sciolism

noun

1. (dated, derogatory, uncountable)The practice of expressing opinions on something which one knows only superficially or has little real understanding of; also, shallow or superficial knowledge; (countable) an instance of this.

   “Indeed, I ſometimes incline to hope that infidelity is arrived at its higheſt pitch, and that ſcioliſm may advance into found knowledge and ſaving faith […].”

   “Here are painted, the miſchiefs of the multiplication of political Scioliſts, and the progreſs of political Scioliſm; the decay of profound knowledge, the perverſion of what we retain, and the decline of religion.”

   “[T]he crude paralogiſms of a vitiated metaphyſics, ſetting themſelves in oppoſition to the very poſtulates of all geometry, the truth of which we recognize by intuition, may pretend, that motion is a principle foreign to the nature of the ſubject; we are not to rank theſe ſcioliſms among the things which the rigour of the most exact reaſoning requires.”

   “The contempt […] is not accidental, nor yet altogether owing to that epidemic of a proud ignorance occasioned by a diffused sciolism, which gave a sickly and hectic shewiness to the latter half of the last century.”

   “And after all, should it be proved that Unitarian writers of the present generation are sciolists, it will not follow that their principles deserve the opprobrious name of sciolism.”