| Word | Meaning | Reference |
| Analytic statements | Statements which are true by definition (vs. synthetic statements). e.g. Roses are flowers. | Positivism |
| Androcentric | The tendency for men to unconsciously bias perceptions in uniquely male ways | Feminism |
| a priori | Deductive knowledge that is independent of experience - thus 2+2=4 is true everywhere. | Immanuel Kant |
| a posteriori | Inductive knowledge that comes only through experience and testing. | Logical Positivism |
| Atomism | Things can be studied by reducing them to their smallest parts (and the whole is the sum of the parts) | Positivism |
| Bedrock assumptions | Assumptions about a theory that are unchallengeable and protected. | Conventionalism |
| Behaviorism | The derivation of general laws of how people and animals behave through observation, deduction and (usually verificationist) experiment. | Standard Positivism |
| Canon, canonized, canonical | When a theorist or text is canonized, it is promoted to an unquestionable level of truth which can be referenced without fear of challenge. | |
| Closed system | A closed system has no inputs from or outputs to any external world and hence is totally isolated. Scientific experiments seek to create this so the effects of deliberate causal variation of one thing can be seen without having to worry whether the cause was external. | Empiricism Positivism |
| Connotation | The deep and cultural meaning of a word ('tree' as 'strength', 'oak' as 'Englishness') | Linguistics Roland Barthes |
| Constructionism | We understand the world through internal constructs. | Immanuel Kant |
| Conventionalism | We tend to conform to conventions, remaining within canonized paradigms. | Conventionalism |
| Denotation | The simple meaning of a word ('tree' as a large plant) | Linguistics Roland Barthes |
| Determinism | Causes exist in social relations which are external constraints on individual choices.
A thing has a separate reality which affects its parts. Society thus has its own independent reality. (vs. Voluntarism) | Positivism |