Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or occurring at a time before the advent of modern science and the application of its methods.
  • adjective Prior to testing or formulation in scientific terms; preliminary.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Existing before the scientific age; belonging or relating to times prior to the reduction of knowledge in general, or of some special branch of it, to the form of science.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective relating to prescience (rare; compare prescient)
  • adjective relating to a stage or time prior to the development of modern science

Etymologies

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Examples

  • In any case, moving modern enigmas in the intro of an old "prescientific" healing art might be difficult, but necessary.

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008

  • We have done this in the name of science, believing that our approaches reveal the biological basis of psychic suffering and dispel prescientific myths and harmful stigma.

    Stanton Peele: America's Imperialistic Mental Illness Epidemic 2010

  • The modern mythos in regards to education is ultra prescientific.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Why Tradition Does Not Justify the Socratic Method 2009

  • Are you trying to make out like you're prescientific or something?

    Obama and the Progressive: a Diary* mjs 2009

  • Though many philosophers believe that CTM can provide the best scientific explanations of cognition and behavior, there is disagreement over whether such explanations will vindicate the commonsense psychological explanations of prescientific RTM.

    Mental Representation Pitt, David 2008

  • McCarthy's long-term objective is to formalize common sense reasoning, the prescientific reasoning that is used in dealing with everyday problems.

    Logic and Artificial Intelligence Thomason, Richmond 2008

  • As a Christian, you can say Sathya Sai Baba's miracle stories are not interesting, let's not pay attention to them, but if you set them within the prescientific religious milieu of the first-century Roman Empire, suddenly miracle stories become especially compelling.

    The God Debate 2007

  • Perhaps it is because it seems that if one finds natural explanations threatening, then the fact that our individual form is shaped by DNA instructions rather than inexplicably by God's hand, that whirlwinds and lightning can be explained in meteorological terms - in short, all of science should be threatening to a religious viewpoint that seeks to hold on to a prescientific view of the world.

    Archive 2007-09-01 James F. McGrath 2007

  • Bultmann had in mind elements of a prescientific worldview in general, but certainly the suggestion that, in order to be a Christian, one must accept young-earth creationism or intelligent design, is not unrelated to this.

    Archive 2007-09-01 James F. McGrath 2007

  • This combination of physical and mental conditions so amazingly favorable to the spread of the Voltairean ideas was a circumstance independent of the state of the surrounding atmosphere, and was what in the phraseology of prescientific times might well have been called providential.

    Voltaire 2007

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