antagande

Antagande is the Swedish term for an assumption or premise used in reasoning, analysis, and discussion. It denotes a proposition that is taken to be true for the purposes of argument or investigation, serving as a starting point for further deduction or testing.

The word is derived from the verb anta, meaning to assume or take on. Antagande, as a noun, refers to the act or state of taking something as given in a given context, whether in formal reasoning or everyday discourse.

In formal contexts such as logic and mathematics, an antagande is a proposition assumed true within a proof or model. It is distinct from axioms, which are foundational truths, and from theorems, which follow from those assumptions. In proofs, one may temporarily adopt an antagande to explore consequences and then assess whether the results hold when it is removed or revised.

In statistics and science, antaganden refer to assumptions about data, distributions, independence, or other conditions required for methods to be valid. When these assumptions are violated, results may be biased or unreliable, prompting researchers to adjust models, use robust methods, or collect additional data.

In everyday language and philosophy, antagande describes suppositions that guide reasoning or argumentation. Making key antaganden explicit helps evaluate the strength of conclusions and clarifies the limits of analyses and debates.

Related terms include premise, hypothesis, supposition, axiom, and model.