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Incommensurable   Listen
adjective
Incommensurable  adj.  Not commensurable; having no common measure or standard of comparison; as, quantities are incommensurable when no third quantity can be found that is an aliquot part of both; the side and diagonal of a square are incommensurable with each other; the diameter and circumference of a circle are incommensurable. "They are quantities incommensurable."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Incommensurable" Quotes from Famous Books



... possessor of ten thousand would not deprive him of anything really conducive either to the support or to the comfort of existence; and, if such would be the effect of taking five pounds from one whose income is fifty, the sacrifice required from the last is not only greater than, but entirely incommensurable with, that imposed upon the first. The mode of adjusting these inequalities of pressure which seems to be the most equitable is that recommended by Bentham, of leaving a certain minimum of income, sufficient to provide the necessaries of life, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... battalions, composing polygons and other regular figures? that the number six has the advantage of being the least of all the numbers that are called perfect? that in a plane six equal circles may touch a seventh? that of all equal bodies, the sphere has the least surface? that [429] certain lines are incommensurable, and consequently ill-adapted for harmony? Do we not see that all these advantages or disadvantages spring from the idea of the thing, and that the contrary would imply contradiction? Can it be thought that ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... changes of the weather would run through their course. According to the present theory, it is not likely such a cycle will ever be discovered. There are too many secular, as well as periodic influences combining, to produce the effect; and the times are too incommensurable. Lately, Mr. Glaisher has presented a paper to the Royal Society, giving about fourteen years from observation. Others have lately attempted to connect the changes of the seasons with the solar spots, as well as with ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... less is not due to the labour, but to certain additional qualities present, in the three superior acres and not present in the worst one. In other words, although in producing loaves—or, as Mill describes it, "the effect"—the parts played by labour and nature are indefinite and incommensurable so long as the land, the labour, and the effect remain all three the same, the parts become immediately measurable when the effect begins to vary, and one of the causes, and only one of them, at the same time ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... is opposed to efficiency. Whether called culture or complete development of personality, the outcome is identical with the true meaning of social efficiency whenever attention is given to what is unique in an individual—and he would not be an individual if there were not something incommensurable about him. Its opposite is the mediocre, the average. Whenever distinctive quality is developed, distinction of personality results, and with it greater promise for a social service which goes beyond the supply in quantity of material commodities. For how can there be a society really ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... of convention," and "the normal as fixed by nature herself." On the theory enunciated by Watts-Dunton, everything except the perfect average is absolutely funny, and the perfect average, of course, is generally an incommensurable quantity. Chesterton carefully made it his business to present the eccentricity—I use the word in its literal sense—of most things, and the humour followed in accordance with the above definition. The method was simple. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West



Words linked to "Incommensurable" :   uncomparable, incomparable



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