Search the Dictionary

Having the quality of producing sleep; tending to produce sleep; soporific.

Teaching the doctrine of idealism; as, the ideal theory or philosophy.

To be ignorant of or not acquainted with. [Archaic] Philosophy would solidly be established, if men would more carefully distinguish those things that they know from those that they ignore. Boyle.

ower; the fancy. The imagination of common language -- the productive imagination of philosophers -- is nothing but the representative process plus the process to which I would give the name of the "comparative." Sir W. Hamilton. The power of the mind to decompose its conceptions, and to recombine the elements of them…

burning with a brilliant white light. -- Indian grass (Bot.), a coarse, high grass (Chrysopogon nutans), common in the southern portions of the United States; wood grass. Gray. -- Indian hemp. (Bot.) (a) A plant of the genus Apocynum (A. cannabinum), having a milky juice, and a tough, fibrous bark, whence the name.…

ness; especially, a systematic apathy regarding what is true or false in religion or philosophy; agnosticism. The indifferentism which equalizes all religions and gives equal rights to truth and error. Cardinal Manning.

peration of discovering and proving general propositions; the scientific method. -- Philosophical induction, the inference, or the act of inferring, that what has been observed or established in respect to a part, individual, or species, may, on the ground of analogy, be affirmed or received of the whole to which it b…

ation in signaling on an electric wire, produced by lateral induction. -- Inductive philosophy or method. See Philosophical induction, under Induction. -- Inductive sciences, those sciences which admit of, and employ, the inductive method, as astronomy, botany, chemistry, etc.

Not apt or fit; unfit; unsuitable; improper; unbecoming. The Aristotelian philosophy is inept for new discoveries. Glanvill.

ensual and frivolous part of mankind are amazing; but the infatuations of the learned and sophistical are incomparably more so. I. Taylor. Such is the infatuation of self-love. Blair.

An unsophisticated person; hence, a child; a simpleton; an idiot. B. Jonson. In Scotland a natural fool was called an innocent. Sir W. Scott. Innocents' day (Eccl.), Childermas day.

, theoretical medicine; that department of medical science which attempts to account philosophically for the various phenomena of health as well as of disease; physiology applied to the practice of medicine. Dunglison.

Relating to the understanding; treating of the mind; as, intellectual philosophy, sometimes called "mental" philosophy.

He was better qualified than they to estimate justly the intrinsic value of Grecian philosophy and refinement. I. Taylor.

; an original contrivance or construction; a device; as, this fable was the invention of Esop; that falsehood was her own invention. We entered by the drawbridge, which has an invention to let one fall if not premonished. Evelyn.

uiry, esp. patient or thorough inquiry or examination; as, the investigations of the philosopher and the mathematician; the investigations of the judge, the moralist.

, supposed to correspond with the modern major scale of C. -- Ionic sect, a sect of philosophers founded by Thales of Miletus, in Ionia. Their distinguishing tenet was, that water is the original principle of all things. -- Ionic type, a kind of heavy-faced type (as that of the following line).

A philosophical toy for exhibiting the prismatic tints by means of thin films.

fix or combining form, indicating identity, or equality; the same numerical value; as in isopod, isomorphous, isochromatic. Specif.:

he same either at a given time, or for a certain period (mean height), as for a year; an isopiestic line. [Written also isobare.]