A fringe theory is an idea or a collection of ideas that departs significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view. It can include work done to the appropriate level of scholarship in a field of study but only supported by a minority of practitioners, to more dubious work. Examples include pseudoscience (ideas that purport to be scientific theories but have little or no scientific support), conspiracy theories, unproven claims about alternative medicine, pseudohistory and so forth. Some fringe theories may in a stricter sense be hypotheses, conjectures, or speculations.
Read more about Fringe Theory: Fringe Science, Fringe History, Fringe Archaeology, Conspiracy Theories
Famous quotes containing the words fringe and/or theory:
“In the Japanese
tongue of the
mind’s eye one
two syllable word
tells of
the fringe of rain....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“By the “mud-sill” theory it is assumed that labor and education are incompatible; and any practical combination of them impossible. According to that theory, a blind horse upon a tread-mill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be—all the better for being blind, that he could not tread out of place, or kick understandingly.... Free labor insists on universal education.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)