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The term pessimism derives from the Latin word pessimus, meaning 'the worst'.It was first used by Jesuit critics of Voltaire's 1759 novel Candide, ou l'Optimisme.Voltaire was satirizing the philosophy of Leibniz who maintained that this was the 'best (optimum) of all possible worlds'.
The word pessimism comes from Latin pessimus, meaning "the worst".The term "optimism" was first used to name Leibniz's thesis that we live in "the best of all possible worlds"; and "pessimism" was coined to name the opposing view.
The poems of the Canadian poet Frederick George Scott have also been cited as an example of Victorian pessimism, [92] as have the poems of the American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson. [93] During this period, artistic representations of nature transformed, from benevolent, uplifting and god-like, to actively hostile, competitive, or indifferent.
Half a glass of water, illustration of two different mental attitudes, optimism (half full) and pessimism (half empty) Optimism is the attitude or mindset of expecting events to lead to particularly positive, favorable, desirable, and hopeful outcomes. A common idiom used to illustrate optimism versus pessimism is a glass filled with water to ...
Optimism bias or optimistic bias is a cognitive bias that causes someone to believe that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event. It is also known as unrealistic optimism or comparative optimism. It is common and transcends gender, ethnicity, nationality, and age. [1] Autistic people are less susceptible to this kind of ...
The concept of explanatory style encompasses a wide range of possible responses to both positive and negative occurrences, rather than a black-white difference between optimism and pessimism. Also, an individual does not necessarily show a uniform explanatory style in all aspects of life, but may exhibit varying responses to different types of ...
In the philosophy of science, the pessimistic induction, also known as the pessimistic meta-induction, is an argument which seeks to rebut scientific realism, particularly the scientific realist's notion of epistemic optimism. The pessimistic meta-induction is the argument that if past successful and accepted scientific theories were found to ...
For James, [2] meliorism stands in the middle between optimism and pessimism, and treats the salvation of the world as a probability rather than a certainty or impossibility. In the case of a meliorist praxis , the activist contemporary of the Pragmatists Jane Addams stripped progressive ideals of any elitist privilege calling for a "lateral ...