Word Finder - speculative

definition

Characterized by speculation; based on guessing, unfounded opinions, or extrapolation.

definition

Pursued as a gamble, with possible large profits or losses; risky.

definition

Pertaining to financial speculation; Involving or resulting from high-risk investments or trade.

But speculative knowledge breaks down or breaks off at an earlier point.

As a result it has been far easier for the American than for the European railway builder to take advantage of the speculative instinct in obtaining money.

Besides numerous contributions to the Proceedings of the Royal and the Royal Astronomical Societies, he published several books, both explanatory and speculative.

May we infer deductively that they have been attained because of the increase of speculative transactions?

His distinctive characteristics are his claim for absolute freedom in the study of church history and the New Testament; his distrust of speculative theology, whether orthodox or liberal; his interest in practical Christianity as a religious life and not a system of theology.

It is a chapter very difficult to write, for while on the one hand an ingenious and speculative historian may refer to the influence of the Crusades almost everything which was thought or done between r too and 1300, a cautious writer who seeks to find Brehier, L'Eglise et l'Orient, p. 347.

He had an extraordinary memory, well stored with scientific knowledge, both modern and historical, a cool and impartial judgment, and a strong preference for facts as against theory of the speculative kind.

From 1867 to 1893 Harris edited The Journal of Speculative Philosophy (22 vols.), which was the quarterly organ of the Philosophical Society founded in 1866.

He refused to base Judaism on speculative philosophy alone; there was a deep emotional side to his thought.

Berthelot, " alchemy rested partly on the industrial processes of the ancient Egyptians, partly on the speculative theories of the Greek philosophers, and partly on the mystical reveries of the Gnostics and Alexandrians."

Eckhart has been called the first of the speculative mystics.

Eckhart is in truth the first who attempted with perfect freedom and logical consistency to give a speculative basis to religious doctrines.

He maintained that the Platonic doctrine was providentially made to harmonize with Christianity, in order that by its means speculative intellects might be led to Christ.

The motley body of Aryan folk-belief, when subjected to the unifying thought of a speculative brain, was transformed to a selfcontained theory of the universe and a logical dualistic principle.

Zoroaster's teachings show him to have been a man of a highly speculative turn, faithful, however, with all his originality, to the Iranian national character.

Much of this area is of primeval forest; somewhat more than a third of the total, belonging to the government, was opened to sale (and speculative exspoliation) in 1904.

This theory had considerable influence on speculative philosophy in France during, the later years of the 19th century.

For Erigena, therefore, the speculative reason is the supreme arbiter; and in accordance with its results the utterances of Scripture and of the church have not infrequently to be subjected to an allegorical or mystical interpretation.

John the Scot was still E acquainted with Greek, seeing that he translated the work of the pseudo-Dionysius; and his speculative genius achieved the fusion of Christian doctrine and Neoplatonic thought in a system of quite remarkable metaphysical completeness.

Investigation of the writings of Indian mathematicians has exhibited a fundamental distinction between the Greek and Indian mind, the former being pre-eminently geometrical and speculative, the latter arithmetical and mainly practical.

The Arabians more closely resembled the Hindus than the Greeks in the choice of studies; their philosophers blended speculative dissertations with the more progressive study of medicine; their mathematicians neglected the subtleties of the conic sections and Diophantine analysis, and applied themselves more particularly to perfect the system of numerals, arithmetic and astronomy.

But of late years the beauties of the Rhine have become sadly marred; the banks in places, especially between Coblenz and Bonn, disfigured by quarrying, the air made dense with the smoke of cement factories and steam-tugs, commanding spots falling a prey to the speculative builder and villages growing into towns.

The rise of speculative philosophy in Greece was coincident with the beginning of prose composition, and many of the earliest philosophers wrote in the prose of the Ionic dialect; others, however, and especially the writers of the Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily, expounded their systems in continuous poems composed in the epic hexameter.

What chiefly distinguishes him from his Greek prototypes is that his purpose is rather ethical than purely speculative; the zeal of a teacher and reformer is more strong in him than even the intellectual passion of a thinker.

But the chief value of Lucretius as a thinker lies in his firm grasp of speculative ideas, and in his application of them to the interpretation of human life and nature.

In many instances, indeed, profits are more or less uncertain during the whole life of the mine, and it is evident that the value of the mining property must be more or less speculative.

In his studies he had come under the influence of Schleiermacher, Hegel and Franz Baader; but he was a man of independent mind, and developed a peculiar speculative theology which showed a disposition towards mysticism and theosophy.

It is important to note that in conceiving philosophic studies to be all one with historical studies and attaining to this unity in himself, he cultivated historical studies to an equal extent with purely theoretical and speculative studies, concentrating especially upon the history of thought and poetry.

In the front of the inquiry lies one main division, that, namely, between speculative and practical knowledge.

Speculative or theoretic knowledge is divided into abstract and concrete.

There is in every chapter a whole group of speculative suggestions, each of which would need a long chapter to itself to elaborate or to discuss.

Towards the close of his life he occupied himself, like Lessing, with speculative questions in philosophy and theology.

In his later life, as we shall presently see, he found his way to a speculative basis for his religious beliefs.

Hence the beliefs he preached were never to him mere speculative ideas, but rather the ultimate realities of being and thought, the final truths as to the character and ways of God interpreted into a law for the government of conscience and the regulation of life.

Theory and The Study of Religion, and, in some measure, of The Seat of Authority in Religion."' These books expressed his mature thought, and may be said to contain, in what he conceived as a final form, the speculative achievements of his life.

Their literary and speculative qualities are indeed exceptionally brilliant; they are splendid in diction, elaborate in argument, cogent yet reverent, keen while fearless in criticism.

As thus used, it was a term which governed the problems of speculative theism rather than those connected with the historical origin, the evolution and the organization of religion.

In its speculative parts the book is quite equal to those that had gone before, but in its literary and historical parts there are indications of a mind in which a longpractised logic had become a rooted habit.

Gregory, although he has not always escaped the charge of Sabellianism, now holds an undisputed place among the fathers of the church; and although the turn of his mind was practical rather than speculative, he is known to have taken an energetic part in most of the doctrinal controversies of his time.

He continued successfully in the management of this business through a financial crisis incident to a wildly speculative time, until in the spring of 1857 the house, by his advice, withdrew from Californian affairs.

Fichte a new speculative theism, and became an opponent of Hegel's pantheistic idealism.

The morality of the Jews did not outgrow their religion, but their interest was always ethical and not speculative.

Thus in the period 1520-1550 we have separate chapters on ancient literature, theology, speculative philosophy and jurisprudence, the literature of taste, and scientific and miscellaneous literature; and the subdivisions of subjects is carried further of course in the later periods.

In consequence of the state of his health, however, he returned to Basel in 1733, where he was appointed professor of anatomy and botany, and afterwards of experimental and speculative philosophy.

It was reserved for Dr Benrath to justify him, and to represent him as a fervent evangelist and at the same time as a speculative thinker with a passion for free inquiry.

To the defects of Machiavelli's education we may, in part at least, ascribe the peculiar vigour of his style and his speculative originality.

We feel that the Principe is inspired with greater fervency, as though its author had more than a speculative aim in view, and brought it forth to serve a special crisis.

Together with the Discorsi, the Principe contains the speculative fruits of his experience and observation combined with his deductions from Roman history.

It was Machiavelli's intense preoccupation with this problem - what a state is and how to found one in existing circumstances - which caused the many riddles of his speculative writings.

He owed something to Lucretius, something to the Stoic nature-pantheism, something to Anaxagoras, to Heraclitus, to the Pythagoreans, and to the Neoplatonists, who were partially known to him; above all, he was a profound student of Nicolas of Cusa, who was indeed a speculative Copernicus.