Word Finder - speculations

definition

The process of thinking or meditating on a subject.

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The act or process of reasoning a priori from premises given or assumed.

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A conclusion to which the mind comes by speculating; mere theory; notion; conjecture.

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An investment involving higher-than-normal risk in order to obtain a higher-than-normal return.

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The act or practice of buying land, goods, shares, etc., in expectation of selling at a higher price, or of selling with the expectation of repurchasing at a lower price; a trading on anticipated fluctuations in price, as distinguished from trading in which the profit expected is the difference between the retail and wholesale prices, or the difference of price in different markets.

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Examination by the eye; view.

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Power of sight.

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A card game in which the players buy from one another trumps or whole hands, upon a chance of getting the highest trump dealt, which entitles the holder to the pool of stakes.

definition

The process of anticipating which branch of code will be chosen and executing it in advance.

But the Cartesian theory, like the later speculations of Kant and Laplace, proposes to give a hypothetical explanation of the circumstances and motions which in the normal course of things led to the state of things required by the law of attraction.

The Brahman priest (brahma) being thus the recognized head of the sacerdotal order (brahma), which itself is the visible embodiment of sacred writ and the devotional spirit pervading it (brahma), the complete realization of theocratic aspirations required but a single step, which was indeed taken in the theosophic speculations of the later Vedic poets and the authors of the Brahmanas (q.v.), viz.

Among the earliest of these speculations is that put forward by Benoit de Maillet in his Telliained, which, though printed in 1735, was not published until twenty-three years later.

Jean Baptiste Rene Robinet' followed out much the same line of thought as De Maillet, but less soberly; and Bonnet's speculations in the Palingenesie, which appeared in 1769, have already been mentioned.

We find in the Meditations no speculations on the absolute nature of the deity, and no clear expressions of opinion as to a future state.

The epidemic nature of wheat-rust was known to Aristotle about 350 B.C., and the Greeks and Romans knew these epidemics well, their philosophers having shrewd speculations as to causes, while the people held characteristic superstitions regarding them, which found vent in the dedication of special festivals and deities to the pests.

Elie de Beaumont, in his speculations on the relation between the direction of mountain ranges and their geological age and character, was feeling towards a comprehensive theory of the forms of crustal relief; but his ideas were too geometrical, and his theory that the earth is a spheroid built up on a rhombic dodecahedron, the pentagonal faces of which determined the direction of mountain ranges, could not be proved.'

He is the first to bring all the culture of the Greeks and all the speculations of the Christian heretics to bear on the exposition of Christian truth.

Interesting speculations as to the periods of origin of great coral reefs have been made by Wayland Vaughan, Andrews and Daly and Humphreys.

Other connubial speculations foundered on the personal dislike of the princess for the various suitors proposed to her, so that on the death of her mother (May 1727) and the departure to Holstein of her beloved sister Anne, her only remaining near relation, the princess found herself at the age of eighteen practically her own mistress.

For this reason their interest in ethical speculations was all the keener; their great thinkers were endlessly engaged in settling what the relation ought to be between duty and self-interest.

His emoluments as treasurer at war, together with his wife's fortune, provided him with ample means, which he lost by rash speculations, a circumstance regarded by his son as the prelude to his own good fortune; for had he been rich, he used to say, he might never have known mathematics.

Lamarck accepted the development theory fully, and pushed his speculations far beyond the realm of fact.

He also found time for philosophical speculations, and in 1830 he published his Inquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers of Man and the Investigation of Truth, which was followed in 1833 by a sequel, The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings.

Among the Greeks and Romans various speculations as to the cause of the how were indulged in; Aristotle, in his Meteors, erroneously ascribes it to the reflection of the sun's rays by the rain; Seneca adopted the same view.

To the work carried on by the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in England, and to investigators in other countries, are due the present day scientific efforts made to systematize investigation and clear away many of the hypothetical speculations that have gathered round this most difficult subject.

Schbnlein thus did something to introduce new and positive conceptions and exacter methods into Germany; but unfortunately his own mind retained the abstract habit of his country, and his abilities were dissipated in the mere speculations of Schelling.

With these gains Voltaire seems to have begun his long series of successful financial speculations.

No laboratories were accessible to ordinary students, who had to content themselves with what the universities could give in the lectureroom and the library, and though both at Bonn and Erlangen Liebig endeavoured to make up for the deficiencies of the official instruction by founding a students' physical and chemical society for the discussion of new discoveries and speculations, he felt that he could never become a chemist in his own country.

If it is obviously the outcome of immense learning on the part of its author, it is no less manifestly the result of the speculations and researches of many laborious predecessors in all departments of history, theology and philosophy.

Herder's services in laying the foundations of a comparative science of religion and mythology are even of greater value than his somewhat crude philological speculations.

Of Herder's properly metaphysical speculations little needs to be said.

None the less it is easy to find it in embryo in the speculations of the essentially European philosophers of Greece.

Here he " woke up to the interest of moral and metaphysical speculations."

Origen indulged in many speculations which were afterwards condemned, but, as these matters were still open questions in his day, he was not reckoned a heretic. (iii.) In accordance with the New Testament use of the term heresy, it is assumed that moral defect accompanies the intellectual error, that the false view is held pertinaciously, in spite of warning, remonstrance and rebuke; aggressively to win over others, and so factiously, to cause division in the church, a breach in its unity.

In the evolution of thought epistemological inquiry succeeded the speculations of the early thinkers, who concerned themselves primarily with attempts to explain existence.

Nor was it without its effect even on the speculations of Butler.

Outwardly he was a conforming Catholic; privately he pursued his theological speculations.

Like Bacon and Telesio he preferred the older Greek philosophers, who had looked at nature for themselves, and whose speculations had more of reality in them.

His sermons show no traces of his bold theological speculations, and he seems to have been faithful in the discharge of his duty.

From this time his published writings are practical in character; not till after the appearance of the Nachgelassene Werke was it known in what shape his final speculations had been thrown out.

The most ancient philosophers whose speculations are known to us seem to have discussed the ideas of number and of continuous magnitude, of space and time, of matter and motion, with a native power of thought which has probably never been surpassed.

Clement of Alexandria or Origen would not call his speculations dogmas.

His powerful reasoning excited among the Roman youth an enthusiasm for philosophical speculations, and the elder Cato insisted on Carneades and his companions being dismissed from the city.

As a historian, however, some of his speculations have been considered fanciful.

The Chaldaeans, Egyptians and Greeks were the early cultivators of science, and botany was not neglected, although the study of it was mixed up with crude speculations as to vegetable life, and as to the change of plants into animals.

The descriptions in these early works were encumbered with much medicinal detail, including speculations as to the virtues of plants.

This description, quoted from James Clerk Maxwell's article in the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, represents the historical position of the subject up till about 1860, when Maxwell began those constructive speculations in electrical theory, based on the influence of the physical views of Faraday and Lord Kelvin, which have in their subsequent development largely transformed theoretical physics into the science of the aether.

The anathema of the Roman Church had fallen upon all the fundamental doctrines for which the Reformers had contended and died; the right of free discussion within the limits of the creeds, which had given room for the speculations of the medieval philosophers, was henceforth curtailed and confined; and the definitions of the schoolmen were for ever exalted by the authority of Rome into dogmas of the Church.

In a somewhat similar fashion, Lamennais (in the first stage of his speculations, represented by the Essai sur l'indiference en matiere religieuse, 1817-18 21) endeavoured to destroy all rational certitude in order to establish the principle of authority; and the same profound distrust of the power of the natural reason to-arrive at truth is exemplified (though the allegation has been denied by the author) in Cardinal Newman.

In the interval he was restlessly active in parliament in denouncing naval abuses, and was also, most disastrously for himself, led into speculations on the Stock Exchange, by which he was brought at the beginning of 1814 into pressing danger of total ruin.

At this moment a notorious fraud was perpetrated on the Stock Exchange by an uncle of his and by other persons with whom he habitually acted in his speculations.

But in all probability these dates were only one development of those speculations in the region of numbers to which Gnosticism was so prone; and in any case to look for genuine traditions among Egyptian Gnostics, or even in the church of Alexandria, would be to misread the history of Christianity in the 2nd century.

Besides this, all their evidence is but approximate, often only stating quantities to a half or quarter of the amount, and seldom nearer than 5 or 10%; hence they are entirely worthless for all the closer questions of the approximation or original identity of standards in different countries; and it is just in this line that the imagination of writers has led them into the greatest speculations, unchecked by accurate evidence of the original standards.

The term has also been applied to the Italian humanists of the Renaissance, and in modern times, somewhat vaguely, to thinkers who have based their speculations on the Platonic metaphysics or on Plotinus, and incorporated with it a tendency towards a mystical explanation of ultimate phenomena.

The earliest Christian philosophers, particularly Justin and Athenagoras, likewise prepared the way for the speculations of the Neoplatonists - partly by their attempts to connect Christianity with Stoicism and Platonism, partly by their ambition to exhibit Christianity as " hyperplatonic."

But were the oldest Neoplatonists really acquainted with the speculations of Philo, or Justin, or Valentinus, or Basilides?

The brilliant French naturalist Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon (1707-1788), in Les Epoques de la nature, included in his vast speculations the theory of alternate submergence and emergence of the continents.

Political troubles and the dominating influence of Werner's speculations checked palaeontology in Germany, while under the leadership of Lamarck and Cuvier France came to the fore.

His speculations on phylogeny, or the descent of invertebrates and vertebrates, were, however, most fantastic and bore no relation to palaeontological evidence.