The Collaborative International Dictionary
Synthetic \Syn*thet"ic\, Synthetical \Syn*thet"ic*al\, a. [Gr. ?: cf. F. synth['e]tique.]
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Of or pertaining to synthesis; consisting in synthesis or composition; as, the synthetic method of reasoning, as opposed to analytical.
Philosophers hasten too much from the analytic to the synthetic method; that is, they draw general conclusions from too small a number of particular observations and experiments.
--Bolingbroke. (Chem.) Artificial. Cf. Synthesis, 2.
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(Zo["o]l.) Comprising within itself structural or other characters which are usually found only in two or more diverse groups; -- said of species, genera, and higher groups. See the Note under Comprehensive, 3.
Synthetic language, or Synthetical language, an inflectional language, or one characterized by grammatical endings; -- opposed to analytic language.
--R. Morris.
Wiktionary
a. synthetic
WordNet
adj. involving or of the nature of synthesis (combining separate elements to form a coherent whole) as opposed to analysis; "limnology is essentially a synthetic science composed of elements...that extend well beyond the limits of biology"- P.S.Welch [syn: synthetic] [ant: analytic]
of a proposition whose truth value is determined by observation or facts; "`all men are arrogant' is a synthetic proposition" [syn: synthetic] [ant: analytic]
Usage examples of "synthetical".
It is, therefore, a synthesis of perceptions, which synthesis itself is not contained in the perception, but contains the synthetical unity of the manifold of the perceptions in a consciousness, that unity constituting the essential of our knowledge of the objects of the senses, i.
Hence no one has ever succeeded in proving a synthetical proposition by pure concepts of the understanding only: as, for instance, the proposition that everything which exists contingently, has a cause.
Without this reflection our use of these concepts would be very uncertain, and synthetical propositions would spring up which critical reason cannot acknowledge, and which are simply founded on transcendental amphiboly, that is, on our confounding an object of the pure understanding with a phenomenon.
That connection is not a work of the senses only and of intuition, but is here the product of a synthetical power of the faculty of imagination, which determines the internal sense with reference to relation in time.
The second procedure consists in the mathematical and here the geometrical construction, by means of which I add in a pure intuition, just as I may do in the empirical intuition, everything that belongs to the schema of a triangle in general and, therefore, to its concept, and thus arrive at general synthetical propositions.
For the purely intellectual concept of the contingent cannot produce a synthetical proposition like that of causality, and the principle of causality has no meaning and no criterion of its use, except in the world of sense, while here it is meant to help us beyond the world of sense.
It was because people were ignorant of this method, and imagined that they could prove dogmatically synthetical propositions which the empirical use of the understanding follows as its principles, that so many and always unsuccessful attempts have been made to prove the proposition of the 'sufficient reason.