements ‘simple signs’ and theproposition ‘completely analysed’. (TLP, 3.2,3.201) {§6.5}
There is one and only one complete analysis ofa proposition. (TLP, 3.25) {§6.5}
It is obvious that, in the analysis of propositions, we mustarrive at elementary propositions, which consist of names in immediatecombination.
This raises the question as to how the propositionalunity comes about. (TLP, 4.221) {§6.5}
If we know on purely logical grounds that there must be elementarypropositions, then everyone who understands propositions in theirunanalysed form must know it. (TLP, 5.5562) {§6.5}
The correct method in philosophy would really be this: to say nothingexcept what can be said, that is, propositions of naturalscience—that is, something that has nothing to do withphilosophy; and then, whenever someone else wanted to say somethingmetaphysical, to demonstrate to them that they had not given a meaningto certain signs in their propositions. This method would beunsatisfying to them—they would not have the feeling that wewere teaching them philosophy—but this wouldbe the only strictly correct one. (TLP, 6.53) {§6.5}
My propositions elucidate when someone who understands me finallyrecognizes them as nonsensical by using them to climb up, over, andout of them. (They must throw away the ladder, so to speak, havingused it to climb up.) They must get over these propositions, andthen they see the world correctly. (TLP, 6.54) {§6.5}
A proposition is completely logically analysed if its grammar is madecompletely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressedin. (PR, 51; cf.BT, 308) {§6.5}
Logical analysis is the analysis of something we have, not ofsomething we don’t have. Therefore it is the analysis ofpropositionsas they stand. (PR, 52) {§6.5}
a mathematical proof is an analysis of the mathematical proposition.(PR, 179) {§6.5}
Complex is not like fact. For I can, e.g., say of a complex that itmoves from one place to another, but not of a fact.
But that this complex is now situated here is a fact. ...
A complex is composed of its parts, the things of a kind which go tomake it up. (This is of course a grammatical proposition concerningthe words ‘complex’, ‘part’ and‘compose’.)
To say that a red circle iscomposed of redness andcircularity, or is a complex with these component parts, is a misuseof these words and is misleading. (Frege was aware of this and toldme.) It is just as misleading to say the fact that this circle is red(that I am tired) is a complex whose component parts are a circle andredness (myself and tiredness).
Neither is a house a complex of bricks and their spatial relations;i.e. that too goes against the correct use of the word. (PR,301–2) {§6.5}
When I say: “My broom is in the corner”,—is thisreally a statement about the broomstick and the brush? Well, it couldat any rate be replaced by a statement giving the position of thestick and the position of the brush. And this statement is surely afurther analysed form of the first one.—But why do I call it“further analysed”?—Well, if the broom is there,that surely means that the stick and brush must be there, and in aparticular relation to one another; and this was as it were hidden inthe sense of the first sentence, and isexpressed in theanalysed sentence. Then does someone who says that the broom is in thecorner really mean: the broomstick is there, and so is the brush, andthe broomstick is fixed in the brush?—If we were to ask anyoneif he meant this he would probably say that he had not thoughtspecially of the broomstick or specially of the brush at all. And thatwould be theright answer, for he meant to speak neither ofthe stick nor of the brush in particular. Suppose that, instead ofsaying “Bring me the broom”, you said “Bring me thebroomstick and the brush which is fitted on toit.”!—Isn’t the answer: “DO you want thebroom? Why do you put it so oddly?”——Is he going tounderstand the further analysed sentence better?—This sentence,one might say, achieves the same as the ordinary one, but in a moreroundabout way.— Imagine a language-game in which someone isordered to bring certain objects which are composed of several parts,to move them about, or something else of that kind. And two ways ofplaying it: in one (a) the composite objects (brooms, chairs, tables,etc.) have names, as in (15); in the other (b) only the parts aregiven names and the wholes are described by means of them.—Inwhat sense is an order in the second game an analysed form of an orderin the first? Does the former lie concealed in the latter, and is itnow brought out by analysis?—True, the broom is taken to pieceswhen one separates broomstick and brush; but does it follow that theorder to bring the broom also consists of corresponding parts? ...
To say, however, that a sentence in (b) is an ‘analysed’form of one in (a) readily seduces us into thinking that the former isthe more fundamental form; that it alone shews what is meant by theother, and so on. For example, we think: If you have only theunanalysed form you miss the analysis; but if you know the analysedform that gives you everything.—But can I not say that an aspectof the matter is lost on you in thelatter case as well asthe former? (PI, §§ 60, 63) {§6.5}
Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. Such an investigationsheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away.Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among otherthings, by certain analogies between the forms of expression indifferent regions of language.—Some of them can be removed bysubstituting one form of expression for another; this may be called an“analysis” of our forms of expression, for the process issometimes like one of taking a thing apart.
But now it may come to look as if there were something like a finalanalysis of our forms of language, and so asingle completelyresolved form of every expression. That is, as if our usual forms ofexpression were, essentially, unanalysed; as if there were somethinghidden in them that had to be brought to light. When this is done theexpression is completely clarified and our problem solved.
It can also be put like this: we eliminate misunderstandings by makingour expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we were movingtowards a particular state, a state of complete exactness; and as ifthis were the real goal of our investigation. (PI,§§ 90–1) {§6.5}
We are not analysing a phenomenon (e.g. thought) but a concept (e.g.that of thinking), and therefore the use of a word. (PI,§383) {§6.5}

A list of key works on analysis (monographs and collections) can befound in the

Annotated Bibliography, §1.2.

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054