Meaning of Potter Stewart test | Babel Free

Definitions

The informal test of identifying something based on whether one intuitively feels it belongs to a certain category.

Examples

“2001 Bridges and Boundaries: Historians, Political Scientists, and the Study⟳ of International Relations It may not be easy to give⟳ a precise, categorical, practical definition of "doing justice to the past," but the concept passes the Potter Stewart test⟳ on pornography — we recognize it when we see⟳ it or fail⟳ to see⟳ it, or at least are convinced that we do.”

“2007 American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation While I continue⟳ to believe⟳ more in the Potter Stewart test⟳, I thing Professor Feldman is to be commended for trying to impose⟳ some order⟳ on the chaos of religion and government, and I am grateful to him for discussing these issues with me”

“2012 The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe For example, astrology and phrenology were once considered sciences and only later were cast⟳ out as pseudoscientific, so they clearly at one time passed the Potter Stewart test⟳.”

CEFR level