SCEPTICISM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Scepticism

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noun

Scepticism n. See Skepticism.

Skepticism n. (Written also scepticism)

An undecided, inquiring state of mind; doubt; uncertainty. "That momentary amazement, and irresolution, and confusion, which is the result of skepticism."

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

(Theol.) A doubting of the truth of revelation, or a denial of the divine origin of the Christian religion, or of the being, perfections, or truth of God. "Let no... secret skepticism lead any one to doubt whether this blessed prospect will be realized."

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Etymology of 'Scepticism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Scepticism" Quotes from Famous Books

... not mad," said the constable sententiously. The police is always the incarnation of scepticism.—"Monsieur le Baron Hulot has been caught by a trick," he added, loud enough for Valerie to ...

— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... comprehensive satire ever written, for it is utterly independent of time, place, and manners. Faust gives us the natural history of the human intellect, Mephistopheles being merely the projected impersonation of that scepticism which is the invariable result of a purely intellectual culture. These four books are the only ones in which universal facts of human nature and experience are ideally represented. They can, therefore, never be displaced. Whatever moral significance there ...

— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... if it were so— that the saint who stood over her, and whose cross she had so lately kissed, would not let her perish from beneath his feet? In these moments her mind wandered in a maze of religious doubts and fears, and she entertained, unconsciously, enough of doctrinal scepticism to found a school of freethinkers. Could it be that God would punish her with everlasting torments because in her agony she was driven to this as her only mode of relief? Would there be no measuring of her sins against her sorrows, and no account taken ...

— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... been. It is of course possible to hold that the story of the dream is pure fiction, and that the lines which Baeda translated were not Caedmon's at all. But there is really nothing to justify this extreme of scepticism. As the hymn is said to have been Caedmon's first essay in verse, its lack of poetic merit is rather an argument for its genuineness than against it. Whether Baeda's narrative be historical or not—and it involves nothing ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... a spirit was dominant in the minds of men like Bodin, it will be evident that a charge of impiety or atheism might well follow a profession of disbelief, or even scepticism, as to the powers of witches or of evil spirits. A maxim familiar as an utterance of Sir Thomas Browne, "Ubi tres medici duo athei," was, no doubt, in common use in Cardan's time; and he, as a doctor, ...

— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

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