reflection

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act of reflecting or the state of being reflected.
2. n. Something, such as light, radiant heat, sound, or an image, that is reflected.
3. n. Mental concentration; careful consideration.
4. n. A thought or an opinion resulting from such consideration.
5. n. An indirect expression of censure or discredit: a reflection on his integrity.
6. n. A manifestation or result: Her achievements are a reflection of her courage.
7. n. Anatomy The folding of a membrane from the wall of a cavity over an organ and back to the wall.
8. n. Anatomy The folds so made.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A bending back; a turning.
2. n. The act of reflecting, or the state of being reflected; specifically, in physics, the change of direction which a ray of light, radiant heat, or sound experiences when it strikes upon a surface and is thrown back into the same medium from which it approached. Reflection follows two laws, viz.
3. n. That which is produced by being reflected; an image given back from a reflecting surface.
4. n. The act of shining.
5. n. The turning of thought back upon past experiences or ideas; attentive or continued consideration; meditation; contemplation; deliberation: as, a man much given to reflection.
6. n. A mental process resulting from attentive or continued consideration; thought or opinion after deliberation.
7. n. A kind of self-consciousness resulting from an outward perception, whether directly or indirectly; the exercise of the internal sense; the perception of a modification of consciousness; the faculty of distinguishing between a datum of sense and a product of reason; the consideration of the limitations of knowledge, ignorance, and error, and of other unsatisfactory states as leading to knowledge of self; the discrimination between the subjective and objective aspects of feelings. The Latin word reflexio was first used as a term of psychology by Thomas Aquinas, who seems to intend no optical metaphor, but to conceive that consciousness is turned back upon itself by the reaction of the object of outward perception. According to Aquinas, pure thought in itself can know nothing of singulars, or particular things; but in perception there is a peculiar sense of reaction or reciprocation which he calls reflection, and this first makes us aware of the existence of actual singulars and also of thought as being an action; and this, according to him, is the first self-consciousness. Scotus accepted reflection, not as affording the first knowledge of singulars, but as a perception of what passes in the mind, and thus the original meaning of the term was modified. Walter Burleigh, who died in 1337, affords an illustration of this when he says that the thing without is apprehended before the passion which is in the soul, because the thing without is apprehended directly, and the passion of the soul only indirectly, by reflection. Ramus, in his dissertation on reflection, defines it as “the successive direction of the attention to several partial perceptions.” A still further change of meaning had come about when Goclenius, in 1613, defined reflection as “the inward action of the soul, by which it recognizes both itself and its acts and ideas.” The importance of the word in the English school of philosophy (Berkeley, Hume, etc.) may be said to be due entirely to its use by Locke, who explains it as follows:
8. n. Reid endeavored to revive the Ramist use of the word, for which he is condemned by Hamilton. Kant, in his use of the term, returns to something like the Thomist view, for he makes it a mode of consciousness by which we are made aware whether knowledge is sensuous or not. Kant makes use of the term reflection to denote a mode of consciousness in which we distinguish between the relations of concepts and the corresponding relations of the objects of the concepts. Thus, two concepts may be different, and yet it may be conceived that their objects are identical; or two concepts may be identical, and yet it may be conceived that their objects (say, two drops of water) are different, Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, in his “Philosophy of Reflection,” 1878, uses the term to denote one of three fundamental modes of consciousness, namely that in which the objective and subjective aspects of what is present are discriminated without being separated as person and thing.
9. n. That which corresponds to and reflects something in the mind or in the nature of any one.
10. n. Reproach cast; censure; criticism.
11. n. In anatomy: Duplication; the folding of a part, as a membrane, upon itself; a bending back or complete deflection.
12. n. That which is reflected; a fold: as, a reflection of the peritoneum forming a mesentery.
13. n. In zoology, a play of color which changes in different lights: as, the reflections of the iridescent plumage of a humming-bird.
14. n. Synonyms Rumination, cogitation.
15. n. See remark, n.
16. To reflect.

Wiktionary

1. n. The act of reflecting or the state of being reflected.
2. n. The property of a propagated wave being thrown back from a surface (such as a mirror).
3. n. Something, such as an image, that is reflected.
4. n. Careful thought or consideration.
5. n. An implied criticism.
6. n. computing The process or mechanism of determining the capabilities of an object at run-time.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of reflecting, or turning or sending back, or the state of being reflected.
2. n. The return of rays, beams, sound, or the like, from a surface. See Angle of reflection, below.
3. n. The reverting of the mind to that which has already occupied it; continued consideration; meditation; contemplation; hence, also, that operation or power of the mind by which it is conscious of its own acts or states; the capacity for judging rationally, especially in view of a moral rule or standard.
4. n. obsolete Shining; brightness, as of the sun.
5. n. That which is produced by reflection.
6. n. An image given back from a reflecting surface; a reflected counterpart.
7. n. A part reflected, or turned back, at an angle; as, the reflection of a membrane.
8. n. Result of meditation; thought or opinion after attentive consideration or contemplation; especially, thoughts suggested by truth.
9. n. Censure; reproach cast.
10. n. (Physiol.) The transference of an excitement from one nerve fiber to another by means of the nerve cells, as in reflex action. See Reflex action, under Reflex.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the phenomenon of a propagating wave (light or sound) being thrown back from a surface
2. n. (mathematics) a transformation in which the direction of one axis is reversed
3. n. expression without words
4. n. the image of something as reflected by a mirror (or other reflective material)
5. n. a calm, lengthy, intent consideration
6. n. a remark expressing careful consideration
7. n. a likeness in which left and right are reversed
8. n. the ability to reflect beams or rays