knowableadj.n.

?c1400 (c1380) G. Chaucer tr. Boethius De Consol. Philos. (BL Add. 10340) (1868) ii. met. vii. l. 1632 Liggiþ þanne stille al vtterly vnknowable [L. ignorabiles] ne fame ne makeþ ȝow nat knowe.]

a1425 (?a1400) Deonise hid Diuinite (Harl.) (1955) 3 In knowing & in louyng of þees þinges þat ben knowable and han bigynnyng.

c1449 R. Pecock Repressor (1860) 41 Many mo of hem ben fyndeable and knoweable bi mannis resoun without Holi Scripture.

1573 R. Lever Arte of Reason i. v. 36 Though there were no reasonable creature in the whole world..yet should many things remain to be knowen, whiche maye be termed, and are in deede, knowable.

1652 J. Gaule Πυς-μαντια 24 Pretending and presuming..to foreknow all things knowable.

1692 J. Locke Toleration iii. ix, in Wks. (1727) II. 417 Who is it will say..that it is knowable, that any National Religion..is that only true Religion?

1725 I. Watts Logick ii. v. §3 The Things knowable concerning God, and our Duty by the Light of Nature are called natural Religion.

1749 D. Hartley Observ. Man i. iii. 349 Reasoning concerning the knowable Relations of unknown things.

1817 J. Bentham Parl. Reform Catech. (1818) 26 The direction taken by the vote is in each instance known or knowable.

1871 Cornhill Mag. May 596 A mind endowed with an insatiable curiosity as to all things knowable and unknowable.

1928 P. Grainger Let. 31 Jan. in All-round Man (1994) 88 You write of yr New Year's cable to me, of ‘result not knowable’.

1970 D. T. Gillespie Quantum Mech. Primer iv. 41 Anything which is in principle knowable about the system at time t can be learned from the function Ψt(x).

2002 L. Purves Radio (2003) xiii. 182 Although showing off is noxious, a presenter needs to yield up at least a little bit of knowable personality.

a1425 (?a1400) Cloud of Unknowing (Harl. 674) (1944) 18 (MED) Þe whiche is incomprehensible to alle create knowable miȝt, as is aungel & mans soule.

1655 Ld. Orrery Parthenissa IV. ii. viii. 746 We were hardly knowable to each other.

1687 R. Boyle Martyrdom Theodora (1703) i. 10 Not being knowable by his fair Mistress.

1740 H. Bracken Farriery Improv'd (ed. 2) II. Index 96 Counterfeits..are knowable in a very little time.

1776 D. Hume Let. 6 Aug. (1932) II. 330 My nephew..has recovered so surprisingly, that he is scarcely knowable.

1806 W. Taylor in Monthly Mag. 22 29 The body..was too much hacked and disfigured to be knowable.

1896 Leeds Mercury 18 July (Weekly Suppl.) 1/5 Stylish men, so altered from the Bohemians of the previous day as to be scarcely knowable.

1932 Eng. Jrnl. 21 524 The world for her is not the simple thing, with hard outlines and knowable surfaces, which it is for the average person.

2005 A. M. Parker Cry Uncle xxix. 269 The shapelessness had resolved somewhat into small shapes,..the sink and the piled dishes knowable in silhouette.

1652 E. Pinchbeck Fountain of Life 2 Suppose there were a man (as was spoken by one Berengarius) that did know all knowables;..what then?

1725 I. Watts Logick i. vi. §1 To distinguish well between knowables and unknowables.

1850 R. W. Emerson Plato in Representative Men ii. 45 What is a great man, but one of great affinities, who takes up into himself all arts, sciences, all knowables, as his food?

1917 Jewish Q. Rev. 8 152 Knowables and sensibles exist before knowledge and sensation.

1959 Operations Res. 7 314 Even when the knowables and controllable variables are observed and analyzed, functional relations only may at best be posited and established.

1999 C. Stearns Buddha from Dolpo 236 The impossibility of a direct realization, or appearance as a knowable, of absolute reality.

1816 J. Ogilvie Philos. Ess. ii. 55 Marking..the line of separation betwixt the knowable and the unknowable.

1856 R. A. Vaughan Hours with Mystics (1860) I. 69 A spiritual art whereby the possible is forsaken for the impossible—the knowable for the unknowable.

1900 H. Macpherson Herbert Spencer 66 Spencerism stands on its own merits as the philosophy of the knowable.

1956 F. Spiegelberg Living Relig. of World ii. 51 It is only that the landscape of the knowable is larger than Man ever imagines it to be, not that the unknowable in any sense diminishes.

2000 Economist 15 July (Review of Books section) 7/2 It is indeed a biography of a ghost, and within the limits of the knowable, it is a tale well told.

1854 Methodist Q. Rev. Apr. 308 The attribution of the laws of nature, of the gradation of necessity, of knowability, or of casualty.

1872 Contemp. Rev. 20 828 Not the unknowability, but the knowability of his ‘ultimate scientific ideas’.

1935 Jrnl. Theol. Stud. 36 314 The belief that the world's orderedness or knowability is an expression of mind.

2006 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 27 Apr. 14/4 There remains Motley's despair over the knowability of the past.

1660 N. Ingelo Bentivolio & Urania iv. 267 God is the most Knowable and most Lovely thing in the world; excess of Knowablenesse following the Greatnesse of his Essence.

1796 F. A. Nitsch Gen. View Kant's Princ. conc. Man 118 Whatever, according to the invariable laws of knowableness, is connected with what is really known.

1883 A. Barratt Physical Metempiric 172 Without ideas there is no perception, no knowableness.

1997 P. van Geert in A. Fogel et al. Dynamics & Indeterminism Developmental & Social Processes i. 17 Determinism, in the sense of predictability and knowableness, has demonstrated its viability very persuasively in the form of highly accurate physical predictions.

a1704 J. Locke Ess. Humane Understanding (1706) iv. xviii. 582 The like holds in Matter of Fact, knowably [1690–1700 knowable] by our Senses.

1808 S. T. Coleridge Coll. Lett. (1959) III. 104 Direct the Conscience to value men for what they do knowably by the Mass, not for what they are actually.

1929 Philos. Rev. 38 282 A philosophy of religion is an attempt to translate the content of religious experience into consistency with the principles of a knowably objective world.

2004 Philadelphia Inquirer (Nexis) 25 Oct. c1 By employing scientifically tested therapies, healers can erase the human bias, relying on what is knowably true rather than what is intuitively felt.