ANALYSIS, in general, the resolution of a whole into its component elements; opposed to synthesis, the combining of separate elements or minor wholes into an inclusive unity. Both analysis and synthesis may be either purely mental or physical. The analysis and synthesis carried out in psychology, for in stance, are purely mental. But even in physics, chemistry, etc., where these processes can also be carried out physically, the mental analysis or synthesis generally precedes the physical in all well-planned experiments.
In grammar, analysis is the breaking up of a sentence into subject, predicate, object, etc. (an exercise introduced into Eng lish schools by J. D. Morell about 1852) ; so the analysis of a book or a lecture is a synopsis of the main points. The chief technical uses of the word, which retains practically the same meaning in all the sciences, are in (I) philosophy, (2) mathe matics, (3) chemistry.
(I.) Logical analysis is the process of examining into the con notation of a concept or idea, and separating the attributes from the whole and each other. It, therefore, does not increase knowl edge, but merely clarifies and tests it. In this sense Kant dis tinguished an analytic from a synthetic judgment, as one in which the predicate is involved in the essence of the subject. Such judgments are also known as verbal, as opposed to real or amplia tive judgments. The processes of synthesis and analysis though formally contradictory are practically supplementary; thus to analyse the connotation is to synthesize the denotation of a term, and vice versa; the process of knowledge involves the two methods, analysis being the corrective of synthetic empiricism. In a wider sense the whole of formal logic is precisely the analysis of the laws of thought. Analytical psychology is dis tinguished from genetic and empirical psychology inasmuch as it proceeds by the method of introspective investigation of mental phenomena instead of by physiological or psycho-physical ex periment. For the relation between analysis and synthesis on the one hand, and deduction and induction on the other, see