Concept
Analysis
Overview
Analysis (pl.: analyses) is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts in order to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle, though analysis as a formal concept is a relatively recent development.
The word comes from the Ancient Greek ἀνάλυσις (analysis, "a breaking-up" or "an untying" from ana- "up, throughout" and lysis "a loosening"). From it also comes the word's plural, analyses.
As a formal concept, the method has variously been ascribed to René Descartes (Discourse on the Method), and Galileo Galilei. It has also been ascribed to Isaac Newton, in the form of a practical method of physical discovery (which he did not name).
The converse of analysis is synthesis: putting the pieces back together again in a new or different whole.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Analysis is discussed.
You have heard an account of what we do with our patients, and you can form your own judgement whether our efforts are likely to lead to lasting injury. Misuse of analysis is possible in various ways: the transference especially, in the hands of an unscrupulous physician, is a dangerous instrument. But no medical remedy is proof against misuse; if a knife will not cut, neither will it serve a surgeon.
Sigmund Freud, Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis
names the idea; states what it is; the book is about it
As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses…
Isaac Newton, Opticks
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Another very palpable inconvenience lies in the fact that I cannot altogether avoid going into an analytic elucidation. Analysis is not, however, suitable for polemical use; it always presupposes the consent of the one analyzed and the situation of a superior and subordinate. Therefore he who wishes to use analysis with polemic intent must offer no objection if the person so analyzed will, in his turn, use analysis…
Sigmund Freud, The history of the psychoanalytic movement
names the idea; states what it is
Such an analysis never isolates this particular exception which constitutes the scientific problems as an individual experience. The extent to which the analysis is carried depends upon the exigencies of the problem. It is the indefinite variety of the problems which accounts for the indefinite variety of the facts.
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
The high relative perfection of mathematical analysis is as easily perceptible. This perfection is not due, as some have thought, to the nature of the signs which are employed as instruments of reasoning, eminently concise and general as they are.
Auguste Comte, The philosophy of mathematics
states what it is; opens on it; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Analysis
Related ideas
- Game theory
- Geology
- Isaac Newton
- Ancient Greek
- Psycholinguistics
- Language
- Discourse on the Method
- Language acquisition
- Mathematics
- Literature
- Matter
- Hypothesis
- Understanding
- Linguistics
- Phonology
- Psychoanalysis
- Peer review
- Euclid's Elements
- René Descartes
- Cricket
- Statistics
- Syntax
- Substance theory
- Semantics
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.