| 释义 |
ideal, a. and n.|aɪˈdiːəl|
[a. F. idéal (16–17th c. in Hatz.-Darm.), ad. late L. ideālis, f. idea idea. Cf. It. ideale, Sp., Pg. ideal.]
A. adj.
1. a. Existing as an idea or archetype; relating to or consisting of ideas (in the Platonic sense): see idea n. 1.
1647H. More Song of Soul i. ii. x, His Ideall, And Centrall presence is in every Atom-ball. 1691–8Norris Pract. Disc. (1711) III. 153 The Natural existence of things is founded upon their Ideal existence; if things had not first existed in Idea, they could never have existed in Nature. 1701― Ideal World i. i. 8 By the Ideal state of things I mean that state of them which is necessary, permanent and immutable, not only antecedent and præexisting to this, but also exemplary and representative of it..according to which it was made. 1896Duke of Argyll Philos. Belief 88 Moulded on a mental plan..so clear, that every bone..and even in some cases the absence of a bone, can be referred with certainty to one ideal plan.
b. Sociol. ideal type [ad. G. idealtypus (M. Weber 1922, in Grundriss d. Sozialökonomik i. i. 3), f. ideal a. + typus type n.1], a hypothetical construct made up of the salient features or elements of a social phenomenon, or generalized concept, in order to facilitate comparison and classification of what is found in operation. Also (with hyphen) attrib. Hence ideal-typical a., of or pertaining to an ideal type; ideal typology, the concept of ideal types.
1928P. A. Sorokin Contemp. Sociol. Theories xii. 677 The outlined ‘spirit of modern capitalism’ is an example of one of the ‘ideal types’ of Max Weber. 1936Wirth & Shils tr. Mannheim's Ideology & Utopia iv. 189 The pure types..of the utopian mind are constructions only in so far as they are conceived of as ideal-types. Ibid. 204 Max Weber always insisted that his general typology was created in order to characterize ideal-typical tendencies, and not immediately perceivable unique constellations. 1947Henderson & Parsons tr. Weber's Theory Social & Econ. Organiz. i. i. 84 As a type (‘ideal type’) which has the merit of clear understandability and lack of ambiguity. 1949R. K. Merton Social Theory xiv. 329 The Puritan ethic, as an ideal-typical expression of the value-attitudes basic to ascetic Protestantism generally, so canalized the interests of seventeenth-century Englishmen. 1962T. B. Bottomore Sociol. ii. 33 Weber's exposition of his ‘ideal type’ method. 1964Gould & Kolb Dict. Social Sci. 311/2 Ideal-type analysis denotes a method of sociological analysis associated with the name of M. Weber. 1964I. L. Horowitz New Sociol. 42 Accounts of history that..were at best ‘ideal-typologies’ with strong subjective biases. Ibid. 456 The idealized or ideal-typical individual entrepreneur as against the political collectivity.
2. a. Conceived or regarded as perfect or supremely excellent in its kind; answering to one's highest conception. Cf. idea n. 2, 3.
1613R. Cawdrey Table Alph. (ed. 3), Ideall, proper. 1626Jackson Creed viii. iii. §2 The Almighty Lord..the very law or Idæal rule of all righteousnesse. 1736Bolingbroke Patriot. (1749) 177 The practice of morality..will never arrive at ideal perfection. 1843Ruskin Arrows of Chace (1880) I. 10 Ideal beauty is the generalization of consummate knowledge, the concentration of perfect truth. 1861Baroness Bunsen in Hare Life II. v. 298 The sea-coast in the winter is to me an ideal enjoyment, by which I mean, completely the thing I like. 1874Green Short Hist. iii. §1. 115 Sir Galahad, the type of ideal knighthood.
b. ideal language (Philos.): a supposed language which would mirror the world perfectly (cf. logically perfect language).
1922B. Russell in tr. Wittgenstein's Tractatus Introd. 8 The whole function of language is to have meaning, and it only fulfils this function in proportion as it approaches to the ideal language which we postulate. 1944M. Black in P. A. Schilpp Philos. B. Russell 251 The ‘ideal language’ is, by definition, the symbolism which would be entirely free from the philosophical defects which Russell claims to find in ordinary language. 1953G. E. M. Anscombe tr. Wittgenstein's Philos. Investigations i. §81 It may look as if what we were talking about were an ideal language. 1963R. Carnap in P. A. Schilpp Philos. R. Carnap 29 When we found in Wittgenstein's book statements about ‘the language’, we interpreted them as referring to an ideal language; and this meant for us a formalized symbolic language. 1964M. Black Compan. to Wittgenstein's Tractatus xx. 133 In this section W. seems to be subscribing to the ideal of an ‘ideal language’. But cf. 5.5563a (ordinary language is perfectly in order). 1967Encycl. Philos. VII. 361 The frequently recurring project of an ideal language is to be found for the first time in the very first extant treatise on language. 1973A. Kenny Wittgenstein iv. 70 In an ideal language,..to each element of the propositional sign would correspond a single object in the world.
3. a. Of, pertaining or relating to, or of the nature of an idea, mental image, or conception.
1611Cotgr., Ideal, ideall; imaginarie, conceiued in th' imagination; onely in fancie. 1661Boyle Style of Script. 232 All things Related to her..Refreshing him with an Ideal, in the Absence of an Immediate Presence of her. 1759Johnson Rasselas xlvii, An ideal form is no less real than material bulk: yet an ideal form has no extension. a1862Buckle Civiliz. (1873) III. v. 303 Starting from the so called nature of things, his first steps were ideal and from them he sought to advance to the actual.
b. Representing or embodying an idea or conception.
1846Ruskin Mod. Paint. (1851) II. iii. i. xiii. §2 Any work of art which represents, not a material object, but the mental conception of a material object, is, in the primary sense of the word, ideal. 1874J. T. Micklethwaite Mod. Par. Churches 112 The crucifix..is an ideal, not a realistic representation.
4. a. Existing only in idea; confined to thought or imagination; imaginary: opp. to real or actual. Hence sometimes, Not real or practical; based on an idea or fancy; fancied, visionary.
1611[see 3]. a1637Stirling Jonathan xxv, Fed their fancies with Ideall shewes. 1757Home Douglas 1, A river here, there an ideal line, By fancy drawn, divides the sister kingdoms. 1776Gibbon Decl. & F. I. x. 272 They despised the ideal terrors of a foreign superstition. 1787Winter Syst. Husb. 168 These assertions are not ideal, but are founded on facts and experiments. 1803W. Taylor in Monthly Mag. XIV. 492 Colour, time, space, may be said to have only an ideal reality. 1862H. Spencer First Princ. ii. ii. §43 (1875) 144 Ideal sights and sounds are in the insane..classed with real sights and sounds. 1877E. R. Conder Bas. Faith iii. 109 The facts are physical; their harmony is ideal. Ibid. 111 It is ideal, capable of existence only in thought; at all events inconceivable by us in any other way.
b. ideal construction (Philos.): a mental conception formed by abstracting properties found in experience and recombining or developing them; the process of forming such a conception.
1874G. H. Lewes Foundation of Creed I. 288 Hume did not clearly understand that Science is essentially an ideal construction very far removed from a real transcript of facts. 1877― Physical Basis of Mind i. i. 8 This unity is only recognised in an ideal construction which lets drop all concrete differences. Ibid. iii. i. 314 Science..is the systematisation of Experience under the forms of ideal constructions. 1883F. H. Bradley Princ. Logic I. ii. 75 Ideal constructions connected, by an inference through identity of quality, with the real that appears in present perception. 1890W. James Princ. Psychol. I. xiii. 533 We have a conception of absolute sameness,..but this..is an ideal construction got by following a certain direction of serial increase to its maximum supposable extreme. 1901G. F. Stout Man. Psychol. (ed. 2) iv. vi. §7. 531 The external world as an ideal construction is a social product. 1917J. Gibson Locke's Theory of Knowledge iv. 78 The nature of ideal construction as the discovery of possible alternatives admitted by the nature of some universal. 1946Mind LV. 153 Suppose, however, that Euclidean points are ideal constructions.
5. Philos. Regarding or treating ideas as the only real entities; of the nature of or pertaining to idealism; idealistic.
1764Reid Inquiry i. §7. 103 Des Cartes' system of the human understanding, which I shall beg leave to call the ideal system. 1792–1814D. Stewart Philos. Hum. Mind (1843) 317 As Clarke..regarded the principles of the ideal theory as incontrovertible, it was perfectly impossible for him, with all his acuteness, to detect the flaw to which Berkeley's paradox owed its plausibility. 1836Emerson Nature, Idealism Wks. (Bohn) II. 160 The frivolous make themselves merry with the Ideal theory..as if it affected the stability of nature.
6. a. Math. Applied to a number or quantity which has no actual existence, but is assumed for some purpose in a system of complex numbers.
1860H. J. S. Smith in Rep. Brit. Assoc. 132 (Theory of Numbers) The assertion that a given complex number contains an ideal factor, is only a convenient mode of expressing a certain set of congruential conditions which are satisfied by the coefficients of the complex number. Ibid. 133 Every ideal number is a divisor of an actual number. 1875B. Peirce in Amer. Jrnl. Math. (1881) IV. 216 The A, B, and C..may represent not merely the actual, but also the ideal, the impossible as well as the possible.
b. Geom. [ad. F. idéal, introduced in this sense by J. V. Poncelet (Traité des Propriétés proj. des Figures (1822) i. ii. §§50 ff.).] Having no proper existence in real Euclidean geometry as the thing so designated, but introduced into projective or complex geometry in order to do away with what would otherwise be exceptions to generalizations; chiefly in ideal point, the single point (at infinity) at which two parallel lines are regarded as intersecting; similarly ideal line, ideal plane, the single line (or plane) at infinity that is regarded as containing all the ideal points (or lines) of a plane (or of space).
1879Encycl. Brit. X. 389/1 We may say that all points at infinity in a line appear to us as one, and may be replaced by a single ‘ideal’ point. 1885C. Leudesdorf tr. Cremona's Elem. Projective Geom. xxi. 226 The segment HH′ has been called an ideal chord of the conic... Accepting this definition we may say that a diameter contains the middle points of all chords, real and ideal, which are parallel to the conjugate diameter. 1937B. C. Patterson Projective Geom. i. 4 Such considerations lead us to assume the existence, in each plane, of one and only one ideal line. It is the locus of all the ideal points of the plane, and it is also the line of intersection of the plane with all parallel planes. Ibid. 5 We assume..the existence of an ideal plane of space, the locus of all ideal points and ideal lines of space. 1962W. T. Fishback Projective & Euclidean Geom. iv. 32 We created the projective plane by adding ideal points and an ideal line to the Euclidean plane.
7. Comb. as ideal case, one perfect or supremely excellent of its kind; ideal copy Bibliogr., the most complete and perfect copy possible of an issue of a printed book, as properly described in a descriptive bibliography from the examination and analysis of multiple particular copies; ideal fluid, a hypothetical fluid that has no viscosity (no internal friction) and is incompressible; ideal gas, a hypothetical gas (which actual gases approach more or less closely in their behaviour) for which the product of the pressure and the volume (of a given mass) is proportional to its absolute temperature; ideal home, used, esp. in titles as Ideal Home Exhibition, Ideal Home Magazine, in the sense ‘a well-designed functional house (and its contents)’; ideal observer Philos. (see quot. 1957); ideal-real a., combining the ideal and the real; ideal-realism, a form of philosophy which combines the principles of idealism and realism; ideal state, an imaginary perfectly constituted political community, harmonious and stable; ideal utilitarianism, in ethics, any form of utilitarianism which takes other intrinsic goods besides pleasure as ultimate ends, together constituting an ideal end; so ideal utilitarian, an adherent of ideal utilitarianism; also as attrib. phr., of or pertaining to such a theory.
1847W. Whewell Philos. Inductive Sci. (ed. 2) xi. v. 49 A body left to itself will move on with unaltered velocity;..(taking this as our Ideal Case) we find that all actual cases are intelligible. 1961E. Nagel Struct. of Sci. xiii. 463 A..device commonly employed in the natural sciences is to formulate a law for a so-called ‘ideal case’... For example, Galileo's law for freely falling bodies is formulated for bodies moving in a vacuum.
1949F. Bowers Princ. Bibliogr. Descr. ii. 113 An ideal copy is a book which is complete in all its leaves as it ultimately left the printer's shop in perfect condition and in the complete state that he considered to represent the final and most perfect state of the book... [Footnote] Nothing is invented in the description of an ideal copy. Instead, all the evidence to be gained from the examination of numbers of copies is analyzed..in order to discover what was the actual most perfect form of the book achieved by the printer within an issue. 1952J. Carter ABC for Bk.-Collectors 102 Though it is possible for an individual example of the book in question to conform to it, the ‘ideal copy’ is a sort of Platonic archetype, exhibiting the final intention of the author, publisher and printer at the completion of printing, in so far as this is capable of being established. 1969E. W. Padwick Bibliogr. Method iii. 29 Partly because each library is mainly concerned with its own collection, and partly because of the extreme rarity of many incunabula, bibliographical descriptions of these works are based more often than not on the examination of works in a single collection and not on the characteristics of an ideal copy. 1972P. Gaskell New Introd. Bibliogr. 321 A bibliography based on analytical techniques is not the same thing as a catalogue of particular books... Indeed it does not describe particular books but ideal copies of its subjects, following the examination of as many actual copies as possible of each one.
1857Thomson & Joule in Proc. R. Soc. VIII. 556 If a solid..be carried uniformly through a perfect liquid. [Note] That is, as we shall call it for brevity, an ideal fluid, perfectly incompressible and perfectly free from mutual friction among its parts. 1948V. L. Streeter Fluid Dynamics i. 6 Many conclusions concerning the motion of a solid through an ideal fluid are applicable with slight modification to the motion of an airship through the air or to the motion of a submarine through the ocean.
1891G. Kamensky tr. Mendeléeff's Princ. Chem. I. ii. 139 For a so-called perfect (ideal) gas, or for considerable variations of density, the elementary expression pv = Ra(t + at), or pv = R(273 + t) should be accepted. 1948Glasstone Textbk. Physical Chem. (ed. 2) iii. 192 For a given mass of an ideal gas at constant pressure, therefore,..the volume is proportional to the absolute temperature. This relationship..is the basis of an ideal gas scale of temperature. Ibid., Instead of defining an ideal gas as one obeying the laws of Boyle and Gay-Lussac, it may be described as one to which Boyle's law is applicable, and whose internal energy is independent of its volume at all temperatures; it can be shown..that these two postulates include Gay-Lussac's law.
1913R. Fry Lett. (1972) II. 371 You left a letter here from the Ideal Home Exhibition people asking Lewis to do decorations. Ibid. 373 I've not heard a word about the Ideal Home. Has it been a success..? 1925A. Huxley Those Barren Leaves i. iv. 41 Agreeing..was a labour-saving device..a necessity in this Ideal Home. 1935Burlington Mag. Jan. 3/2 The plans rather suggest an Ideal Home Exibition. 1967K. Giles Death in Diamonds vi. 105 A big room furnished with a modernity which might be next year's Ideal Home. 1967‘M. Hunter’ Cambridgeshire Disaster vi. 40 A baby grand piano..which gave a slightly Mayfairish touch of sophistication to the otherwise Ideal Homes format. 1969New Yorker 29 Nov. 56/3 What d'you bet he considers it the Ideal Home? 1972R. Perry Fall Guy v. 86 The furniture wasn't out of Ideal Home..affording me no aesthetic pleasure whatsoever.
1952R. Firth in Philos. & Phenomenol. Research XII. 317 (title) Ethical absolutism and the ideal observer. 1957P. Edwards in Edwards & Pap Mod. Introd. Philos. 390 The..‘ideal observer’ theory of Adam Smith and others..maintains that ‘X is good’ can be translated into some such statement as ‘If there were an omniscient, disinterested and dispassionate observer he would approve of X’. 1959R. B. Brandt Ethical Theory vii. 174 We must explain further the properties of the ‘ideal observer’. 1971T. D. Campbell Adam Smith's Sci. of Morals vi. 128, I shall argue..that to present Smith's theory as a form of Ideal Observer theory is a mistake. 1972J. Rawls Theory of Justice §30. 185 Suppose that the ideal observer is thought of as a perfectly sympathetic being.
1886New Princeton Rev. Jan. 22 (Cent.) The half-and-half systems, the ideal-real as they are called, held by so many in the present day in Germany, are in the position of a professedly neutral person between two hostile armies, exposed to the fire of both.
1874W. Wallace tr. Hegel's Logic Prolegomena xix. p. cxlvi, The measure dominates the conception of Plato's ideal state. 1892B. Jowett tr. Plato's Dialogues (ed. 3) V. Index 442 Ideal state, the, difficulty of. 1901R. L. Nettleship Lect. Republic of Plato (ed. 2) vi. 131 An outline is given of the institutions of the ideal state. 1931L. R. Palmer tr. Zeller's Outl. Hist. Greek Philos. ii. iii. 126 The Syracusan Hermocrates was to describe the degeneration from the original ideal state to the present. 1946A. Gray Socialist Tradition iii. 63 The actual description of life in the ideal state—the social gadgets—may appear trivial and puerile. 1952K. R. Popper Open Soc. (ed. 2) I. iii. 21 In believing in such an ideal state which does not change, Plato deviates radically from the tenets of historicism. 1967Encycl. Philos. VI. 330/2 In the Republic,..Plato delineates his famous Ideal State, or ‘Callipolis’. 1970J. Passmore Perfectibility of Man xii. 258 Kant looked forward..to an ideal State, or, in his later writings, to an ‘ethical Commonwealth’.
1907H. Rashdall Theory of Good & Evil I. vii. 184 This view of ethics, which combines the utilitarian principle that Ethics must be teleological with a non-hedonistic view of the ethical end, I propose to call Ideal Utilitarianism. According to this view actions are right or wrong according as they tend to produce for all mankind an ideal end or good, which includes, but is not limited to, pleasure. 1930W. D. Ross Right & Good ii. 19 The theory of ‘ideal utilitarianism’, if I may for brevity refer so to the theory of Professor Moore. Ibid. 23 The ‘ideal utilitarian’ theory can only fall back on an opinion..that one of the goods is the greater. 1959R. B. Brandt Ethical Theory xiv. 355 Universal personal pluralism (often called ‘ideal utilitarianism’). Ibid. xv. 385 Some ideal utilitarians (for example, Hastings Rashdall) think that qualities of character like veracity, sexual purity, and temperance have great intrinsic value. 1970J. N. Findlay Axiological Ethics iii. 46 There is no reason why an ideal utilitarianism may not sometimes place so high a value on certain actions..as to let them outweigh all consequences.
B. n.
1. a. A conception of something, or a thing conceived, in its highest perfection, or as an object to be realized or aimed at; a perfect type; a standard of perfection or excellence.
[1623Cockeram, Ideall, a proper man.] 1796F. A. Nitsch Gen. View Kant's Princ. concerning Man 52 Materialism, Idealism, Spiritualism, and Scepticism, are merely Ideals, which can only be approached, but never reached. 1798W. Taylor in Monthly Rev. XXVI. 481 The..dissertation..on the Ideals of the Greek artists. 1809–10Coleridge Friend (1865) 125 The ideal to which..we should endeavour to approximate. 1845M. Pattison Ess. (1889) I. 1 Whether or no there be any perfect ideal of historical composition, the one best form of writing history for all ages and countries. 1859Mill Liberty iii. (1865) 42/2 Advancing towards the Chinese ideal of making all people alike. a1866J. Grote Exam. Utilit. Philos. xvii. (1870) 269 The notion of an ideal, of something which for whatever reason, ought to be, as distinguished from what is.
b. An actual thing or person regarded as realizing such a conception, and so as being perfect in its kind; a standard proposed for imitation.
a1849H. Coleridge Ess. (1851) II. 10 He seems to have made Donne his ideal. 1861Max Müller Chips (1880) I. xiii. 310 His grandson speaks of him [Confucius] as the ideal of a sage. 1877E. R. Conder Bas. Faith i. 6 According to another authority God is the perfect ideal of which Nature is the imperfect realisation.
2. Something existing only as a mental conception; an imaginary thing.
1884A. Daniell Princ. Physics ix. 199 A rigid solid is one which, when a stress is applied to it, experiences no deformation..This is an ideal; no substance is absolutely rigid.
3. Math. [a. G. ideal n., introduced in this sense by R. Dedekind (in P. G. L. Dirichlet Vorles. über Zahlentheorie (ed. 2, 1871) Suppl. x. 452) after the adjectival use in ideale zahl ideal number (E. E. Kummer 1846, in Ber. über die zur Bekanntmachung geeigneten Verh. d. K. Preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Berlin 87).] A subring that contains all products of the form rx and xr, where r and x are elements of the ring and of the subring, respectively; also called a two-sided ideal; left (or right) ideal, a subring that contains all products of the form rx (or xr).
1898Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. IV. 228 The relation between Dedekind's ideals and Kronecker's forms is discussed. 1911Encycl. Brit. XIX. 856/1 It is a fundamental theorem that every ideal can be resolved into the product of a finite number of prime ideals, and that this resolution is unique. 1937A. A. Albert Mod. Higher Algebra (1938) xi. 253 Right ideals (right invariant subrings) are defined analogously, and we call 𝔐 an ideal (invariant subring) if it is both a right and a left ideal. When 𝔘 is commutative every right ideal is a left ideal so that every right or left ideal is an ideal. 1952E. T. Bell Math. v. 80 The particular subvarieties of a ring called ideals have proved of great significance in the general theory of rings, particularly with regard to the structure or morphology of rings. Ideals entered modern algebra through the theory of algebraic numbers..in the 1870s, but it was only in the 1920s and 1930s that their deeper relevance for much of algebra and algebraic geometry was recognized. 1969F. M. Hall Introd. Abstr. Algebra II. vii. 181 An important example of an ideal is the subring of multiples of n in the ring of integers. Ibid., Even when R is commutative not all subrings are ideals.
¶ See also beau-ideal. |