Theory
From left to right: Einstein, Freud, Nietzsche and Marx
By field: art theory - auteur theory - conflict theory - critical theory - criticism - culture theory - discourse - education - feminism - film theory - genre theory - history - horror theory - intellectuals - language - literary theory - media theory - Marxism - materialism - modernism - music theory - philosophy - postmodernism - poststructuralism - queer theory - sex theory - science - semiotics - structuralism - sociology - structuralism
Related: academics - connoisseur - deconstruction - Frankfurt school - hyperreality - interpretation - knowledge - law - method - model - ontology - reality - reproduction (media) - reflexivity - technique - technology - theory
Science: anthropology - biology - communication - economics - folklore - linguistics - medicine - memetics - political science - psychology - social sciences - sociobiology - sociology -
People: A - Kathy Acker - Guillaume Apollinaire - Theodor Adorno - Louis Althusser - Aristotle - Rudolf Arnheim - B - Gaston Bachelard - Mikhail Bakhtin - Georges Bataille - Roland Barthes - Charles Baudelaire - Jean Baudrillard - Michel Bauwens - Simone de Beauvoir - Jeremy Bentham - Walter Benjamin - Alfred Binet - Maurice Blanchot - Iwan Bloch - Pierre Bourdieu - Jean-Pierre Bouyxou - Scott Bukatman - Judith Butler - C - Noël Carroll - Daniel Chandler - Noam Chomsky - Carol Clover - Barbara Creed - Aleister Crowley D - Arthur C. Danto - Gilles Deleuze - Charles Darwin - Guy Debord - Jacques Derrida - Bram Dijkstra - Mark Dery - René Descartes - Denis Diderot - Emile Durkheim - E - Terry Eagleton - Umberto Eco - Havelock Ellis - August Endell - Kodwo Eshun - F - Leslie Fiedler - Michel Foucault - Cynthia Freeland - Sigmund Freud - Northrop Frye - G - Hal Foster - Antonio Gramsci - Clement Greenberg - Germaine Greer - Elizabeth Grosz - H - Jurgen Habermas - Stuart Hall - Dick Hebdige - Friedrich Hegel - Martin Heidegger - Magnus Hirschfeld - Max Horkheimer - David Hume - I - Luce Irigaray - J - Katrien Jacobs - Fredric Jameson - Charles Jencks - K - Immanuel Kant - Linda Kauffman - Alfred Charles Kinsey - Siegfried Kracauer - Richard von Krafft-Ebing - Rosalind Krauss - Julia Kristeva - L - Henri Lefčbvre - Gershon Legman - Jacques Lacan - Jean-François Lyotard - M - Lev Manovich - Niccolo Machiavelli - Greil Marcus - Herbert Marcuse - Karl Marx - Marshall McLuhan - Laura Mulvey - Henri Michaux - N - Nietzsche - P - Camille Paglia - Morse Peckham - Sadie Plant - Plato - Karl Popper - Neil Postman - R - Andrew Ross - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - John Ruskin - S - Marquis de Sade - Sartre - Arthur Schopenhauer - Steven Shaviro - Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel - Susan Sontag - Spinoza - Robert Stam - Thomas Swiss - T - David Toop - Parker Tyler - E.B. Tylor - V - Paul Virilio - Giambattista Vico - Voltaire - W - Ken Wilber - Linda Williams - Raymond Williams - Mary Wollstonecraft - Z - Slavoj Žižek
Definition
Humans construct theories in order to explain, predict and master phenomena (e.g. inanimate things, events, or the behaviour of animals). In many instances, it is seen to be a model of reality. A theory makes generalizations about observations and consists of an interrelated, coherent set of ideas. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/theory, Jan 2004Theories exist not only in the so-called ‘hard sciences’ but in all fields of academic study, from philosophy to music to literature. In the humanities, theory is often used as an abbreviation for critical theory or literary theory, referring to continental philosophy's aesthetics or its attempts to understand the structure of society and to conceptualize alternatives. In philosophy, theoreticism refers to the overuse of theory. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory#Other_fields [Oct 2005]
Usage note: theory vs hypothesis
Usage: Theory, Hypothesis. A theory is a scheme of the relations subsisting between the parts of a systematic whole; an hypothesis is a tentative conjecture respecting a cause of phenomena. --American Heritage DictionaryFifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From Structuralism to Postmodernity (1994) - John Lechte
Book Description
John Lechte surveys the major thinkers of the post-war era and illuminates the complex thought of each with remarkable clarity. The list of thinkers includes Chomsky, Foucault, Irigaray, Derrida, Bataille, Baudrillard, Adorno and Habermas
Back Cover
Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers surveys the most important figures who have influenced postwar thought. The reader is guided through structuralism, semiotics, post-Marxism and Annales history, on to modernity and postmodernity. With its comprehensive biographical and bibliographical information, this book provides a vital reference work for all those who want to understand the intellectual history of the last fifty years.