SKEPTICISM • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Skepticism

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/skˈɛptɪsˌɪzəm/ Listen

noun

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 'Skepticism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Skepticism" Quotes from Famous Books

... you cry out? Mr. Stirling, am I not right?" Madame appealed to the one face on which no amusement or skepticism was shown. ...

— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford

... skepticism, but plied his paddle again. He was not as concerned about the launch as he pretended, of course; at the worst it probably meant that Stinson had been entertaining some of his friends on the sly. He had no intention of handing his mysterious passenger to the police. But was he to let her ...

— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... traces of them may be detected in the literature of the ancient world, and even in the writings of mediaeval times; nay, it might not be too much to affirm that in the systems of Oriental Superstition, and in the Schools of Grecian Skepticism, several of them were more fully taught in early times than they have yet been in Modern Europe, and that the recent attempts to reconstruct and reproduce them in a shape adapted to the present stage of civilization, ...

— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... understand them. "Our venerable mother," says the great historian from whom we have already quoted, "had contrived to unite the opposite extremes of bigotry and indifference"; and these blended influences, which led Gibbon first to Rome, and then to skepticism, proved no doubt to the average mind a mere narcotic to all spiritual life. Gibbon is not the only great writer who has recorded his testimony against Hanoverian Oxford. Adam Smith in that work which has been called, ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... merchants who are assembled in a tavern at Paris, are represented as conversing on the subject of their wives: all of them express themselves with levity, or skepticism, or scorn, on the virtue of women, except a young Genoese merchant named Bernabo, who maintains, that by the especial favor of Heaven he possesses a wife no less chaste than beautiful. Heated by the wine, and excited by the arguments and the coarse raillery of another young merchant, Ambrogiolo, ...

— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

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