prospectivity

Noun

prospectivity (countable and uncountable, plural prospectivities)

1. The state of being prospective rather than retrospective.
   • 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.2000, Eleanor Jack Gibson, Anne D. Pick, An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development, →ISBN
   • 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.2012, Michael J. White, Agency and Integrality: Philosophical Themes in the Ancient Discussions of Determinism and Responsibility, →ISBN, page 73
2. The quality of being or having a likely location in which to prospect for minerals.
   • A further ramification of the regional observations concems diamond prospectivity.2006, Manitoba. Geological Survey, Report of Activities, page 83
   • 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.2008, L. Nadeau, J.J. Ryan, P. Brouillette, D.T. James, Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5907, page 1
3. 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.
   • 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.];1919, Ludwik Silberstein, Projective Vector Algebra
   • 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...2014, Alfred North Whitehead, Science and Philosophy, →ISBN