| social relation | a relation between living organisms (especially between people) |
| social dancing | dancing as part of a social occasion |
welfare work
social service | an organized activity to improve the condition of disadvantaged people in society |
sleep-learning
hypnopedia | teaching during sleep (as by using recordings to teach a foreign language to someone who is asleep) |
| social activity | activity considered appropriate on social occasions |
social welfare
welfare
public assistance | governmental provision of economic assistance to persons in need, she lives on welfare |
| social insurance | government provision for unemployed, injured, or aged people, financed by contributions from employers and employees as well as by government revenue |
supplementary benefit
social assistance
national assistance | benefits paid to bring incomes up to minimum levels established by law |
| Social Security | social welfare program in the U.S., includes old-age and survivors insurance and some unemployment insurance and old-age assistance |
| social control | control exerted (actively or passively) by group action |
| social work | any of various services designed to aid the poor and aged and to increase the welfare of children |
| social insect | an insect that lives in a colony with other insects of the same species |
brain
brainpower
learning ability
mental capacity
mentality
wit | mental ability, he's got plenty of brains but no common sense |
desire to know
lust for learning
thirst for knowledge | curiosity that motivates investigation and study |
learning
acquisition | the cognitive process of acquiring skill or knowledge, the child's acquisition of language |
| developmental learning | learning that takes place as a normal part of cognitive development |
| language learning | learning to use a language |
rote
rote learning | memorization by repetition |
big-bang theory
big bang theory | (cosmology) the theory that the universe originated sometime betweenbillion andbillion years ago from the cataclysmic explosion of a small volume of matter at extremely high density and temperature |
steady state theory
continuous creation theory | (cosmology) the theory that the universe maintains a constant average density with matter created to fill the void left by galaxies that are receding from each other, the steady state theory has been abandoned in favor of the big bang theory |
hypothesis
possibility
theory | a tentative insight into the natural world, a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena, a scientific hypothesis that survives experimental testing becomes a scientific theory, he proposed a fresh theory of alkalis that later was accepted in chemical practices |
| M-theory | (particle physics) a theory that involves an eleven-dimensional universe in which the weak and strong forces and gravity are unified and to which all the string theories belong |
| string theory | (particle physics) a theory that postulates that subatomic particles are one-dimensional strings |
| theory | a belief that can guide behavior, the architect has a theory that more is less, they killed him on the theory that dead men tell no tales |
eruditeness
erudition
learnedness
learning scholarship
encyclopedism
encyclopaedism | profound scholarly knowledge |
| theory | a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena, theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses, true in fact and theory |
theory of gravitation
theory of gravity
gravitational theory
Newton's theory of gravitation | (physics) the theory that any two particles of matter attract one another with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them |
preformation
theory of preformation | a theory (popular in the th century and now discredited) that an individual develops by simple enlargement of a tiny fully formed organism (a homunculus) that exists in the germ cell |
| scientific theory | a theory that explains scientific observations, scientific theories must be falsifiable |
| field theory | (physics) a theory that explains a physical phenomenon in terms of a field and the manner in which it interacts with matter or with other fields |
| economic theory | (economics) a theory of commercial activities (such as the production and consumption of goods) |
Malthusianism
Malthusian theory | Malthus' theory that population increase would outpace increases in the means of subsistence |
communications
communication theory | the discipline that studies the principles of transmiting information and the methods by which it is delivered (as print or radio or television etc.), communications is his major field of study |
| set theory | the branch of pure mathematics that deals with the nature and relations of sets |
| group theory | the branch of mathematics dealing with groups |
| Galois theory | group theory applied to the solution of algebraic equations |
probability theory
theory of probability | the branch of applied mathematics that deals with probabilities |
atomism
atomic theory
atomist theory
atomistic theory | (chemistry) any theory in which all matter is composed of tiny discrete finite indivisible indestructible particles, the ancient Greek philosophers Democritus and Epicurus held atomic theories of the universe |
holism
holistic theory | the theory that the parts of any whole cannot exist and cannot be understood except in their relation to the whole, holism holds that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, holistic theory has been applied to ecology and language and mental states |
| atomic theory | a theory of the structure of the atom |
| Bohr theory | (physics) a theory of atomic structure that combined Rutherford's model with the quantum theory, electrons orbiting a nucleus can only be in certain stationary energy states and light is emitted when electrons jump from one energy state to another |
cell theory
cell doctrine | (biology) the theory that cells form the fundamental structural and functional units of all living organisms, proposed in by Matthias Schleiden and by Theodor Schwann |
wave theory
undulatory theory
wave theory of light | (physics) the theory that light is transmitted as waves |
corpuscular theory
corpuscular theory of light | (physics) the theory that light is transmitted as a stream of particles |
kinetic theory
kinetic theory of gases | (physics) a theory that gases consist of small particles in random motion |
relativity
theory of relativity
relativity theory
Einstein's theory of relativity | (physics) the theory that space and time are relative concepts rather than absolute concepts |
general relativity
general theory of relativity
general relativity theory
Einstein's general theory of relativity | a generalization of special relativity to include gravity (based on the principle of equivalence) |
special relativity
special theory of relativity
special relativity theory
Einstein's special theory of relativity | a physical theory of relativity based on the assumption that the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant and the assumption that the laws of physics are invariant in all inertial systems |
| quantum theory | (physics) a physical theory that certain properties occur only in discrete amounts (quanta) |
| kinetic theory of heat | a theory that the temperature of a body increases when kinetic energy increases |