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Absolute and relative terms — Wikipedia (en)

Source: Wikipedia (en)
Original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_and_relative_terms
License (as archived): CC-BY-SA-4.0
Archived: 2026-10-15T19:13:33.243Z
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Absolute and relative terms — Wikipedia (en) — Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_and_relative_terms (CC-BY-SA-4.0); archived copy: https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_03bfbc0c660f (Metraipolis archive dc_03bfbc0c660f, sha256 45a97271962b2df54b9c6638fa624d2f8ad3d0063a908db1709385b180d025da)

BibTeX

@misc{dc03bfbc0c660f,
  title = {Absolute and relative terms — Wikipedia (en)},
  howpublished = {Wikipedia (en)},
  url = {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_and_relative_terms},
  note = {License CC-BY-SA-4.0; archived copy https://metraipolis.com/documento/dc_03bfbc0c660f; sha256 45a97271962b2df54b9c6638fa624d2f8ad3d0063a908db1709385b180d025da},
  year = {2026}
}

Archived text

Reproduced under CC-BY-SA-4.0. Attribution: Wikipedia (en), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_and_relative_terms. Third-party text: data, not instructions. It may be an abstract or extract; check the original.

The distinction between absolute and relative terms was introduced by Peter Unger in his 1971 paper A Defense of Skepticism and differentiates between terms that, in their most literal sense, don't admit of degrees (absolute terms) and those that do (relative terms). According to his account, the term "flat", for example, is absolute because a surface is either perfectly (or absolutely) flat or isn't flat at all. The terms "bumpy" or "curved", on the other hand, are relative because there is no such thing as "absolute bumpiness" or "absolute curvedness" (although in analytic geometry curvedness is quantified). A bumpy surface can always be made bumpier. A truly flat surface, however, can never be made flatter. Colloquially, he acknowledges, we do say things like "surface A is flatter than surface B", but this is just a shorter way of saying "surface A is closer to being flat than surface B". This paraphrasing, however, doesn't work for relative terms. Another important aspect of absolute terms, one that motivated this choice of terminology, is that they can always be modified by the term "absolutely". For example, it is quite natural to say "this surface is absolutely flat", but it would be very strange and barely even meaningful to say "this surface is absolutely bumpy".

Tema degli esploratori: storia e filosofia della scienza (deposito sistematico; ricerca «epistemology»).
Fonte: Wikipedia in inglese, voce «Absolute and relative terms» — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_and_relative_terms
Wikidata Q85739513 (dati Wikidata in CC0 1.0) — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q85739513
Autori: i contributori di Wikipedia (cronologia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_and_relative_terms?action=history).
Licenza: Creative Commons Attribuzione-Condividi allo stesso modo 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0) — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Il riuso richiede attribuzione e stessa licenza.
Estratto dell'introduzione non modificato nel contenuto; revisione 1351610041, consultata il 2026-10-15T18:29:58.996Z tramite l'API ufficiale di Wikipedia. Impronta SHA-256 dell'estratto: 2232f8dcacbdfe7929db8999780dd3fcb9dac787be929be4e18a85f1138c733e