<P> The adjective hypothetical, meaning "having the nature of a hypothesis", or "being assumed to exist as an immediate consequence of a hypothesis", can refer to any of these meanings of the term "hypothesis". </P> <P> In its ancient usage, hypothesis referred to a summary of the plot of a classical drama . The English word hypothesis comes from the ancient Greek ὑπόθεσις word hupothesis, meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". </P> <P> In Plato's Meno (86e--87b), Socrates dissects virtue with a method used by mathematicians, that of "investigating from a hypothesis ." In this sense,' hypothesis' refers to a clever idea or to a convenient mathematical approach that simplifies cumbersome calculations . Cardinal Bellarmine gave a famous example of this usage in the warning issued to Galileo in the early 17th century: that he must not treat the motion of the Earth as a reality, but merely as a hypothesis . </P> <P> In common usage in the 21st century, a hypothesis refers to a provisional idea whose merit requires evaluation . For proper evaluation, the framer of a hypothesis needs to define specifics in operational terms . A hypothesis requires more work by the researcher in order to either confirm or disprove it . In due course, a confirmed hypothesis may become part of a theory or occasionally may grow to become a theory itself . Normally, scientific hypotheses have the form of a mathematical model . Sometimes, but not always, one can also formulate them as existential statements, stating that some particular instance of the phenomenon under examination has some characteristic and causal explanations, which have the general form of universal statements, stating that every instance of the phenomenon has a particular characteristic . </P>

A hypothesis must account for all available information be logical and be