analysis and synthesis meaning

Analysis vs. Synthesis

What's the difference.

Analysis and synthesis are two fundamental processes in problem-solving and decision-making. Analysis involves breaking down a complex problem or situation into its constituent parts, examining each part individually, and understanding their relationships and interactions. It focuses on understanding the components and their characteristics, identifying patterns and trends, and drawing conclusions based on evidence and data. On the other hand, synthesis involves combining different elements or ideas to create a new whole or solution. It involves integrating information from various sources, identifying commonalities and differences, and generating new insights or solutions. While analysis is more focused on understanding and deconstructing a problem, synthesis is about creating something new by combining different elements. Both processes are essential for effective problem-solving and decision-making, as they complement each other and provide a holistic approach to understanding and solving complex problems.

Further Detail

Introduction.

Analysis and synthesis are two fundamental processes in various fields of study, including science, philosophy, and problem-solving. While they are distinct approaches, they are often interconnected and complementary. Analysis involves breaking down complex ideas or systems into smaller components to understand their individual parts and relationships. On the other hand, synthesis involves combining separate elements or ideas to create a new whole or understanding. In this article, we will explore the attributes of analysis and synthesis, highlighting their differences and similarities.

Attributes of Analysis

1. Focus on details: Analysis involves a meticulous examination of individual components, details, or aspects of a subject. It aims to understand the specific characteristics, functions, and relationships of these elements. By breaking down complex ideas into smaller parts, analysis provides a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

2. Objective approach: Analysis is often driven by objectivity and relies on empirical evidence, data, or logical reasoning. It aims to uncover patterns, trends, or underlying principles through systematic observation and investigation. By employing a structured and logical approach, analysis helps in drawing accurate conclusions and making informed decisions.

3. Critical thinking: Analysis requires critical thinking skills to evaluate and interpret information. It involves questioning assumptions, identifying biases, and considering multiple perspectives. Through critical thinking, analysis helps in identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, enabling a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter.

4. Reductionist approach: Analysis often adopts a reductionist approach, breaking down complex systems into simpler components. This reductionist perspective allows for a detailed examination of each part, facilitating a more in-depth understanding of the subject matter. However, it may sometimes overlook the holistic view or emergent properties of the system.

5. Diagnostic tool: Analysis is commonly used as a diagnostic tool to identify problems, errors, or inefficiencies within a system. By examining individual components and their interactions, analysis helps in pinpointing the root causes of issues, enabling effective problem-solving and optimization.

Attributes of Synthesis

1. Integration of ideas: Synthesis involves combining separate ideas, concepts, or elements to create a new whole or understanding. It aims to generate novel insights, solutions, or perspectives by integrating diverse information or viewpoints. Through synthesis, complex systems or ideas can be approached holistically, considering the interconnections and interdependencies between various components.

2. Creative thinking: Synthesis requires creative thinking skills to generate new ideas, concepts, or solutions. It involves making connections, recognizing patterns, and thinking beyond traditional boundaries. By embracing divergent thinking, synthesis enables innovation and the development of unique perspectives.

3. Systems thinking: Synthesis often adopts a systems thinking approach, considering the interactions and interdependencies between various components. It recognizes that the whole is more than the sum of its parts and aims to understand emergent properties or behaviors that arise from the integration of these parts. Systems thinking allows for a comprehensive understanding of complex phenomena.

4. Constructive approach: Synthesis is a constructive process that builds upon existing knowledge or ideas. It involves organizing, reorganizing, or restructuring information to create a new framework or understanding. By integrating diverse perspectives or concepts, synthesis helps in generating comprehensive and innovative solutions.

5. Design tool: Synthesis is often used as a design tool to create new products, systems, or theories. By combining different elements or ideas, synthesis enables the development of innovative and functional solutions. It allows for the exploration of multiple possibilities and the creation of something new and valuable.

Interplay between Analysis and Synthesis

While analysis and synthesis are distinct processes, they are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they often complement each other and are interconnected in various ways. Analysis provides the foundation for synthesis by breaking down complex ideas or systems into manageable components. It helps in understanding the individual parts and their relationships, which is essential for effective synthesis.

On the other hand, synthesis builds upon the insights gained from analysis by integrating separate elements or ideas to create a new whole. It allows for a holistic understanding of complex phenomena, considering the interconnections and emergent properties that analysis alone may overlook. Synthesis also helps in identifying gaps or limitations in existing knowledge, which can then be further analyzed to gain a deeper understanding.

Furthermore, analysis and synthesis often involve an iterative process. Initial analysis may lead to the identification of patterns or relationships that can inform the synthesis process. Synthesis, in turn, may generate new insights or questions that require further analysis. This iterative cycle allows for continuous refinement and improvement of understanding.

Analysis and synthesis are two essential processes that play a crucial role in various fields of study. While analysis focuses on breaking down complex ideas into smaller components to understand their individual parts and relationships, synthesis involves integrating separate elements or ideas to create a new whole or understanding. Both approaches have their unique attributes and strengths, and they often complement each other in a cyclical and iterative process. By employing analysis and synthesis effectively, we can gain a comprehensive understanding of complex phenomena, generate innovative solutions, and make informed decisions.

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Difference Between Analysis and Synthesis

• Categorized under Science | Difference Between Analysis and Synthesis

Analysis Vs Synthesis

Analysis is like the process of deduction wherein you cut down a bigger concept into smaller ones. As such, analysis breaks down complex ideas into smaller fragmented concepts so as to come up with an improved understanding. Synthesis, on the other hand, resolves a conflict set between an antithesis and a thesis by settling what truths they have in common. In the end, the synthesis aims to make a new proposal or proposition.

Derived from the Greek word ‘analusis’ which literally means ‘a breaking up,’ analysis is, by far, mostly used in the realm of logic and mathematics even before the time of the great philosopher Aristotle. When learners are asked to analyze a certain concept or subject matter, they are encouraged to connect different ideas or examine how each idea was composed. The relation of each idea that connects to the bigger picture is studied. They are also tasked to spot for any evidences that will help them lead into a concrete conclusion. These evidences are found by discovering the presence of biases and assumptions.

Synthesizing is different because when the learners are asked to synthesize, they already try to put together the separate parts that have already been analyzed with other ideas or concepts to form something new or original. It’s like they look into varied resource materials to get insights and bright ideas and from there, they form their own concepts.

Similar definitions of synthesis (from other sources) state that it is combining two (or even more) concepts that form something fresh. This may be the reason why synthesis in chemistry means starting a series of chemical reactions in order to form a complex molecule out of simpler chemical precursors. In botany, plants perform their basic function of photosynthesis wherein they use the sunlight’s energy as catalyst to make an organic molecule from a simple carbon molecule. In addition, science professors use this term like bread and butter to denote that something is being made. When they mention about amino acid (the building blocks of proteins) synthesis, then it is the process of making amino acids out of its many basic elements or constituents. But in the field of Humanities, synthesis (in the case of philosophy) is the end product of dialectic (i.e. a thesis) and is considered as a higher process compared to analysis.

When one uses analysis in Chemistry, he will perform any of the following: (quantitative analysis) search for the proportionate components of a mixture, (qualitative analysis) search for the components of a specific chemical, and last is to split chemical processes and observe any reactions that occur between the individual elements of matter.

1. Synthesis is a higher process that creates something new. It is usually done at the end of an entire study or scientific inquiry. 2. Analysis is like the process of deduction wherein a bigger concept is broken down into simpler ideas to gain a better understanding of the entire thing.

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Analysis vs Synthesis: Breaking Down the Key Distinctions

Analysis and synthesis are two fundamental concepts in the realm of research and problem-solving. Analysis involves breaking down complex ideas or data into smaller, more manageable parts to understand their underlying components and relationships. On the other hand, synthesis is the process of combining separate elements or ideas to form a coherent whole, often leading to new insights or solutions.

Throughout this article, we will delve deeper into the distinctions between analysis and synthesis, exploring their unique characteristics, applications, and significance in various fields. By understanding the nuances of these two approaches, we can enhance our critical thinking skills and decision-making abilities.

Let’s Define The Terms

Define Analysis:

Analysis is the process of breaking down complex ideas or concepts into smaller, more manageable parts in order to understand their structure, function, and relationships. It involves examining the components of a whole and studying how they interact with each other. Through analysis, one can identify patterns, trends, and discrepancies that may not be immediately apparent. This methodical approach allows for a thorough examination of the subject matter, leading to a deeper comprehension of its underlying principles.

Define Synthesis:

Synthesis, on the other hand, is the act of combining separate elements or ideas to form a coherent whole. It involves integrating diverse sources of information or perspectives to create a new, unified understanding. Through synthesis, one can draw connections between seemingly unrelated concepts and construct a comprehensive framework that captures the essence of the original material. This creative process often results in the development of novel insights and innovative solutions to complex problems.

How To Properly Use The Words In A Sentence

Understanding the distinction between analysis and synthesis is crucial for effective communication. Here’s how to use these terms correctly in a sentence:

How To Use Analysis In A Sentence

Analysis involves breaking down complex information into smaller parts to better understand it. When using the word “analysis” in a sentence, consider the following:

• Ensure that your analysis of the data is thorough and accurate.
• The analysis of the financial report revealed several key trends.
• Her analysis of the poem provided new insights into its meaning.

How To Use Synthesis In A Sentence

Synthesis, on the other hand, involves combining different elements to create a whole. When incorporating the word “synthesis” into a sentence, keep the following in mind:

• The synthesis of various research findings led to a groundbreaking discovery.
• Her speech was a synthesis of ideas from different philosophical schools.
• The artist’s work represents a beautiful synthesis of colors and textures.

More Examples Of Analysis & Synthesis Used In Sentences

When it comes to understanding the difference between analysis and synthesis, examples can be particularly helpful. Let’s explore some more examples of how these concepts can be used in sentences.

Examples Of Using Analysis In A Sentence

• The data analysis revealed a significant correlation between the variables.
• She conducted a thorough analysis of the market trends before making her decision.
• The forensic analysis of the crime scene provided crucial evidence for the investigation.
• His analysis of the poem highlighted the recurring themes and motifs present in the text.
• The financial analysis showed a clear pattern of growth over the past quarter.

Examples Of Using Synthesis In A Sentence

• By synthesizing the findings from various studies, researchers were able to draw new conclusions about the phenomenon.
• Her ability to synthesize complex information quickly made her a valuable asset to the team.
• The artist’s synthesis of different artistic styles created a unique and innovative masterpiece.
• Through the synthesis of historical documents, historians were able to reconstruct the events leading up to the war.
• His synthesis of traditional and modern techniques resulted in a truly original culinary creation.

Common Mistakes To Avoid

When it comes to the concepts of analysis and synthesis, it is crucial to understand the key differences between the two and avoid common mistakes that people often make when using them interchangeably. Here are some common errors to steer clear of:

1. Confusing Analysis With Synthesis

One of the most common mistakes is mistaking analysis for synthesis. Analysis involves breaking down complex ideas or systems into smaller components to understand how they work individually. On the other hand, synthesis involves combining different elements or components to create a new whole. It is important to recognize that these are two distinct processes with different objectives.

2. Overlooking The Importance Of Context

Another common mistake is overlooking the importance of context when using analysis and synthesis. Analysis often focuses on the details and specifics of a particular subject, while synthesis looks at the bigger picture and how different elements interact with each other. It is essential to consider the context in which these processes are being used to ensure a comprehensive understanding.

3. Neglecting Critical Thinking Skills

Neglecting critical thinking skills is a common mistake that can hinder the effectiveness of both analysis and synthesis. Critical thinking involves evaluating information objectively, questioning assumptions, and considering alternative perspectives. Without strong critical thinking skills, it is easy to make errors in the analysis and synthesis of information.

4. Failing To Communicate Findings Clearly

One of the key objectives of both analysis and synthesis is to communicate findings effectively. Failing to communicate findings clearly is a common mistake that can lead to misunderstandings or misinterpretations. It is important to present information in a clear and concise manner to ensure that the intended message is conveyed accurately.

Context Matters

When considering the choice between analysis and synthesis, it is crucial to understand that the decision heavily depends on the context in which these methods are being applied. Different situations may call for either analysis or synthesis, and the effectiveness of each approach can vary based on the specific circumstances.

Examples Of Different Contexts

Here are some brief examples of different contexts and how the choice between analysis and synthesis might change:

• Scientific Research: In the field of scientific research, analysis is often used to break down complex data sets into smaller components for detailed examination. On the other hand, synthesis may be more suitable for combining multiple research findings to draw overarching conclusions.
• Business Decision-Making: When making strategic business decisions, analysis can help in evaluating the pros and cons of various options based on quantitative data. In contrast, synthesis can be valuable for integrating different perspectives and creating innovative solutions.
• Creative Writing: In the realm of creative writing, analysis can be beneficial for dissecting the themes and motifs present in a piece of literature. Synthesis, on the other hand, may be utilized to blend different writing styles or genres to create a unique narrative.

Exceptions To The Rules

While analysis and synthesis are powerful tools in the realm of research and problem-solving, there are certain exceptions where the traditional rules may not apply. It is essential to recognize these exceptions to ensure a comprehensive understanding of when to utilize each method effectively.

1. Complex Systems

One key exception to the rules of analysis and synthesis arises when dealing with complex systems. In such cases, the linear approach of analysis may fall short in capturing the intricate interconnections and feedback loops present within the system. Synthesis, on the other hand, allows for a holistic view that considers the system as a whole, enabling a more comprehensive understanding.

When studying the global climate system, analyzing individual components such as temperature fluctuations or carbon emissions may not provide a complete picture. Synthesizing data from various sources, including weather patterns, ocean currents, and greenhouse gas concentrations, is necessary to grasp the complex interactions driving climate change.

2. Creativity And Innovation

In creative endeavors and innovation, strict adherence to the rules of analysis and synthesis may stifle the generation of novel ideas and solutions. Creativity often thrives in the realm of ambiguity and exploration, where unconventional thinking is encouraged. In such cases, a blend of both analytical and synthetic approaches may be more beneficial.

When brainstorming ideas for a new product design, relying solely on analysis to deconstruct existing products may limit the potential for innovation. By synthesizing diverse inspirations, experimenting with unconventional materials, and embracing a creative mindset, designers can push the boundaries of traditional analysis to unlock groundbreaking concepts.

The debate between analysis and synthesis is one that has intrigued scholars and thinkers for centuries. While analysis breaks down complex ideas into smaller parts for detailed examination, synthesis combines those parts to create a holistic understanding. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, and the key lies in knowing when to employ each method effectively. Ultimately, the balance between analysis and synthesis is essential for gaining a comprehensive perspective on any subject matter.

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Synthesis vs. Analysis: Breaking Down the Difference

Both synthesis and analysis play an important role in market and competitive intelligence (M/CI), but are two markedly different stages of a broader CI process. All too often, business leaders conflate synthesis and analysis, a mistake that can be very damaging to the overall success of M/CI efforts within an organization.

In this guide, we’ll break down the key differences between synthesis and analysis, discuss where you should focus the majority of your time, and explore ways to improve both your synthesis and analysis processes in the competitive intelligence infrastructure at your organization.

But first, let’s start with definitions for both synthesis and analysis as they relate to competitive intelligence activities.

What is synthesis?

Synthesis is the process of combining simple things into something more complex in order to understand their shared qualities.

What is analysis?

Analysis is the process of breaking down something into its basic parts to understand the nature, function or meaning of the relationships among the parts.

It is the understanding of the meaning that allows CI practitioners to create insights, intelligence, and knowledge.

It’s crucial to note that analysis can only be conducted by humans – not software. Too often, the makers of software programs or the latest technology claim that their product has the ability to conduct analysis. The reality is that today this just isn’t possible. Claims of non-human analysis are at best misleading and more likely fraudulent.

Synthesis vs. Analysis: Why Does It Matter?

To a layperson, these differences might seem trivial or a matter of semantics, but nothing could be further from the truth. Understanding this distinction is actually crucially important in helping competitive intelligence practitioners to educate their end customers. These end customers likely belong to a variety of departments or business units scattered around the organization, and consume M/CI insights to help them make better decisions. It’s fair to say that many end users’ understanding of M/CI is rudimentary at best.

Consumers of competitive intelligence should understand that analysis isn’t just something that happens with technology. Meaningful analysis requires a great deal of work to be performed by humans, and it’s important to recognize that this work takes time.

Yes, it’s possible to summarize information quickly. But analyzing information and transforming it into something valuable with context and meaning for your organization takes time.

Drawing a clear line between synthesis and analysis also helps to better align expectations across the organization. Many times, stakeholders might think they want a synthesis, but what they really want is an analysis. Let’s look at a quick example:

The leader of a sales organization reaches out to the M/CI team and asks for a report with the ten most recent deals that the sales team lost to a major competitor. This is a synthesis, and while the report does have value, it probably doesn’t provide any particularly meaningful information or helpful insights. In reality, what the sales leader likely wants to know is WHY their team lost those deals. Uncovering insights in this area requires an analysis of the data involved. This analysis report will certainly provide greater insights into the sales teams performance and will likely require more time to produce.

Making sure that the end users of competitive intelligence across the organization understand what they’re asking for, and the work involved in delivering it, enables the M/CI team to serve end users much more effectively.

Technology for Synthesis, Humans for Analysis

Another helpful way to think about the distinction between synthesis and analysis is the way in which the work is completed.

Today, the level of data that M/CI teams have access to continues to grow rapidly, and shows no signs of letting up. Compounding that issue is the increasing diversity of the requests that flow into the M/CI team from across the organization.

As a general rule, technology can perform synthesis much more effectively than humans can and M/CI teams should deploy technology to perform synthesis. Making sense of the information gathered and how it impacts certain areas of the business or markets (aka analysis) is work best performed by talented, well-qualified M/CI professionals. Take an example of an organization who want to track news about their competitors:

By setting up an automated monitoring tool that synthesizes competitor news, organizations can track news sources, social media platforms, and press releases for any news related to a set of pre-selected competitors. Any news will be pulled into a central platform, which will display all relevant news items in a real-time dashboard, email report, or some other format. This is far more efficient than relying on a human to track all these sources of information, and ensures key news items are never missed by the CI team.

Without software to assist M/CI teams overcome the deluge of data and inbound requests, it’s all too easy for even the most talented of M/CI professionals to get bogged down with low-value administrative tasks. . Organizations should look to incorporate sophisticated M/CI software platforms that employ technologies like Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to effectively source, tag, and categorize competitive intelligence data. A lack of software and infrastructure around M/CI efforts often leads organizations to enter a cycle of competitive intelligence failure, where the CI function fails to prove their value to the wider organization and is eventually shut down.

Maximize the effectiveness of your competitive intelligence effort.  Schedule a call   with our experts today.

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Analysis and Synthesis Explained

Posted by Thomas DeMichele on August 8, 2017 in Reference

Understanding Analysis and Synthesis

In simple terms , analysis examines a system by dividing a whole into its parts, and synthesis examines a system by combining and comparing parts.

In more complete terms , analysis is the top-down process of examining a rational or material system by analyzing its properties to better understand a system and its parts, and synthesis is the bottom-up process of examining the parts of systems and systems themselves, and comparing them to each other, to better understand systems whole, properties of systems, and their relations. [1] [2] [3]

The origin of the terms analysis and synthesis : The terms analysis and synthesis come from classical Greek though and literally mean “to loosen up” and “to put together” respectively. Analysis is “to loosen up” to examine from the top down, from the system to its properties.  Synthesis is to “to put together,” to examine from the bottom-up, to start with the pieces and see how they fit together. Both are simply different directions from which we can approach examining a rational or material (idea-based or real) system. See:  Analysis and Synthesis On Scientific Method – Based on a Study by Bernhard Riemann  for more reading after you check out the quick introduction to analysis and synthesis below.

Analysis and Synthesis Defined

To define the above in more complete terms:

A system  is a collection of properties . It can either be simple, like a binary system, or complex, like the ecosystem of earth. With that said, a system as a whole and its properties can be rational (idea-based and “formal”), empirical (real and “material”), or mixed (for example, a computer contains rational properties like software and material properties like hardware). Thus, a system in this sense is simply any collection of real or imagined properties from a system of numbers, to an atom, to a collection of atoms as an object, to a collection of objects, to an essay, to the universe.

Analysis breaks down systems into this simplest parts in order to understand each individual part and the system as a whole.

Synthesis compares the parts of one or more systems, or even whole systems themselves, in order to understand the relations between systems and parts of systems.

Analysis and Synthesis Explained in More Detail With Examples

To further illustrate Analysis and Synthesis, we can offer the following example.

Say we have 3 systems, let’s call them X, Y, and Z.

• Analysis would take each system and dissect that system to see what was true about each system respectively, defining the properties of X, Y, and Z, then defining the properties of those properties until no further analysis could be done.
• Synthesis on the other hand would look at each part of each system individually (from the most basic property to the most complex) to see how those parts related to other parts in the system, to see how those parts related to parts of the other systems, and to see how the systems related to each other. In doing this it would attempt to consider all possible relations, considering two given properties at a time, or considering two or more properties or systems together.

Since analysis deals with what is true about a system (as it examines what properties are contained in the system), it generally uses top-down deductive reasoning to understand what is certain about a system (unless we observed or measured the system incorrectly, what we glean from the system should have a degree of certainty to it; ex. we look at the black cat, we notice the property blackness, we can thus be fairly sure “the black cat is black.”).

Since synthesis deals with the relations between systems and properties of systems, it generally uses bottom-up inductive reasoning to see what is likely true about a property of a system or system of properties in terms of their relation to other systems and/or properties. Because it is comparing systems, and inferring relations based on a sort of reasoning by analogy, it can tend to produce insights that while valuable are less certain than those gleaned by analysis.

Both of these reasoning types, analysis and synthesis, can work in tandem or in isolation. After-all, to preform synthesis we must have first analyzed a system, and once we have preformed synthesis, we could very well uncover new aspects of a system to analyze.

In other words, analysis and synthesis are the two main directions from which we can approach studying any rational (idea-based and “formal”) or empirical (real and “material”) system.

TIP : Another idea from Greek thought is Plato’s Dialectic and Aristotle’s Golden Mean . Learn how we can use analysis and synthesis to explore dualities. Or, learn about rationalism and empiricism and how we can apply analysis and synthesis to logic and reason . These concepts are at the heart of not only human reason , but well known systems like the scientific method. So there is a lot to learn about.

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Video Transcripts: Analyzing & Synthesizing Sources: Synthesis: Definition and Examples

Analyzing & synthesizing sources: synthesis: definition and examples.

Last updated 11/8/2016

Video Length: 2:50

Visual: The screen shows the Walden University Writing Center logo along with a pencil and notebook. “Walden University Writing Center.” “Your writing, grammar, and APA experts” appears in center of screen. The background changes to the title of the video with open books in the background.

Audio: Guitar music plays.

Visual: Slide changes to the title “Moving Towards Synthesis” and the following:

Interpreting, commenting on, explaining, discussion of, or making connections between MULTIPLE ideas and sources for the reader.

Often answers questions such as:

• What do these things mean when put together?
• How do you as the author interpret what you’ve presented?

Audio : Synthesis is a lot like, I like to say it's like analysis on steroids. It's a lot like analysis, where analysis is you're commenting or interpreting one piece of evidence or one idea, one paraphrase or one quote. Synthesis is where you take multiple pieces of evidence or multiple sources and their ideas and you talk about the connections between those ideas or those sources. And you talk about where they intersect or where they have commonalities or where they differ. And that's what synthesis is. But really, in synthesis, when we have synthesis, it really means we're working with multiple pieces of evidence and analyzing them.

Visual: Slide changes to the title “Examples of Synthesis” and the following example:

Ang (2016) found that small businesses that followed the theory of financial management reduced business costs by 12%, while Sonfield (2015) found that this theory reduced costs by 17%. These studies together confirmed that adopting the theory of financial management reduces costs for U.S. small businesses.

Audio: So here's an example for you. In this eaxmple we have Ang (2016), that's source number 1, right? Then Sonfield (2015), that's source number 2. They are both using this theory and found that it reduced costs by both 12% and 17%. So this is my evidence, right?

I have one sentence, but two pieces of evidence, because we're working with two different sources, Ang and Sonfield, one and two. In my next sentence, my last sentence here, we have my piece of synthesis. Because I'm taking these two sources and saying that they both found something very similar. They confirmed that adopting the theory for financial management reduces costs for small businesses. So I'm showing the commonality between these two sources. So it's a very, sort of, not simple, but, you know, clean approach to synthesis. It's a very direct approach to kind of showing the similarities between these two sources. So that's an example of synthesis, okay.

Visual : The following example is added to the slide:

Sharpe (2016) observed an increase in students’ ability to focus after they had recess. Similarly, Barnes (2015) found that hands-on activities also helped students focus. Both of these techniques have worked well in my classroom, helping me to keep my students engaged in learning.

Audio: Another example here. So Sharpe found that one thing helps students. Barnes found another thing helps students focus. Two different sources, two different ideas. In the bold sentence of synthesis, I'm taking these two ideas together and talking about how they have both worked well in my classroom.

The synthesis that we have here kind of take two different approaches. The first example is more about how these studies confirm something. The second example is about how these two ideas can be useful in my own practice, I'm applying it to my own practice, or the author is applying it to their own practice in the classroom. But they both are examples of synthesis and taking different pieces of evidence showing how they work together or relate, okay.

I kind of like to think of synthesis as taking two pieces of a puzzle. So each piece of evidence is a piece of the puzzle. And you're putting together those pieces for the reader and saying, look, this is the overall picture, right? This is what we can see, when these two pieces--or three pieces--of the puzzle are put together. So it's kind of like putting together a puzzle.

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Analysis vs Synthesis: Difference and Comparison

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Analysis involves breaking down complex concepts or systems into smaller components to understand their structure and function, while synthesis involves combining various elements or ideas to create something new or to form a cohesive whole. Analysis is akin to dissecting a puzzle to understand its individual pieces, while synthesis is like assembling those pieces to create a new picture or idea.

Key Takeaways An analysis examines and breaks down a complex idea or object into smaller parts to understand its structure and function. Synthesis combines multiple smaller ideas or parts to create a new and more complex idea or object. An analysis is a deductive process used to understand an object, while synthesis is an inductive process used to create a new object.

Analysis vs Synthesis

The difference Between Analysis and Synthesis is that they have different approaches. The analysis is a Micro approach, and the synthesis is a Macro.

The analysis involves disintegrating the fragments, whereas synthesis is an overview of the whole process. Analyzing is about observing and trying. Incidentally, synthesizing is experimenting and applying.

Comparison Table

What is Analysis?  

Analysis is a systematic approach to understanding complex phenomena by breaking them down into smaller, more manageable components. It involves examining the elements, structure, and relationships within a system to gain insight, clarity, and comprehension.

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Key Aspects of Analysis

• Decomposition: Analysis begins with decomposition, where the complex entity or problem is broken down into its constituent parts. This process involves identifying the fundamental components and understanding their individual characteristics and functions. For example, in the analysis of a literary text, decomposition might involve examining themes, characters, plot elements, and literary devices.
• Examination and Evaluation: Once the components are identified, analysis entails a thorough examination and evaluation of each element. This step involves scrutinizing the properties, behaviors, and interactions of the components to discern patterns, dependencies, and causal relationships. In scientific analysis, this might involve conducting experiments, gathering data, and applying statistical methods to draw conclusions.
• Interpretation and Synthesis: Analysis also encompasses interpretation, where the findings from the examination phase are synthesized to form a coherent understanding of the whole. This step involves making connections between the individual components, identifying overarching themes or principles, and drawing meaningful conclusions. Through interpretation, analysts derive insights and explanations that help illuminate the underlying mechanisms or dynamics of the system under study.
• Iterative Process: Analysis is an iterative process, where initial findings lead to further inquiry and refinement. Analysts may revisit earlier stages, gather additional data, or revise their interpretations in light of new evidence or insights. This iterative approach allows for a deepening understanding and refinement of the analysis over time.

Applications of Analysis

• Scientific Research: In scientific research, analysis is crucial for understanding natural phenomena, testing hypotheses, and advancing knowledge in various fields such as physics, biology, and psychology.
• Business and Management: Analysis plays a vital role in decision-making processes within organizations, where it is used to evaluate market trends, assess financial performance, and optimize operational strategies.
• Literary Criticism: Literary analysis involves dissecting literary works to uncover themes, symbolism, and narrative techniques, enabling scholars to interpret and appreciate literature on a deeper level.

What is Synthesis?

Synthesis is the process of combining separate elements or ideas to form a coherent whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. It involves integrating diverse components or perspectives to create something new, innovative, or harmonious.

Key Aspects of Synthesis

• Integration of Elements: Synthesis begins with the integration of disparate elements, whether they are ideas, materials, or concepts. This integration involves identifying connections, similarities, and complementary aspects among the individual components. By combining these elements, synthesis seeks to create a unified and cohesive structure or concept.
• Creativity and Innovation: Central to synthesis is the element of creativity, as it requires envisioning and generating novel solutions, designs, or interpretations. Synthesis involves thinking beyond conventional boundaries, exploring unconventional combinations, and generating original insights or perspectives. Through creative synthesis, individuals can produce innovative ideas, products, or artworks that transcend existing paradigms.
• Reconciliation of Differences: Synthesis also entails reconciling differences or contradictions between the components being combined. This may involve finding common ground, accommodating diverse viewpoints, or resolving conflicts to create a harmonious synthesis. By acknowledging and integrating diverse perspectives, synthesis can foster inclusivity, collaboration, and mutual understanding.
• Transformation and Emergence: In the process of synthesis, the combined elements undergo transformation, resulting in emergent properties or qualities that were not present in the individual components. This emergence gives rise to new patterns, meanings, or functionalities that enrich the synthesized whole. Through synthesis, disparate elements are reconfigured and elevated to create something that transcends their original forms.

Applications of Synthesis

• Innovation and Design: Synthesis is fundamental to the process of innovation and design, where it enables the creation of new products, technologies, or solutions by combining existing ideas, materials, or techniques in novel ways.
• Interdisciplinary Research: Synthesis plays a crucial role in interdisciplinary research, where it facilitates the integration of insights and methodologies from diverse fields to address complex problems or phenomena.
• Artistic Expression: In the arts, synthesis allows artists to blend various techniques, styles, or themes to create original artworks that express complex emotions, concepts, or narratives.

Main Differences Between Analysis and Synthesis

• Analysis involves breaking down complex phenomena into smaller components for examination.
• Synthesis involves combining separate elements or ideas to form a cohesive whole.
• Analysis aims to understand the structure, function, and relationships within a system or concept.
• Synthesis aims to create something new, innovative, or integrated by combining diverse elements or perspectives.
• Analysis results in a deeper understanding and clarification of the components and mechanisms of a system.
• Synthesis results in the emergence of novel ideas, solutions, or artworks that transcend the original components.
• Analysis follows a systematic, step-by-step approach, involving decomposition, examination, and interpretation.
• Synthesis involves creative thinking, experimentation, and the reconciliation of disparate elements to generate innovative outcomes.
• Analysis can be iterative, with findings leading to further inquiry and refinement of understanding.
• Synthesis may also be iterative, as the process of combining elements involves experimentation and revision to achieve the desired outcome.

References  

• https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0266-5611/23/3/007/meta
• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/smj.4250100507

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Emma Smith holds an MA degree in English from Irvine Valley College. She has been a Journalist since 2002, writing articles on the English language, Sports, and Law. Read more about me on her bio page .

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Synthesis vs. Analysis — What's the Difference?

Difference Between Synthesis and Analysis

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Chapter Six: Analysis and Synthesis

What does it mean to know something? How would you explain the process of thinking? In the 1950s, educational theorist Benjamin Bloom proposed that human cognition, thinking and knowing, could be classified by six categories. 1 Hierarchically arranged in order of complexity, these steps were:

Since his original model, the taxonomy has been revised, as illustrated in the diagram below:

• Each word is an action verb instead of a noun (e.g., “applying” instead of “application”);
• Some words have been changed for different synonyms;
• One version holds “creating” above “evaluating”;
• And, most importantly, other versions are reshaped into a circle, as pictured above. 2

What do you think the significance of these changes is?

I introduce this model of cognition to contextualize analysis as a cognitive tool which can work in tandem with other cognitive tasks and behaviors. Analysis is most commonly used alongside synthesis . To proceed with the LEGO® example from Chapter 4, consider my taking apart the castle as an act of analysis. I study each face of each block intently, even those parts that I can’t see when the castle is fully constructed. In the process of synthesis, I bring together certain blocks from the castle to instead build something else—let’s say, a racecar. By unpacking and interpreting each part , I’m able to build a new whole . 3

In a text wrestling essay, you’re engaging in a process very similar to my castle-to-racecar adventure. You’ll encounter a text and unpack it attentively, looking closely at each piece of language, its arrangement, its signification, and then use it to build an insightful, critical insight about the original text. I might not use every original block, but by exploring the relationship of part-to-whole, I better understand how the castle is a castle. In turn, I am better positioned to act as a sort of tour guide for the castle or a mechanic for the racecar, able to show my readers what about the castle or racecar is important and to explain how it works.

In this chapter, you’ll learn about crafting a thesis for a text wrestling essay and using evidence to support that thesis . As you will discover, an analytical essay involves every tier of Bloom’s Taxonomy, arguably even including “judgement” because your thesis will present an interpretation that is evidence-based and arguable.

Chapter Vocabulary

So What? Turning Observations into a Thesis

It’s likely that you’ve heard the term “thesis statement” multiple times in your writing career. Even though you may have some idea what a thesis entails already, it is worth reviewing and unpacking the expectations surrounding a thesis, specifically in a text wrestling essay.

A thesis statement is a central, unifying insight that drives your analysis or argument. In a typical college essay, this insight should be articulated in one to three sentences, placed within the introductory paragraph or section. As we’ll see below, this is not always the case, but it is what many of your audiences will expect. To put it simply, a thesis is the “So what?” of an analytical or persuasive essay. It answers your audience when they ask, Why does your writing matter? What bigger insights does it yield about the subject of analysis? About our world?

Thesis statements in most rhetorical situations advocate for a certain vision of a text, phenomenon, reality, or policy. Good thesis statements support such a vision using evidence and thinking that confirms, clarifies, demonstrates, nuances, or otherwise relates to that vision. In other words, a thesis is “a proposition that you can prove with evidence…, yet it’s one you have to prove, that isn’t obviously true or merely factual.” 4

In a text wrestling analysis, a thesis pushes beyond basic summary and observation. In other words, it’s the difference between:

If you think of your essay as the human body, the thesis is the spine. Yes, the body can still exist without a spine, but its functionings will be severely limited. Furthermore, everything comes back to and radiates out from the spine: trace back from your fingertips to your backbone and consider how they relate. In turn, each paragraph should tie back to your thesis, offering support and clear connections so your reader can see the entire “body” of your essay. In this way, a thesis statement serves two purposes: it is not only about the ideas of your paper, but also the structure .

The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) 5 suggests this specific process for developing your thesis statement:

• Once you’ve read the story or novel closely, look back over your notes for patterns of questions or ideas that interest you. Have most of your questions been about the characters, how they develop or change?

For example: If you are reading Conrad’s  The Secret Agent , do you seem to be most interested in what the author has to say about society? Choose a pattern of ideas and express it in the form of a question and an answer such as the following:

Question:  What does Conrad seem to be suggesting about early twentieth-century London society in his novel  The Secret Agent ? Answer:  Conrad suggests that all classes of society are corrupt.

Pitfalls: Choosing too many ideas. Choosing an idea without any support.

• Once you have some general points to focus on, write your possible ideas and answer the questions that they suggest.

For example: Question :  How does Conrad develop the idea that all classes of society are corrupt? Answer:  He uses images of beasts and cannibalism whether he’s describing socialites, policemen or secret agents.

• To write your thesis statement, all you have to do is turn the question and answer around. You’ve already given the answer, now just put it in a sentence (or a couple of sentences) so that the thesis of your paper is clear.

For example: In his novel,  The Secret Agent , Conrad uses beast and cannibal imagery to describe the characters and their relationships to each other. This pattern of images suggests that Conrad saw corruption in every level of early twentieth-century London society.

• Now that you’re familiar with the story or novel and have developed a thesis statement, you’re ready to choose the evidence you’ll use to support your thesis. There are a lot of good ways to do this, but all of them depend on a strong thesis for their direction.

For example: Here’s a student’s thesis about Joseph Conrad’s  The Secret Agent .

In his novel, The Secret Agent, Conrad uses beast and cannibal imagery to describe the characters and their relationships to each other. This pattern of images suggests that Conrad saw corruption in every level of early twentieth-century London society.

This thesis focuses on the idea of social corruption and the device of imagery. To support this thesis, you would need to find images of beasts and cannibalism within the text.

There are many ways to write a thesis, and your construction of a thesis statement will become more intuitive and nuanced as you become a more confident and competent writer. However, there are a few tried-and-true strategies that I’ll share with you over the next few pages.

The T3 Strategy

T3 is a formula to create a thesis statement. The T (for Thesis) should be the point you’re trying to make—the “So what?” In a text wrestling analysis, you are expected to advocate for a certain interpretation of a text: this is your “So what?” Examples might include:

In “A Wind from the North,” Bill Capossere conveys the loneliness of isolated life or Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” suggests that marriage can be oppressive to women

But wait—there’s more! In a text wrestling analysis, your interpretation must be based on evidence from that text. Therefore, your thesis should identify both a focused statement of the interpretation (the whole) and also the particular subjects of your observation (the parts of the text you will focus on support that interpretation). A complete T3 thesis statement for a text wrestling analysis might look more like this:

In “A Wind from the North,” Bill Capossere conveys the loneliness of an isolated lifestyle using the motif of snow, the repeated phrase “five or six days” (104), and the symbol of his uncle’s car. or “The Story of an Hour” suggests that marriage can be oppressive to women. To demonstrate this theme, Kate Chopin integrates irony, foreshadowing, and symbols of freedom in the story.

Notice the way the T3 allows for the part-to-whole thinking that underlies analysis:

This is also a useful strategy because it can provide structure for your paper: each justifying support for your thesis should be one section of your paper.

• Thesis: In “A Wind from the North,” Bill Capossere conveys the loneliness of an isolated lifestyle using the motif of snow, the repeated phrase “five or six days” (104), and the symbol of his uncle’s car.
• Section on ‘the motif of snow.’ Topic sentence: The recurring imagery of snow creates a tone of frostiness and demonstrates the passage of time.
• Section on ‘the repeated phrase “five or six days” (104).’ Topic sentence: When Capossere repeats “five or six days” (104), he reveals the ambiguity of death in a life not lived.
• Section on ‘the symbol of his uncle’s car.’ Topic sentence: Finally, Capossere’s uncle’s car is symbolic of his lifestyle.

Once you’ve developed a T3 statement, you can revise it to make it feel less formulaic. For example:

In “A Wind from the North,” Bill Capossere conveys the loneliness of an isolated lifestyle by symbolizing his uncle with a “untouchable” car. Additionally, he repeats images and phrases in the essay to reinforce his uncle’s isolation. or “The Story of an Hour,” a short story by Kate Chopin, uses a plot twist to imply that marriage can be oppressive to women. The symbols of freedom in the story create a feeling of joy, but the attentive reader will recognize the imminent irony.

The O/P Strategy

An occasion/position thesis statement is rhetorically convincing because it explains the relevance of your argument and concisely articulates that argument. Although you should already have your position in mind, your rhetorical occasion will lead this statement off: what sociohistorical conditions make your writing timely, relevant, applicable? Continuing with the previous examples:

As our society moves from individualism to isolationism, Bill Capossere’s “A Wind from the North” is a salient example of a life lived alone. or Although Chopin’s story was written over 100 years ago, it still provides insight to gender dynamics in American marriages.

Following your occasion, state your position—again, this is your “So What?” It is wise to include at least some preview of the parts you will be examining.

As our society moves from individualism to isolationism, Bill Capossere’s “A Wind from the North” is a salient example of a life lived alone. Using recurring images and phrases, Capossere conveys the loneliness of his uncle leading up to his death. or Although Chopin’s story was written over 100 years ago, it still provides insight to gender dynamics in American marriages. “The Story of an Hour” reminds us that marriage has historically meant a surrender of freedom for women.

Research Question and Embedded Thesis

There’s one more common style of thesis construction that’s worth noting, and that’s the inquiry-based thesis. (Read more about inquiry-based research writing in Chapter Eight). For this thesis, you’ll develop an incisive and focused question which you’ll explore throughout the course of the essay. By the end of the essay, you will be able to offer an answer (perhaps a complicated or incomplete answer, but still some kind of answer) to the question. This form is also referred to as the “embedded thesis” or “delayed thesis” organization.

Although this model of thesis can be effectively applied in a text wrestling essay, it is often more effective when combined with one of the other methods above.

Consider the following examples:

Bill Capossere’s essay “A Wind from the North” suggests that isolation results in sorrow and loneliness; is this always the case? How does Capossere create such a vision of his uncle’s life? or Many people would believe that Kate Chopin’s story reflects an outdated perception of marriage—but can “The Story of an Hour” reveal power imbalances in modern relationships, too?

Synthesis: Using Evidence to Explore Your Thesis

Now that you’ve considered what your analytical insight might be (articulated in the form of a thesis), it’s time to bring evidence in to support your analysis—this is the synthesis part of Bloom’s Taxonomy earlier in this chapter. Synthesis refers to the creation of a new whole (an interpretation) using smaller parts (evidence from the text you’ve analyzed).

There are essentially two ways to go about collecting and culling relevant support from the text with which you’re wrestling. In my experience, students are split about evenly on which option is better for them:

Option #1: Before writing your thesis, while you’re reading and rereading your text, annotate the page and take notes. Copy down quotes, images, formal features, and themes that are striking, exciting, or relatable. Then, try to group your collection of evidence according to common traits. Once you’ve done so, choose one or two groups on which to base your thesis. Or Option #2: After writing your thesis , revisit the text looking for quotes, images, and themes that support, elaborate, or explain your interpretation. Record these quotes, and then return to the drafting process.

Once you’ve gathered evidence from your focus text, you should weave quotes, paraphrases, and summaries into your own writing. A common misconception is that you should write “around” your evidence, i.e. choosing the direct quote you want to use and building a paragraph around it. Instead, you should foreground your interpretation and analysis, using evidence in the background to explore and support that interpretation. Lead with your idea, then demonstrate it with evidence; then, explain how your evidence demonstrates your idea.

The appropriate ratio of evidence (their writing) to exposition (your writing) will vary depending on your rhetorical situation, but I advise my students to spend at least as many words unpacking a quote as that quote contains. (I’m referring here to Step #4 in the table below.) For example, if you use a direct quote of 25 words, you ought to spend at least 25 words explaining how that quote supports or nuances your interpretation.

There are infinite ways to bring evidence into your discussion, 6 but for now, let’s take a look at a formula that many students find productive as they find their footing in analytical writing: Front-load + Quote/Paraphrase/Summarize + Cite + Explain/elaborate/analyze.

What might this look like in practice?

The recurring imagery of snow creates a tone of frostiness and demonstrates the passage of time. (1) Snow brings to mind connotations of wintery cold, quiet, and death (2) as a “sky of utter clarity and simplicity” lingers over his uncle’s home and “it [begins] once more to snow” ( (3) Capossere 104). (4) Throughout his essay, Capossere returns frequently to weather imagery, but snow especially, to play on associations the reader has. In this line, snow sets the tone by wrapping itself in with “clarity,” a state of mind. Even though the narrator still seems ambivalent about his uncle, this clarity suggests that he is reflecting with a new and somber understanding.

• Front-load Snow brings to mind connotations of wintery cold, quiet, and death
• Quote as a “sky of utter clarity and simplicity” lingers over his uncle’s home and “it [begins] once more to snow”
• Cite (Capossere 104).
• Explain/elaborate/analysis Throughout his essay, Capossere returns frequently to weather imagery, but snow especially, to play on associations the reader has. In this line, snow sets the tone by wrapping itself in with “clarity,” a state of mind. Even though the narrator still seems ambivalent about his uncle, this clarity suggests that he is reflecting with a new and somber understanding.

This might feel formulaic and forced at first, but following these steps will ensure that you give each piece of evidence thorough attention. Some teachers call this method a “quote sandwich” because you put your evidence between two slices of your own language and interpretation.

For more on front-loading (readerly signposts or signal phrases), see the subsection titled “Readerly Signposts” in Chapter Nine.

Idea Generation: Close Reading Graphic Organizer

The first time you read a text, you most likely will not magically stumble upon a unique, inspiring insight to pursue as a thesis. As discussed earlier in this section, close reading is an iterative process, which means that you must repeatedly encounter a text (reread, re-watch, re-listen, etc.) trying to challenge it, interrogate it, and gradually develop a working thesis.

Very often, the best way to practice analysis is collaboratively, through discussion. Because other people will necessarily provide different perspectives through their unique interpretive positions, reading groups can help you grow your analysis. By discussing a text, you open yourself up to more nuanced and unanticipated interpretations influenced by your peers. Your teacher might ask you to work in small groups to complete the following graphic organizer in response to a certain text. (You can also complete this exercise independently, but it might not yield the same results.)

Thesis Builder

Your thesis statement can and should evolve as you continue writing your paper: teachers will often refer to a thesis as a “working thesis” because the revision process should include tweaking, pivoting, focusing, expanding, and/or rewording your thesis. The exercise on the next two pages, though, should help you develop a working thesis to begin your project. Following the examples, identify the components of your analysis that might contribute to a thesis statement.

Model Texts by Student Authors

(A text wrestling analysis of “Proofs” by Richard Rodriguez)

Songs are culturally important. In the short story “Proofs” by Richard Rodriguez, a young Mexican American man comes to terms with his bi-cultural life. This young man’s father came to America from a small and poverty-stricken Mexican village. The young man flashes from his story to his father’s story in order to explore his Mexican heritage and American life. Midway through the story Richard Rodriguez utilizes the analogies of songs to represent the cultures and how they differ. Throughout the story there is a clash of cultures. Because culture can be experienced through the arts and teachings of a community, Rodriguez uses the songs of the two cultures to represent the protagonist’s bi-cultural experience.

According to Rodriguez, the songs that come from Mexico express an emotional and loving culture and community: “But my mama says there are no songs like the love songs of Mexico” (50). The songs from that culture can be beautiful. It is amazing the love and beauty that come from social capital and community involvement. The language Richard Rodriguez uses to explain these songs is beautiful as well. “—it is the raw edge of sentiment” (51). The author explains how it is the men who keep the songs. No matter how stoic the men are, they have an outlet to express their love and pain as well as every emotion in between. “The cry of a Jackal under the moon, the whistle of a phallus, the maniacal song of the skull” (51). This is an outlet for men to express themselves that is not prevalent in American culture. It expresses a level of love and intimacy between people that is not a part of American culture. The songs from the American culture are different. In America the songs get lost. There is assimilation of cultures. The songs of Mexico are important to the protagonist of the story. There is a clash between the old culture in Mexico and the subject’s new American life represented in these songs.

A few paragraphs later in the story, on page 52, the author tells us the difference in the American song. America sings a different tune. America is the land of opportunity. It represents upward mobility and the ability to “make it or break it.” But it seems there is a cost for all this material gain and all this opportunity. There seems to be a lack of love and emotion, a lack of the ability to express pain and all other feelings, the type of emotion which is expressed in the songs of Mexico. The song of America says, “You can be anything you want to be” (52). The song represents the American Dream. The cost seems to be the loss of compassion, love and emotion that is expressed through the songs of Mexico. There is no outlet quite the same for the stoic men of America. Rodriguez explains how the Mexican migrant workers have all that pain and desire, all that emotion penned up inside until it explodes in violent outbursts. “Or they would come into town on Monday nights for the wrestling matches or on Tuesdays for boxing. They worked over in Yolo County. They were men without women. They were Mexicans without Mexico” (49).

Rodriguez uses the language in the story almost like a song in order to portray the culture of the American dream. The phrase “I will send for you or I will come home rich,” is repeated twice throughout the story. The gain for all this loss of love and compassion is the dream of financial gain. “You have come into the country on your knees with your head down. You are a man” (48). That is the allure of the American Dream.

The protagonist of the story was born in America. Throughout the story he is looking at this illusion of the American Dream through a different frame. He is also trying to come to terms with his own manhood in relation to his American life and Mexican heritage. The subject has the ability to see the two songs in a different light. “The city will win. The city will give the children all the village could not-VCR’s, hairstyles, drumbeat. The city sings mean songs, dirty songs” (52). Part of the subject’s reconciliation process with himself is seeing that all the material stuff that is dangled as part of the American Dream is not worth the love and emotion that is held in the old Mexican villages and expressed in their songs.

Rodriguez represents this conflict of culture on page 53. The protagonist of the story is taking pictures during the arrest of illegal border-crossers. “I stare at the faces. They stare at me. To them I am not bearing witness; I am part of the process of being arrested”(53). The subject is torn between the two cultures in a hazy middle ground. He is not one of the migrants and he is not one of the police. He is there taking pictures of the incident with a connection to both of the groups and both of the groups see him connected with the other.

The old Mexican villages are characterized by a lack of : “Mexico is poor” (50). However, this is not the reason for the love and emotion that is held. The thought that people have more love and emotion because they are poor is a misconception. There are both rich people and poor people who have multitudes of love and compassion. The defining elements in creating love and emotion for each other comes from the level of community interaction and trust—the ability to sing these love songs and express emotion towards one another. People who become caught up in the American Dream tend to be obsessed with their own personal gain. This diminishes the social interaction and trust between fellow humans. There is no outlet in the culture of America quite the same as singing love songs towards each other. It does not matter if they are rich or poor, lack of community, trust, and social interaction; lack of songs can lead to lack of love and emotion that is seen in the old songs of Mexico.

The image of the American Dream is bright and shiny. To a young boy in a poor village the thought of power and wealth can dominate over a life of poverty with love and emotion. However, there is poverty in America today as well as in Mexico. The poverty here looks a little different but many migrants and young men find the American Dream to be an illusion. “Most immigrants to America came from villages.

The America that Mexicans find today, at the decline of the century, is a closed-circuit city of ramps and dark towers, a city without God. The city is evil. Turn. Turn” (50). The song of America sings an inviting tune for young men from poor villages. When they arrive though it is not what they dreamed about. The subject of the story can see this. He is trying to come of age in his own way, acknowledging America and the Mexico of old. He is able to look back and forth in relation to the America his father came to for power and wealth and the America that he grew up in. All the while, he watches this migration of poor villages, filled with love and emotion, to a big heartless city, while referring back to his father’s memory of why he came to America and his own memories of growing up in America. “Like wandering Jews. They carried their home with them, back and forth: they had no true home but the tabernacle of memory” (51). The subject of the story is experiencing all of this conflict of culture and trying to compose his own song.

Works Cited

Rodriguez, Richard. “Proofs.” In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction , edited by Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones, Norton, 1996, pp. 48-54.

Normal Person: An Analysis of the Standards of Normativity in “A Plague of Tics” 9

David Sedaris’ essay “A Plague of Tics” describes Sedaris’ psychological struggles he encountered in his youth, expressed through obsessive-compulsive tics. These abnormal behaviors heavily inhibited his functionings, but more importantly, isolated and embarrassed him during his childhood, adolescence, and young adult years. Authority figures in his life would mock him openly, and he constantly struggled to perform routine simple tasks in a timely manner, solely due to the amount of time that needed to be set aside for carrying out these compulsive tics. He lacked the necessary social support an adolescent requires because of his apparent abnormality. But when we look at the behaviors of his parents, as well as the socially acceptable tics of our society more generally, we see how Sedaris’ tics are in fact not too different, if not less harmful than those of the society around him. By exploring Sedaris’ isolation, we can discover that socially constructed standards of normativity are at best arbitrary, and at worst violent.

As a young boy, Sedaris is initially completely unaware that his tics are not socially acceptable in the outside world. He is puzzled when his teacher, Miss Chestnut, correctly guesses that he is “going to hit [himself] over the head with [his] shoe” (361), despite the obvious removal of his shoe during their private meeting. Miss Chestnut continues by embarrassingly making fun out of the fact that Sedaris’ cannot help but “bathe her light switch with [his] germ-ridden tongue” (361) repeatedly throughout the school day. She targets Sedaris with mocking questions, putting him on the spot in front of his class; this behavior is not ethical due to Sedaris’ age. It violates the trust that students should have in their teachers and other caregivers. Miss Chestnut criticizes him excessively for his ambiguous, child-like answers. For example, she drills him on whether it is “healthy to hit ourselves over the head with our shoes” (361) and he “guess[es] that it was not,” (361) as a child might phrase it. She ridicules his use of the term “guess,” using obvious examples of instances when guessing would not be appropriate, such as “[running] into traffic with a paper sack over [her] head” (361). Her mockery is not only rude, but ableist and unethical. Any teacher—at least nowadays—should recognize that Sedaris needs compassion and support, not emotional abuse.

These kinds of negative responses to Sedaris’ behavior continue upon his return home, in which the role of the insensitive authority figure is taken on by his mother. In a time when maternal support is crucial for a secure and confident upbringing, Sedaris’ mother was never understanding of his behavior, and left little room for open, honest discussion regarding ways to cope with his compulsiveness. She reacted harshly to the letter sent home by Miss Chestnut, nailing Sedaris, exclaiming that his “goddamned math teacher” (363) noticed his strange behaviors, as if it should have been obvious to young, egocentric Sedaris. When teachers like Miss Chestnut meet with her to discuss young David’s problems, she makes fun of him, imitating his compulsions; Sedaris is struck by “a sharp, stinging sense of recognition” upon viewing this mockery (365). Sedaris’ mother, too, is an authority figure who maintains ableist standards of normativity by taunting her own son. Meeting with teachers should be an opportunity to truly help David, not tease him.

On the day that Miss Chestnut makes her appearance in the Sedaris household to discuss his behaviors with his mother, Sedaris watches them from the staircase, helplessly embarrassed. We can infer from this scene that Sedaris has actually become aware of that fact that his tics are not considered to be socially acceptable, and that he must be “the weird kid” among his peers—and even to his parents and teachers. His mother’s cavalier derision demonstrates her apparent disinterest in the well-being of he son, as she blatantly brushes off his strange behaviors except in the instance during which she can put them on display for the purpose of entertaining a crowd. What all of these pieces of his mother’s flawed personality show us is that she has issues too—drinking and smoking, in addition to her poor mothering—but yet Sedaris is the one being chastised while she lives a normal life. Later in the essay, Sedaris describes how “a blow to the nose can be positively narcotic” (366), drawing a parallel to his mother’s drinking and smoking. From this comparison, we can begin to see flawed standards of “normal behavior”: although many people drink and smoke (especially at the time the story takes place), these habits are much more harmful than what Sedaris does in private.

Sedaris’ father has an equally harmful personality, but it manifests differently. Sedaris describes him as a hoarder, one who has, “saved it all: every last Green Stamp and coupon, every outgrown bathing suit and scrap of linoleum” (365). Sedaris’ father attempts to “cure [Sedaris] with a series of threats” (366). In one scene, he even enacts violence upon David by slamming on the brakes of the car while David has his nose pressed against a windshield. Sedaris reminds us that his behavior might have been unusual, but it wasn’t violent: “So what if I wanted to touch my nose to the windshield? Who was I hurting?” (366). In fact, it is in that very scene that Sedaris draws the aforementioned parallel to his mother’s drinking: when Sedaris discovers that “a blow to the nose can be positively narcotic,” it is while his father is driving around “with a lapful of rejected, out-of-state coupons” (366). Not only is Sedaris’ father violating the trust David places in him as a caregiver; his hoarding is an arguably unhealthy habit that simply happens to be more socially acceptable than licking a concrete toadstool. Comparing Sedaris’s tics to his father’s issues, it is apparent that his father’s are much more harmful than his own. None of the adults in Sedaris’ life are innocent—“mother smokes and Miss Chestnut massaged her waist twenty, thirty times a day—and here I couldn’t press my nose against the windshield of a car” (366)—but nevertheless, Sedaris’s problems are ridiculed or ignored by the ‘normal’ people in his life, again bringing into question what it means to be a normal person.

In high school, Sedaris’ begins to take certain measures to actively control and hide his socially unacceptable behaviors. “For a time,” he says, “I thought that if I accompanied my habits with an outlandish wardrobe, I might be viewed as eccentric rather than just plain retarded” (369). Upon this notion, Sedaris starts to hang numerous medallions around his neck, reflecting that he “might as well have worn a cowbell” (369) due to the obvious noises they made when he would jerk his head violently, drawing more attention to his behaviors (the opposite of the desired effect). He also wore large glasses, which he now realizes made it easier to observe his habit of rolling his eyes into his head, and “clunky platform shoes [that] left lumps when used to discreetly tap [his] forehead” (369). Clearly Sedaris was trying to appear more normal, in a sense, but was failing terribly. After high school, Sedaris faces the new wrinkle of sharing a college dorm room. He conjures up elaborate excuses to hide specific tics, ensuring his roommate that “there’s a good chance the brain tumor will shrink” (369) if he shakes his head around hard enough and that specialists have ordered him to perform “eye exercises to strengthen what they call he ‘corneal fibers’” (369). He eventually comes to a point of such paranoid hypervigilance that he memorizes his roommate’s class schedule to find moments to carry out his tics in privacy. Sedaris worries himself sick attempting to approximate ‘normal’: “I got exactly fourteen minutes of sleep during my entire first year of college” (369). When people are pressured to perform an identity inconsistent with their own—pressured by socially constructed standards of normativity—they harm themselves in the process. Furthermore, even though the responsibility does not necessarily fall on Sedaris’ peers to offer support, we can assume that their condemnation of his behavior reinforces the standards that oppress him.

Sedaris’ compulsive habits peak and begin their slow decline when he picks up the new habit of smoking cigarettes, which is of course much more socially acceptable while just as compulsive in nature once addiction has the chance to take over. He reflects, from the standpoint of an adult, on the reason for the acquired habit, speculating that “maybe it was coincidental, or perhaps … much more socially acceptable than crying out in tiny voices” (371). He is calmed by smoking, saying that “everything’s fine as long I know there’s a cigarette in my immediate future” (372). (Remarkably, he also reveals that he has not truly been cured, as he revisits his former tics and will “dare to press [his] nose against the doorknob or roll his eyes to achieve that once-satisfying ache” [372.]) Sedaris has officially achieved the tiresome goal of appearing ‘normal’, as his compulsive tics seemed to “[fade] out by the time [he] took up with cigarettes” (371). It is important to realize, however, that Sedaris might have found a socially acceptable way to mask his tics, but not a healthy one. The fact that the only activity that could take place of his compulsive tendencies was the dangerous use of a highly addictive substance, one that has proven to be dangerously harmful with frequent and prolonged use, shows that he is conforming to the standards of society which do not correspond with healthy behaviors.

In a society full of dangerous, inconvenient, or downright strange habits that are nevertheless considered socially acceptable, David Sedaris suffered through the psychic and physical violence and negligence of those who should have cared for him. With what we can clearly recognize as a socially constructed disability, Sedaris was continually denied support and mocked by authority figures. He struggled to socialize and perform academically while still carrying out each task he was innately compelled to do, and faced consistent social hardship because of his outlandish appearance and behaviors that are viewed in our society as “weird.” Because of ableist, socially constructed standards of normativity, Sedaris had to face a long string of turmoil and worry that most of society may never come to completely understand. We can only hope that as a greater society, we continue sharing and studying stories like Sedaris’ so that we critique the flawed guidelines we force upon different bodies and minds, and attempt to be more accepting and welcoming of the idiosyncrasies we might deem to be unfavorable.

Teacher Takeaways

“The student clearly states their thesis in the beginning, threading it through the essay, and further developing it through a synthesized conclusion. The student’s ideas build logically through the essay via effective quote integration: the student sets up the quote, presents it clearly, and then responds to the quote with thorough analysis that links it back to their primary claims. At times this thread is a bit difficult to follow; as one example, when the student talks about the text’s American songs, it’s not clear how Rodriguez’s text illuminates the student’s thesis. Nor is it clear why the student believes Rodriguez is saying the “American Dream is not worth the love and emotion.” Without this clarification, it’s difficult to follow some of the connections the student relies on for their thesis, so at times it seems like they may be stretching their interpretation beyond what the text supplies.”– Professor Dannemiller

“I like how this student follows their thesis through the text, highlighting specific instances from Sedaris’s essay that support their analysis. Each instance of this evidence is synthesized with the student’s observations and connected back to their thesis statement, allowing for the essay to capitalize on the case being built in their conclusion. At the ends of some earlier paragraphs, some of this ‘spine-building’ is interrupted with suggestions of how characters in the essay should behave, which doesn’t always clearly link to the thesis’s goals. Similarly, some information isn’t given a context to help us understand its relevance, such as what violating the student-teacher trust has to do with normativity being a social construct, or how Sedaris’s description of ‘a blow to the nose’ being a narcotic creates a parallel to his mother’s drinking and smoking. Without further analysis and synthesis of this information the reader is left to guess how these ideas connect.”– Professor Dannemiller

Sedaris, David. “A Plague of Tics.” 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology , 4 th edition, edited by Samuel Cohen, Bedford, 2013, pp. 359-372.

Analyzing “Richard Cory” 10

In the poem “Richard Cory” by Edward Arlington Robinson, a narrative is told about the character Richard Cory by those who admired him. In the last stanza, the narrator, who uses the pronoun “we,” tells us that Richard Cory commits suicide. Throughout most of the poem, though, Cory had been described as a wealthy gentleman. The “people on the pavement” (2), the speakers of the poem, admired him because he presented himself well, was educated, and was wealthy. The poem presents the idea that, even though Cory seemed to have everything going for him, being wealthy does not guarantee happiness or health.

Throughout the first three stanzas Cory is described in a positive light, which makes it seem like he has everything that he could ever need. Specifically, the speaker compares Cory directly and indirectly to royalty because of his wealth and his physical appearance: “He was a gentleman from sole to crown, / Clean favored and imperially slim” (Robinson 3-4). In line 3, the speaker is punning on “soul” and “crown.” At the same time, Cory is both a gentleman from foot (sole) to head (crown) and also soul to crown. The use of the word “crown” instead of head is a clever way to show that Richard was thought of as a king to the community. The phrase “imperially slim” can also be associated with royalty because imperial comes from “empire.” The descriptions used gave clear insight that he was admired for his appearance and manners, like a king or emperor.

In other parts of the poem, we see that Cory is ‘above’ the speakers. The first lines, “When Richard Cory went down town, / We people on the pavement looked at him” (1-2), show that Cory is not from the same place as the speakers. The words “down” and “pavement” also suggest a difference in status between Cory and the people. The phrase “We people on the pavement” used in the first stanza (Robinson 2), tells us that the narrator and those that they are including in their “we” may be homeless and sleeping on the pavement; at the least, this phrase shows that “we” are below Cory.

In addition to being ‘above,’ Cory is also isolated from the speakers. In the second stanza, we can see that there was little interaction between Cory and the people on the pavement: “And he was always human when he talked; / But still fluttered pulses when he said, / ‘Good- morning’” (Robinson 6-8). Because people are “still fluttered” by so little, we can speculate that it was special for them to talk to Cory. But these interactions gave those on the pavement no insight into Richard’s real feelings or personality. Directly after the descriptions of the impersonal interactions, the narrator mentions that “he was rich—yes, richer than a king” (Robinson 9). At the same time that Cory is again compared to royalty, this line reveals that people were focused on his wealth and outward appearance, not his personal life or wellbeing.

The use of the first-person plural narration to describe Cory gives the reader the impression that everyone in Cory’s presence longed to have the life that he did. Using “we,” the narrator speaks for many people at once. From the end of the third stanza to the end of the poem, the writing turns from admirable description of Richard to a noticeably more melancholy, dreary description of what those who admired Richard had to do because they did not have all that Richard did. These people had nothing, but they thought that he was everything. To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread…. (Robinson 9-12)

They sacrificed their personal lives and food to try to rise up to Cory’s level. They longed to not be required to struggle. A heavy focus on money and materialistic things blocked their ability to see what Richard Cory was actually feeling or going through. I suggest that “we” also includes the reader of the poem. If we read the poem this way, “Richard Cory” critiques the way we glorify wealthy people’s lives to the point that we hurt ourselves. Our society values financial success over mental health and believes in a false narrative about social mobility.

Though the piece was written more than a century ago, the perceived message has not been lost. Money and materialistic things do not create happiness, only admiration and alienation from those around you. Therefore, we should not sacrifice our own happiness and leisure for a lifestyle that might not make us happy. The poem’s message speaks to our modern society, too, because it shows a stigma surrounding mental health: if people have “everything / To make us wish that we were in [their] place” (11-12), we often assume that they don’t deal with the same mental health struggles as everyone. “Richard Cory” reminds us that we should take care of each other, not assume that people are okay because they put up a good front.

“I enjoy how this author uses evidence: they use a signal phrase (front-load) before each direct quote and take plenty of time to unpack the quote afterward. This author also has a clear and direct thesis statement which anticipates the content of their analysis. I would advise them, though, to revise that thesis by ‘previewing’ the elements of the text they plan to analyze. This could help them clarify their organization, since a thesis should be a road-map.”– Professor Wilhjelm

Robinson, Edward Arlington. “Richard Cory.” The Norton Introduction to Literature , Shorter 12 th edition, edited by Kelly J. Mays, Norton, 2017, p. 482.

the cognitive process and/or rhetorical mode of studying constituent parts to demonstrate an interpretation of a larger whole.

a part or combination of parts that lends support or proof to an arguable topic, idea, or interpretation.

a cognitive and rhetorical process by which an author brings together parts of a larger whole to create a unique new product. Examples of synthesis might include an analytical essay, found poetry, or a mashup/remix.

a 1-3 sentence statement outlining the main insight(s), argument(s), or concern(s) of an essay; not necessary in every rhetorical situation; typically found at the beginning of an essay, though sometimes embedded later in the paper. Also referred to as a “So what?” statement.

EmpoWORD: A Student-Centered Anthology and Handbook for College Writers Copyright © 2018 by Shane Abrams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Learning about Synthesis Analysis

What D oes Synthesis and Analysis Mean?

Synthesis: the combination of ideas to

• show commonalities or patterns

Analysis: a detailed examination

• of elements, ideas, or the structure of something
• can be a basis for discussion or interpretation

Synthesis and Analysis: combine and examine ideas to

• show how commonalities, patterns, and elements fit together
• form a unified point for a theory, discussion, or interpretation
• develop an informed evaluation of the idea by presenting several different viewpoints and/or ideas

Key Resource: Synthesis Matrix

Synthesis Matrix

A synthesis matrix is an excellent tool to use to organize sources by theme and to be able to see the similarities and differences as well as any important patterns in the methodology and recommendations for future research. Using a synthesis matrix can assist you not only in synthesizing and analyzing,  but it can also aid you in finding a researchable problem and gaps in methodology and/or research.

Use the Synthesis Matrix Template attached below to organize your research by theme and look for patterns in your sources .Use the companion handout, "Types of Articles" to aid you in identifying the different article types for the sources you are using in your matrix. If you have any questions about how to use the synthesis matrix, sign up for the synthesis analysis group session to practice using them with Dr. Sara Northern!

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What is the difference between analysis and synthesis?

Synthesis is a antonym of analysis ., as nouns the difference between analysis and synthesis, derived terms, related terms, external links.

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Supplement to Analysis

Definitions and descriptions of analysis.

The older a word, the deeper it reaches. (Wittgenstein NB , 40) { §6.5 }

This supplement collects together various definitions and descriptions of analysis that have been offered in the history of philosophy (including all the classic ones), to indicate the range of different conceptions and the issues that arise. (There are also some remarks on related topics such as analyticity, definition, and methodology more generally.) In most cases, abbreviated references are given; full details can be found in the Annotated Bibliography on Analysis, in the section mentioned in curly brackets after the relevant definition or description. Where there is more than one passage quoted from a particular author, passages are numbered in chronological order of composition (as far as that can be determined).

• Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy , 1999, ed. Robert Audi

Concise Oxford Dictionary , 1976, ed. J. B. Sykes

• Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology , 1925, ed. James Mark Baldwin

A Kant Dictionary , 1995, by Howard Caygill

Oxford dictionary of philosophy , 1996, by simon blackburn, philosophielexikon , 1997, ed. a. hügli and p. lübcke, routledge encyclopedia of philosophy , 1998, entry under ‘analytical philosophy’ by thomas baldwin, routledge encyclopedia of philosophy , 1998, entry under ‘conceptual analysis’ by robert hanna, alexander of aphrodisias, al-fārābī, abū naṣr muḥammad, arnauld, antoine and nicole, pierre, ayer, a. j., beaney, michael, bentham, jeremy, bergson, henri, bos, henk j. m., bradley, f. h., brandom, robert b., carnap, rudolf, cassirer, ernst, cohen, l. jonathan, collingwood, r. g., davidson, donald, de chardin, teilhard, derrida, jacques, descartes, rené.

• DeStaël, Germaine

Frege, Gottlob

Ganeri, jonardon, geertz, clifford, günderrode, karoline von, hegel, georg w.f., heidegger, martin, hobbes, thomas, hodges, wilfrid, holton, gerald, husserl, edmund, ibn rushd, abū al-walīd muḥammad ibn aḥmad, ibn sinān, ibrāhim, kant, immanuel, lakatos, imre, lambert, johann heinrich, leibniz, gottfried wilhelm, lichtenberg, georg christoph, locke, john, lodge, david, matilal, bimal krishna, mendelssohn, moses, moore, g. e., newton, isaac, nietzsche, friedrich, poincaré, jules henri, polya, george, quine, w.v.o., rorty, richard, rosen, stanley, russell, bertrand, ryle, gilbert, schiller, friedrich, sellars, wilfrid, soames, scott, staal, j. f., stebbing, l. susan.

• Strawson, F. Peter

Urmson, J. O.

Westerhoff, jan, whitehead, alfred north, wilson, john cook, wittgenstein, ludwig, 1. definitions of analysis, cambridge dictionary of philosophy , 2nd ed., 1999, ed. robert audi.

the process of breaking up a concept, proposition, linguistic complex, or fact into its simple or ultimate constituents. { §1.1 }

1. Resolution into simpler elements by analysing (opp. synthesis ); statement of result of this; … 2. (Math.) Use of algebra and calculus in problem-solving. { §1.1 }

Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology , 1925, ed. James Mark Baldwin, Vol. I

The isolation of what is more elementary from what is more complex by whatever method. { §1.1 }

Kant combines two senses of analysis in his work, one derived from Greek geometry, the other from modern physics and chemistry. Both remain close to the original Greek sense of analysis as a ‘loosening up’ or ‘releasing’, but each proceed in different ways. The former proceeds ‘lemmatically’ by assuming a proposition to be true and searching for another known truth from which the proposition may be deduced. The latter proceeds by resolving complex wholes into their elements. { §4.5 }

The process of breaking a concept down into more simple parts, so that its logical structure is displayed. { §1.1 }

Auflösung, Zerlegung in Bestandteile, im Gegensatz zu Synthese. { §1.1 }

Philosophical analysis is a method of inquiry in which one seeks to assess complex systems of thought by ‘analysing’ them into simpler elements whose relationships are thereby brought into focus. { §1.1 }

The theory of conceptual analysis holds that concepts – general meanings of linguistic predicates – are the fundamental objects of philosophical inquiry, and that insights into conceptual contents are expressed in necessary ‘conceptual truths’ (analytic propositions). { §1.1 }

Annotated Bibliography, §1.1

2. Descriptions of Analysis

And he [Aristotle] called them Analytics because the resolution of every compound into those things out of which the synthesis [is made] is called analysis . For analysis is the converse of synthesis. Synthesis is the road from the principles to those things that derive from the principles, and analysis is the return from the end to the principles. For geometers are said to analyze when, beginning from the conclusion they go up to the principles and the problem, following the order of those things which were assumed for the demonstration of the conclusion {1}. But he also uses analysis who reduces composite bodies into simple bodies {2}, and he analyzes who divides the word into the parts of the word {3}; also he who divides the parts of the word into the syllables {4}; and he who divides these into their components {5}. And they are severally said to analyse who reduce compound syllogisms into simple ones {6}, and simple ones into the premisses out of which they get their being {7}. And further, resolving imperfect syllogisms into perfect ones is called analyzing {8}. And they call analysis the reducing of the given syllogism into the proper schemata {9}. And it is especially in this meaning of analysis that these are entitled Analytics , for he describes for us a method at the end of the first book with which we shall be able to do this. ( Commentary on Aristotle’s Prior Analytics , §1.2.1 (7, lines 11–33); tr. in Gilbert 1960, 32; the square brackets are in the original translation, the curly brackets have been added here to highlight the nine senses that Alexander distinguishes) { §2.4 , §3.2 }

• Transfer from the observed to the unobserved is of two kinds: one is by the method of Synthesis and the other is by the method of Analysis. With Analysis the reasoning starts with the unobserved, while with Synthesis it starts with the observed. If we want to use the method of Analysis to infer to the unobserved by means of the observed, we have to know the content that we are seeking [to transfer to] the unobserved thing, and then we study the question which are the sense-perceived things that satisfy that content. Then when we know something sense-perceived that satisfies that content, we use it to take those concepts that make the unobserved thing similar to the sense-perceived thing. Then we study the question which of those concepts is such that the whole of it satisfies the content that is observed in the sense-perceived thing. When we find such a concept, the content transfers necessarily from the thing observed by the senses to the unobserved thing. So therefore the inference to the unobserved by means of the observed, using this method, is in potential a question, i.e. a quaesitum , which a syllogism in the first figure is able to resolve. ( SY , 19.3; translation modified) { 3.3 }

it is not the same thing to take an argument in one’s hand and then to see and solve its faults, as it is to be able to meet it quickly while being subjected to questions; for what we know, we often do not know in a different context. Moreover, just as in other things speed or slowness is enhanced by training, so it is with arguments too, so that supposing we are unpractised, even though a point is clear to us, we are often too late for the right moment. Sometimes too it happens as with diagrams; for there we can sometimes analyse the figure, but not construct it again: so too in refutations, though we know on what the connexion of the argument depends, we still are at a loss to split the argument apart. ( SR , 16, 175a20–30) { §2.4 }

We must next explain how to reduce syllogisms to the figures previously described; this part of our inquiry still remains. For if we examine the means by which syllogisms are produced, and possess the ability to discover them, and can also analyse [ analuoimen ] the syllogisms when constructed into the figures previously described, our original undertaking will be completed. (( PrA , I, 32, 46b40–47a6; Tredennick tr. slightly modified) { §2.4 }

Thus it is evident (1) that the types of syllogism which cannot be analysed in these figures [viz., second figure syllogisms into the third figure, and third figure syllogisms into the second figure] are the same as those which we saw could not be analysed into the first figure; and (2) that when syllogisms are reduced to the first figure these alone are established per impossibile .

It is evident, then, from the foregoing account [taken as including the discussion prior to chapter 45] how syllogisms should be reduced; and also that the figures can be analysed into one another. ( PrA , I, 45, 51a40–b5; Tredennick tr., substituting ‘analysed’ for ‘resolved’) { §2.4 }

If it were impossible to prove truth from falsehood, it would be easy to make analyses [ analuein ]; for then the propositions would convert from necessity. Let A be something that is the case; and if A is the case, then these things are the case (things which I know to be the case—call them B ). From the latter, then, I shall prove that the former is the case. (In mathematics conversion is more common because mathematicians assume nothing incidental—and in this too they differ from those who argue dialectically—but only definitions.) ( PoA , I, 12, 78a6–13) { §2.4 }

We deliberate not about ends but about means. For a doctor does not deliberate whether he shall heal, nor an orator whether he shall convince, nor a statesman whether he shall produce law and order, nor does any one else deliberate about his end. Having set the end, they consider how and by what means it is to be attained; and if it seems to be produced by several means they consider by which it is most easily and best produced, while if it is achieved by one only they consider how it will be achieved by this and by what means this will be achieved, till they come to the first cause, which in the order of discovery is last. For the person who deliberates seems to inquire and analyse in the way described as though he were analysing a geometrical construction (not all inquiry appears to be deliberation—for instance mathematical inquiries—but all deliberation is inquiry), and what is last in the order of analysis seems to be first in the order of becoming. And if we come on an impossibility, we give up the search, e.g. if we need money and this cannot be got; but if a thing appears possible we try to do it. ( NE , III, 3, 1112b8–27) { §2.4 }

The art of arranging a series of thoughts properly, either for discovering the truth when we do not know it, or for proving to others what we already know, can generally be called method.

Hence there are two kinds of method, one for discovering the truth, which is known as analysis , or the method of resolution , and which can also be called the method of discovery . The other is for making the truth understood by others once it is found. This is known as synthesis , or the method of composition , and can also be called the method of instruction .

Analysis does not usually deal with the entire body of a science, but is used only for resolving some issue. ( LAT , 233–4) { §4.1 }

Now analysis consists primarily in paying attention to what is known in the issue we want to resolve. The entire art is to derive from this examination many truths that can lead us to the knowledge we are seeking.

Suppose we wondered whether the human soul is immortal, and to investigate it we set out to consider the nature of the soul. First we would notice that it is distinctive of the soul to think, and that it could doubt everything without being able to doubt whether it is thinking, since doubting is itself a thought. Next we would ask what thinking is. Since we would see nothing contained in the idea of thought that is contained in the idea of the extended substance called body, and since we could even deny of thought everything belonging to body — such as having length, width, and depth, having different parts, having a certain shape, being divisible, etc. — without thereby destroying the idea we have of thought, from this we would conclude that thought is not at all a mode of extended substance, because it is the nature of a mode not to be able to be conceived while the thing of which it is a mode is denied. From this we infer, in addition, that since thought is not a mode of extended substance, it must be the attribute of another substance. Hence thinking substance and extended substance are two really distinct substances. It follows from this that the destruction of one in no way brings about the destruction of the other, since even extended substance is not properly speaking destroyed, but all that happens in what we call destruction is nothing more than the change or dissolution of several parts of matter which exist forever in nature. Likewise it is quite easy to judge that in breaking all the gears of a clock no substance is destroyed, although we say that the clock is destroyed. This shows that since the soul is in no way divisible or composed of parts, it cannot perish, and consequently is immortal.

This is what we call analysis or resolution . We should notice, first, that in this method — as in the one called composition — we should practice proceeding from what is better known to what is less known. For there is no true method which could dispense with this rule.

Second, it nevertheless differs from the method of composition in that these known truths are taken from a particular examination of the thing we are investigating, and not from more general things as is done in the method of instruction. Thus in the example we presented, we did not begin by establishing these general maxims: that no substance perishes, properly speaking; that what is called destruction is only a dissolution of parts; that therefore what has no parts cannot be destroyed, etc. Instead we rose by stages to these general notions.

Third, in analysis we introduce clear and evident maxims only to the extent that we need them, whereas in the other method we establish them first, as we will explain below.

Fourth and finally, these two methods differ only as the route one takes in climbing a mountain from a valley differs from the route taken in descending from the mountain into the valley, or as the two ways differ that are used to prove that a person is descended from St. Louis. One way is to show that this person had a certain man for a father who was the son of a certain man, and that man was the son of another, and so on up to St. Louis. The other way is to begin with St. Louis and show that he had a certain child, and this child had others, thereby descending to the person in question. This example is all the more appropriate in this case, since it is certain that to trace an unknown genealogy, it is necessary to go from the son to the father, whereas to explain it after finding it, the most common method is to begin with the trunk to show the descendants. This is also what is usually done in the sciences where, after analysis is used to find some truth, the other method is employed to explain what has been found.

This is the way to understand the nature of analysis as used by geometers. Here is what it consists in. Suppose a question is presented to them, such as whether it is true or false that something is a theorem, or whether a problem is possible or impossible; they assume what is at issue and examine what follows from that assumption. If in this examination they arrive at some clear truth from which the assumption follows necessarily, they conclude that the assumption is true. Then starting over from the end point, they demonstrate it by the other method which is called composition . But if they fall into some absurdity or impossibility as a necessary consequence of their assumption, they conclude from this that the assumption is false and impossible.

This is what may be said in a general way about analysis, which consists more in judgment and mental skill than in particular rules. ( LAT , 236–8) { §4.1 }

It is advisable to stress the point that philosophy, as we understand it, is wholly independent of metaphysics, inasmuch as the analytic method is commonly supposed by its critics to have a metaphysical basis. Being misled by the associations of the word ‘analysis’, they assume that philosophical analysis is an activity of dissection; that it consists in ‘breaking up’ objects into their constituent parts, until the whole universe is ultimately exhibited as an aggregate of ‘bare particulars’, united by external relations. If this were really so, the most effective way of attacking the method would be to show that its basic presupposition was nonsensical. For to say that the universe was an aggregate of bare particulars would be as senseless as to say that it was Fire or Water or Experience. It is plain that no such possible observation would enable to verify such an assertion. But, so far as I know, this line of criticism is in fact never adopted. The critics content themselves with pointing out that few, if any, of the complex objects in the world are simply the sum of their parts. They have a structure, an organic unity, which distinguishes them, as genuine wholes, from mere aggregates. But the analyst, so it is said, is obliged by his atomistic metaphysics to regard an object consisting of parts a , b , c , and d , in a distinctive configuration as being simply a + b + c + d , and thus gives an entirely false account of its nature.

If we follow the Gestalt psychologists, who of all men talk most constantly about genuine wholes, in defining such a whole as one in which the properties of every part depend to some extent on its position in the whole, then we may accept it as an empirical fact that there exist genuine, or organic, wholes. And if the analytic method involved a denial of this fact, it would indeed be a faulty method. But, actually, the validity of the analytic method is not dependent on any empirical, much less any metaphysical, presupposition about the nature of things. For the philosopher, as an analyst, is not directly concerned with the physical properties of things. He is concerned only with the way in which we speak about them.

In other words, the propositions of philosophy are not factual, but linguistic in character – that is, they do not describe the behaviour of physical, or even mental, objects; they express definitions, or the formal consequences of definitions. Accordingly, we may say that philosophy is a department of logic. For we shall see that the characteristic mark of a purely logical inquiry is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions and not with questions of empirical fact.

It follows that philosophy does not in any way compete with science. The difference in type between philosophical and scientific propositions is such that they cannot conceivably contradict one another. And this makes it clear that the possibility of philosophical analysis is independent of any empirical assumptions. That it is independent of any metaphysical assumptions should be even more obvious still. For it is absurd to suppose that the provision of definitions, and the study of their formal consequences, involves the nonsensical assertion that the world is composed of bare particulars, or any other metaphysical dogma.

What has contributed as much as anything to the prevalent misunderstanding of the nature of philosophical analysis is the fact that propositions and questions which are really linguistic are often expressed in such a way that they appear to be factual. A striking instance of this is provided by the proposition that a material thing cannot be in two places at once. This looks like an empirical proposition, and is constantly invoked by those who desire to prove that it is possible for an empirical proposition to be logically certain. But a more critical inspection shows that it is not empirical at all, but linguistic. It simply records the fact that, as the result of certain verbal conventions, the proposition that two sense-contents occur in the same visual or tactual sense-field is incompatible with the proposition that they belong to the same material thing. And this is indeed a necessary fact. But it has not the least tendency to show that we have certain knowledge about the empirical properties of objects. For it is necessary only because we happen to use the relevant words in a particular way. There is no logical reason why we should not so alter our definitions that the sentence ‘A thing cannot be in two places at once’ comes to express a self-contradiction instead of a necessary truth. (1936, 75–7) { §6.7 }

From our assertion that philosophy provides definitions, it must not be inferred that it is the function of the philosopher to compile a dictionary, in the ordinary sense. For the definitions which philosophy is required to provide are of a different kind from those which we expect to find in dictionaries. In a dictionary we look mainly for what may be called explicit definitions; in philosophy, for definitions in use . ...

We define a symbol in use , not by saying that it is synonymous with some other symbol, but by showing how the sentences in which it significantly occurs can be translated into equivalent sentences, which contain neither the definiendum itself, nor any of its synonyms. A good illustration of this process is provided by Bertrand Russell’s so-called theory of descriptions, which is not a theory at all in the ordinary sense, but an indication of the way in which all phrases of the form ‘the so-and-so’ are to be defined. ( Ibid ., 80–1) { §6.7 }

[A serious mistake in my account in Language, Truth and Logic ] was my assumption that philosophical analysis consisted mainly in the provision of ‘definitions in use’. It is, indeed, true that what I describe as philosophical analysis is very largely a matter of exhibiting the inter-relationship of different types of propositions; but the cases in which this process actually yields a set of definitions are the exception rather than the rule. ...

... Thus, when Professor Moore suggests that to say that ‘existence is not a predicate’ may be a way of saying that ‘there is some very important difference between the way in which “exist” is used in such a sentence as “Tame tigers exist” and the way in which “growl” is used in “Tame tigers growl”’, he does not develop his point by giving rules for the translation of one set of sentences into another. What he does is to remark that whereas it makes good sense to say ‘All tame tigers growl’ or ‘Most tame tigers growl’ it would be nonsense to say ‘All tame tigers exist’ or ‘Most tame tigers exist’. Now this may seem a rather trivial point for him to make, but in fact it is philosophically illuminating. For it is precisely the assumption that existence is a predicate that gives plausibility to ‘the ontological argument’; and the ontological argument is supposed to demonstrate the existence of a God. Consequently Moore by pointing out a peculiarity in the use of the word ‘exist’ helps to protect us from a serious fallacy; so that his procedure, though different from that which Russell follows in his theory of descriptions, tends to achieve the same philosophical end. (1946, 31–3) { §6.7 }

In analytic geometry, the geometrical problems are solved by ‘translating’ them into the language of arithmetic and algebra. And here we can also see how ‘interpretive’ analysis plays a role. Lines, circles, curves, and so on, must first be ‘interpreted’ as equations, and the geometrical problems correspondingly reformulated, before arithmetic and algebra can be applied in solving them. The idea here can be generalized: problems need to be interpreted in some form before the resources of a relevant theory or conceptual framework can be brought to bear. And this is exactly what is involved in analytic philosophy: the propositions to be analysed—those that give rise to the philosophical problems to be solved or dissolved—need to be rephrased in a richer conceptual framework or formalized in an appropriate logical theory. Analytic philosophy, then, is ‘analytic’ much more in the sense that analytic geometry is analytic than in any crude decompositional sense. (2017, 96.)

By the word paraphrasis may be designated that sort of exposition which may be afforded by transmuting into a proposition, having for its subject some real entity, a proposition which has not for its subject any other than a fictitious entity. ( EL , 246) { §5.6 }

By intuition is meant the kind of intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known, that is, to elements common both to it and other objects. To analyse, therefore, is to express a thing as a function of something other than itself. All analysis is thus a translation, a development into symbols, a representation taken from successive points of view from which we note as many resemblances as possible between the new object which we are studying and others which we believe we know already. In its eternally unsatisfied desire to embrace the object around which it is compelled to turn, analysis multiplies without end the number of its points of view in order to complete its always incomplete representation, and ceaselessly varies its symbols that it may perfect the always imperfect translation. It goes on, therefore, to infinity. But intuition, if intuition is possible, is a simple act. (1903, 6–7) { §5.1 }

[Analysis] operates always on the immobile, whilst intuition places itself in mobility, or, what comes to the same thing, in duration. There lies the very distinct line of demarcation between intuition and analysis. The real, the experienced and the concrete are recognised by the fact that they are variability itself, the element by the fact that it is invariable. And the element is invariable by definition, being a diagram, a simplified reconstruction, often a mere symbol, in any case a motionless view of the moving reality. (1903, 40–1) { §5.1 }

Modern science is neither one nor simple. It rests, I freely admit, on ideas which in the end we find clear; but these ideas have gradually become clear through the use made of them; they owe most of their clearness to the light which the facts, and the applications to which they led, have by reflection shed on them — the clearness of a concept being scarcely anything more at bottom than the certainty, at last obtained, of manipulating the concept profitably. At its origin, more than one of these concepts must have appeared obscure, not easily reconcilable with the concepts already admitted into science, and indeed very near the borderline of absurdity. This means that science does not proceed by an orderly dovetailing together of concepts predestined to fit each other exactly. True and fruitful ideas are so many close contacts with currents of reality, which do not necessarily converge on the same point. However the concepts in which they lodge themselves manage somehow, by rubbing off each other's corners, to settle down well enough together. (1903, 74) { §5.1 }

It may help to be reminded that many philosophers who might allow themselves to be described as “analysts” have been strongly influenced by the work of Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein. For while all three have been engaged in “clarification of meaning” they have done so in different and distinctive ways; and the resulting divergences in conceptions of philosophical method have not yet been reconciled. This makes it hard to give any simple account of what is meant today by “philosophical analysis”. (1950a, 2) { §6.1 }

A man who had to describe “philosophical analysis” might resort to talking about a climate of opinion. The weather, he might say, is congenial to empiricists, naturalists, agnostics; the well acclimatized have admired the two Principia’s and the Tractatus and have read a hundred pages of Hume for one of Kant. Here rhetoric is viewed with suspicion and enthusiasm barely tolerated; this is a land of “prose writers, hoping to be understood” [J. M. Keynes, A Treatise on Probability , 1921, preface].

... If a formula or a slogan is wanted, it is easy enough to say that these writers (like Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein before them) are engaged in clarification of meaning . ... And if those who are best at the work of clarification might feel embarrassed to provide a satisfactory analysis of “analysis”, that is perhaps no cause for apology or alarm. For it is a mark of life to resist arbitrary confinement, and “philosohical analysis” is still much alive. (1950a, 12–13) { §6.1 }

Analysis comprises mathematical methods for finding the solutions (in geometry: the constructions) of problems or the proofs of theorems, doing so by introducing unknowns. (2001, 129) { §4.2 }

It is a very common and most ruinous superstition to suppose that analysis is no alteration, and that, whenever we distinguish, we have at once to do with divisible existence. It is an immense assumption to conclude, when a fact comes to us as a whole, that some parts of it may exist without any sort of regard for the rest. Such naive assurance of the outward reality of all mental distinctions, such touching confidence in the crudest identity of thought and existence, is worthy of the school which so loudly appeals to the name of Experience. ... If it is true in any sense (and I will not deny it) that thought in the end is the measure of things, yet at least this is false, that the divisions we make within a whole all answer to elements whose existence does not depend on the rest. It is wholly unjustifiable to take up a complex, to do any work we please upon it by analysis, and then simply predicate as an adjective of the given these results of our abstraction. These products were never there as such, and in saying, as we do, that as such they are there, we falsify the fact. You can not always apply in actual experience that coarse notion of the whole as the sum of its parts into which the school of ‘experience’ so delights to torture phenomena. If it is wrong in physiology to predicate the results, that are reached by dissection, simply and as such of the living body, it is here infinitely more wrong. The whole that is given to us is a continuous mass of perception and feeling; and to say of this whole, that any one element would be what it is there, when apart from the rest, is a very grave assertion. We might have supposed it not quite self-evident, and that it was possible to deny it without open absurdity. ( PL , §64/ WLM , 77–8) { §5.6 }

judgement is the differentiation of a complex whole, and hence always is analysis and synthesis in one. ( AR , 149/ WLM , 158) { §5.6 }

At any moment my actual experience, however relational its contents, is in the end non-relational. No analysis into relations and terms can ever exhaust its nature or fail in the end to belie its essence. What analysis leaves for ever outstanding is no mere residue, but is a vital condition of the analysis itself. Everything which is got out into the form of an object implies still the felt background against which the object comes, and, further, the whole experience of both feeling and object is a non-relational immediate felt unity. The entire relational consciousness, in short, is experienced as falling within a direct awareness. This direct awareness is itself non-relational. It escapes from all attempts to exhibit it by analysis as one or more elements in a relational scheme, or as that scheme itself, or as a relation or relations, or as the sum or collection of any of these abstractions. And immediate experience not only escapes, but it serves as the basis on which the analysis is made. Itself is the vital element within which every analysis still moves, while, and so far as, and however much, that analysis transcends immediacy. ( ETR , 176/ WLM , 280–1) { §5.6 }

I would rather now lay more stress on the logical vice of all Analysis and Abstraction – so far as that means taking any feature in the Whole of Things as ultimately real except in its union with the Whole. ( Collected Works of F.H. Bradley: Selected Correspondence 1905–1924 , Bristol, Thoemmes Press, 1999, 275)

Analysis and synthesis I take in the end to be two aspects of one principle … Every analysis proceeds from and on the basis of a unity ... The point before us is the question as to how, without separation in its existence, we can discriminate ideally in analysis. ( ETR , 300)

Socratic method is a way of bringing our practices under rational control by expressing them explicitly in a form in which they can be confronted with objections and alternatives, a form in which they can be exhibited as the conclusions of inferences seeking to justify them on the basis of premises advanced as reasons, and as premises in further inferences exploring the consequences of accepting them. (2000, 56) { §6.9 }

I think of analytic philosophy as having at its center a concern with semantic relations between what I will call ‘vocabularies’. … Its characteristic form of question is whether and in what way one can make sense of the meanings expressed by one kind of locution in terms of the meanings expressed by another kind of locution. So, for instance, two early paradigmatic projects were to show that everything expressible in the vocabulary of number-theory, and again, everything expressible using definite descriptions, is expressible already in the vocabulary of first-order quantificational logic with identity.

The nature of the key kind of semantic relation between vocabularies has been variously characterized during the history of analytic philosophy: as analysis, definition, paraphrase, translation, reduction of different sorts, truth-making, and various kinds of supervenience—to name just a few contenders. In each case, however, it is characteristic of classical analytic philosophy that logical vocabulary is accorded a privileged role in specifying these semantic relations. It has always been taken at least to be licit to appeal to logical vocabulary in elaborating the relation between analysandum and analysans —target vocabulary and base vocabulary—and, according to stronger versions of this thesis, that may be the only vocabulary it is licit to employ in that capacity. I will refer to this aspect of the analytic project as its commitment to ‘ semantic logicism ’. (2006, Lecture One, §1) { §6.9 }

What I want to call the “classical project of analysis”, then, aims to exhibit the meanings expressed by various target vocabularies as intelligible by means of the logical elaboration of the meanings expressed by base vocabularies thought to be privileged in some important respects—epistemological, ontological, or semantic—relative to those others. This enterprise is visible in its purest form in what I have called the “core programs” of empiricism and naturalism, in their various forms. In my view the most significant conceptual development in this tradition—the biggest thing that ever happened to it—is the pragmatist challenge to it that was mounted during the middle years of the twentieth century. Generically, this movement of thought amounts to a displacement from the center of philosophical attention of the notion of meaning in favor of that of use : in suitably broad senses of those terms, replacing concern with semantics by concern with pragmatics . ( Ibid ., Lecture One, §2) { §6.9 }

the analysis or, more precisely, quasi-analysis of an entity that is essentially an indivisible unit into several quasi-constituents means placing the entity in several kinship contexts on the basis of a kinship relation, where the unit remains undivided. (1928a, §71; English tr. by Rolf A. George slightly altered) { §6.7 }

The logical analysis of a particular expression consists in the setting-up of a linguistic system and the placing of that expression in this system. (1936, 143) { §6.7 }

That part of the work of philosophers which may be held to be scientific in its nature—excluding the empirical questions which can be referred to empirical science—consists of logical analysis. The aim of logical syntax is to provide a system of concepts, a language, by the help of which the results of logical analysis will be exactly formulable. Philosophy is to be replaced by the logic of science —that is to say, by the logical analysis of the concepts and sentences of the sciences, for the logic of science is nothing other than the logical syntax of the language of science . (1937, xiii) { §6.7 }

The task of making more exact a vague or not quite exact concept used in everyday life or in an earlier stage of scientific or logical development, or rather of replacing it by a newly constructed, more exact concept, belongs among the most important tasks of logical analysis and logical construction. We call this the task of explicating, or of giving an explication for, the earlier concept … (1947, 8–9) { §6.7 }

By the procedure of explication we mean the transformation of an inexact, prescientific concept, the explicandum , into a new exact concept, the explicatum . Although the explicandum cannot be given in exact terms, it should be made as clear as possible by informal explanations and examples. ...

The term ‘explicatum’ has been suggested by the following two usages. Kant calls a judgement explicative if the predicate is obtained by analysis of the subject. Husserl, in speaking about the synthesis of identification between a confused, nonarticulated sense and a subsequently intended distinct, articulated sense, calls the latter the ‘Explikat’ of the former. (For both uses see Dictionary of philosophy [1942], ed. D. Runes, p. 105). What I mean by ‘explicandum’ and ‘explicatum’ is to some extent similar to what C.H. Langford calls ‘analysandum’ and ‘analysans’: “the analysis then states an appropriate relation of equivalence between the analysandum and the analysans” [Langford 1942, 323 { §6.4 }]; he says that the motive of an analysis “is usually that of supplanting a relatively vague idea by a more precise one” ( ibid ., p. 329).

(Perhaps the form ‘explicans’ might be considered instead of ‘explicatum’; however, I think that the analogy with the terms ‘definiendum’ and ‘definiens’ would not be useful because, if the explication consists in giving an explicit definition, then both the definiens and the definiendum in this definition express the explicatum, while the explicandum does not occur.) The procedure of explication is here understood in a wider sense than the procedures of analysis and clarification which Kant, Husserl, and Langford have in mind. The explicatum (in my sense) is in many cases the result of analysis of the explicandum (and this has motivated my choice of the terms); in other cases, however, it deviates deliberately from the explicandum but still takes its place in some way; this will become clear by the subsequent examples. (1950, 3) { §6.7 }

[T]he sense of all objective judgments reduces to a final original relation, which can be expressed in different formulations as the relation of “form” to “content”, as the relation of “universal” to “particular”, as the relation of “validity [ Geltung ]” to “being [ Sein ]”. Whatever designation one may finally choose here, what is alone decisive is that the basic relation itself is to be retained as a strictly unitary relation, which can only be designated through the two opposed moments that enter into it – but never constructed out of them, as if they were independent constituents present in themselves. The original relation is not to be defined in such a way that the “universal” somehow “subsists” next to or above the “particular” – the form somehow separate from the content – so that the two are then melded with one another by means of some or another fundamental synthesis of knowledge. Rather, the unity of mutual determination constitutes the absolutely first datum, behind which one can go back no further, and which can only be analyzed via the duality of two “viewpoints” in an artificially isolating process of abstraction. It is the basic flaw of all metaphysical epistemologies that they always attempt to reinterpret this duality of “moments” as a duality of “elements”. (1913, 13–14; cited and tr. by Friedman 2000, 34) { §5.4 }

conceptual analysis typically relates one kind of reason for using a certain word to another. (1986, 51) { §6.9 }

When philosophical analysis proceeds from intuitively sanctioned premisses to a reasoned conclusion, it may be described as moving from analysandum to analysans. It seeks to ensure that any muddles or inconsistencies in our unreasoned inclinations and passive prejudices are replaced by an explicitly formulated, consciously co-ordinated, adequately reasoned, and freely adopted system of acceptable principles. (1986, 96) { §6.9 }

Socrates was essentially the inventor of a method. ... His revolt against the study of nature was essentially a revolt against observation in favour of thought; and whereas mathematical method, as an example of thought, had already been discovered by his predecessors, his own discovery was that a similar method, for which he invented an appropriate technique, could be applied to ethical questions. This technique, as he himself recognized, depended on a principle which is of great importance to any theory of philosophical method: the principle that in a philosophical inquiry what we are trying to do is not to discover something of which until now we have been ignorant, but to know better something which in some sense we knew already; not to know it better in the sense of coming to know more about it, but to know it better in the sense of coming to know it in a different and better way—actually instead of potentially, or explicitly instead of implicitly, or in whatever terms the theory of knowledge chooses to express the difference: the difference itself has been a familiar fact ever since Socrates pointed it out. (1933, 10–11) { §5.6 }

[The] work of disentangling and arranging questions, which ... I [call] analysis, may be alternatively described as the work of detecting presuppositions. ... The analysis which detects absolute presuppositions I call metaphysical analysis; but as regards procedure and the qualifications necessary to carry it out there is no difference whatever between metaphysical analysis and analysis pure and simple ... (1940, 39–40) { §5.6 }

It is only by analysis that any one can ever come to know either that he is making any absolute presuppositions at all or what absolute presuppositions he is making.

Such analysis may in certain cases proceed in the following manner. If the inquirer can find a person to experiment upon who is well trained in a certain type of scientific work, intelligent and earnest in his devotion to it, and unaccustomed to metaphysics, let him probe into various presuppositions that his ‘subject’ has been taught to make in the course of his scientific education, and invite him to justify each or alternatively to abandon it. If the ‘inquirer’ is skilful and the ‘subject’ the right kind of man, these invitations will be contemplated with equanimity, and even with interest, so long as relative presuppositions are concerned. But when an absolute presupposition is touched, the invitation wil be rejected, even with a certain degree of violence.

The rejection is a symptom that the ‘subject’, co-operating with the work of analysis, has come to see that the presupposition he is being asked to justify or abandon is an absolute presupposition; and the violence with which it is expressed is a symptom that he feels the importance of this absolute presupposition for the kind of work to which he is devoted. This is what ... I called being ‘ticklish in one’s absolute presuppositions’; and the reader will see that this ticklishness is a sign of intellectual health combined with a low degree of analytical skill. A man who is ticklish in that way is a man who knows, ‘instinctively’ as they say, that absolute presuppositions do not need justification. ( Ibid. , 43–4) { §5.6 }

metaphysical analysis, the discovery that certain presuppositions actually made are absolute presuppositions, is an integral part or an indispensable condition, you can put it whichever way you like, of all scientific work.( Ibid. , 84) { §5.6 }

“Pattern” [ lǐ ] is a term that makes reference to the close examination of things for the subtle and minute characteristics that should be distinguished in order to separate things. This is why it is called “the Pattern for separating things” [ fēnlǐ 分理]. When applied to concrete materials, it appears in the expressions “the pattern of the folds in the skin” [ jīlǐ 理], “the pattern of capillary pores” [ còulǐ 腠理] and “refined patterns” [ wénlǐ  文理].

When things are successfully separated so that the individual strands [ tiáo 條] are not intertwined, this is called “Well Ordered”[ tiáo lǐ  條理]. Mengzi declared that “Kongzi is [like] a complete orchestra”, explaining, “it is the work of wisdom to begin [a concert] in Good Order and is the work of the sage to maintain that Good Order through to the end”. To account for the supreme sageliness and wisdom of Kongzi, this description simply holds up his [capacity for] Good Order. ( An Evidential Commentary on the Meanings of Terms in the Mengzi , Section 1; tr. Justin Tiwald, in Tiwald and Van Norden 2014, 319–20) { §4.7 }

The word ‘principle’ [ lǐ 理] is a name assigned to the arrangement of the parts of anything which gives the whole its distinctive property or characteristic, and which can be observed by careful examination and analysis of the parts down to the minutest detail. This is why we speak of the principle of differentiation ( fen-li ). With reference to the substance of things, there are such expressions as the principle governing the fibres ( ji-li ), the principle governing the arrangement between skin and flesh ( cou-li ), and pattern ( wen-li ). ... When proper differentiation is made, there will be order without confusion. This is called ‘order and arrangement’ ( tiao-li ). ( An Evidential Commentary on the Meanings of Terms in the Mengzi , Section 1; tr. in Chin and Freeman 1990, 69; cited in Cheng Chung-yi 2009, 461) { §4.7 }

It has been said that there is Han classical learning and there is Song classical learning: the former emphasizes the ancient glosses ( gu-xun ) and the latter is concerned with [understanding] the reason and meaning [of things] ( yi-li ). I am greatly puzzled by this statement. If one can understand the reason and meaning [of things] by sheer speculation, then anyone can grab them out of emptiness. If that is so, what can we hope to gain from classical learning? It is precisely because sheer speculation cannot lead us to the reason and meaning [of things] as intended by the sages and worthies that one has to seek it from the ancient Classics. When seeking from the ancient Classics, we are facing the huge distance between the ancient and the present that lies in the texts, and then we have to resort to the ancient glosses [so as to fill the distance up]. Only when the ancient glosses are clear can the Classics be understood, and only when the Classics are understood can the reason and meaning [of things] as intended by the sages and worthies be grasped. ( Works of Dai Zhen , 1980, 168; tr. in Chin and Freeman 1990, 12; cited (modified) in Cheng 2009, 460) {§4.7}

In philosophy we are used to definitions, analyses, reductions. Typically these are intended to carry us from concepts better understood, or clear, or more basic epistemologically or ontologically, to others we want to understand. The method I have suggested fits none of these categories. I have proposed a looser relation between concepts to be illuminated and the relatively more basic. (‘Radical Interpretation’, 1972, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, 137)

Unlike the primitives who gave a face to every moving thing, or the early Greeks who defined all the aspects and forces of nature, modern man is obsessed by the need to depersonalise (or impersonalise) all that he most admires. There are two reasons for this tendency. The first is analysis , that marvellous instrument of scientific research to which we owe all our advances but which, breaking down synthesis after synthesis, allows one soul after another to escape, leaving us confronted with a pile of dismantled machinery, and evanescent particles. The second reason lies in the discovery of the sidereal world, so vast that it seems to do away with all proportion between our own being and the dimensions of the cosmos around us. ( The Phenomenon of Man , 1955, 282; tr. Bernard Wall, Fontana, 1965; tr. first publ. 1959)

Up until now the idea of philosophy remained defined in a formal way as an idea of an infinite task theoria . Could a history of this infinite theoretical life, which merges itself in its efforts and failures with a simple realization of the self , take on the value of a genetic description? Will the history of the “transcendental motive” through all the stages of European philosophy, enlighten us at last on the genesis of transcendental subjectivity? But such a history presupposes the possibility of such a going backward, the possibility of finding again the originary sense of the former presents as such. It implies the possibility of a transcendental “regression” ( Ruckfrage ) through a history that is intelligible and transparent to consciousness, a history whose sedimentations can be unmade and remade without alteration. ( The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy , The University of Chicago Press, 2003, 161; tr. Marian Hobson)

[discussing his ‘Rule Four’: “ We need a method if we are to investigate the truth of things ”] … the human mind has within it a sort of spark of the divine, in which the first seeds of useful ways of thinking are sown, seeds which, however neglected and stifled by studies which impede them, often bear fruit of their own accord. This is our experience in the simplest of sciences, arithmetic and geometry: we are well aware that the geometers of antiquity employed a sort of analysis which they went on to apply to the solution of every problem, though they begrudged revealing it to posterity. At the present time a sort of arithmetic called ‘algebra’ is flourishing, and this is achieving for numbers what the ancients did for figures. ( Rules for the Direction of the Mind , in PW , I, 16–17) { §4.2 }

As for the method of demonstration, this divides into two varieties: the first proceeds by analysis and the second by synthesis.

Analysis shows the true way by means of which the thing in question was discovered methodically and as it were a priori , so that if the reader is willing to follow it and give sufficient attention to all points, he will make the thing his own and understand it just as perfectly as if he had discovered it for himself. But this method contains nothing to compel belief in an argumentative or inattentive reader; for if he fails to attend even to the smallest point, he will not see the necessity of the conclusion. Moreover there are many truths which — although it is vital to be aware of them — this method often scarcely mentions, since they are transparently clear to anyone who gives them his attention.

Synthesis, by contrast, employs a directly opposite method where the search is, as it were, a posteriori (though the proof itself is often more a priori than it is in the analytic method). It demonstrates the conclusion clearly and employs a long series of definitions, postulates, axioms, theorems and problems, so that if anyone denies one of the conclusions it can be shown at once that it is contained in what has gone before, and hence the reader, however argumentative or stubborn he may be, is compelled to give his assent. However, this method is not as satisfying as the method of analysis, nor does it engage the minds of those who are eager to learn, since it does not show how the thing in question was discovered.

It was synthesis alone that the ancient geometers usually employed in their writings. But in my view this was not because they were utterly ignorant of analysis, but because they had such a high regard for it that they kept it to themselves like a sacred mystery.

Now it is analysis which is the best and truest method of instruction, and it was this method alone which I employed in my Meditations . As for synthesis, which is undoubtedly what you are asking me to use here, it is a method which it may be very suitable to deploy in geometry as a follow-up to analysis, but it cannot so conveniently be applied to these metaphysical subjects.

The difference is that the primary notions which are presupposed for the demonstration of geometrical truths are readily accepted by anyone, since they accord with the use of our senses. Hence there is no difficulty there, except in the proper deduction of the consequences, which can be done even by the less attentive, provided they remember what has gone before. Moreover, the breaking down of propositions to their smallest elements is specifically designed to enable them to be recited with ease so that the student recalls them whether he wants to or not.

In metaphysics by contrast there is nothing which causes so much effort as making our perception of the primary notions clear and distinct. Admittedly, they are by their nature as evident as, or even more evident than, the primary notions which the geometers study; but they conflict with many preconceived opinions derived from the senses which we have got into the habit of holding from our earliest years, and so only those who really concentrate and meditate and withdraw their minds from corporeal things, so far as is possible, will achieve perfect knowledge of them. Indeed, if they were put forward in isolation, they could easily be denied by those who like to contradict just for the sake of it. (‘Second Set of Replies’, in PW , II, 110–11) { §4.2 }

De Staël, Germaine

• Anatomical study cannot be undertaken on a living body without destroying it. Analysis, when one tries to apply it to indivisible truths, destroys them, because its first attempts are directed against their unity. We need to divide our mind in two so that one half may contemplate the other. However this division takes place, it deprives our being of that sublime identity without which we would lack sufficient strength to believe in that which consciousness alone can affirm. (1813, 44)

[interpolated into the text of the Elements ] What is analysis and what is synthesis. Analysis is the assumption of that which is sought as if it were admitted [and the arrival] by means of its consequences at something admitted to be true. Synthesis is an assumption of that which is admitted [and the arrival] by means of its consequences at something admitted to be true. ( E , Book XIII, Prop. 1; Vol. III, 442, where Heath comments on the interpolation) { §2.2 }

Explaining the Emptiness of Appearances

This means that the characteristic of the lion is empty. There is really only gold. There is no lion present. The Substance of the gold is never absent. This is the doctrine of “the emptiness of appearances”. Nonetheless, the emptiness has no characteristic of its own. It requires the appearance in order to become apparent. This does not prevent appearances from having an illusory existence, which is called “the emptiness of appearances”.

(Fazang, ‘Essay on the Golden Lion’, tr. by Bryan W. Van Norden, in Tiwald and Van Norden 2014, 87.)

To recap, wholeness is the building; particularity is the conditions. Identity is [building and conditions] not opposing each other. Difference is each condition considered separately. Integration is the result of the various conditions. Disintegration is each maintaining its own character. Alternatively, put in verse:

That the one is identical with the many is called wholeness.

That the many are not the same as the one is called particularity.

The various kinds are identical in constituting the whole.

Each has its particular difference manifested in the identity.

The wondrous integration is the Pattern of the dependent origination of one and many.

Disintegration is that each resides in its own character and does not create the whole.

This belongs to the sphere of wisdom, not discriminatory consciousness.

Through this expedient device one understands the one vehicle [of Huayan].

(Fazang, ‘The Rafter Dialogue’, tr. by David Elstein, in Tiwald and Van Norden 2014, 86.)

[In replying to the objections that Husserl had raised in his Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891) to Frege’s Grundlagen definitions] If words and combinations of words refer to [ bedeuten ] ideas, then for any two of them there are only two possibilities: either they designate the same idea or they designate different ideas. In the former case it is pointless to equate them by means of a definition: this is ‘an obvious circle’; in the latter case it is wrong. These are also the objections the author raises, one of them regularly. A definition is also incapable of analysing the sense, for the analysed sense just is not the original one. In using the word to be explained, I either think clearly everything I think when I use the defining expression: we then have the ‘obvious circle’; or the defining expression has a more richly articulated sense, in which case I do not think the same thing in using it as I do in using the word to be explained: the definition is then wrong. One would think that a definition was unobjectionable in the case where the word to be explained had as yet no sense at all, or where we were asked explicitly to regard its sense as non-existent so that it was first given a sense by the definition. But in the last case too, the author refutes the definition by reminding us of the difference between the ideas (p. 107). To evade all objections, one would accordingly have to create a new verbal root and form a word out of it. This reveals a split between psychological logicians and mathematicians. What matters to the former is the sense of the words, as well as the ideas which they fail to distinguish from the sense; whereas what matters to the latter is the thing itself: the Bedeutung of the words. The reproach that what is defined is not the concept but its extension actually affects all mathematical definitions. For the mathematician, it is no more right and no more wrong to define a conic as the line of intersection of a plane with the surface of a circular cone than to define it as a plane curve with an equation of the second degree in parallel coordinates. His choice of one or the other of these expressions or of some other one is guided solely by reasons of convenience and is made irrespective of the fact that the expressions have neither the same sense nor evoke the same ideas. I do not intend by this that a concept and its extension are one and the same, but that coincidence in extension is a necessary and sufficient criterion for the occurrence between concepts of the relation that corresponds to identity [ Gleichheit ] between objects. ( RH , 319–20/ FR , 225–6) { §6.2 }

We come to definitions . Definitions proper must be distinguished from elucidations [ Erläuterungen ]. In the first stages of any discipline we cannot avoid the use of ordinary words. But these words are, for the most part, not really appropriate for scientific purposes, because they are not precise enough and fluctuate in their use. Science needs technical terms that have precise and fixed Bedeutungen , and in order to come to an understanding about these Bedeutungen and exclude possible misunderstandings, we provide elucidations. Of course in so doing we have again to use ordinary words, and these may display defects similar to those which the elucidations are intended to remove. So it seems that we shall then have to provide further elucidations. Theoretically one will never really achieve one’s goal in this way. In practice, however, we do manage to come to an understanding about the Bedeutungen of words. Of course we have to be able to count on a meeting of minds, on others’ guessing what we have in mind. But all this precedes the construction of a system and does not belong within a system. In constructing a system it must be assumed that the words have precise Bedeutungen and that we know what they are. ( LM , 224/ FR , 313) { §6.2 }

We have ... to distinguish two quite different cases :

1. We construct a sense out of its constituents and introduce an entirely new sign to express this sense. This may be called a ‘constructive definition’ [‘ aufbauende Definition ’], but we prefer to call it a ‘definition’ tout court .

2. We have a simple sign with a long-established use. We believe that we can give a logical analysis [ Zerlegung ] of its sense, obtaining a complex expression which in our opinion has the same sense. We can only allow something as a constituent of a complex expression if it has a sense we recognize. The sense of the complex expression must be yielded by the way in which it is put together. That it agrees with the sense of the long established simple sign is not a matter for arbitrary stipulation, but can only be recognized by an immediate insight. No doubt we speak of a definition in this case too. It might be called an ‘analytic definition’ [‘ zerlegende Definition ’] to distinguish it from the first case. But it is better to eschew the word ‘definition’ altogether in this case, because what we should here like to call a definition is really to be regarded as an axiom. In this second case there remains no room for an arbitrary stipulation, because the simple sign already has a sense. Only a sign which as yet has no sense can have a sense arbitrarily assigned to it. So we shall stick to our original way of speaking and call only a constructive definition a definition. According to that a definition is an arbitrary stipulation which confers a sense on a simple sign which previously had none. This sense has, of course, to be expressed by a complex sign whose sense results from the way it is put together.

Now we still have to consider the difficulty we come up against in giving a logical analysis when it is problematic whether this analysis is correct.

Let us assume that A is the long-established sign (expression) whose sense we have attempted to analyse logically by constructing a complex expression that gives the analysis. Since we are not certain whether the analysis is successful, we are not prepared to present the complex expression as one which can be replaced by the simple sign A . If it is our intention to put forward a definition proper, we are not entitled to choose the sign A , which already has a sense, but we must choose a fresh sign B , say, which has the sense of the complex expression only in virtue of the definition. The question now is whether A and B have the same sense. But we can bypass this question altogether if we are constructing a new system from the bottom up; in that case we shall make no further use of the sign A – we shall only use B . We have introduced the sign B to take the place of the complex expression in question by arbitrary fiat and in this way we have conferred a sense on it. This is a definition in the proper sense, namely a constructive definition.

If we have managed in this way to construct a system for mathematics without any need for the sign A , we can leave the matter there; there is no need at all to answer the question concerning the sense in which – whatever it may be – this sign had been used earlier. In this way we court no objections. However, it may be felt expedient to use sign A instead of sign B . But if we do this, we must treat it as an entirely new sign which had no sense prior to the definition. We must therefore explain that the sense in which this sign was used before the new system was constructed is no longer of any concern to us, that its sense is to be understood purely from the constructive definition that we have given. In constructing the new system we can take no account, logically speaking, of anything in mathematics that existed prior to the new system. Everything has to be made anew from the ground up. Even anything that we may have accomplished by our analytical activities is to be regarded only as preparatory work which does not itself make any appearance in the new system itself.

Perhaps there still remains a certain unclarity. How is it possible, one may ask, that it should be doubtful whether a simple sign has the same sense as a complex expression if we know not only the sense of the simple sign, but can recognize the sense of the complex one from the way it is put together? The fact is that if we really do have a clear grasp of the sense of the simple sign, then it cannot be doubtful whether it agrees with the sense of the complex expression. If this is open to question although we can clearly recognize the sense of the complex expression from the way it is put together, then the reason must lie in the fact that we do not have a clear grasp of the sense of the simple sign, but that its outlines are confused as if we saw it through a mist. The effect of the logical analysis of which we spoke will then be precisely this – to articulate the sense clearly. Work of this kind is very useful; it does not, however, form part of the construction of the system, but must take place beforehand. Before the work of construction is begun, the building stones have to be carefully prepared so as to be usable; i.e. the words, signs, expressions, which are to be used, must have a clear sense, so far as a sense is not to be conferred on them in the system itself by means of a constructive definition.

We stick then to our original conception: a definition is an arbitrary stipulation by which a new sign is introduced to take the place of a complex expression whose sense we know from the way it is put together. A sign which hitherto had no sense acquires the sense of a complex expression by definition. ( LM , 227–9/ FR , 317–8) { §6.2 }

Whereas in Europe the emergence of the new philosophy was inextricably interwoven with the emergence of natural science, in India this was not so. The failure to appreciate that the two developments are nevertheless distinct is another important reason why there has not been a proper diagnosis of early modernity in the philosophy. Generally speaking, what we can say is that early modern forms of philosophical inquiry in India are governed by data drawn from logical form and linguistic practice rather than the microscope and distal observation of natural phenomenon. Philosophy in early modern India made the discipline rest instead on the sort of linguistic turn that characterized, much later, the origins of analytical philosophy in European thought. Bearing this point in mind, it is no surprise that profound affinities should have been discovered between early modern theory in India and twentieth century analytical philosophy. (2011, 6) { §4.6 }

The highest good is reached through an understanding of the true nature of [the distinction between] honest, dishonest and destructive debate, of false reasoning, tricks and checks in debate, of [the pattern of sound investigation, whose components are] doubt, purpose, examples, assumed principles, syllogisms, suppositional reasoning and decision, and [initially] of the ways of gaining knowledge and the knowables. (Cited in Ganeri 2011, 122) { §4.6 }

Analysis … is sorting out the structures of signification … and determining their social ground and import. ( The Interpretation of Cultures , New York: Basic Books, 1973, 9)

Cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses, not discovering the Continent of Meaning and mapping out its bodiless landscape. ( Ibid ., 20)

• Now, when a person is dead, their mixture returns to the substance of the earth...But once these elements have been driven to life in the organism, they become different from what they were before they entered into this organic connection. They have become livelier and increase the earth's life in returning to the earth, like two who have increased their strength in long struggle are now stronger when the struggle has ended than they were before. ( GSW , 447; IE , 82)

The analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, was, in fact, nothing else than ridding it of the form in which it had become familiar. To break an idea up into its original elements is to return to its moments, which at least do not have the form of the given idea, but rather constitute the immediate property of the self. This analysis, to be sure, only arrives at thoughts which are themselves familiar, fixed, and inert determinations. But what is thus separated and non-actual is an essential moment; for it is only because the concrete does divide itself, and make itself into something non-actual, that it is self-moving. The activity of dissolution is the power and work of the Understanding , the most astonishing and mightiest of powers, or rather the absolute power. The circle that remains self-enclosed and, like substance, holds its moments together, is an immediate relationship, one therefore which has nothing astonishing about it. But that an accident as such, detached from what circumscribes it, what is bound and is actual only in its context with others, should attain an existence of its own and a separate freedom—this is the tremendous power of the negative; it is the energy of thought, of the pure ‘I’. Death, if that is what we want to call this non-actuality, is of all things the most dreadful, and to hold fast what is dead requires the greatest strength. Lacking strength, Beauty hates the Understanding for asking of her what it cannot do. But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false, and then, having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. This power is identical with what we earlier called the Subject, which by giving determinateness an existence in its own element supersedes abstract immediacy, i.e. the immediacy which barely is, and thus is authentic substance: that being or immediacy whose mediation is not outside of it but which is this mediation itself. ( PS , ‘Preface’, §32, 18–19)

[Summary of above passage offered by J.N. Findlay] The analysis of an idea is the removal of its familiarity, its reduction to elements that are the true possessions of the thinking self. In such reduction the idea itself changes and renders itself unreal. The force which effects analysis is that of the Understanding, the most remarkable and absolute of powers, the power of the thinking self and also of death. It is above all marvellous that this thinking self should be able to isolate, and to look at apart, what can only exist as an aspect or ‘moment’ in a living whole. Thinking Spirit can, however, only grasp such a whole by first tearing it into parts, each of which it must look at separately for a while, before putting them back in the whole. The thinking self must destroy an immediate, existent unity in order to arrive at a unity which includes mediation, and is in fact mediation itself. (‘Analysis of the Text’, §32, in PS , 499) { §5.2 }

What we are trying to bring to light here by means of phenomenological analysis in regard to the intentional structure of production is not contrived and fabricated but already present in the everyday, pre-philosophical productive behaviour of the Dasein. In producing, the Dasein lives in such an understanding of being without conceiving it or grasping it as such. (1927, §12, 114–15) { §5.8 }

every method by which we investigate the causes of things is either compositive, or resolutive, or partly compositive, partly resolutive. And the resolutive is usually called analytic, while the compositive is usually called synthetic. ( Logica , ‘On Method’, §1, 289) { §4.1 }

What philosophers seek to know. Philosophers seek scientific knowledge either simply or indefinitely, that is, they seek to know as much as they can when no definite question is proposed or the cause of some definite phenomenon or at least to discover something definite, such as what the cause of light is, or of heat, or gravity, of a figure which has been proposed, and similar things; or in what subject some proposed accident inheres; or which of many accidents is above all conducive to the production of some proposed effect; or in what way particular proposed causes ought to be conjoined in order to produce a definite effect. Because of the variety of the things sought for, sometimes the analytic method, sometimes the synthetic method, and sometimes both ought to be applied.

The first part, by which principles are found, is purely analytic. Seeing that the causes of all singulars are composed from the causes of universals or simples, it is necessary for those who are looking simply for scientific knowledge, which consists of the knowledge of the causes of all things insofar as this can be achieved, to know the causes of universals or those accidents which are common to all bodies, that is, to every material thing, before they know the causes of singular things, that is, of the accidents by which one thing is distinguished from another. Again, before the causes of those things can be known, it is necessary to know which things are universals. But since universals are contained in the nature of singular things, they must be unearthed by reason, that is, by resolution. For example, let any conception or idea of a singular thing be proposed, say a square. The square is resolved into: plane, bounded by a certain number of lines equal to one another, and right angles . Therefore we have these universals or components of every material thing: line, plane (in which a surface is contained), being bounded, angle, rectitude , and equality . If anyone finds the causes or origin of these, he will put them together as the cause of the square. Again, if he proposes to himself the conception of gold, the ideas of being solid, visible, and heavy (that is, of tending to the center of the earth or of motion downwards) and many others more universal than gold itself, which can be resolved further until one arrives at the most universal, will come from this by resolution. And by this same method of resolving things into other things one will know what those things are, of which, when their causes are known what those things are, of which, when their causes are known and composed one by one, the causes of all singular things are known. We thus conclude that the method of investigating the universal notions of things is purely analytic. ( Ibid ., §§ 3–4, 291–5) { §4.1 }

The method of scientific knowledge, civil as well as natural, [starting] from sense-experience and [going] to principles is analytic; while [starting] from principles is synthetic. ( Ibid ., §7, 301) { §4.1 }

it is obvious that in the investigation of causes there is a need partly for the analytic method, partly for the synthetic method. The analytic method is needed for understanding the circumstances of the effect one by one; the synthetic method for putting together those things which, single in themselves, act as one. ( Ibid ., §10, 311) { §4.1 }

that art of geometers which they call logistic is ... the method according to which by supposing that the thing asked about is true they come upon in reasoning either things known [to be true], from which they can prove the truth of the thing sought, or [they come upon] impossibilities, from which it can be understood that what was supposed [to be true] was false. ( Ibid ., §19, 329) { §4.1 }

[Logical analysis] stands somewhere between translating and paraphrasing. ( Logic , Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977, 86)

The terms “analysis” and “synthesis” bring to mind, on the one hand, certain methodological practices in the works of Plato, Descartes, Newton, Kant, Hegel, and others and, on the other hand, techniques in fields as disparate as chemistry and logic, mathematics and psychology. The width of this spectrum of associations alerts us to the realization that at the base of these two related terms there lies a specific methodological thema-antithema ... pair. Indeed, it is one of the most pervasive and fundamental ones, in science and outside. This chapter attempts to uncover and identify this thematic content, to clarify the meanings and uses of the terms “analysis” and “synthesis”, and especially to distinguish among four general meanings: (1) Analysis and Synthesis, and particularly synthesis, used in the grand, cultural sense, (2) Analysis and Synthesis used in the reconstitutional sense (e.g., where an analysis, followed by a synthesis, re-establishes the original condition), (3) Analysis and Synthesis used in the transformational sense (e.g., where the application of Analysis and Synthesis advances one to a qualitatively new level), and (4) Analysis and Synthesis used in the judgmental sense (as in the Kantian categories and their modern critiques). (1998, 111) { §5.5 }

The point of view of function is the central one for phenomenology; the investigations radiating from it comprise almost the whole phenomenological sphere, and in the end all phenomenological analyses somehow enter into its service as component parts or preliminary stages. In place of analysis and comparison, description and classification restricted to particular experiences [ Erlebnisse ], the particulars are considered from the “teleological” point of view of their function, to make possible “synthetic unity”. ( IPP , I, §86; Kersten’s tr. modified) { §5.8 }

Explication is penetration of the internal horizon of the object by the direction of perceptual interest. In the case of the unobstructed realization of this interest, the protentional expectations fulfill themselves in the same way; the object reveals itself in its properties as that which it was anticipated to be, except that what was anticipated now attains original givenness. A more precise determination results, eventually perhaps partial corrections, or—in the case of obstruction—disappointment of the expectations, and partial modalization. ( EJ , §22, 105) { §5.8 }

The process of explication in its originality is that in which an object given at first hand is brought to explicit intuition. The analysis of its structure must bring to light how a twofold constitution of sense [ Sinngebung ] is realized in it: “object as substrate” and “determination α ...”; it must show how this constitution of sense is realized in the form of a process which goes forward in separate steps, through which, however, extends continuously a unity of coincidence —a unity of coincidence of a special kind, belonging exclusively to these sense-forms. ( EJ , §24a, 114) { §5.8 }

• What we carry out by means of these  topoi , inasmuch as they are instruments, proceeds in the following way: we place before our consideration all the  topoi  when we examine a given  quaesitum ; then we analyse this  quaesitum  into its predicate and its subject and we review inductively each of the  topoi  intended for establishing or refuting it. If we find this  quaesitum  falling under one of the  topoi , we have there and then found the syllogism which allows us to establish or refute it. Indeed it is from this action that this part of logic is called “analysis”. ( SL , §6) { 3.3 }
• Analysis is the inquiry [directed] towards finding the premisses from which the  quaesitum  follows, on condition that they include a middle term which shows that the analyst, when he reaches the goal of his analysis, has found the premisses by means of the analysis and accomplished what Aristotle in his  Analytics  called the acquisition of the premisses. When he has found the premisses in his analysis their terms are necessarily, for [analyst], existent, known and identifiable. In the analysis one must therefore name the terms, identify and describe them. { §3.3 }

§1. MATHEMATICS ARRIVES AT ALL ITS DEFINITIONS SYNTHETICALLY, WHEREAS PHILOSOPHY ARRIVES AT ITS DEFINITIONS ANALYTICALLY

There are two ways in which one can arrive at a general concept: either by the arbitrary combination of concepts, or by separating out that cognition which has been rendered distinct by means of analysis. Mathematics only ever draws up its definitions in the first way. For example, think arbitrarily of four straight lines bounding a plane surface so that the opposite sides are not parallel to each other. Let this figure be called a trapezium . The concept which I am defining is not given prior to the definition itself; on the contrary, it only comes into existence as a result of that definition. Whatever the concept of a cone may ordinarily signify, in mathematics, the concept is the product of the arbitrary representation of a right-angled triangle which is rotated on one of its sides. In this and in all other cases the definition obviously comes into being as a result of synthesis .

The situation is entirely different in the case of philosophical definitions. In philosophy, the concept of a thing is always given, albeit confusedly or in an insufficiently determinate fashion. The concept has to be analysed; the characteristic marks which have been separated out and the concept which has been given have to be compared with each other in all kinds of contexts; and this abstract thought must be rendered complete and determinate. For example, everyone has a concept of time. But suppose that that concept has to be defined. The idea of time has to be examined in all kinds of relation if its characteristic marks which have been abstracted have to be combined together to see whether they yield an adequate concept; they have to be collated with each other to see whether one characteristic mark does not partly include another within itself. If, in this case, I had tried to arrive at a definition of time synthetically, it would have had to have been a happy coincidence indeed if the concept, thus reached synthetically, had been exactly the same as that which completely expresses the idea of time which is given to us. ( IDP , 2: 276–7/ TP , 248–9) { §4.5 }

The true method of metaphysics is basically the same as that introduced by Newton into natural science and which has been of such benefit to it. Newton’s method maintains that one ought, on the basis of certain experience and, if need be, with the help of geometry, to seek out the rules in accordance with which certain phenomena of nature occur. ( IDP , 2: 286/ TP , 259) { §4.5 }

What I am chiefly concerned to establish is this: in metaphysics one must proceed analytically throughout, for the business of metaphysics is actually the analysis of confused cognitions. If this procedure is compared with the procedure which is adopted by philosophers and which is currently in vogue in all schools of philosophy, one will be struck by how mistaken the practice of philosophers is. With them, the most abstracted concepts, at which the understanding naturally arrives last of all, constitute their starting point, and the reason is that the method of the mathematicians, which they wish to imitate throughout, is firmly fixed in their minds. This is why there is a strange difference to be found between metaphysics and all other sciences. In geometry and in the other branches of mathematics, one starts with what is easier and then one slowly advances to the more difficult operations. In metaphysics, one starts with what is the most difficult: one starts with possibility, with existence in general, with necessity and contingency, and so on – all of them concepts which demand great abstraction and close attention. And the reason for this is to be sought chiefly in the fact that the signs for these concepts undergo numerous and imperceptible modifications in use; and the differences between them must not be overlooked. One is told that one ought to proceed synthetically throughout. Definitions are thus set up right at the beginning, and conclusions are confidently drawn from them. Those who practise philosophy in this vein congratulate each other for having learnt the secret of thorough thought from the geometers. What they do not notice at all is the fact that geometers acquire their concepts by means of synthesis , whereas philosophers can only acquire their concepts by means of analysis – and that completely changes the method of thought. ...

Metaphysics has a long way to go yet before it can proceed synthetically. It will only be when analysis has helped us towards concepts which are understood distinctly and in detail that it will be possible for synthesis to subsume compound cognitions under the simplest cognition, as happens in mathematics. ( IDP , 2: 289–90/ TP , 262–3) { §4.5 }

Such a system of pure (speculative) reason I hope myself to deliver under the title Metaphysics of Nature , which will be not half so extensive but will be incomparably richer in content than this critique, which had first to display the sources and conditions of its possibility, and needed to clear and level a ground that was completely overgrown. Here I expect from my reader the patience and impartiality of a judge , but there I will expect the cooperative spirit and assistance of a fellow worker ; for however completely the principles of the system may be expounded in the critique, the comprehensiveness of the system itself requires also that no derivative concepts should be lacking, which, however, cannot be estimated a priori in one leap, but must be gradually sought out; likewise, just as in the former the whole synthesis of concepts has been exhausted, so in the latter it would be additionally demanded that the same thing should take place in respect of their analysis , which would be easy and more entertainment than labor. ( CPR , Axxi) { §4.5 }

I understand by an analytic of concepts not their analysis, or the usual procedure of philosophical investigations, that of analyzing [ zergliedern ] the content of concepts that present themselves and bringing them to distinctness, but rather the much less frequently attempted analysis [ Zergliederung ] of the faculty of understanding itself, in order to research the possibility of a priori concepts by seeking them only in the understanding as their birthplace and analyzing its pure use in general; for this is the proper business of a transcendental philosophy; the rest is the logical treatment of concepts in philosophy in general. We will therefore pursue the pure concepts into their first seeds and predispositions in the human understanding, where they lie ready, until with the opportunity of experience they are finally developed and exhibited in their clarity by the very same understanding, liberated from the empirical conditions attaching to them. ( CPR , A65–6/B90–1) { §4.5 }

[in offering a refutation of Mendelssohn’s proof of the persistence of the soul] If we take the above propositions in a synthetic connection, as valid for all thinking beings, as they must be taken in rational psychology as a system, and if from the category of relation, starting with the proposition “All thinking beings are, as such, substances” we go backward through the series of propositions until the circle closes, then we finally come up against the existence of thinking beings, which in this system are conscious of themselves not only as independent of external things but also as being able to determine themselves from themselves (in regard to the persistence belonging necessarily to the character of a substance). But from this it follows that idealism , at least problematic idealism, is unavoidable in that same rationalistic system, and if the existence of external things is not at all required for the determination of one’s own existence in time, then such things are only assumed, entirely gratuitously, without a proof of them being able to be given.

If, on the contrary, we follow the analytic procedure, grounded on the “I think” given as a proposition that already includes existence in itself, and hence grounded on modality, and then we take it apart so as to cognize its content, whether and how this I determines its existence in space or time merely through it, then the propositions of the rational doctrine of the soul begin not from the concept of a thinking being in general but from an actuality; and from the way this is thought, after everything empirical has been detached from it, it is concluded what pertains to a thinking being in general ... ( CPR , B416–19) { §4.5 }

Give a philosopher the concept of a triangle, and let him try to find out in his way how the sum of its angles might be related to a right angle. He has nothing but the concept of a figure enclosed by three straight lines, and in it the concept of equally many angles. Now he may reflect on this concept as long as he wants, yet he will never produce anything new. He can analyze [ zergliedern ] and make distinct the concept of a straight line, or of an angle, or of the number three, but he will not come upon any other properties that do not already lie in these concepts. But now let the geometer take up this question. He begins at once to construct a triangle. Since he knows that two right angles together are exactly equal to all of the adjacent angles that can be drawn at one point on a straight line, he extends one side of his triangle, and obtains two adjacent angles that together are equal to two right ones. Now he divides the external one of these angles by drawing a line parallel to the opposite side of the triangle, and sees that here there arises an external adjacent angle which is equal to an internal one, etc. In such a way, through a chain of inferences that is always guided by intuition, he arrives at a fully illuminating and at the same time general solution of the question. ( CPR , A716–7/B744–5) { §4.5 }

But although a mere plan that might precede the  Critique of Pure Reason  would be unintelligible, undependable, and useless, it is by contrast all the more useful if it comes after. For one will thereby be put in the position to survey the whole, to test one by one the main points at issue in the science, and to arrange many things in the exposition better than could be done in the first execution of the work. Here then is such a  plan  subsequent to the completed work, which now can be laid out according to the  analytic method , whereas the  work  itself absolutely had to be composed according to the  synthetic method , so that the science might present all of its articulations, as the structural organization of a quite peculiar capacity of cognition, in their natural connection. ( PFM,  4: 263; translation modified)

In the Critique of Pure Reason I worked on this question [Is metaphysics possible at all?] synthetically , namely by inquiring within pure reason itself, and seeking to determine within this source both the elements and the laws of its pure use, according to principles. This work is difficult and requires a resolute reader to think himself little by little into a system that takes no foundation as given except reason itself, and that therefore tries to develop cognition out of its original seeds without relying on any fact whatever. Prolegomena should by contrast be preparatory exercises; they ought more to indicate what needs to be done in order to bring a science into existence if possible, than to present the science itself. They must therefore rely on something already known to be dependable, from which we can go forward with confidence and ascend to the sources, which are not yet known, and whose discovery not only will explain what is known already, but will also exhibit an area with many cognitions that all arise from these same sources. The methodological procedure of prolegomena, and especially of those that are to prepare for a future metaphysics, will therefore be analytic . ( PFM , 4: 274–5/ 25–6) { §4.5 }

[interpreting the method of analysis in ancient Greek geometry] Rule of analysis and synthesis: Draw conclusions from your conjecture, one after the other, assuming that it is true. If you reach a false conclusion, then your conjecture was false. If you reach an indubitably true conclusion, your conjecture may have been true. In this case reverse the process, work backwards, and try to deduce your original conjecture via the inverse route from the indubitable truth to the dubitable conjecture. If you succeed, you have proved your conjecture. (1978a, 72–3) { §2.2 }

• If a proposition is to be proven, it occurs according to either the analytic or synthetic method, which are already defined in almost all logics. According to the analytic method, one starts with a proposition. One proves it through a syllogism. If the premises are not axioms, they must be proved through new conclusions until one finally arrives at nothing but axioms, definitions, and experiences. If this happens, one considers the proposition proved. According to the synthetic method, by contrast, one starts with definitions, principles, and experiences and derives the proof of the proposition in question from them. The inferences are the same in both methods, and the difference lies exclusively in the order, which is completely reversed. (1761, §28)

Synthesis is when, beginning from principles and running through truths in order, we discover certain progressions and form tables, as it were, or sometimes even general formulae, in which the answers to what arises later can be discovered. Analysis, however, goes back to principles solely for the sake of a given problem, just as if nothing had been discovered previously, by ourselves or by others. It is better to produce a synthesis, since that work is of permanent value, whereas when we begin an analysis on account of particular problems we often do what has been done before. However, to use a synthesis which has been established by others, and theorems which have already been discovered, is less of an art than to do everything by oneself by carrying out an analysis; especially as what has been discovered by others, or even by ourselves, does not always occur to us or come to hand. There are two kinds of analysis: one is the common type proceeding by leaps, which is used in algebra, and the other is a special kind which I call ‘reductive’. This is much more elegant, but is less well-known. In practice, analysis is more necessary, so that we may solve the problems which are presented to us; but the man who can indulge in theorising will be content to practice analysis just far enough to master the art. For the rest, he will rather practise synthesis, and will apply himself readily only to those questions to which order itself leads him. For in this way he will always progress pleasantly and easily, and will never feel any difficulties, nor be disappointed of success, and in a short time he will achieve much more than he would ever have hoped for at the outset. ( USA , 16–17) { §4.4 }

Primary truths are those which either state a term of itself, or deny an opposite of its opposite. For example, ‘A is A’, or ‘A is not not-A’ ...

All other truths are reduced to primary truths by the aid of definitions—i.e. by the analysis of notions; and this constitutes a priori proof , independent of experience. ...

The predicate or consequent, therefore, is always in the subject or antecedent, and this constitutes the nature of truth in general, or, the connexion between the terms of a proposition, as Aristotle also has observed. In identities this connexion and inclusion of the predicate in the subject is express, whereas in all other truths it is implicit and must be shown through the analysis of notions, in which a priori demonstration consists. ( PT , 87–8) { §4.4 }

There are two kinds of truths , those of reason and those of fact . Truths of reason are necessary and their opposite is impossible; truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, its reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into simpler ideas and truths, until we come to those that are primitive. ( M , §33; tr. R. Latta) { §4.4 }

Our whole philosophy is rectification of colloquial linguistic usage. ( Aphorisms , 115) { §4.5 }

Writing is an excellent means of awakening in every man the system slumbering within him; and everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly to recognize before. ( Ibid ., 119) { §4.5 }

Whichever way you look at it, philosophy is always analytical chemistry. The peasant employs all the propositions of the most abstract philosophy, only he employs them enveloped, concealed, compounded, latent, as the chemist and physicist says; the philosopher gives us the propositions pure. ( Ibid ., 162) { §4.5 }

There are therefore three ways whereby we get the complex Ideas of mixed Modes . 1. By Experience and Observation of things themselves. Thus by seeing two Men wrestle, or fence, we get the Idea of wrestling or fencing. 2. By Invention , or voluntary putting together of several simple Ideas in our own Minds: So he that first invented Printing, or Etching, had an Idea of it in his Mind, before it ever existed. 3. Which is the most usual way, by explaining the names of Actions we never saw, or Notions we cannot see; and by enumerating, and thereby, as it were, setting before our Imaginations all those Ideas which go to the making them up, and are the constituent parts of them. For having by Sensation and Reflection stored our Minds with simple Ideas , and by use got the Names, that stand for them, we can by those Names represent to another any complex Idea , we would have him conceive; so that it has in it no simple Idea , but what he knows, and has, with us, the same name for. For all our complex Ideas are ultimately resolvable into simple Ideas , of which they are compounded, and originally made up, though perhaps their immediate Ingredients, as I may so say, are also complex Ideas . Thus the mixed Mode , which the word Lye stands for, is made of these simple Ideas : 1. Articulate Sounds. 2. Certain Ideas in the Mind of the Speaker. 3. Those words the signs of those Ideas . 4. Those signs put together by affirmation or negation, otherwise than the Ideas they stand for, are in the mind of the Speaker. I think I need not go any farther in the Analysis of that complex Idea , we call a Lye : What I have said is enough to shew, that it is made up of simple Ideas : And it could not be an offensive tediousness to my Reader, to trouble him with a more minute enumeration of every particular simple Idea , that goes to this complex one; which, from what has been said, he cannot but be able to make out to himself. The same may be done in all our complex Ideas whatsoever; which however compounded, and decompounded, may at last be resolved into simple Ideas , which are all the Materials of Knowledge or Thought we have or can have. ( Essay , II, xxii, 9) { §4.3 }

Analysis has a way of unravelling the self: the longer you pull on the thread, the more flaws you find. ( Therapy , London, 31)

It is commonplace in logic to talk about the analysis of propositions. In the context of logic in Sanskrit, we have to talk about the analysis of Sanskrit propositions. A Sanskrit proposition is what is expressed in a Sanskrit sentence. It will appear that the analysis proposed by the early Sanskrit writers would not be entirely unfamiliar to one accustomed to the usual subject-predicate analysis of modern or traditional Western logic, nor is it unrelated to it. However, the logical as well as grammatical analysis of Sanskrit sentences presents some significant contrasts with the usual subject-predicate analysis. Unless these points of contrast are noted, it will be difficult to appreciate fully some of the concerns of the Sanskrit logicians.

A sentence in Sanskrit is regarded as the expression of a “thought” or what is called a cognitive state ( jñāna ), or, to be precise, a qualificative cognitive state ( viśiṣṭa-jñāna ). A simple qualificative cognitive state is one where the cognizer cognizes something (or some place or some locus, as we will have to call it) as qualified by a property or a qualifier. It is claimed by most Sanskrit writers that to say that something or some place is qualified by a qualifier is equivalent to saying that it is a locus of some property or “locatable”. (1998, 201–2)

In a specific sense, the philosophy of language was part of Indian philosophical activity from the beginning of its history. One reason was to recognize the Scriptures’( Vedas’ ) authority in certain areas of our belief system. The Indians do not always talk about ‘revelation’ in the way it is understood in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. The Scriptures were regarded by tradition as embodying certain truths derived from the supposedly ‘revealed’ insights of the sages called ‘seers’ (= rṣi ). Veda thus means a body of knowledge, in fact, a source or ‘means’ of knowledge. The Scriptures are in fact a body of statements. This linguistic nature of the Scriptures (in the case of the Buddhists, the dialogues of the Buddha fulfil the same purpose, and the same is true of Jainism and Mahāvīra) reveals gradually the fact that language or ‘verbal testimony’ is an important source of knowledge, like perception and inference. This has led to the general inquiry about how a bit of language, a word or a sentence, imparts knowledge to the hearer. Therefore, what we call the philosophy of language in India has always formed a part of the classical philosophers’ general epistemological inquiry, part of the pramāṇa-śāstra , the theory of ‘evidence’ for belief or knowledge. The question was: how does a linguistic utterance, through the communication of its meaning, impart knowledge to the hearer? For it is observed that not simply the Scriptural statements but also any ordinary statement can and does impart knowledge. Strictly speaking, most of our knowledge today is derived from reading and listening, hence we can say that it is linguistically communicated.

In particular, however, analysis of sentences and words into significant components, the relationship between word and meaning, classification of words according to semantic contribution, division of words with reference to the division of ontological categories, logical and psychological factors in knowing the meaning of a sentence, philosophical significance of grammatical analysis, and principles of linguistics—all these have been repeatedly discussed by the philosophers in India over the centuries. This discussion constitutes the vast amount of writing which we can very profitably explore to talk about the classical Indian philosophy of language. (2001, 4–5)

The certainty of mathematics is based upon the general axiom that nothing can be and not be at the same time. In this science each proposition such as, for example, “A is B”, is proven in one of two ways. Either one unpacks the concepts of A and shows “A is B”, or one unpacks the concepts of B and infers from this that not-B must also be not-A. Both types of proof are thus based upon the principle of contradiction, and since the object of mathematics in general is magnitude and that of geometry in particular extension , one can say that in mathematics in general our concepts of magnitude are unpacked and analyzed, while in geometry in particular our concepts of extension are unpacked and analyzed. In fact, since geometry lays nothing else as its basis than the abstract concept of extension and derives all its conclusions from this single source – deriving them, to be sure, in such a way that one recognizes distinctly that everything maintained in it is necessarily connected by the principle of contradiction with the abstracted concept of extension, there is no doubt that all geometric truths that geometry teaches us to unpack or untangle from the concept of extension must be encountered all tangled up in it. For what else can the profoundest inferences do but analyze a concept and make distinct what was obscure? Such inferences cannot bring in what is not to be found in the concept, and it is easy to see that it is also not possible, by means of the principle of contradiction, to derive from the concept what is not to be found in it. In the concept of extension, for example, there lies the inner possibility that a space is limited by three straight lines in such a way that two of them include a right angle. For it follows from the essence of extension that it is capable of many sorts of limitations and that the assumed sort of limitation of one of its level planes contains no contradiction. If one subsequently shows that the concept of this assumed limitation or of a right-angled triangle necessarily entails that the square of the hypotenuse is such-and-such, then it must have also been possible to find this truth originally and implicitly in the initial concept of extension. Otherwise it could never have been derived from it by means of the principle of contradiction. The idea of extension is inseparable from the idea of the possibility of such a limitation, as was previously assumed, and the limitation is in turn necessarily connected to the concept of the equality of the aforesaid square. Thus, this truth also lay tangled up, as one might say, in the original concept of extension, but it escaped our attention and could not be distinctly known and distinguished until, through analysis, we unpacked all the parts of this concept and separated them from one another. The analysis of concepts is for the understanding nothing more than what the magnifying glass is for sight. It does not produce anything that was not to be found in the object. But it spreads out the parts of the object and makes it possible for our senses to distinguish much that they would otherwise not have noticed. The analysis of concepts does nothing different from this; it makes the parts and members of these concepts, which were previously obscure and unnoticed, distinct and recognizable, but it does not introduce anything into the concepts that was not already to be found in them. (1763, §1/ PW , 257–8) { §4.5 }

It seems necessary, then, to regard the world as formed of concepts. These are the only objects of knowledge. They cannot be regarded fundamentally as abstractions either from things or from ideas; since both alike can, if anything is to be true of them, be composed of nothing but concepts. A thing becomes intelligible first when it is analysed into its constituent concepts. ( NJ , 8) { §6.4 }

It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer. I do not know how far this source of error would be done away, if philosophers would try to discover what question they were asking, before they set about to answer it; for the work of analysis and distinction is often very difficult: we may often fail to make the necessary discovery, even though we make a definite attempt to do so. But I am inclined to think that in many cases a resolute attempt would be sufficient to ensure success; so that, if only this attempt were made, many of the most glaring difficulties and disagreements in philosophy would disappear. ( PE , vii) { §6.4 }

My point is that ‘good’ is a simple notion, just as ‘yellow’ is a simple notion; that, just as you cannot, by any manner of means, explain to any one who does not already know it, what yellow is, so you cannot explain what good is. Definitions of the kind that I was asking for, definitions which describe the real nature of the object or notion denoted by a word, and which do not merely tell us what the word is used to mean, are only possible when the object or notion in question is something complex. You can give a definition of a horse, because a horse has many different properties and qualities, all of which you can enumerate. But when you have enumerated them all, when you have reduced a horse to his simplest terms, then you no longer define those terms. They are simply something which you think of or perceive, and to any one who cannot think of or perceive them, you can never, by any definition, make their nature known. ( PE , 7) { §6.4 }

As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy. And although the arguing from Experiments and Observations by Induction be no Demonstration of general Conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the Nature of Things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the Induction is more general. And if no Exception occur from Phænomena, the Conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any Exception shall occur from Experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced with such Exceptions as occur. By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: and the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover’d, and establish’d as Principles, and by them explaining the Phænomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations. ( Opticks , Book Three, Part I, 404–5) { §4.1 }

All concepts in which an entire process is semiotically telescoped elude definition. ( On the Genealogy of Morals , 1887, tr. Walter Kaufmann, New York: Random House, 1968, 80)

the most valuable insights are methods . ( The Antichrist , 1895, §13)

The so-called Treasury of Analysis [ analuomenos ] .. is, in short, a special body of doctrines furnished for the use of those who, after going through the usual elements, wish to obtain the power of solving theoretical problems, which are set to them, and for this purpose only is it useful. It is the work of three men, Euclid the author of the Elements , Apollonius of Perga, and Aristaeus the Elder, and proceeds by the method of analysis and synthesis.

Now analysis is the way from what is sought—as if it were admitted—through its concomitants [ akolouthôn ] in order to something admitted in synthesis. For in analysis we suppose that which is sought to be already done, and we inquire from what it results, and again what is the antecedent [ proêgoumenon ] of the latter, until we on our backward way light upon something already known and being first in order. And we call such a method analysis, as being a solution backwards [ anapalin lysin ].

In synthesis, on the other hand, we suppose that which was reached last in analysis to be already done, and arranging in their natural order as consequents [ epomena ] the former antecedents [ proêgoumena ] and linking them one with another, we in the end arrive at the construction of the thing sought. And this we call synthesis.

Now analysis is of two kinds. One seeks the truth, being called theoretical. The other serves to carry out what was desired to do, and this is called problematical. In the theoretical kind we suppose the thing sought as being and as being true, and then we pass through its concomitants [ akolouthôn ] in order, as though they were true and existent by hypothesis, to something admitted; then, if that which is admitted be true, the thing sought is true, too, and the proof will be the reverse of analysis. But if we come upon something false to admit, the thing sought will be false, too. In the problematic kind we suppose the desired thing to be known, and then we pass through its concomitants [ akolouthôn ] in order, as though they were true, up to something admitted. If the thing admitted is possible or can be done, that is, if it is what the mathematicians call given, the desired thing will also be possible. The proof will again be the reverse of analysis. But if we come upon something impossible to admit, the problem will also be impossible. ( PAC , tr. in Hintikka and Remes 1974, 8–10) { §2.2 }

For we should remember that if a person goes on analyzing names into words, and inquiring also into the elements out of which the words are formed, and keeps on always repeating this process, he who has to answer him must at last give up the inquiry in despair … But if we take a word which is incapable of further resolution, then we shall be right in saying that we at last reached a primary element, which need not be resolved any further. (‘Cratylus’, Benjamin Jowett (trans.), in Hamilton and Cairns (ed.), Collected Dialogues , New York: Pantheon Books, 421e)

Then, said I, is not dialectic the only process of inquiry that advances in this manner, doing away with hypotheses, up to the first principle itself in order to find confirmation there? And it is literally true that when the eye of the soul is sunk in the barbaric slough of the Orphic Myth, dialectic gently draws it forth and leads it up, employing as helpers and cooperators in this conversation the studies and sciences which we enumerated, which we called sciences often from habit, though they really need some other designation, connoting more clearness than opinion and more obscurity than science. ‘Understanding’ I believe was the term we employed. But, I presume we shall not dispute about the name when things of such moment lie before us for consideration. (‘Republic VII’, Paul Shorey (trans.), Ibid. , 533d)

Understand then, said I, that by the other section of the intelligible I mean that which the reason lays hold of by the power of dialectic, treating its assumptions not as absolute beginnings but literally as hypotheses, underpinnings, footings and springboards so to speak, to enable it to rise to that which requires no assumption and is the starting point of all, and after attaining to that again taking hold of the first dependencies from it, so to proceed downward to the conclusion, making no use whatever of any object of sense but only of pure ideas moving on through ideas to ideas and ending with ideas. (‘Republic VI’, Paul Shorey (trans.), Ibid ., 511b)

In mathematics logic is called analysis , and analysis means division , dissection . It can have, therefore, no tool other than the scalpel and the microscope. (‘Intuition and Logic in Mathematics’, 1900, in William Ewald, ed., From Kant to Hilbert , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, 1018)

Nonmathematical illustration [of the method of analysis described by Pappus] . A primitive man wishes to cross a creek; but he cannot do so in the usual way because the water has risen overnight. Thus, the crossing becomes the object of a problem; ‘crossing the creek’ is the x of this primitive problem. The man may recall that he has crossed some other creek by walking along a fallen tree. He looks around for a suitable fallen tree which becomes his new unknown, his y . He cannot find any suitable tree but there are plenty of trees standing along he creek; he wishes that one of them would fall. Could he make a tree fall across the creek? There is a great idea and there is a new unknown; by what means could he tilt the tree over the creek?

This train of ideas ought to be called analysis if we accept the terminology of Pappus. If the primitive man succeeds in finishing his analysis he may become the inventor of the bridge and of the axe. What will be the synthesis? Translation of ideas into actions. The finishing act of the synthesis is walking along a tree across the creek.

The same objects fill the analysis and the synthesis; they exercise the mind of the man in the analysis and his muscles in the synthesis; the analysis consists in thoughts, the synthesis in acts. There is another difference; the order is reversed. Walking across the creek is the first desire from which the analysis starts and it is the last act with which the synthesis ends. (1957, 145) { §2.2 }

beauty and order are common to all branches of mathematics, as are the method of proceeding from things better known to things we seek to know and the reverse path from the latter to the former, the methods called analysis and synthesis. ( CEE , 8/6–7) { §2.2 }

as Nous is set over understanding and dispenses principles to it from above, perfecting it out of its own riches, so in the same way dialectic, the purest part of philosophy, hovers attentively over mathematics, encompasses its whole development, and of itself contributes to the special sciences their various perfecting, critical, and intellective powers—the procedures, I mean, of analysis, division, definition, and demonstration. Being thus endowed and led towards perfection, mathematics reaches some of its results by analysis, others by synthesis, expounds some matters by division, others by definition, and some of its discoveries binds fast by demonstration, adapting these methods to its subjects and employing each of them for gaining insight into mediating ideas. Thus its analyses are under the control of dialectic, and its definitions, divisions, and demonstrations are of the same family and unfold in conformity with the way of mathematical understanding. It is reasonable, then, to say that dialectic is the capstone of the mathematical sciences. It brings to perfection all the intellectual insight they contain, making what is exact in them more irrefutable, confirming the stability of what they have established and referring what is pure and incorporeal in them to the simplicity and immateriality of Nous, making precise their primary starting-points through definitions and explicating the distinctions of genera and species within their subject-matters, teaching the use of synthesis to bring out the consequences that follow from principles and of analysis to lead up to the first principles and starting-points. ( CEE , 42–3/35–6) { §2.2 }

Magnitudes, figures and their boundaries, and the ratios that are found in them, as well as their properties, their various positions and motions—these are what geometry studies, proceeding from the partless point down to solid bodies, whose many species and differences it explores, then following the reverse path from the more complex objects to the simpler ones and their principles. It makes use of synthesis and analysis, always starting from hypotheses and first principles that it obtains from the science above it and employing all the procedures of dialectic—definition and division for establishing first principles and articulating species and genera, and demonstrations and analyses in dealing with the consequences that follow from first principles, in order to show the more complex matters both as proceeding from the simpler and also conversely as leading back to them. ( CEE , 57/46) { §2.2 }

[Euclid’s Elements ] contains all the dialectical methods: the method of division for finding kinds, definitions for making statements of essential properties, demonstrations for proceeding from premises to conclusions, and analysis for passing in the reverse direction from conclusions to principles. ( CEE , 69/57) { §2.2 }

there are certain methods that have been handed down, the best being the method of analysis, which traces the desired result back to an acknowledged principle. Plato, it is said, taught this method to Leodamas, who also is reported to have made many discoveries in geometry by means of it. A second is the method of diaeresis , which divides into its natural parts the genus proposed for examination and which affords a starting-point for demonstration by eliminating the parts irrelevant for the establishment of what is proposed. This method also Plato praised as an aid in all the sciences. A third is the reduction to impossibility, which does not directly show the thing itself that is wanted but by refuting its contradictory indirectly establishes its truth. ( CEE , 211–12/165–6) { §2.2 }

for problems one common procedure, the method of analysis, has been discovered, and by following it we can reach a solution; for thus it is that even the most obscure problems are pursued. ( CEE , 242/189) { §2.2 }

In general we must understand that all mathematical arguments proceed either from or to the starting-points, as Porphyry somewhere says. Those that proceed from the starting-points are themselves of two kinds, as it happens, for they proceed either from common notions, that is, from self-evident clarity alone, or from things previously demonstrated. Those that proceed to the starting-points are either affirmative of them or destructive. But those that affirm first principles are called “analyses”, and their reverse procedures “syntheses” (for it is possible from those principles to proceed in orderly fashion to the thing sought, and this is called “synthesis”); when they are destructive, they are called “reductions to impossibility”, for it is the function of this procedure to show that something generally accepted and self-evident is overthrown. There is a kind of syllogism in it, though not the same as in analysis ... ( CEE , 255/198–9) { §2.2 }

A maxim of shallow analysis prevails: expose no more logical structure than seems useful for the deduction or other inquiry at hand. In the immortal words of Adolf Meyer, where it doesn’t itch don't scratch.

On occasion the useful degree of analysis may, conversely, be such as to cut into a simple word of ordinary language, requiring its paraphrase into a composite term in which other terms are compounded with the help of canonical notation. When this happens, the line of analysis adopted will itself commonly depend on what is sought in the inquiry at hand; again there need be no question of the uniquely right analysis, nor of synonymy. (1960, §33, 160–1) { §6.9 }

This construction [of the ordered pair as a class, such as Wiener’s identification of the ordered pair x , y > with the class {{ x }, { y , Λ}}] is paradigmatic of what we are most typically up to when in a philosophical spirit we offer an “analysis” or “explication” of some hitherto inadequately formulated “idea” or expression. We do not claim synonymy. We do not claim to make clear and explicit what the users of the unclear expression had unconsciously in mind all along. We do not expose hidden meanings, as the words ‘analysis’ or ‘explication’ would suggest; we supply lacks. We fix on the particular functions of the unclear expression that make it worth troubling about, and then devise a substitute, clear and couched in terms to our liking, that fills those functions. Beyond those conditions of partial agreement, dictated by our interests and purposes, any traits of the explicans come under the head of “don’t-cares” … Under this head we are free to allow the explicans all manner of novel connotations never associated with the explicandum. …

Philosophical analysis, explication, has not always been seen in this way. Only the reading of a synonymy claim into analysis could engender the so-called paradox of analysis, which runs thus: how can a correct analysis be informative, since to understand it we must already know the meanings of its terms, and hence already know that the terms which it equates are synonymous? The notion that analysis must consist somehow in the uncovering of hidden meanings underlies also the recent tendency of some of the Oxford philosophers to take as their business an examination of the subtle irregularities of ordinary language. And there is no mistaking the obliviousness of various writers to the point about the don’t-cares. …

... explication is elimination . We have, to begin with, an expression or form of expression that is somehow troublesome. It behaves partly like a term but not enough so, or it is vague in ways that bother us, or it puts kinks in a theory or encourages one or another confusion. But also it serves certain purposes that are not to be abandoned. Then we find a way of accomplishing those same purposes through other channels, using other and less troublesome forms of expression. The old perplexities are resolved.

According to an influential doctrine of Wittgenstein’s, the task of philosophy is not to solve problems but to dissolve them by showing that there were really none there. This doctrine has its limitations, but it aptly fits explication. For when explication banishes a problem it does so by showing it to be in an important sense unreal; viz., in the sense of proceeding only from needless usages. (1960, §53, 258–60) { §6.9 }

This brings us to the second of the five turning points, the shift from terms to sentences. The medievals had the notion of syncategorematic words, but it was a contemporary of John Horne Tooke who developed it into an explicit theory of contextual definition; namely, Jeremy Bentham. He applied contextual definition not just to grammatical particles and the like, but even to some genuine terms, categorematic ones. If he found some term convenient but ontologically embarrassing, contextual definition enabled him in some cases to continue to enjoy the services of the term while disclaiming its denotation. He could declare the term syncategorematic, despite grammatical appearances, and then could justify his continued use of it if he could show systematically how to paraphrase as wholes all sentences in which he chose to imbed it. Such was his theory of fictions: what he called paraphrasis, and what we now call contextual definition. The term, like the grammatical particles, is meaningful as a part of meaningful wholes. If every sentence in which we use a term can be paraphrased into a sentence that makes good sense, no more can be asked. (1975, 68–9) { §5.6 }

The issue is: is there such an activity as “conceptual analysis” or can philosophers do no more than describe usage and, perhaps, make recommendations for change in usage? One’s answer to this question will determine whether one thinks that Wittgenstein was wrong to give up on the idea of a systematic theory of meaning, and Quine right to suggest that the very notion of “meaning” was a hangover of Aristotelean essentialism. If they were right, it is hard to hang on to the idea that “conceptual clarity” is a goal of philosophical inquiry … Metaphilosophical issues hover in the wings of the debates over whether the content of an assertion varies from utterer to utterer and from audience to audience. If it does not, if something remains invariable – the concepts expressed by the words that make up the sentence – then perhaps there really are entities with intrinsic properties which philosophical analysis can hope to pin down. But, if content does vary in this way, then concepts are like persons — never quite the same twice, always developing, always maturing. You can change a concept by changing usage, but you cannot get a concept right, once and for all. (‘Analytic and Conversational Philosophy’, Philosophy as Cultural Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 122–3)

Analysis, to be sure, is articulation rather than dissolution. (1980, 8) { §1.2 , §5.8 }

we must see where we are going , or what will “count” as the successful resolution to the given exercise of analysis. … Analysis is the admittedly indispensable road to our destination, but it is no more the destination than it is the intention to begin the voyage. One could perhaps say that the destination is an articulated structure. But we know that we have reached the destination only when we recognize a given articulation as the explanation of that structure. We cannot see that an analysis explains a structure by performing an additional step in the analysis. At some point we must see that we are finished. And to see an analysis is not to analyze. It is rather to see an articulated structure as a unity, whole, or synthesis. ( Ibid ., 9) { §1.2 , §5.8 }

If to understand is to possess an explanation, and if an explanation is an analysis, it remains the case that an analysis is intelligible because it is also a synthesis. Explanation may be called “recollection” in the Platonic sense because it is the process of retracing, by the method of counting and measuring, the joints of an internally articulated unity, one prefigured within the initial formulation of the entire analytical exercise. In slightly more prosaic terms, analysis is never merely the application of rules. It is also at once a seeing of which rules to apply and how to apply them. This is what it means to say that analysis is also synthesis. And this is why it is false to say, as is at least implied by so much contemporary analytical philosophy, that we begin with intuitions and then replace them with ever more sophisticated analyses. Not only is it false to say this, but strictly speaking, it is meaningless. If “to mean” is “to provide an analysis”, there is no analysis of analysis without ingredient intuition. Without intuition, there is at each stage nothing to analyze. Intuition (of syntheses or unities) without analysis is mute, but analysis without intuition is inarticulate as well as blind: the sounds it utters cannot be distinguished from noise. ( Ibid ., 9–10) { §1.2 , §5.8 }

analysis is a cognitive activity and it cannot be coherently understood except by recourse to intuition. There is a non-discursive context of analysis . ( Ibid ., 27) { §1.2 , §5.8 }

conceptual analysis is rooted in intuitions which cannot be replaced by the process of analysis but which regulate that process. ( Ibid ., 48) { §1.2 , §5.8 }

That all sound philosophy should begin with an analysis of propositions, is a truth too evident, perhaps, to demand a proof. That Leibniz’s philosophy began with such an analysis, is less evident, but seems to be no less true. ( PL , 8) { §6.3 }

It is necessary to realize that definition, in mathematics, does not mean, as in philosophy, an analysis of the idea to be defined into constituent ideas. This notion, in any case, is only applicable to concepts, whereas in mathematics it is possible to define terms which are not concepts. Thus also many notions are defined by symbolic logic which are not capable of philosophical definition, since they are simple and unanalyzable. ( POM , ch. 2, §31, 27) { §6.3 }

For the comprehension of analysis, it is necessary to investigate the notion of whole and part, a notion which has been wrapped in obscurity—though not without certain more or less valid logical reasons—by the writers who may be roughly called Hegelian. ( POM , ch. 16, §133, 137) { §6.3 }

I have already touched on a very important logical doctrine, which the theory of whole and part brings into prominence—I mean the doctrine that analysis is falsification. Whatever can be analyzed is a whole, and we have already seen that analysis of wholes is in some measure falsification. But it is important to realize the very narrow limits of this doctrine. We cannot conclude that the parts of a whole are not really its parts, nor that the parts are not presupposed in the whole in a sense in which the whole is not presupposed in the parts, nor yet that the logically prior is not usually simpler than the logically subsequent. In short, though analysis gives us the truth, and nothing but the truth, yet it can never give us the whole truth. This is the only sense in which the doctrine is to be accepted. In any wider sense, it becomes merely a cloak for laziness, by giving an excuse to those who dislike the labour of analysis. ( POM , ch. 16, §138, 141) { §6.3 }

We are sometimes told that things are organic unities, composed of many parts expressing the whole and expressed in the whole. This notion is apt to replace the older notion of substance, not, I think, to the advantage of precise thinking. The only kind of unity to which I can attach any precise sense—apart from the unity of the absolutely simple—is that of a whole composed of parts. But this form of unity cannot be what is called organic; for if the parts express the whole or the other parts, they must be complex, and therefore themselves contain parts; if the parts have been analyzed as far as possible, they must be simple terms, incapable of expressing anything except themselves. A distinction is made, in support of organic unities, between conceptual analysis and real division into parts. What is really indivisible, we are told, may be conceptually analyzable. This distinction, if the conceptual analysis be regarded as subjective, seems to me wholly inadmissible. All complexity is conceptual in the sense that it is due to a whole capable of logical analysis, but is real in the sense that it has no dependence upon the mind, but only upon the nature of the object. Where the mind can distinguish elements, there must be different elements to distinguish; though, alas! there are often different elements which the mind does not distinguish. The analysis of a finite space into points is no more objective than the analysis (say) of causality into time-sequence + ground and consequent, or of equality into sameness of relation to a given magnitude. In every case of analysis, there is a whole consisting of parts with relations; it is only the nature of the parts and the relations which distinguishes different cases. Thus the notion of an organic whole in the above sense must be attributed to defective analysis, and cannot be used to explain things.

It is also said that analysis is falsification, that the complex is not equivalent to the sum of its constituents and is changed when analyzed into these. In this doctrine, as we saw in Parts I and II, there is a measure of truth, when what is to be analyzed is a unity. A proposition has a certain indefinable unity, in virtue of which it is an assertion; and this is so completely lost by analysis that no enumeration of constituents will restore it, even though itself be mentioned as a constituent. There is, it must be confessed, a grave logical difficulty in this fact, for it is difficult not to believe that a whole must be constituted by its constituents. For us, however, it is sufficient to observe that all unities are propositions or propositional concepts, and that consequently nothing that exists is a unity. If, therefore, it is maintained that things are unities, we must reply that no things exist. ( POM , ch. 53, §439, 466–7) { §6.3 }

What we want to be clear about is the twofold method of analysis of a proposition, i.e. , first taking the proposition as it stands and analyzing it, second taking the proposition as a special case of a type of propositions. Whenever we use variables, we are already necessarily concerned with a type of propositions. E.g. “ p ⊃ q ” stands for any proposition of a certain type. When values are assigned to p and q , we reach a particular proposition by a different road from that which would have started with those values plus implication, and have so built up the particular proposition without reference to a type. This is how functions come in. (‘Fundamental Notions’, 1904, in 1994, 118) { §6.3 }

We ought to say, I think, that there are different ways of analysing complexes, and that one way of analysis is into function and argument, which is the same as type and instance. ( Ibid ., 256) { §6.3 }

The fundamental epistemological principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted. ( KAKD , 159) { §6.3 }

when we say ‘the author of Waverley was Scott’ we mean ‘one and only one man wrote Waverley, and he was Scott’. Here the identity is between a variable, i.e. an indeterminate subject (‘he’), and Scott; ‘the author of Waverley’ has been analysed away, and no longer appears as a constituent of the proposition. ( KAKD , 165) { §6.3 }

Analysis may be defined as the discovery of the constituents and the manner of combination of a given complex. The complex is to be one with which we are acquainted; the analysis is complete when we become acquainted with all the constituents and with their manner of combination, and know that there are no more constituents and that that is their manner of combination. We may distinguish formal analysis as the discovery of the manner of combination, and material analysis as the discovery of the constituents. Material analysis may be called descriptive when the constituents are only known by description, not by acquaintance. ( TK , 119) { §6.3 }

Philosophy, if what has been said is correct, becomes indistinguishable from logic as that word has now come to be used. The study of logic consists, broadly speaking, of two not very sharply distinguished portions. On the one hand it is concerned with those general statements which can be made concerning everything without mentioning any one thing or predicate or relation, such for example as ‘if x is a member of the class α and every member of α is a member of β , then x is a member of the class β , whatever x , α , and β may be.’. On the other hand, it is concerned with the analysis and enumeration of logical forms , i.e. with the kinds of propositions that may occur, with the various types of facts, and with the classification of the constituents of facts. In this way logic provides an inventory of possibilities, a repertory of abstractly tenable hypotheses. ( SMP , 84–5) { §6.3 }

The essence of philosophy as thus conceived is analysis, not synthesis. To build up systems of the world, like Heine’s German professor who knit together fragments of life and made an intelligible system out of them, is not, I believe, any more feasible than the discovery of the philosopher’s stone. What is feasible is the understanding of general forms, and the division of traditional problems into a number of separate and less baffling questions. ‘Divide and conquer’ is the maxim of success here as elsewhere. ( SMP , 86) { §6.3 }

Kant, under the influence of Newton, adopted, though with some vacillation, the hypothesis of absolute space, and this hypothesis, though logically unobjectionable, is removed by Occam’s razor, since absolute space is an unnecessary entity in the explanation of the physical world. Although, therefore, we cannot refute the Kantian theory of an a priori intuition, we can remove its grounds one by one through an analysis of the problem. Thus, here as in many other philosophical questions, the analytic method, while not capable of arriving at a demonstrative result, is nevertheless capable of showing that all the positive grounds in favour of a certain theory are fallacious and that a less unnatural theory is capable of accounting for the facts.

Another question by which the capacity of the analytic method can be shown is the question of realism. Both those who advocate and those who combat realism seem to me to be far from clear as to the nature of the problem which they are discussing. If we ask: ‘Are our objects of perception real and are they independent of the percipient?’ it must be supposed that we attach some meaning to the words ‘real’ and ‘independent’, and yet, if either side in the controversy of realism is asked to define these two words, their answer is pretty sure to embody confusions such as logical analysis will reveal. ( SMP , 90–1) { §6.3 }

The supreme maxim in scientific philosophizing is this:

Wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.

Some examples of the substitution of construction for inference in the realm of mathematical philosophy may serve to elucidate the uses of this maxim. Take first the case of irrationals. In old days, irrationals were inferred as the supposed limits of series of rationals which had no rational limit; but the objection to this procedure was that it left the existence of irrationals merely optative, and for this reason the stricter methods of the present day no longer tolerate such a definition. We now define an irrational number as a certain class of ratios, thus constructing it logically by means of ratios, instead of arriving at it by a doubtful inference from them. Take again the case of cardinal numbers. Two equally numerous collections appear to have something in common: this something is supposed to be their cardinal number. But so long as the cardinal number is inferred from the collections, not constructed in terms of them, its existence must remain in doubt, unless in virtue of a metaphysical postulate ad hoc . By defining the cardinal number of a given collection as the class of all equally numerous collections, we avoid the necessity of this metaphysical postulate, and thereby remove a needless element of doubt from the philosophy of arithmetic. A similar method, as I have shown elsewhere, can be applied to classes themselves, which need not be supposed to have any metaphysical reality, but can be regarded as symbolically constructed fictions.

The method by which the construction proceeds is closely analogous in these and all similar cases. Given a set of propositions nominally dealing with the supposed inferred entities, we observe the properties which are required of the supposed entities in order to make these propositions true. By dint of a little logical ingenuity, we then construct some logical function of less hypothetical entities which has the requisite properties. The constructed function we substitute for the supposed inferred entities, and thereby obtain a new and less doubtful interpretation of the body of propositions in question. This method, so fruitful in the philosophy of mathematics, will be found equally applicable in the philosophy of physics, where, I do not doubt, it would have been applied long ago but for the fact that all who have studied this subject hitherto have been completely ignorant of mathematical logic. I myself cannot claim originality in the application of this method to physics, since I owe the suggestion and the stimulus for its application entirely to my friend and collaborator Dr Whitehead, who is engaged in applying it to the more mathematical portions of the region intermediate between sense-data and the points, instants and particles of physics.

A complete application of the method which substitutes constructions for inferences would exhibit matter wholly in terms of sense-data, and even, we may add, of the sense-data of a single person, since the sense-data of others cannot be known without some element of inference. This, however, must remain for the present an ideal, to be approached as nearly as possible, but to be reached, if at all, only after a long preliminary labour of which as yet we can only see the very beginning. ( RSDP , 115–6) { §6.3 }

In the special sciences, when they have become fully developed, the movement is forward and synthetic, from the simpler to the more complex. But in philosophy we follow the inverse direction: from the complex and relatively concrete we proceed towards the simple and abstract by means of analysis, seeking, in the process, to eliminate the particularity of the original subject-matter, and to confine our attention entirely to the logical form of the facts concerned. ( OKEW , 189–90) { §6.3 }

The nature of philosophic analysis … can now be stated in general terms. We start from a body of common knowledge, which constitutes our data. On examination, the data are found to be complex, rather vague, and largely interdependent logically. By analysis we reduce them to propositions which are as nearly as possible simple and precise, and we arrange them in deductive chains, in which a certain number of initial propositions form a logical guarantee for all the rest. ( OKEW , 214) { §6.3 }

the chief thesis that I have to maintain is the legitimacy of analysis. ( PLA , 189) { §6.3 }

it is very important to distinguish between a definition and an analysis. All analysis is only possible in regard to what is complex, and it always depends, in the last analysis, upon direct acquaintance with the objects which are the meanings of certain simple symbols. It is hardly necessary to observe that one does not define a thing but a symbol. ( PLA , 194) { §6.3 }

Analysis is not the same thing as definition. You can define a term by means of a correct description, but that does not constitute an analysis. ( PLA , 196) { §6.3 }

The business of philosophy, as I conceive it, is essentially that of logical analysis, followed by logical synthesis. ( LA , 341) { §6.3 }

Ever since I abandoned the philosophy of Kant and Hegel, I have sought solutions of philosophical problems by means of analysis; and I remain firmly persuaded, in spite of some modern tendencies to the contrary, that only by analysing is progress possible. ( MPD , 11) { §6.3 }

Philosophy must then involve the exercise of systematic restatement. But this does not mean that it is a department of philology or literary criticism.

Its restatement is not the substitution of one noun for another or one verb for another. That is what lexicographers and translators excel in. Its restatements are transmutations of syntax, and transmutations of syntax controlled not be desire for elegance or stylistic correctness but by desire to exhibit the forms of the facts into which philosophy is the enquiry.

I conclude, then, that there is, after all, a sense in which we can properly enquire and even say “what it really means to say so and so”. For we can ask what is the real form of the fact recorded when this is concealed or disguised and not duly exhibited by the expression in question. And we can often succeed in stating this fact in a new form of words which does exhibit what the other failed to exhibit. And I am for the present inclined to believe that this is what philosophical analysis is, and that this is the sole and whole function of philosophy. (1932, 100) { §6.8 }

I have no special objection to or any special liking for the fashion of describing as ‘analysis’ the sort or sorts of conceptual examination which constitute philosophizing. But the idea is totally false that this examination is a sort of garage inspection of one conceptual vehicle at a time. On the contrary, to put it dogmatically, it is always a traffic inspector’s examination of a conceptual traffic-block, involving at least two streams of vehicles hailing from the theories, or points of view or platitudes which are at cross-purposes with one another. (1953, 32) { §6.8 }

It is certain that when I wrote “Systematically Misleading Expressions” I was still under the direct influence of the notion of an “ideal language”—a doctrine according to which there were a certain number of logical forms which one could somehow dig up by scratching away at the earth which covered them. I no longer think, especially not today, that this is a good method. I do not regret having traveled that road, but I am happy to have left it behind me. (In Rorty 1967, 305) { §6.8 }

alas! intellect must first destroy the object of Inner Sense if it would make it its own. Like the analytical chemist, the philosopher can only discover how things are combined by analysing them, only lay bare the workings of spontaneous Nature by subjecting them to the torment of his own techniques. In order to lay hold of the fleeting phenomenon, he must first bind it in the fetters of rule, tear its fair body to pieces by reducing it to concepts, and preserve its living spirit in a sorry skeleton of words. Is it any wonder that natural feeling cannot find itself again in such an image, or that in the account of the analytical thinker truth should appear as paradox? ( AE , I, 4) { §5.2 }

analysis without synopsis must be blind. (‘Time and the World Order’, in Herbert Feigl and Grover Maxwell, (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science III , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962, 527)

[in discussing Ryle 1953 { Quotation }] Personally, I have no axe to grind about what it takes to analyze a concept. Very likely, there are different sorts of cases. It may well be that sometimes what we want from an analysis is the tracing of the sort of intricate web of conceptual relations in which Ryle delights. But there is little reason for thinking that this is always so—at least, if analysis is construed as whatever it is that philosophers do to solve their problems. What strikes me as worrisome is Ryle’ tendency to use the web metaphor as a rationale for rejecting the old, Russellian conception of analysis, with its emphasis on precisely formulated logical forms, and replacing it with methodology which, in some cases, may degenerate into a recipe for generating a conceptual fog. It is all well and good to recognize that sometimes the concepts philosophers deal with will be vague, imprecise, and open-ended, with close conceptual connections to other concepts of the same sort. We do have to be able to deal with such cases—perhaps along the lines Ryle suggests. What is not good is a prior ideological commitment to blurred edges, indirectness, and an unwillingness to separate tangential from central issues. Sometimes Ryle and other ordinary language philosophers seem to go too far in this direction; substituting one confining orthodoxy about analysis for another. When this happens, central philosophical points get missed ... (2003, II, 80–1) { §6.1 }

Philosophical analysis is a term of art. At different times in the twentieth century, different authors have used it to mean different things. What is to be analyzed (e.g., words and sentences versus concepts and propositions), what counts as a successful analysis, and what philosophical fruits come from analysis are questions that have been vigorously debated since the dawn of analysis as a self-conscious philosophical approach. Often, different views of analysis have been linked to different views of the nature of philosophy, the sources of philosophical knowledge, the role of language in thought, the relationship between language and the world, and the nature of meaning—as well to more focused questions about necessary and apriori truth. Indeed the variety of positions is so great as to make any attempt to extract a common denominator from the multiplicity of views sterile and not illuminating.

Nevertheless analytic philosophy—with its emphasis on what is called “philosophical analysis”—is a clear and recognizable tradition. Although the common core of doctrine uniting its practitioners scarcely exceeds the platitudinous, a pattern of historical influence is not hard to discern. The tradition begins with G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (as well as Gottlob Frege, whose initial influence was largely filtered through Russell and Wittgenstein). These philosophers set the agenda, first, for logical positivists such as Rudolf Carnap, Carl Hempel, and A.J. Ayer and then later for Wittgenstein, who in turn ushered in the ordinary language school led by Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin. More recently the second half of the twentieth century has seen a revival of Russellian and Carnapian themes in the work of W.V. Quine, Donald Davidson, and Saul Kripke. Analytic philosophy, with its changing views of philosophical analysis, is a trail of influence ... (2005, 144) { §6.1 }

the mathematical method is characteristic of much of Western philosophy, whereas the grammatical method is characteristic of much of Indian philosophy. (1965, 99) {§2.7}

Discoveries of this kind [of the dependence of systems of categories on the language in which they are formulated] open up new vistas. They emphasize the desirability that philosophers should take full account of linguistics. With the help of linguistics, philosophy is in a position to enter a fruitful area of research. In this respect, philosophers are in a more favourable position that mathematicians—for the latter investigate what they have first created, while the former face the richness and variety of natural languages, where reality surpasses the boldest imagination. Mathematicians can never enter other spaces than the one in which they were born, not even with the advancement of space travel. At most, they can propose to physicists that they should describe physical space with the help of another geometry. Philosophers, on the other hand, can learn a language and thereby enter a new world of experience: the linguistic categories of a newly learned language may not segment reality in the same way as do the categories Western philosophers are accustomed to. Philosophers obtain passports for non-Aristotelian worlds as soon as they begin to study the syntax of a language which is sufficiently different from Greek. Of course, the fruitfulness of such research increases if the language studied belongs to a civilization which has also produced philosophy, logic, and linguistics or related fields of study. (1965, 105) { §2.7 }

Historically speaking, Pāṇini’s method has occupied a place comparable to that held by Euclid’s method in Western thought. Scientific developments have therefore taken different directions in India and in the West. Pāṇini’s system produced at an early date such logical distinctions as those between language and metalanguage, theorem and metatheorem, use and mention, which were discovered much later in Europe. In other Indian sciences, e.g., in mathematics and astronomy, as well as in later grammatical systems of Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil, systematic abbreviations are used which not only are ingenious but also constitute new adaptations of the same method. In India, Pāṇini’s perfection and ingenuity have rarely been matched outside the realm of linguistics. In the West, this corresponds to the belief that mathematics is the most perfect among the sciences. Just as Plato reserved admission to his Academy for geometricians, Indian scholars and philosophers are expected to have first undergone a training in scientific linguistics. In India, grammar was called the Veda of the Vedas, the science of sciences. Renou declares: ‘To adhere to Indian thought means first of all to think like a grammarian’ ... This has determined the form and method of a large part of Indian philosophy, an important feature which is generally lost when Sanskrit originals are translated into Western languages. It seems almost unavoidable that translations of an accurate original should therefore appear vague. (1965, 114) { §2.7 }

In my opinion Logical Positivism fails in its treatment of analysis. Wittgenstein and the other Logical Positivists talk much about analysis, but they do not consider the various kinds of analysis, nor do they show in what sense philosophy is the analysis of facts. They make use of analytic definition of a symbolic expression, and of the analytic clarification of a concept, but they do not distinguish between them. They also employ postulational analysis. But they do not seem to understand directional analysis, and, accordingly, they fail to apprehend the need for it. In this way they depart, in my opinion, from the practice of Moore. Not only is their conception of analysis defective, but, further, their conception of the kinds of facts to be analysed is inadequate. They treat all facts as linguistic facts . Hence, they suppose that the first problem of philosophy is to determine the principles of symbolism, and from these principles to draw limits with regard to what we can think. This assumption has two important consequences. First, it leads to the view that philosophy is ‘the activity of finding meaning’, to quote Schlick’s statement. The second consequence is that they are apt to place too much reliance upon the construction of postulational systems. (1933b, 82–3) { §6.6 }

Strawson, Peter F.

An analysis, I suppose, may be thought of as a kind of breaking down or decomposing of something. So we have the picture of a kind of intellectual taking to pieces of ideas or concepts; the discovering of what elements a concept or idea is composed and how they are related. Is this the right picture or the wrong one—or is it partly right and partly wrong? That is a question which calls for a considered response … ( Analysis and Metaphysics , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, 2)

If we took this notion [of analysis as decomposition] completely seriously for the case of conceptual analysis—analysis of ideas—we should conclude that our task was to find ideas that were completely simple, that were free from internal conceptual complexity; and then to demonstrate how the more or less complex ideas that are of interest to philosophers could be assembled by a kind of logical or conceptual construction out of these simple elements. The aim would be to get a clear grasp of complex meanings by reducing them, without remainder, to simple meanings. Thus baldly stated, this may seem a rather implausible project. And so it is. Nevertheless it, or some close relation of it, has been, and is, taken seriously. Even when not taken to the lengths I have just described, it continues to exercise a certain influence on the philosophical mind. ( Ibid. 18)

Among the philosophers who were most influential in England in the period between the two world wars were the analysts. Their analytic theories were sometimes associated with the metaphysical view which Russell called logical atomism, sometimes with the supposedly anti-metaphysical doctrines of logical positivism, and sometimes, as in the case of G. E. Moore, the analytic practice had no clearly defined dogmatic background at all. But they were united at least in the view that analysis was at least one of the most important tasks of the philosopher; and by analysis they meant something which, whatever precise description of it they chose, at least involved the attempt to rewrite in different and in some way more appropriate terms those statements which they found philosophically puzzling. (1956, vii) { §6.1 }

analysis is a familiar philosophical method. I shall not attempt to offer you a complete historical account of analytic philosophy. Even the minute examination of a particular analytic philosopher, or group of analytic philosophers, would not be of great interest. I propose rather to sketch, in broad strokes, four major forms of philosophical analysis which I think important to distinguish carefully from one another. I shall call the first of these: classical analysis. It corresponds, roughly, to the traditional method of analysis used by English philosophers, a method which Russell did so much to develop. I shall then examine three other, more recent forms of philosophical analysis: (1) the type of analysis which involves the construction of artificial languages; (2) the type of analysis practiced by Wittgenstein in his later period; (3) the type of analysis which characterizes present-day Oxford Philosophy.

The fundamental notion of classical analysis is that propositions couched in ordinary language are correct, in the sense that they are not objectionable in principle. They are neither logically nor metaphysically absurd. On the other hand, insofar as the form of these propositions of ordinary language hides their true meaning, they are neither metaphysically nor logically satisfactory. The task of the analyst is, therefore, to reformulate them so that this meaning will be clearly and explicitly presented, rather then to reject them. To analyze, is to reformulate,—to translate into a better wording. (1962, 294–5) { §6.1 }

The logical positivism of the Vienna Circle did not modify the methodology of classical analysis. However, because of the anti-metaphysical standpoint which was characteristic of positivism, it could not accept the notion of the goal of analysis as metaphysical discovery. For the positivists of this school, the goal of philosophical analysis is to clarify the language of science, a clarification which would result from, for example, elucidating the relationships between observation and theory, or between scientific concepts at different levels of abstraction. ( Ibid ., 296) { §6.1 }

A second school [or third school, after ‘classical analysis’ and logical positivism] was inspired (largely, but not entirely) by the thought of Wittgenstein in his later period. Wittgenstein had himself been led to this new point of view in his criticism of his own Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ( Logische-Philosophische Abhandlung ), a book which itself espoused implicitly a certain form of classical analysis. According to Wittgenstein, classical analysis rested upon a false conception of language and of thought. ...

... for an analyst of this sort, philosophical problems do not result from ignorance of the precise meaning of a concept, but from an entirely false conception of its function. ... Such a false conception is what Ryle calls a “category mistake”. To resolve a philosophical problem, one should exhibit the generic character of the concepts involved in it, rather than attempting to give a perfect definition or explication of these concepts. ...

This conception of philosophical analysis—of analysis as the resolution of conceptual enigmas—has sometimes been condescendingly called “therapeutic positivism”. ( Ibid ., 297–9) { §6.1 }

The fourth method of analysis ... is that of Oxford Philosophy. ...

The analytic philosophers of the Cambridge School—for example, Russell and Wittgenstein—came to philosophy after considerable work in the sciences and in mathematics. Philosophy of mathematics was the first topic to which Russell applied his classical method of analysis. But the Oxford philosophers came to their subject, almost without exception, after extensive study of classics. Thus they were naturally interested in words, in syntax, and in (idioms. They did not wish to use linguistic analysis simply to resolve philosophical problems; they were interested in the study of language for its own sake. Therefore these philosophers are, perhaps, both more given to making linguistic distinctions, and better at finding such distinctions, than most. Ibid ., 299) { §6.1 }

Many English philosophers (including many who owe allegiance to Oxford Philosophy) would place themselves at a position between that of Wittgenstein and the view I have just sketched. It may therefore be in point to indicate briefly the principal differences between the two schools:

(1) Wittgensteinian analysis has, for its sole end, the resolution of philosophical enigmas. If there were no such enigmas, there would be no need for analysis. For Oxford, on the other hand, analysis has an intrinsic value.

(2) According to Wittgenstein and his disciples, all that is necessary is to exhibit the generic character of the concepts which we analyze. For Oxford, a minute analysis is indispensable.

(3) For Wittgenstein, analysis is the only useful method in philosophy. For Oxford, it is only one among others, and no one claims that it is sufficient, by itself, to resolve all philosophical problems. ( Ibid ., 301) { §6.1 }

It is not sensible to ask for the method of making one‘s fortune (or of ruining oneself); there are many. It is no more sensible to ask “What is the analytical method?” There is not one “analytic philosophy”. There are several. ( Ibid ., 301 [closing sentences]) { §6.1 }

For explaining Dharmakīrti’s approach it is necessary to distinguish four levels of philosophical analysis in ascending order of sophistication. At the lowest level we begin with the perspective of ordinary, unenlightened beings . Their view of the world is not to be faulted to the extent to which it is largely pragmatically successful: it allows them to successfully interact with the world. However, from a philosophical perspective it leaves much to be desired, as it is characterized by the chief fault of satkāyadr ṣ ṭi , the mistaken superimposition of a substantial self where there is none, both in the case of persons, as well as in the case of other phenomena. At the second level of the scale we come to the reductionist view that we find exemplified in the Abhidharma. Both persons as well as other partite objects are analysed and found to be nothing but convenient verbal designations sitting on top of what is ultimately real, namely conglomerations of fundamentally existing dharmas . At this level, some elements are still characterized by spatial, temporal, or conceptual extension. Some objects, such as colours, are spread out in space, some objects have temporal extension, and most importantly, some qualities of objects are shared across different instances of them: all earth-atoms are solid, all water-atoms wet, and so on. By and large this perspective accords with the Sarvāstivāda view we find in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośa . At the third level the reductionist perspective is further refined into a form of particularism . According to this position all three forms of extension are given up because they are considered to be the products of cognitive errors. We perceive objects as spatially extended because we confuse qualities of the mental image of the object with the qualities of what gives rise to the mental image. The assumption of temporal extension is an artefact of the slowness of our perceptual system. Because we cannot keep up with the rapid succession that marks the change of things, we simply group together various successive phenomena that form part of a single causal chain and construe it as one temporally persisting object. The same happens in the case of shared objects in general or object-types. Even though every particular is different from any other particular, we are often not able to register the differences between distinct things. As in the case of temporal resolution, the comparative coarseness of our conceptual resolution causes us to lump together various distinct, though similar things. So despite the fact that all there is out there in the world is a variety of things such as earth-atoms that are distinct from one another, on account of some similarity we put them all together and argue that they all instantiate the same object-type of solidity. This view is often referred to as a Sautrāntika position, and the emphasis on the extremely short-lived nature of all objects seems to justify this, even though, as noted before, it is difficult to be precise about the distinction between this form of Sautrāntika, the form that we find in Vasubandhu, and those coming from sources preceding Vasubandhu. This particularist stance is the philosophical position from which Dharmakīrti constructs most of his arguments. This is a curious fact, since it does not represent his final view, the position he wants to endorse after discussing various other positions that are all in some way defective. For if we push our philosophical analysis yet further we get to a fourth level, an idealist theory , according to which the duality between the perceiving subject and the non-material perceived object is illusory. All phenomena have only one nature, and this nature is mental. The affinity of this view with Yogācāra positions is obvious. Despite the fact that this is the position Dharmakīrti wants to endorse, in the end it does not dominate his philosophical exposition. In fact there is only one substantial section of the Pramāṇavārttika where he employs it consistently as a background for his argumentation.

This sequence of four positions along the sliding scale of analysis is interesting for a number of reasons. On the one hand it mirrors the historical development of Buddhist thought in India, from the confrontation with non-Buddhist believers in a substantial ātman through Abhidharma reductionism, a thoroughgoing form of particularism, up to the idealism of Yogācāra. Yet this sequence is at the same time considered to be a conceptual hierarchy, an ascent to better and better philosophical theories or, what amounts to the same thing in the Buddhist context, a hierarchy of views that result in less and less erroneous superimposition ( samāropa ). It is obvious how the Abhidharma reductionism is supposed to remove clinging to the mistaken belief in a substantial self where there is none. Yet, as the partcularist stage argues, the reductionist is still bound by superimposing spatial, temporal, and conceptual extension to a world consisting of non-extended, momentary, and utterly distinct particulars. Removing those frees us from further superimpositions, and thereby from the potential for further clinging, clinging that in turn leads to suffering and continuing entanglement in cyclic existence. Further superimposition takes place when the appearance of external objects is superimposed on some purely mental phenomena, thereby causing the particularist picture in the first place. A thoroughgoing removal of superimpositions must also dispense with the erroneous distinction between perceiving subject and perceived object.

A single argumentative pattern can be understood as the driving force behind the movement through the four levels. This is the neither-one-nor-many argument, well known throughout the history of Buddhist philosophy. When applied to the perspective of ordinary beings, this argument begins with the question whether an object and its parts are identical or different. It appears that they cannot be identical (since the object is one and the parts are many, and one thing cannot have contradictory properties), and that they cannot be different (as the whole is never found as a separate entity distinct from the parts). The reductionist argues that we should conclude from this that wholes are not real in the first place, but merely conceptually constructed pseudo-entities. the same considerations can then be applied to particulars and properties they supposedly share (here a key argument is that distinct shared properties would have to be permanent, conflicting with the principle of momentariness), and to the perceiving object and perception (if they are distinct, why do we never encounter one without the other?). ( The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, 253–5)

The primary weapon is analysis. And analysis is the evocation of insight by the hypothetical suggestions of thought, and the evocation of thought by the activities of direct insight. In this process the composite whole, the interrelations, and the things related, concurrently emerge into clarity. ( Essays in Science and Philosophy , New York: Philosophical Library, 1947, 157)

Analysis is often understood to imply a whole of which the parts are explicitly known before the analysis; but logical elements are for our ordinary consciousness only implicit: we use them without reflecting on them, just as we use grammatical distinctions long before we have any knowledge of grammar. Logic does not merely analyse: it makes explicit what was implicit. ( Statement and Inference , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926, 49)

The hypothetical process therefore combines in itself both the method of discovery and the proof, and is the proper scientific exposition. The non-hypothetical proof to which we are accustomed is a sort of scientific pedantry, and it is consequently a great mistake first to give what is called analysis, which corresponds to the hypothetical process, and then to follow it by a synthesis, which is the non-hypothetical part, thus putting aside analysis as if it were a sort of accident. It is an error because it conceals the true process of thinking. ( Ibid. , 560)

I have changed my views on “atomic” complexes: I now think that qualities, relations (like love) etc. are all copulae! That means I for instance analyse a subject-predicate proposition, say, “Socrates is human” into “Socrates” and “something is human”, (which I think is not complex). The reason for this is a very fundamental one. I think that there cannot be different Types of things! In other words whatever can be symbolized by a simple proper name must belong to one type. And further: every theory of types must be rendered superfluous by a proper theory of symbolism: For instance if I analyse the proposition Socrates is mortal into Socrates, mortality and (∃x,y) ∈ 1 (x,y) I want a theory of types to tell me that “mortality is Socrates” is nonsensical, because if I treat “mortality” as a proper name (as I did) there is nothing to prevent me to make the substitution the wrong way round. But if I analyse (as I do now) into Socrates and (∃x).x is mortal or generally into x and (∃x) φx it becomes impossible to substitute the wrong way round because the two symbols are now of a different kind themselves. What I am most certain of is not however the correctness of my present way of analysis, but of the fact that all theory of types must be done away with by a theory of symbolism showing that what seem to be different kinds of things are symbolized by different kinds of symbols which cannot possibly be substituted in one another’s places. I hope I have made this fairly clear!

Propositions which I formerly wrote ∈ 2 (a,R,b) I now write R(a,b) and analyse them into a,b and (∃x,y)R(x,y) [with (∃x,y)R(x,y) marked in the text as “not complex”] ( NB , 121–2) { §6.5 }

How is it reconcilable with the task of philosophy, that logic should take care of itself? If, for example, we ask: Is such and such a fact of the subject-predicate form?, we must surely know what we mean by “subject-predicate form”. We must know whether there is such a form at all. How can we know this? “From the signs”. But how? For we haven’t got any signs of this form. We may indeed say: We have signs that behave like signs of the subject-predicate form, but does that mean that there really must be facts of this form? That is, when those signs are completely analysed? And here the question arises again: Does such a complete analysis exist? And if not : then what is the task of philosophy?!!? ( NB , 2) { §6.5 }

Our difficulty now lies in the fact that to all appearances analysability, or its opposite, is not reflected in language. That is to say: We can not , as it seems, gather from language alone whether for example there are real subject-predicate facts or not. But how COULD we express this fact or its opposite? This must be shewn . ( NB , 10) { §6.5 }

The trivial fact that a completely analysed proposition contains just as many names as there are things contained in its reference [ Bedeutung ]; this fact is an example of the all-embracing representation of the world through language. ( NB , 11) { §6.5 }

The completely analysed proposition must image its reference [ Bedeutung ]. ( NB , 18) { §6.5 }

A question: can we manage without simple objects in LOGIC?

Obviously propositions are possible which contain no simple signs, i.e. no signs which have an immediate reference [ Bedeutung ]. And these are really propositions making sense, nor do the definitions of their component parts have to be attached to them.

But it is clear that components of our propositions can be analysed by means of a definition, and must be, if we want to approximate to the real structure of the proposition. At any rate, then, there is a process of analysis . And can it not now be asked whether this process comes to an end? And if so: What will the end be?

If it is true that every defined sign signifies via its definitions then presumably the chain of definitions must some time have an end. [Cf. TLP 3.261.]

The analysed proposition mentions more than the unanalysed.

Analysis makes the proposition more complicated than it was, but it cannot and must not make it more complicated than its meaning [ Bedeutung ] was from the first.

When the proposition is just as complex as its reference [ Bedeutung ], then it is completely analysed.

But the reference [ Bedeutung ] of our propositions is not infinitely complicated. ( NB , 46) { §6.5 }

But it also seems certain that we do not infer the existence of simple objects from the existence of particular simple objects, but rather know them—by description, as it were—as the end-product of analysis, by means of a process that leads to them. ( NB , 50) { §6.5 }

Let us assume that every spatial object consists of infinitely many points, then it is clear that I cannot mention all these by name when I speak of that object. Here then would be a case in which I cannot arrive at the complete analysis in the old sense at all; and perhaps just this is the usual case.

But this is surely clear: the propositions which are the only ones that humanity uses will have a sense just as they are and do not wait upon a future analysis in order to acquire a sense.

Now, however, it seems to be a legitimate question: Are–e.g.–spatial objects composed of simple parts; in analysing them, does one arrive at parts that cannot be further analysed, or is this not the case?

—But what kind of question is this?—

Is it , A PRIORI, clear that in analysing we must arrive at simple components—is this, e.g., involved in the concept of analysis— , or is analysis ad infinitum possible?—Or is there in the end even a third possibility? ( NB , 62) { §6.5 }

In a proposition a thought can be so expressed that to the objects of the thought correspond elements of the propositional sign.

I call these elements ‘simple signs’ and the proposition ‘completely analysed’. ( TLP , 3.2, 3.201) { §6.5 }

There is one and only one complete analysis of a proposition. ( TLP , 3.25) { §6.5 }

It is obvious that, in the analysis of propositions, we must arrive at elementary propositions, which consist of names in immediate combination.

This raises the question as to how the propositional unity comes about. ( TLP , 4.221) { §6.5 }

If we know on purely logical grounds that there must be elementary propositions, then everyone who understands propositions in their unanalysed form must know it. ( TLP , 5.5562) { §6.5 }

The correct method in philosophy would really be this: to say nothing except what can be said, that is, propositions of natural science—that is, something that has nothing to do with philosophy; and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to them that they had not given a meaning to certain signs in their propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to them—they would not have the feeling that we were teaching them philosophy—but  this  would be the only strictly correct one. ( TLP , 6.53) { §6.5 }

My propositions elucidate when someone who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical by using them to climb up, over, and out of them. (They must throw away the ladder, so to speak, having used it to climb up.) They must get over these propositions, and then they see the world correctly. ( TLP , 6.54) { §6.5 }

A proposition is completely logically analysed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in. ( PR , 51; cf. BT , 308) { §6.5 }

Logical analysis is the analysis of something we have, not of something we don’t have. Therefore it is the analysis of propositions as they stand . ( PR , 52) { §6.5 }

a mathematical proof is an analysis of the mathematical proposition. ( PR , 179) { §6.5 }

Complex is not like fact. For I can, e.g., say of a complex that it moves from one place to another, but not of a fact.

But that this complex is now situated here is a fact. ...

A complex is composed of its parts, the things of a kind which go to make it up. (This is of course a grammatical proposition concerning the words ‘complex’, ‘part’ and ‘compose’.)

To say that a red circle is composed of redness and circularity, or is a complex with these component parts, is a misuse of these words and is misleading. (Frege was aware of this and told me.) It is just as misleading to say the fact that this circle is red (that I am tired) is a complex whose component parts are a circle and redness (myself and tiredness).

Neither is a house a complex of bricks and their spatial relations; i.e. that too goes against the correct use of the word. ( PR , 301–2) { §6.5 }

When I say: “My broom is in the corner”,—is this really a statement about the broomstick and the brush? Well, it could at any rate be replaced by a statement giving the position of the stick and the position of the brush. And this statement is surely a further analysed form of the first one.—But why do I call it “further analysed”?—Well, if the broom is there, that surely means that the stick and brush must be there, and in a particular relation to one another; and this was as it were hidden in the sense of the first sentence, and is expressed in the analysed sentence. Then does someone who says that the broom is in the corner really mean: the broomstick is there, and so is the brush, and the broomstick is fixed in the brush?—If we were to ask anyone if he meant this he would probably say that he had not thought specially of the broomstick or specially of the brush at all. And that would be the right answer, for he meant to speak neither of the stick nor of the brush in particular. Suppose that, instead of saying “Bring me the broom”, you said “Bring me the broomstick and the brush which is fitted on to it.”!—Isn’t the answer: “DO you want the broom? Why do you put it so oddly?”——Is he going to understand the further analysed sentence better?—This sentence, one might say, achieves the same as the ordinary one, but in a more roundabout way.— Imagine a language-game in which someone is ordered to bring certain objects which are composed of several parts, to move them about, or something else of that kind. And two ways of playing it: in one (a) the composite objects (brooms, chairs, tables, etc.) have names, as in (15); in the other (b) only the parts are given names and the wholes are described by means of them.—In what sense is an order in the second game an analysed form of an order in the first? Does the former lie concealed in the latter, and is it now brought out by analysis?—True, the broom is taken to pieces when one separates broomstick and brush; but does it follow that the order to bring the broom also consists of corresponding parts? ...

To say, however, that a sentence in (b) is an ‘analysed’ form of one in (a) readily seduces us into thinking that the former is the more fundamental form; that it alone shews what is meant by the other, and so on. For example, we think: If you have only the unanalysed form you miss the analysis; but if you know the analysed form that gives you everything.—But can I not say that an aspect of the matter is lost on you in the latter case as well as the former? ( PI , §§ 60, 63) { §6.5 }

Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language.—Some of them can be removed by substituting one form of expression for another; this may be called an “analysis” of our forms of expression, for the process is sometimes like one of taking a thing apart.

But now it may come to look as if there were something like a final analysis of our forms of language, and so a single completely resolved form of every expression. That is, as if our usual forms of expression were, essentially, unanalysed; as if there were something hidden in them that had to be brought to light. When this is done the expression is completely clarified and our problem solved.

It can also be put like this: we eliminate misunderstandings by making our expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we were moving towards a particular state, a state of complete exactness; and as if this were the real goal of our investigation. ( PI , §§ 90–1) { §6.5 }

We are not analysing a phenomenon (e.g. thought) but a concept (e.g. that of thinking), and therefore the use of a word. ( PI , §383) { §6.5 }

A list of key works on analysis (monographs and collections) can be found in the

Annotated Bibliography, §1.2 .

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Analysis and Synthesis

Experiential Education

What you will learn:

• What ‘analysis’ means.
• What ‘synthesis’ means.
• Why we analyse and synthesise, and how this can help us in the workplace.
• How to analyse and synthesise at university.
• How analysis and synthesis fits with a learning cycle.
• How to use a matrix to make analysis and synthesis easier.

What do these words mean?

‘Analysis’ and ‘synthesis’ are the noun forms of the verbs ‘to analyse’ and ‘to synthesise’. The plurals of the nouns are ‘analyses’ and ‘syntheses’.

To analyse is to pull something apart: to give insights into the what, why, where, how, and who.

To synthesise is to draw on one or more sources and infer relationships among those sources in a new and meaningful way, and from which any reasonable person could make plans or decisions.

Analysis and synthesis are simply terms for what we do every day, often subconsciously. Think about driving, say from home to work. You don’t just jump in the car, drive, and arrive. You analyse (that is, you think about, and provide yourself with information about) the weather – your car’s capabilities – how far you need to travel and the time it will take – how you feel – the route you need to take – the likely traffic conditions – and so forth. You synthesise this information, and make meaningful decisions about the time you might need to leave, your route, whether you need to get fuel on the way, and so on.

Once on the road, you analyse the traffic – road conditions – traffic lights – pedestrians – road works: all the one hundred and one things of which a driver needs to be aware. You then act accordingly (synthesise): deciding which lane to take; when to slow down or speed up; whether you might need to stop in a hurry or swerve to avoid something. Most of the time this is done very quickly, sometimes in a split second. You analyse the situation, synthesise the results of your analysis, and act, or plan to act, accordingly.

Why do we analyse?

As can be seen above, we analyse to help us break down a possibly complex situation into more manageable parts, and to help us see and deal with the total picture a little more easily and clearly.

How can this help us in the workplace?

The skill of good analysis is one that we can take and apply anywhere: at home, in the community, at work. Here are some examples of how analysing can help us in the workplace:

• Applying for a job: for example, it can aid in completing a list of criteria. Sometimes these lists can appear overwhelming. Breaking them down into manageable parts can help us think logically and write appropriately.
• At the interview: considering, for example, what to wear, what to say, how to manage our time to ensure we are not late, and so on.
• In the work environment: understanding the role we are to fill, and the tasks we need to do to fill that role.

Why do we synthesise?

Once we have analysed possibly complex situations, we decide what we need to do, based on the results of the analysis. We also then need to put our decisions into action: planning, preparing, and applying.

For example, we can analyse, in the work environment, the role we need to fill and the tasks we need to do. However, we then need to stop analysing and start doing. Otherwise, we can fall into what has been called “analysis paralysis”, a situation where it is possible to do a lot of “work” but achieve very little.

See WritingforCollege.org (2013)

Application in the Study Environment

Analysis at university.

According to Jewell (2013):

The word 'analysis' usually implies at least two elements: (a) A breakdown of something into parts or ideas, and (b) A discussion or description of those parts using a point of view or a method.

Let’s look at this quote bit by bit.

Breaking something down into its parts

Most assessment pieces at university require both analysis and synthesis. You might, for example, be asked to read some material and watch a YouTube video, then post, in MyLO, your responses to various questions. These questions will most likely start with ‘Why’, ‘how’, ‘who’, ‘what’, or ‘where’. To answer the questions, you will need to go to the reading material and the YouTube clip, and do a little research (search for the answers, that is). You will probably also have some knowledge from your own personal experience (tacit knowledge), which is also a valuable resource for research.

You will then sort through and think about what you have discovered from these various sources, decide which information is applicable to the question, and infer some relationships between the pieces of discovered information. Those relationships might be themes, patterns, recurrences, gaps, congruities, incongruities , and so forth. This will help you bring what might be a lot of material down into a manageable number of reportable findings (which is the beginning of synthesis).

Describing the parts using a point of view

When someone completes, for example, a PhD thesis, their work is sent to two or three examiners who are expert in the field. The examiners respond to the thesis, and decide whether it is of a sufficient standard to grant the applicant their PhD. A researcher asked several examiners what they look for when examining theses. Among the suggestions provided by the examiners are the following (Marshall 2011, pp. 1-13, emphasis added):

• Good analysis is not just finding out things (data*), sorting them into categories, and describing them.
• Good analysis creates an argument (that is, the writer puts forward a point of view based on their findings).
• Good analysis is reflective (see the module on Reflective Cycle ).
• Good analysis can justify why the analysis is done in the first place.

The examiners had six related aspects they look for when examining a thesis (or essay, report, presentation etc.):

• A good read
• Authenticity
• Details stick in the reader’s mind
• Imaginative
• Well presented
• Well written.

* Data (singular is ‘datum’) = facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis.

Academic synthesis

There are, according to the Michigan State University (2017, italics added), two types of synthesis: the ‘explanatory’ synthesis, and the ‘argument’ synthesis:

An explanatory synthesis helps people understand something. Something is analysed (pulled apart) to find its component parts (its what, why, where, how, and who). The component parts are then presented to the reader in a clear and orderly fashion. This type of synthesis does not go far beyond what is obvious to anyone who carefully reads the same sources. These notes are an example of an explanatory synthesis.

An argument synthesis goes a step further and deeper. It allows you to present your own point of view (known in academic circles as your ‘argument’), supported by relevant facts drawn from the sources, and presented logically. An argument synthesis makes a proposition that is debatable, about which any reasonable person could disagree – any two writers working with the same source material could conceive of and support other, perhaps opposing arguments.

Please see the 5 minute video below on analysis and synthesis (Ceraso 2015) as foundations of systems thinking.

Foundation of Systems Thinking

Synthesis Vs. Analysis | 4:05 mins

In most cases, your syntheses will need to be the second type: the ‘So what?’. Perhaps in your analysis you found a pattern of connections – but also a gap in the pattern. You might ask yourself (and give an opinion, or ‘argument’, on):

• What does the pattern mean? It might mean that there is a lesson to be learnt from it. It might be found to be meaningless – but this must be made explicit** in your synthesis.
• Does the pattern fit with other relevant patterns? Or is it different from other relevant patterns? How? Why? What do you think it means?
• What might the gap mean? It might mean that our analysis is wrong or needs adjustment – or it might mean that there is something that needs further investigation.
• The next question would then be: Why might it need further investigation? The answer might be that it may give us (you, those around you, the community in general) a better understanding of something/a better way to do things/a new product/a new way of looking at something.

For example, you might be asked to make explicit the drive from home to work. You would then need to explain, in words, each step of the journey, starting with the need to make it, the analysis you made of each of the aspects (weather, car condition etc.), the decisions you made and why, the actions you took as a result of those decisions, what actually happened on the drive, and whether you came to any new decisions for the future based on your experience.

Making explicit often simply involves writing down things we already know but don't always know we know.

Once you have answered the questions (both those posed by the teacher for the assignment, and those you will ask yourself as your research deepens) you will need to communicate your findings and your conclusions. That is, you explain clearly, fully, and succinctly, with no ambiguity, your findings and the relationships you have inferred from the various pieces of relevant information. Communication might be through a MyLO posting, or an essay, or blog, or presentation.

How does this fit with learning cycles?

It might be easier to understand analysis and synthesis if we look at a learning cycle. A learning cycle is a concept of how adults learn from an experience. David Kolb (1984) proposed that learning is a process that can be modelled as a continuous cycle, as follows:

(Kolb 1984, p. 21)

You will probably hear the name ‘Kolb’ a lot in relation to learning cycles. His model has been adapted by many theorists since 1984. The cycles have many different names: action learning cycle, reflective cycle, experiential learning cycle. Others suggest that the cycle is not a closed circle, but a continuous spiral. Here is an example that can help with reflection and reflective writing:

Prpic (2005)

You will notice that the spiral deepens in colour as it moves around the cycle. This is to indicate deeper thinking as the cycle progresses. Here are the main sections:

• Learning moment: this is the experience (learning event, for example).
• Feelings and values: this is the very start of analysis. You start collecting a few facts about the experience.
• Analysis: this is when you consider the what, why, where, how, and who. That is, you start pulling apart the experience, to discover its component parts.
• Lessons learned: this is still part of the analysis. You are coming to some conclusions and making some decisions.
• Action plan: this is where synthesis kicks in. You can have all the information in the world at your fingertips, and have deep insights into yourself and the experience, but unless you take the next step to apply that knowledge, you can remain in “analysis paralysis”. Synthesis is when you apply your new understandings; that is, when you make plans to use what you have learned from the analysis, and even more, when you implement those plans

To summarise:

To analyse is to:

• Examine a situation or text to find its component parts in a way relevant to the particular requirements of the necessity for analysis.
• Come to logical and relevant decisions based on our findings.

To synthesise is to:

• Bring the component parts together again in a new and meaningful way.
• Utilise the results to make decisions and/or plans
• Then follow through with the decisions/plans

Linked to this module is a useful tool to help you break down your analysis and synthesis. You can use this matrix any time you need to, and for any analysis/synthesis situation.

For the sake of this exercise, we will stick with the theme of car travel. Think about the last time you drove somewhere. Consider all the hundreds of things you had to be aware of and plan to allow for before you actually started the engine. You will probably discover that there are too many items to even start writing them down.

You will find that this is usually the case when you are asked to analyse something, so you need to select a relevant aspect, and concentrate on that (mentioning in your write-up that this is what you have done). In this case, let’s concentrate on thinking about the driving conditions.

I have put a few into the matrix to start you off.

As you will see, analysis and synthesis of the over-all driving conditions requires analysis and synthesis of all the various aspects. More likely than not, each aspect can combine to change the outcome of the over-all synthesis. For example, driving on a rainy day, on wet roads, at night, would mean you would make different plans than if you were going to drive on dry roads during sunny daytime.

Over to you to put in a few more, into any of the columns and rows. If you wish, you can then upload it as an artefact into your Unit or Professional Portfolio.

ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS MATRIX EXAMPLE - DRIVING CONDITIONS

Ceraso, G 2015, ‘Analysis v. synthesis’, YouTube video, viewed 11 July 2017, < https://youtu.be/JdP1S0qj5vg >.

Kolb, DA 1984, Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs.

Marshall, H 2011, ‘‘Good’ qualitative analysis – examiners’ views’, Proceedings of the 2011 TASA Conference: Local Lives Global Networks, Newcastle, Australia, 28 November - 1 December, 2011, pp. 1-13.

Michigan State University 2017, Introduction to syntheses, viewed 13 June 2017, < https://msu.edu/~jdowell/135/Synthesis.html#anchor48017 >.

Prpic, JK 2005, Reflective learning spiral, viewed 13 June 2017, < http://cmapspublic.ihmc.us/rid=1PC8NRGW0-2BL1DL-2GNL/ReflectiveLearningSpiral-JKayaPRPIC.cmap >.

WritingforCollege.org 2013 ‘Analysis’, viewed 22 June 2017, < http://www.tc.umn.edu/~jewel001/CollegeWriting/WRITEREAD/Analysis/default.htm >.

Source of Images

Analysis and synthesis: 13 June 2017 from: < http://www.solvingforpattern.org/2013/04/24/a-science-of-analysis-synthesis/ >.

Module Creator/Author: Dr Christine Angel, 16 July 2017

Analysis and Synthesis

Why it matters: analysis and synthesis.

The skills of analysis and synthesis are vital to academic writing; they are necessary for you to establish your ethos with fellow scholars and professionals in your field. In academic writing, you must first research and understand the conversation around a specific topic before you can attempt to add to it. In order to understand this conversation, you need to locate credible and recent academic sources on the topic, analyze them individually, and then synthesize them in order to identify patterns, trends, gaps, limitations, etc.

In this unit, we will discuss the importance of analyzing each source individually, and then synthesizing them with other, similar sources to understand the current state of the research surrounding the topic. Basically, if you want to learn more about your field, you must read credible sources that are backed by primary and secondary research; you must learn to understand these sources in isolation as well as how they fit together.

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Analysis and Synthesis

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Data analysis is a challenging stage of the integrative review process as it requires the reviewer to synthesize data from diverse methodological sources. Although established approaches to data analysis and synthesis of integrative review findings continue to evolve, adherence to systematic methods during this stage is essential to mitigating potential bias. The use of rigorous and transparent data analysis methods facilitates an evidence synthesis that can be confidently incorporated into practice. This chapter discusses strategies for data analysis including creating a data matrix and presents inductive analysis approaches to support the integration and interpretation of data from a body of literature. This chapter also discusses the presentation of results and includes examples of narrative and thematic syntheses from recently published integrative reviews.

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Dwyer, P.A. (2020). Analysis and Synthesis. In: Toronto, C., Remington, R. (eds) A Step-by-Step Guide to Conducting an Integrative Review. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37504-1_5

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• Design Thinking Tutorial
• Design Thinking - Home
• Design Thinking - Introduction
• Design Thinking - Definition
• Design Thinking - Applications
• Design Thinking - Solution-Based
• Analysis Vs Synthesis
• Design Thinking - Divergent
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Design Thinking - Analysis Vs Synthesis

In this chapter, we will see the difference between two ways of solution-based thinking, i.e. Analysis and Synthesis, and also get to know how it helps in design thinking.

Analysis is derived from the Greek word ‘analusis’, which translates into ‘breaking up’ in English. Analysis is older than the times of great philosophers like Aristotle and Plato. As discussed in the previous section, analysis is the process of breaking down a big single entity into multiple fragments. It is a deduction where a bigger concept is broken down to smaller ones . This breaking down into smaller fragments is necessary for improved understanding.

So, how does analysis help in design thinking? During analysis, design thinkers are required to break down the problem statement into smaller parts and study each one of them separately. The different smaller components of the problem statement are to be solved one-by-one, if possible. Then, solutions are thought for each of the small problems. Brainstorming is done over each of the solutions.

Later, a feasibility check is done to include the feasible and viable solutions. The solutions that don’t stand firm on the grounds of feasibility and viability are excluded from the set of solutions to be considered.

Design thinkers are, then, encouraged to connect with the diverse ideas and examine the way each idea was composed. This process of breaking down the bigger problem statement at hand into multiple smaller problem statements and examining each as a separate entity is called analysis.

Reductionism

The underlying assumption in analysis is reductionism . Reductionism states that the reality around us can be reduced down to invisible parts. The embodiment of this principle is found in basic axioms of analytic geometry, which says “the whole is equal to the sum of its parts”. However, understanding of a system cannot be developed by analysis alone. Hence, synthesis is required following analysis.

Synthesis refers to the process of combining the fragmented parts into an aggregated whole. It is an activity that is done at the end of the scientific or creative inquiry. This process leads to creation of a coherent bigger entity, which is something new and fresh. How does synthesis come into picture in design thinking?

Once the design thinkers have excluded the non-feasible and non-viable solutions and have zeroed-in on the set of feasible and viable solutions, it is time for the thinkers to put together their solutions.

Out of 10 available solutions, around 2-3 solutions may need to be excluded since they may not fit into the larger picture, i.e. the actual solution. This is where synthesis helps.

The design thinkers start from a big entity called the problem statement and then end up with another bigger entity, i.e. the solution. The solution is completely different from the problem statement. During synthesis, it is ensured that the different ideas are in sync with each other and do not lead to conflicts.

Analysis + Synthesis = Design Thinking

Analysis and synthesis, thus, form the two fundamental tasks to be done in design thinking. Design thinking process starts with reductionism, where the problem statement is broken down into smaller fragments. Each fragment is brainstormed over by the team of thinkers, and the different smaller solutions are then put together to form a coherent final solution. Let us take a look at an example.

Problem Statement − Suppose the problem statement at hand is to contain the attrition that happens in companies worldwide. High quality employees leave the organization, mainly after the appraisal cycle. As a result, an average company loses its valuable human resources and suffers from an overhead of transferring the knowledge to a new employee. This takes time and additional human resource in the form of a trainer, which adds to the company’s costs. Devise a plan to contain attrition in the company.

Analysis − Now, let’s break down the problem statement into various constituent parts. Following are the subparts of the same problem statement, broken down to elementary levels.

• The employees are not motivated anymore to work in the company.
• Appraisal cycle has something to do with attrition.
• Knowledge transfer is necessary for new employees.
• Knowledge transfer adds to the cost of the company.

Synthesis − Now, let's start solving each problem individually. In this step, we will do synthesis. Let's look at one problem at a time and try to find a solution only for that problem statement, without thinking of other problem statements.

To solve the problem of lack of motivation, the management can plan some sort of incentives that can be given on a regular basis. The efforts put in by the employees must be rewarded well. This will keep the employees motivated.

To solve the issue of occurrence of attrition during appraisal cycle, the management can conduct a meeting with the employees leaving the organization, and take their insight as to what led them to leave the company.

For knowledge transfer, the management can hire only those people who are experts in a domain.

Regarding concerns for budget of knowledge transfer, the management can have a document prepared by experts in a domain and this document can be uploaded on intranet. This can be made available to new joinees. Hence, additional human resource is not required for knowledge transfer and this will reduce the figures in the company's budget.

Now, if we observe carefully, the third solution may not be feasible all the time. We cannot be assured of expert professionals coming for interviews all the time. Moreover, expert professionals demand more compensation than not-so-expert professionals. This will increase the company's budget.

Hence, we will now combine the other three solutions to form a coherent one. The final solution will be for the management to first have a talk with the employees leaving the organization to know the reasons behind attrition, then come up with awards in suitable categories and then, create an easily and universally accessible document in the organization for knowledge transfer.

This way, analysis and synthesis together help in design thinking process. Design thinkers start with breaking down a problem into smaller problems that can be handled and studied easily. Then, the different solutions are combined to form a coherent single solution.

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• Conducting a Literature Review by Ann Dyer Last Updated Aug 13, 2024 1978 views this year

Doing Diligence

The first step in any systematic review or other type of evidence synthesis project is to search the existing literature to identify what research, both primary and secondary, has already been conducted. As with any publication, your review will likely need to be original/novel in order to be of interest to editors and publications. In addition, duplicating a previously done study may not add new understandings to the body of evidence. Here are some questions for consideration:

• Has your research question already been answered?
• How recently has the existing secondary research been conducted/published?
• Does the existing secondary research need to be updated due to new original research that has been conducted after its publication?
• Is there existing secondary research that answers a different research question than the one you want to answer?
• How does your question, methodology, or timing differ from existing research?

All of these questions will help you identify  why  you would conduct this new study. It is disheartening (at best) to learn part way through an evidence synthesis project that the research has already been conducted.

Search Published Literature

Search for published studies that address your research question. This should be done in several different databases to ensure you have a solid sense of what has already been accomplished. It will also inform the way that you create your search strategy for this study, as you'll learn the types of words that are used to describe this research question, publications that have published these types of studies, and how the articles have been indexed within the databases. Below are a few databases that you might consider searching for health sciences publications.

• PubMed This link to PubMed is for those affiliated with WSU. PubMed comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
• EMBASE Embase is an abstract and Indexing (A & I) database covering over 8,500 journal titles, 30 million articles back to 1974, all disciplines of medicine and biomedical science, and includes substantial coverage of Allied Health subjects.
• CINAHL Complete (EBSCOHost) CINAHL Complete is the world's most comprehensive source of full-text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 1,300 journals indexed in CINAHL.
• APA PsycInfo (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window An index with summaries of citations to articles in over 1,300 psychology research journals. Articles date from 1806 - present. Note: There are less than 146 records with publication dates prior to 1890. Updated weekly.

Search for Preregistrations

In addition to finding articles that have already been published, you will need to search registries to see if others are currently in the process of researching this topic/question, just as you would for clinical research. Here are a few repositories for you to search:

• Open Science Framework (OSF) Registries
• Cochrane Preregistrations
• Campbell Preregistrations

Identification of Review Type

While considering conducting a literature review, you should compare your draft research question to the different review types that can be used to explore the existing research. Some types, such as narrative reviews, do not consider the literature search as a formal methodology, while others such as Systematic Reviews view the literature search as a reproducible research methodology.

As a first step, search the literature for other published articles and studies that address the same or similar research question. The quantity, quality, and depth of existing research will be an important component in deciding on a review type.

Selection of the review type includes not only aspirations for what the review could accomplish, but also pragmatic limitations based on how much time the team has to devote to the project, how many team members are participating in the review, and deadlines for the review completion (such as the date of an upcoming conference). In addition, the breadth of the research question may result in a large number of search results; this should be considered in terms of the number of team members involved in the screening and abstraction of the included studies, as well as whether the research question should be narrowed or include more limitations/exclusion criteria in order to satisfy the practical limitations of the team.

Use the decision tree below from Cornell University to determine what type of review best suits your question/topic and available resources. The PDF is linked for you to view/download along with descriptions of the review types, with an image of the decision tree displayed on this page. To learn more about the different types, purposes, and methods of reviews, click the "Types of Reviews" link below the decision tree. 

Types of Reviews

• What Type of Review is Right For You? | Decision Tree

Reproduced from Grant, M. J. and Booth, A. (2009), A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 26: 91–108. doi: 10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x 

Develop a Searchable Question

When developing a searchable question, it helps to identify the key concepts of your research proposal. A clear and precise search question can be used to develop search terms during the literature searching process.

There are a number of frameworks available to use to help you break your question into its key concepts. Take a look at the frameworks below. 

• Evidence-Based Practice
• General Health
• Health Management

From BMJ Best Practice :

The PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparator and Outcomes) model captures the key elements and is a good strategy to provide answerable questions.

Population : who are the relevant patients or the target audience for the problem being addressed?      Example: In women with non-tubal infertility

Intervention : what intervention is being considered?     Example: …would intrauterine insemination…

Comparator : what is the main comparator to the intervention that you want to assess?      Example: …when compared with fallopian tube sperm perfusion…

Outcomes : what are the consequences of the interventions for the patient? Or what are the main outcomes of interest to the patient or decision maker?      Example: …lead to higher live birth rates with no increase in multiple pregnancy, miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy rates?

How to clarify a clinical question. (n.d.). BMJ Best Practice . Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://bestpractice.bmj.com/info/us/toolkit/learn-ebm/how-to-clarify-a-clinical-question/

From "Formulating the Evidence Based Practice Question":

Setting : What is the context for the question? The research evidence should reflect the context or the research findings may not be transferable.

Perspective : Who are the users, potential users, or stakeholders of the service?

Intervention : What is being done for the users, potential users, or stakeholders?

Comparison : What are the alternatives? An alternative might maintain the status quo and change nothing.

Evaluation : What measurement will determine the intervention’s success? In other words, what is the result?

Davies, K. S. (2011). Formulating the Evidence Based Practice Question: A Review of the Frameworks. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice , 6 (2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.18438/B8WS5N

From "How CLIP became ECLIPSE":

Expectation —what does the search requester want the information for (the original ‘I’s)? Client Group Location Impact:  what is the change in the service, if any, which is being looked for? What would constitute success? How is this being measured? Professionals Service:  for which service are you looking for information? For example, outpatient services, nurse-led clinics, intermediate care

Wildridge, V., & Bell, L. (2002). How CLIP became ECLIPSE: A mnemonic to assist in searching for health policy/management information. Health Information & Libraries Journal , 19 (2), 113–115. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1471-1842.2002.00378.x

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