a. [f. mod.L. syntheticus: see -ICAL.] (Opposed to ANALYTICAL.)
1. Logic, Philos., etc. = prec. 1.
1620. T. Granger, Div. Logike, IV. ii. 295. Method, is either contextiue, or retextiue. The contextiue is also called Synthesis, or Syntheticall Method.
1673. O. Walker, Educ., x. 119. Neither is his Philosophy more notional then all Sciences, which are delivered in a Synthetical, i. e. a doctrinal method, and begin with universal propositions.
1697. trans. Burgersdicius’ Logic, II. 138. It often happens in a Part of a Discipline whose Whole is in Method Synthetical, that the Analytick Order may be kept.
1733. Berkeley, Th. Vision Vind., § 38. In the synthetical method of delivering science or truth already found.
1827. Whately, Logic, Introd. (ed. 2), 16. The synthetical form of teaching is … sufficiently interesting to one who has made considerable progress in any study; and … is the form in which our knowledge naturally arranges itself in the mind…: but the analytical is the more interesting, easy, and natural kind of introduction; as being the form in which the first invention or discovery … must originally have taken place.
1837. Whewell, Hist. Induct. Sci., VI. vi. § 7. II. 100. One consequence of the synthetical form adopted by Newton in the Principia was, that his successors had the problem of the solar system to begin entirely anew.
1864. Bowen, Logic, x. 321. In descending along its course, the synthetical proof gathers all these accessions into one common trunk.
2. Chem. = prec. 2.
1733. P. Shaw, Chem. Lect., ix. (1755), 169. This Synthetical Chemistry, taken in the strict Sense, for the Recomposition of Bodies from their own Principles.
1796. Phil. Trans., LXXXVI. 414. I made the following synthetical observations and experiments.
1877. Huxley, Physiogr. (1878), 111. The discovery of the composition of water was indeed made originally by synthetical, and not by analytical, processes.
1893. W. A. Hammond, in N. Amer. Rev., CLVI. 21. Those medicines which are synthetical, that is, formed in the laboratory by the union of other substances.
3. In the philosophy of Kant: = prec. 4.
1838. [F. Haywood], trans. Kant’s Crit. Pure Reason, 15. That the straight line between two points is the shortest, is a synthetical proposition. For my conception of straight contains nothing of quantity, but only a quality.
1839. Penny Cycl., XIII. 175/2. Experience, which is itself a synthetical combination of its intuitions.
1884. trans. Lotze’s Logic, 61. Judgments of the form ‘S is P’ are called synthetical, when P is understood to be a mark not already contained in that group of marks which enables us to conceive S distinctly; they are called analytical when P … belongs essentially to those marks the union of which is necessary to make the concept of S complete.
4. = prec. 5.
1799. A. Young, Agric. Linc., 244. This [sc. a bog produced by overflow from an artificial channel] Sir Joseph [Banks] calls a synthetical bog; and says, he flatters himself, he shall become master of Mr. Elkinton’s mode of drainage soon, as he had succeeded in a synthetical, as well as in an analytical experiment.
1826. Kirby & Spence, Entomol., xlviii. IV. 461. Though he studied insects analytically with unrivalled success, he was not always equally happy in his synthetical arrangement of them.
1881. Routledge, Science, ix. 219. Newton, having thus analysed light, proceeded to arrange experiments for the opposite or synthetical process of recombining the coloured rays.
b. = prec. 5 b.
1812. Hazlitt, On Tooke, Lit. Rem. 1836, I. 360. The difference between the synthetical and analytical faculties.
1829. Loudon, Encycl. Plants (1836), 429. The most unreasonable advocate of the exploded doctrines of synthetical botany.
1842. Kingsley, Life & Lett. (1878), I. 71. Synthetical minds are subject to this self-torture.
† 5. Gram. (See quot. and cf. SYNTHESIS 2.)
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Synthetical, pertaining to the figure Synthesis, which is when a noun collective singular is joyn’d with a verb plural.
