synthetical, a.
(sɪnˈθɛtɪkəl)
[f. mod.L. syntheticus: see -ical.]
(Opposed to analytical.)
1. Logic, Philos., etc. = prec. 1.
| 1620 T. Granger Div. Logike iv. ii. 295 Method, is either contextiue, or retextiue. The contextiue is also called Synthesis, or Syntheticall Method. 1673 O. Walker Educ. x. 119 Neither is his Philosophy more notional then all Sciences, which are delivered in a Synthetical, i.e. a doctrinal method, and begin with universal propositions. 1697 tr. Burgersdicius' Logick ii. 138 It often happens in a Part of a Discipline whose Whole is in Method Synthetical, that the Analytick Order may be kept. 1733 Berkeley Th. Vision Vind. §38 In the synthetical method of delivering science or truth already found. 1827 Whately Logic Introd. (ed. 2) 16 The synthetical form of teaching is..sufficiently interesting to one who has made considerable progress in any study; and..is the form in which our knowledge naturally arranges itself in the mind..: but the analytical is the more interesting, easy, and natural kind of introduction; as being the form in which the first invention or discovery..must originally have taken place. 1837 Whewell Hist. Induct. Sci. vi. vi. §7 II. 100 One consequence of the synthetical form adopted by Newton in the Principia was, that his successors had the problem of the solar system to begin entirely anew. 1864 Bowen Logic x. 321 In descending along its course, the synthetical proof gathers all these accessions into one common trunk. |
2. Chem. = prec. 2.
| 1733 P. Shaw Chem. Lect. ix. (1755) 169 This Synthetical Chemistry, taken in the strict Sense, for the Recomposition of Bodies from their own Principles. 1796 Phil. Trans. LXXXVI. 414, I made the following synthetical observations and experiments. 1877 Huxley Physiogr. (1878) 111 The discovery of the composition of water was indeed made originally by synthetical, and not by analytical, processes. 1893 W. A. Hammond in N. Amer. Rev. CLVI. 21 Those medicines which are synthetical, that is, formed in the laboratory by the union of other substances. |
3. In the philosophy of Kant: = prec. 4.
| 1796 F. A. Nitsch Gen. View Kant's Princ. concerning Man 76 This act may be called a synthetical act of the reproductive imagination. Ibid. 89 A synthetical judgment à priori. 1838 [F. Haywood] tr. Kant's Crit. Pure Reason 15 That the straight line between two points is the shortest, is a synthetical proposition. For my conception of straight contains nothing of quantity, but only a quality. 1839 Penny Cycl. XIII. 175/2 Experience, which is itself a synthetical combination of its intuitions. 1884 tr. Lotze's Logic 61 Judgments of the form ‘S is P’ are called synthetical, when P is understood to be a mark not already contained in that group of marks which enables us to conceive S distinctly; they are called analytical when P..belongs essentially to those marks the union of which is necessary to make the concept of S complete. |
4. a. = prec. 5.
| 1799 A. Young Agric. Linc. 244 This [sc. a bog produced by overflow from an artificial channel] Sir Joseph [Banks] calls a synthetical bog; and says, he flatters himself, he shall become master of Mr. Elkinton's mode of drainage soon, as he had succeeded in a synthetical, as well as in an analytical experiment. 1826 Kirby & Spence Entomol. xlviii. IV. 461 Though he studied insects analytically with unrivalled success, he was not always equally happy in his synthetical arrangement of them. 1881 R. Routledge Science ix. 219 Newton, having thus analysed light, proceeded to arrange experiments for the opposite or synthetical process of recombining the coloured rays. |
b. = prec. 5 b.
| 1812 Hazlitt On Tooke Lit. Rem. 1836 I. 360 The difference between the synthetical and analytical faculties. 1829 Loudon Encycl. Plants (1836) 429 The most unreasonable advocate of the exploded doctrines of synthetical botany. 1842 Kingsley Life & Lett. (1878) I. 71 Synthetical minds are subject to this self-torture. |
† 5. Gram. (See quot. and cf. synthesis 2.)
| 1656 Blount Glossogr., Synthetical, pertaining to the figure Synthesis, which is when a noun collective singular is joyn'd with a verb plural. |