Application
Despite the controversial philosophical origins of the concept, particularly its close association with logical positivism, operational definitions have undisputed practical applications. This is especially so in the social and medical sciences, where operational definitions of key terms are used to preserve the unambiguous empirical testability of hypothesis and theory. Operational definitions are also important in the physical sciences.
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Famous quotes containing the word application:
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea!—incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Great abilites are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and colouring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)