What is "principle"

Principle \Prin"ci*ple\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Principled; p. pr. & vb. n. Principling.] To equip with principles; to establish, or fix, in certain principles; to impress with any tenet, or rule of conduct, good or ill.

Governors should be well principled.
--L'Estrange.

Let an enthusiast be principled that he or his teacher is inspired.
--Locke.

Principle \Prin"ci*ple\, n. [F. principe, L. principium beginning, foundation, fr. princeps, -cipis. See Prince.]

1. Beginning; commencement. [Obs.]

   Doubting sad end of principle unsound.
   --Spenser.

2. A source, or origin; that from which anything proceeds; fundamental substance or energy; primordial substance; ultimate element, or cause.

   The soul of man is an active principle.
   --Tillotson.

3. An original faculty or endowment.

   Nature in your principles hath set [benignity].
   --Chaucer.

   Those active principles whose direct and ultimate object is the communication either of enjoyment or suffering.
   --Stewart.

4. A fundamental truth; a comprehensive law or doctrine, from which others are derived, or on which others are founded; a general truth; an elementary proposition; a maxim; an axiom; a postulate.

   Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection.
   --Heb. vi. 1.

   A good principle, not rightly understood, may prove as hurtful as a bad.
   --Milton.

5. A settled rule of action; a governing law of conduct; an opinion or belief which exercises a directing influence on the life and behavior; a rule (usually, a right rule) of conduct consistently directing one's actions; as, a person of no principle.

   All kinds of dishonesty destroy our pretenses to an honest principle of mind.
   --Law.

6. (Chem.) Any original inherent constituent which characterizes a substance, or gives it its essential properties, and which can usually be separated by analysis; -- applied especially to drugs, plant extracts, etc.

   Cathartine is the bitter, purgative principle of senna.
   --Gregory.

   Bitter principle, Principle of contradiction, etc. See under Bitter, Contradiction, etc.

late 14c., "origin, source, beginning; rule of conduct; axiom, basic assumption; elemental aspect of a craft or discipline," from Anglo-French principle, Old French principe "origin, cause, principle," from Latin principium (plural principia) "a beginning, commencement, origin, first part," in plural "foundation, elements," from princeps (see prince). Used absolutely for (good or moral) principle from 1650s.It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them. [Adlai Stevenson, speech, New York City, Aug. 27, 1952]\nScientific sense of "general law of nature" is recorded from 1802. The English -l- apparently is by analogy of participle, etc.

n. A fundamental assumption. vb. (context transitive English) To equip with principles; to establish, or fix, in certain principles; to impress with any tenet or rule of conduct.

1. n. a basic generalization that is accepted as true and that can be used as a basis for reasoning or conduct; "their principles of composition characterized all their works" [syn: rule]

2. a rule or standard especially of good behavior; "a man of principle"; "he will not violate his principles"

3. a basic truth or law or assumption; "the principles of democracy"

4. a rule or law concerning a natural phenomenon or the function of a complex system; "the principle of the conservation of mass"; "the principle of jet propulsion"; "the right-hand rule for inductive fields" [syn: rule]

5. rule of personal conduct [syn: precept]

6. (law) an explanation of the fundamental reasons (especially an explanation of the working of some device in terms of laws of nature); "the rationale for capital punishment"; "the principles of internal-combustion engines" [syn: rationale]

A principle is a law or rule that has to be, or usually is to be followed, or can be desirably followed, or is an inevitable consequence of something, such as the laws observed in nature or the way that a system is constructed. The principles of such a system are understood by its users as the essential characteristics of the system, or reflecting system's designed purpose, and the effective operation or use of which would be impossible if any one of the principles was to be ignored.

Examples of principles are descriptive comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption, the normative rule or code of conduct, and the law or fact of nature underlying the working of an artificial device.

A principle is a law or rule.

Principle may also refer to:

• Principle (chemistry), a constituent of a substance
• Principle Pictures, U.S.-American documentary film company
• The Principle, term for polygamy used by some modern-day splinter groups within the Latter Day Saint movement; see Mormonism and polygamy
• The Principle, 2014 documentary film
• Principle, or value (personal and cultural)
• Principle in principles and parameters
• Principles (retailer)

In modern chemistry, principles are the constituents of a substance, specifically those that produce a certain quality or effect in the substance, such as a bitter principle, which is any one of the numerous compounds having a bitter taste.

The idea of chemical principles developed out of the classical elements. Paracelsus identified the tria prima as principles in his approach to medicine.

Georg Ernst Stahl published Philosophical Principles of Universal Chemistry in 1730 as an early effort to distinguish between mixtures and compounds. He writes, "the simple are Principles, or the first material causes of Mixts;..." To define a Principle, he wrote

A Principle is defined, à priori, that in a mix’d matter, which first existed; and a posteriori, that into which it is at last resolved. (...) chemical Principles are called Salt, Sulfur and Mercury (...) or Salt, Oil, and Spirit.

Stahl recounts theories of chemical principles according to Helmont and J. J. Becher. He says Helmont took Water to be the "first and only material Principle of all things." According to Becher, Water and Earth are principles, where Earth is distinguished into three kinds. Stahl also ascribes to Earth the "principle of rest and aggregation."

Historians have described how early analysts used Principles to classify substances:

The classification of substances varies from one author to the next, but it generally relied on tests to which to which materials could be submitted or procedures that could be applied to them. "Test" must be understood here in a double sense, experimental and moral: gold was considered noble because it resisted fire, humidity, and being buried underground. Camphor, like sulfur, arsenic, mercury, and ammonia, belonged to the "spirits" because it was volatile. Glass belonged among the metals because, like them, it could be melted. And since the seven known metals – gold, silver, iron, copper, tin, lead, and mercury – were characterized by their capacity to be melted, what made a metal a metal was defined by reference to the only metal that was liquid at room temperature, mercury or quicksilver. But "common" mercury differed from the mercuric principle, which was cold and wet. Like all other metals, it involved another "principle", which was hot and dry, sulfur.

Guillaume-Francois Rouelle "attributed two functions to principles: that of forming mixts and that of being an agent or instrument of chemical principles."

Thus the four principles, earth, air, fire, and water, were principles both of the chemist's operations and of the mixts they operated upon. As instruments they were, unlike specific chemical reagents, "natural and general," always at work in every chemical operation. As constituent elements, they did not contradict the chemistry of displacement but transcended it: the chemist could never isolate or characterize an element as he characterized a body; an element was not isolable, for it could not be separated from a mixt without re-creating a new mixt in the process.

In his book The Sceptical Chymist of 1661, Robert Boyle criticized the traditional understanding of the composition of materials and initiated the modern understanding of chemical elements.