A fact is a true datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means.
For example, "This sentence contains words." accurately describes a linguistic fact, and "The sun is a star" accurately describes an astronomical fact. Further, "Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States" and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated" both accurately describe historical facts. Generally speaking, facts are independent of belief and of knowledge and opinion.
Facts are different from inferences, theories, values, and objects.
The word fact derives from the Latin factum. It was first used in English with the same meaning: "a thing done or performed" a meaning now obsolete. The common usage of "something that has really occurred or is the case" dates from the mid-16th century.
Barbara J. Shapiro wrote in her book A Culture of Fact how the concept of a fact evolved, starting within the English legal tradition of the 16th century.
In 1870, Charles Sanders Peirce described in his book "The Fixation of Belief" four methods which people use to decide what they should believe: tenacity, method of authority, a priori and scientific method.
The term fact also indicates a matter under discussion deemed to be true or correct, such as to emphasize a point or prove a disputed issue; (e.g., "... the fact of the matter is ...").
Alternatively, fact may also indicate an allegation or stipulation of something that may or may not be a true fact, (e.g., "the author's facts are not trustworthy"). This alternate usage, although contested by some, has a long history in standard English according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. The Oxford English Dictionary dates this use to 1729.
Fact may also indicate findings derived through a process of evaluation, including review of testimony, direct observation, or otherwise; as distinguishable from matters of inference or speculation.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
En utilisant les outils de l'histoire des savoirs, des sciences et des techniques, de l'épistémologie mais aussi de la sociologie et de l'anthropologie, il s'agira de comprendre comment les savoirs so
Le cours de Théorie de l'Urbanisme traite des modèles, projets et techniques de l'urbanisme entre XVIIIe et XXIe siècle, en mettant en relation discours théorique et projet, texte et image. Le projet
We are urged to live emotionally rich and fulfilling lives, but the meaning of this injunction is often mysterious or even suspect. This course addresses, from a philosophical perspective and in a coo
Virtual reality (VR) is immersive not only because of visual integration, but because we can act and perform in a virtual environment (VE). Beyond the mere fact that a VR system provides images comput
Max-stable processes arise as the only possible nontrivial limits for maxima of affinely normalized identically distributed stochastic processes, and thus form an important class of models for the ext
Oxford University Press2014
Our brain continuously self-organizes to construct and maintain an internal representation of the world based on the information arriving through sensory stimuli. Remarkably, cortical areas related to
Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term law has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) across all fields of natural science (physics, chemistry, astronomy, geoscience, biology). Laws are developed from data and can be further developed through mathematics; in all cases they are directly or indirectly based on empirical evidence.
A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their metaphysical status has been a subject of controversy in philosophy, with modal realists such as David Lewis arguing that they are literally existing alternate realities, and others such as Robert Stalnaker arguing that they are not.
A belief is a subjective attitude that a proposition is true or a state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some stance, take, or opinion about something. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white".