prospectivity

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prospectivity (countable and uncountable, plural prospectivities)

1. The state of being prospective rather than retrospective.
   • 2000, Eleanor Jack Gibson, Anne D. Pick, An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development, →ISBN:

     Four properties that stand out as descriptive of behavior at its own level are agency, prospectivity, the search for order in the world, and flexibility.

   • 2012, Michael J. White, Agency and Integrality: Philosophical Themes in the Ancient Discussions of Determinism and Responsibility, →ISBN, page 73:

     As we shall see, the account of the alethic modalities adopted by Diodorus takes into account the temporal prospectivity of possibility and, thus, avoids Aristotle's criticism of the Megarian equation of possibility and actuality.

   • 2013, P.J. Nerhot, Law, Interpretation and Reality, →ISBN, page 381:

     Even though we cannot guarantee 100% prospectivity, as even Lon Fuller would accept, we do make the claim that the Law is in general prospective.

2. The quality of being or having a likely location in which to prospect for minerals.
   • 2006, Manitoba. Geological Survey, Report of Activities, page 83:

     A further ramification of the regional observations concems diamond prospectivity.

   • 2008, L. Nadeau, J.J. Ryan, P. Brouillette, D.T. James, Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5907, page 1:

     Despite being comprised largely of a multiply deformed amphibolite and granulite facies metagranitoid terrain, the region includes supracrustal belts of three different ages, all hosting gossans that signal base- and precious metal prospectivity.

   • 2010, Silvana Tordo, Petroleum Exploration and Production Rights, →ISBN:

     Countries with limited prospectivity have limited options, and generally limited negotiation power.

   • 2014, Robert Wynn Jones, Foraminifera and their Applications, →ISBN, page 150:

     An understanding of the limits of petroleum systems within basins is critical to an evaluation of their potential prospectivity, with exploration risk increasing in proportion to the distance from an established petroleum system.

3. (geometry) A projective relationship between a line and itself by projecting onto an intersecting line from a point on another line that intersects at the same point, and then back on to the first line from a different point on the first intersecting line.
   • 1919, Ludwik Silberstein, Projective Vector Algebra:

     Schur bases his definitions of equality, of addition and multiplication of projective segments, upon the correspondence known as ' prospectivity,' and, at first, avails himself only of the axioms of connection and of order [Shur's postulates 1. to 8.];

   • 2014, Alfred North Whitehead, Science and Philosophy, →ISBN:

     If a point O on I is related to A by a prospectivity, then all prospectivities, which (1) have the same double point U, and (2) relate O to A, give the same correspondent (Q, in figure) to any point P on the line I; in fact they are all the same prospectivity, however m, n, S, and S' may have been varied subject to these conditions.

   • 2016, Francesca Biagioli, Space, Number, and Geometry from Helmholtz to Cassirer, →ISBN, page 122:

     Alternatively, Friedrich Schur (1881, p. 253) used Thomae's (1873, p. 11) definition of projectivity in terms of prospectivity to prove the fundamental theorem in a manner which is independent of the Archimedean axiom.