As they encrease the hatred of vice in some, so doe they enlarge thetheory of wickednesse in all.
(sciences) Acoherentstatement or set of ideas thatexplainsobservedfacts orphenomena and correctly predicts new facts or phenomena not previously observed, or which sets out thelaws and principles of something known or observed; ahypothesis confirmed by observation, experiment etc.[from 17th c.]
1843,John Stuart Mill, ""A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, ..., Bk V, Ch 7:
In its most proper acceptation,theory means the completed result of philosophical induction from experience.
1990, Tony Bennett,Outside Literature, page139:
Does this mean, then, that there can be no such thing as atheory of literature?
2002 May 23, Duncan Steel,The Guardian:
It was only when Einstein'stheory of relativity was published in 1915 that physicists could show that Mercury's "anomaly" was actually because Newton's gravitationaltheory was incomplete.
2003,Bill Bryson,A Short History of Nearly Everything, BCA, page118:
The world would need additional decades [...] before the Big Bang would begin to move from interesting idea to establishedtheory.
2009,Richard Dawkins,The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Bantam, page10:
Scientists and creationists are understanding the word "theory" in two very different senses. Evolution is atheory in the same sense as the heliocentrictheory. In neither case should the word "only" be used, as in "only atheory".
2012 January, Michael Riordan, “Tackling Infinity”, inAmerican Scientist[1], volume100, number 1, archived fromthe original on30 April 2013, page86:
Some of the most beautiful and thus appealing physicaltheories, including quantum electrodynamics and quantum gravity, have been dogged for decades by infinities that erupt when theorists try to prod their calculations into new domains. Getting rid of these nagging infinities has probably occupied far more effort than was spent in originating thetheories.
Knottheory classifies the mappings of a circle into 3-space.
1999, Wes DeMott,Vapors:
It's just atheory I have, and I wonder if women would agree. But don't men say a lot about themselves when a short-skirted woman slides out of a car or chair?
2003 June 21, Sean Coughlan,The Guardian:
Thetheory is that by stripping costs to the bone, they are able to offer ludicrously low fares.
In scientific discourse, the informal sense of “unsubstantiated statement or idea” is discouraged (withhypothesis orconjecture preferred), due to unintentional ambiguity and intentional equivocation with the sense “well-developed statement or structure”.
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