Search the Dictionary

Freedom from subtlety or abstruseness; clearness; as, the simplicity of a doctrine; the simplicity of an explanation or a demonstration.

eptic or skepticism; characterized by skepticism; hesitating to admit the certainly of doctrines or principles; doubting of everything.

The doctrine that no fact or principle can be certainly known; the tenet that all knowledge is uncertain; Pyrrohonism; universal doubt; the position that no fact or truth, however worthy of confidence, can be established on philosophical grounds; critical investigation or inquiry, as opposed to the positive assumption…

ound." Milton. Slight is the subject, but not so the praise. Pope. Some firmly embrace doctrines upon slight grounds. Locke.

Provided that; on condition that; in case that; if. Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Milton.

One who advocates or practices the doctrines of socialism.

The tenets or doctrines of Faustus Socinus, an Italian theologian of the sixteenth century, who denied the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the personality of the Devil, the native and total depravity of man, the vicarious atonement, and the eternity of future punishment. His theory was, that Christ was a man divinely com…

The doctrine that refers all diseases to morbid changes of the solid parts of the body. It rests on the view that the solids alone are endowed with vital properties, and can receive the impression of agents tending to produce disease.

The dictrine or the science of the general properties of material substances; somatics.

The doctrine or mode of reasoning practiced by a sophist; hence, any fallacy designed to deceive. When a false argument puts on the appearance of a true one, then it is properly called a sophism, or "fallacy". I. Watts. Let us first rid ourselves of sophisms, those of depraved men, and those of heartless philosophers.…

The doctrine of salvation by Jesus Christ.

on refuted; not fallacious; as, sound argument or reasoning; a sound objection; sound doctrine; sound principles. Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me. 2 Tim. i. 13.

A believer in the doctrine, formerly current, of encasement in the male (see Encasement), in which the seminal thread, or spermatozoid, was considered as the real animal germ, the head being the true animal head and the tail the body.

ry sphere, Crystalline sphere, Oblique sphere,. See under Armillary, Crystalline,. -- Doctrine of the sphere, applications of the principles of spherical trigonometry to the properties and relations of the circles of the sphere, and the problems connected with them, in astronomy and geography, as to the latitudes and…

Spherical geometry, that branch of geometry which treats of spherical magnitudes; the doctrine of the sphere, especially of the circles described on its surface. -- Spherical harmonic analysis. See under Harmonic, a. -- Spherical lune,portion of the surface of a sphere included between two great semicircles having a…

The doctrine of the sphere; the science of the properties and relations of the circles, figures, and other magnitudes of a sphere, produced by planes intersecting it; spherical geometry and trigonometry.

The doctrine, in opposition to the materialists, that all which exists is spirit, or soul -- that what is called the external world is either a succession of notions impressed on the mind by the Deity, as maintained by Berkeley, or else the mere educt of the mind itself, as taught by Fichte.

One who maintains the doctrine of spiritualism.

Doctrine or knowledge of the stars; star lore; astrology; astronomy. [Obs.] Which in star-read were wont have best insight. Spenser.

The doctrine or belief of the Stercoranists.