working hypothesis

plural working hypotheses

1. A hypothesis that is weakly held, tentatively, as a best guess; such a hypothesis among several plausible ones that is driving or underpinning a scientific team's work at a given time.

   Among these several hypotheses, the one judged as most likely was our working hypothesis during the autumn semester.

   4 more examples

   We do not know that this is the case, but it is an hypothesis which cannot be refuted and is simpler than any other possible hypothesis. I shall therefore adopt it as a working hypothesis in what follows.

   1927, Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Philosophy

   By a process of elimination of the various possibilities we have set up a working hypothesis that the rock-cut installation was for the purpose of making and storing wine.

   1964, James B. Pritchard, Winery, Defenses, and Soundings at Gibeon

   Astronomers at one time considered the possibility that all stars had the same luminosity as the sun and tried to derive the distances of stars from how bright they appeared to be. This working hypothesis, although a good idea at the time, led to a number of inconsistencies.

   1968, Donald D. Clayton, Principles of Stellar Evolution and Nucleosynthesis

   Brand thinks it is a "plausible working hypothesis" that properties are legitimate objects, as good as "specifiable groupings of particulars" - which presumably sets or classes are.

   1979, R. M. Martin, Pragmatics, Truth, and Language