Proposition

PROPOSITION

What is a proposition? According to bailey, “ generally a proposition is simply a statement about one or more concept or variables. A proposition that discusses a single variable is called univariate. A bivariate proposition is one that relates two variables, while a proposition relating to more than two variables is called multivariate.

Types of proposition:

There are several types of propositions. According to bailey, just as concept are the building blocks of proposition – Propositions are the building blocks of theories. As such they have been given different names depending upon their theoretical uses. Sub-types of propositions include, hypothesis, empirical generalizations, axioms, postulates, and theorems.

a) Hypothesis:

A Hypothesis may be defined as a “tentative point of view” for explaining certain facts or relationships and as a guide in further investigation of other facts or relationship. Thus, a hypothesis is a proposition, which has not been tested and is only a provisional explanation of a phenomenon or a tentative solution of a problem.

b) Empirical generalization:

“ Empirical generalization” is an important type of generalization. “An empirical generalization is a relationship, which is established by induction. It is a statement of relationship that is constructed by first discovering and observing the existence of a relationship (in one or a few instances) and then generalization to say that the observed relationship holds true in all cases (or most of the cases)”.

c) Postulates, axioms and theorems:

The researcher should know that “true or self-evident statements as described in the terms above, from which other statements are deduced are called axioms or postulates.

It may be pointed out that the term “postulate” is generally used for such statements where truth can be established empirically. It may be further pointed out that a proposition that can be deducted from set of postulates is known as a theorem. What is important to understand is that postulates need not be tested like hypothesis? It may be concluded that hypothesis are either tested or data may be collected for testing empirical generalizations. As Axioms is by definition true and is not pre-testable. Similarly, a postulate is not directly testable but is assumed to be true by definition just as an axiom is. The character of a theorem is that it is deduced from an axiom or postulate and thus directly testable.