Concept
Hypothesis
Overview
A hypothesis (pl.: hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. A scientific hypothesis must be based on observations and make a testable and reproducible prediction about reality, in a process beginning with an educated guess.
If a hypothesis is repeatedly independently demonstrated by experiment to be true, it becomes a scientific theory. In colloquial usage, the words hypothesis and theory are often used interchangeably, but this is incorrect in the context of science.
A working hypothesis is a provisionally-accepted hypothesis used for the purpose of pursuing further progress in research. Working hypotheses are frequently discarded, and often proposed with knowledge (and warning) that they are incomplete and thus false, with the intent of moving research in at least somewhat the right direction, especially when scientists are stuck on an issue and brainstorming ideas.
In formal logic, a hypothesis is the antecedent in a proposition. For example, in the proposition "If P, then Q", statement P denotes the hypothesis (or antecedent) of the consequent Q. Hypothesis P is the assumption in a (possibly counterfactual) "what if" question. The adjective "hypothetical" (having the nature of a hypothesis or being assumed to exist as an immediate consequence of a hypothesis), can refer to any of the above meanings of the term "hypothesis".
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 Hypothesis is discussed.
The function of the hypothesis is to unify, to furnish a method of dealing with things, and its structure must be suitable to this end. It must be so formed that it will be likely to prove valid, and writers have formulated various rules to be followed in the formation of hypotheses.
John Dewey, Studies in Logical Theory
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
The next requisite for the admissibility of a hypothesis is its sufficiency. That is, it must determine à priori the consequences which are given in experience and which are supposed to follow from the hypothesis itself. If we require to employ auxiliary hypotheses, the suspicion naturally arises that they are mere fictions; because the necessity for each of them requires the same justification as in the case of the…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; opens on it
The great difference between induction and hypothesis is, that the former infers the existence of phenomena such as we have observed in cases which are similar, while hypothesis supposes something of a different kind from what we have directly observed, and frequently something which it would be impossible for us to observe directly. Accordingly, when we stretch an induction quite beyond the limits of our…
Charles S. Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Let us give the name of _hypothesis_ to anything that may be proposed to our belief; and just as the electricians speak of live and dead wires, let us speak of any hypothesis as either _live_ or _dead_. A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed. If I ask you to believe in the Mahdi, the notion makes no electric connection with your nature,--it refuses to scintillate…
William James, The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Nevertheless, I do not agree with M. Comte in condemning those who employ themselves in working out into detail the application of these hypotheses to the explanation of ascertained facts, provided they bear in mind that the utmost they can prove is, not that the hypothesis is, but that it _may_ be true. The ether hypothesis has a very strong claim to be so followed out, a claim greatly strengthened since it has…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Hypothesis
- Avicenna
- Timon of Phlius
- A. J. Ayer
- George Henry Lewes
- Xenophanes
- Colin Murray Turbayne
- Jean Nicod
- F. C. S. Schiller
- Kieran Egan (philosopher)
Related ideas
- Gregory Vlastos
- Falsifiability
- Ernest Nagel
- Carl Gustav Hempel
- Ancient Greek
- Correlation
- Karl Popper
- Scientific theory
- Explanation
- Nature
- Null hypothesis
- Plato
- Prediction
- Socrates
- Scientific method
- Testability
- Confirmation holism
- Galileo Galilei
- Experience
- Verificationism
- Occam's razor
- Imre Lakatos
- Reason
- Reality
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.