Thesis  

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"The growth of our knowledge is the result of a process closely resembling what Darwin called ‘natural selection’; that is, the natural selection of hypotheses: our knowledge consists, at every moment, of those hypotheses which have shown their (comparative) fitness by surviving so far in their struggle for existence; a competitive struggle which eliminates those hypotheses which are unfit."--Objective Knowledge'' (1972) by Karl Popper

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  1. A proposition or statement supported by arguments.
  2. A lengthy essay written to establish the validity of a thesis (sense 1.1), especially one submitted as a requirement for a university degree; a dissertation.
  3. An affirmation, or distinction from a supposition or hypothesis.
  4. In the dialectical method of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: the initial stage of reasoning where a formal statement of a point is developed; this is followed by antithesis and synthesis.


Mathematics and logic

  • A conjecture, especially one too vague to be formally stated or verified but useful as a working convention
  • A hypothesis, especially one too vague to be formally stated or verified but useful as a working convention
  • A proposition

Humanities

Etymology

From Late Middle English thesis (“lowering of the voice”) and also borrowed directly from its etymon Latin thesis (“proposition, thesis; lowering of the voice”), from Ancient Greek θέσῐς (thésis, “arrangement, placement, setting; conclusion, position, thesis; lowering of the voice”), from τῐ́θημῐ (títhēmi, “to place, put, set; to put down in writing; to consider as, regard”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to do; to place, put”)) + -σῐς (-sis, suffix forming abstract nouns or nouns of action, process, or result) The English word is a doublet of deed.

Sense 1.1 (“proposition or statement supported by arguments”) is adopted from antithesis. Sense 1.4 (“initial stage of reasoning”) was first used by the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), and later applied to the dialectical method of his countryman, the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831).

The plural form theses




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Thesis" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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