Theories
The most widespread and enduring conspiracy theories—British intelligence killed Princess Diana, the U.S. government orchestrated 9/11—are completely absurd. But that doesn’t stop them from drawing a vast and vehement audience. David Aaronovitch picks apart 12 grand conspiracy theories to conclude that they are concocted and promoted, in large part, by educated losers. (Yes, he actually calls them losers.)
'Gravity' hints at the passion behind Newton's theoriesDetroit Free PressBY JOHN MONAGHAN It's an image planted in the mind of every schoolkid: Isaac Newton sits beneath an apple tree as a shiny red orb bonks him on the noggin. ... ABC's Lost: Lighthouse Episode Recap & TheoriesMetrowny.com...
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Now that they've had two days to think about it, what can the Internet's brainiest 'Lost' theorists tell us about the show's final season?
Inflation theory, which posits that the universe ballooned from subatomic scale to the size of a soccer ball during its first 10-33 seconds, has had great ...
There are a million different ingenious theories out there that explain this or that certain phenomenon and many are very complicated. See which one are surfacing on the interwebs today.
BBC News Professor's alien life 'seed' theory claimed BBC News The astrobiologist has helped developed the panspermia theory which suggests an extra-terrestrial origin for life. He argues for a cycle of life as microbes ... See all stories on this topic Renowned professor brings...
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"This is someone who in law school worked with [Harvard professor] Larry Tribe on a paper on the legal implications of Einstein's theory of relativity," said senior adviser David M. Axelrod.
Nick Jonas (and the Administration) has just released a new song and it's called "Conspiracy Theory."
Listen to the newest single from his upcoming album "Who I Am" below:
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Amateur historian Rick Rogers has spent decades developing a theory that either Dutch or Spanish traders visited Hawaii before Captain Cook's 1778 arrival. Maps from 1589 showing an approximation of Hawaii's shape and location; remains of a 1664 women indicating she had syphilis and the disappearance of 5 Spanish ships plying the Manila to Acapulco trade in the 1500 and 1600s make his case.
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Scholars at the global warming skeptics thinktank, "The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI)" say ocean acidification theory is a scare tactic ignores Cambrian data, the chemistry of CO2 and the alkaline affect of ocean rocks.
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Man-created (anthropogenic) carbon emissions are changing the PH in earth’s oceans, causing acidification which will rapidly destroy coral reefs and anything in the ocean that contains calcium carbonate. Scientists conclude that unabated CO2 emissions over the coming centuries may produce changes in ocean pH that are greater than any experienced in the past 300 million years.
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Inspired by Ghandi and refined by E.F. Schumacher appropriate technology argues that technology adoption should be done in context with the local community and mindful of its potential consequences. Simply put, not all new tech is good tech at any time for all people.
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Diffusion of innovations theory focuses on the stages an individual takes when adopting a new technology and the types of adopters. E.M. Rogers argued that diffusion has four stages; knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation. Rogers divided technology adopters into 5 groups: innovator, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.
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A theory of delinquency and delinquent subcultures developed by Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin in Delinquency and Opportunity (1960). Simply put, lack of material opportunity leads to increased crime. Cloward and Ohlin suggest that the social structure of a community determines access to both the learning and performance structures that underwrite career delinquency and criminal subcultures.
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Heather MacDonald says recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most common social theories that came out of the 1960s: the idea that the root cause of crime lies in income inequality and social injustice. As the economy started shedding jobs in 2008, criminologists and pundits predicted that crime would shoot up. Instead, the opposite happened. Over seven million lost jobs later, crime has plummeted to its lowest level since the early 1960s.
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The expected retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens and subsequent supreme court nomination fight will cast a bright light on judicial theories of interpretation. Get them here.
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Grant Lawrence has a theory about the failed attempt to attack Northwest Flight 253, it was conveniently overlooked by US intelligence to provide justification to bomb Yemen (as home of Al Queda) and to insure key provisions of the Patriot Act are *not* allowed to expire.
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Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, is to launch an advertising campaign for his People of Freedom Party using posters showing his battered face. Berlusconi, 73, suffered a fractured nose, two broken teeth and severe cuts to his gums and lips when he was hit in the face with a souvenir...
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ROME - Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has written a Christmas letter to the pope saying Christian values guide his government's work, the latest evidence that the premier beset by a sex scandal is taking an increasingly pious tone as he eyes Catholic voters.The letter follows a new Berlusconi mantra...
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ROME — Public trust in Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has improved since he suffered a bloody assault as he left a political rally eight days ago, according to a poll published Monday.The 73-year-old leader suffered broken teeth and cuts to his face when he was struck in the face with...
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The 73-year-old premier collapsed after he was apparently struck in the face by a man who was clutching a small statue of the Duomo, the city's world-famous cathedral.A shaken Mr Berlusconi was quickly dragged to his waiting car by his security guards and driven to hospital.Doctors said he had not suffered...
Feminist film theory is anchored on feminist politics and feminist theory.
A collection of the best Lost theories.
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Named after American circus impresario P.T. Barnum, the Barnum effect posits that people will tend to believe ambiguous or vague statements about themselves and accept them as accurate.
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Altercasting is a theory of emotional persuasion where an actor/agent forces an individual into a social role to generate a desired set of actions or beliefs. It has two forms: manded and tact-based.
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We all know at least one person with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD -- aka the 'winter blues.' Check out 3 of the top theories behind the physiology of the SAD.
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Research now suggests that SAD has a genetic component. Simply put, low-sunlight is not an equal opportunity depressant. Some genetic groups are more affected by SAD than others. Specifically, the 5-HTTLPR gene has been found to be expressed differently in SAD patients.
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The serotonergic dysfunction theory of SAD states, based on research findings, that the receptors on brain cells that are stimulated by serotonin are not functioning correctly, resulting in abnormal neuroendocrine responses and the symptoms experienced in SAD.
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One major theory for explaining SAD involves the circadian rhythms of the body. In effect, reduced daylight causes a 'phase shift' of the body's circadian rhythms which affects when and how much melatonin is produced. During sleep, melatonin acts affects the amount of hormones secreted by the body's 'master gland' -- the pituitary gland. The result is a cascade of symptoms common to SAD.
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On 12/21/09 Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was hit in the face with a souvenir marble and metal replica of Milan's famous Gothic cathedral. Theorists point to lack of blood, long absence and plans to use image as a campaign poster as proof it was guise to lift his sagging opinion polls.
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The effects of ADHD can be significantly improved through a program of sustained neurofeedback treatment (EEG) The US National Institute of Mental Health has commissioned a study to assess success of the therapy.
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Agenda setting theory posits that mass media play a powerful role of a 'gatekeeper' who decides which issues are important and how much prominence should be given to them.
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Affect infusion model posits that as complex situations become more complicated, our moods tend to influence our evaluations and processing.
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The theory of the Affect Infusion Model posits that as complex situations become more complicated, our moods tend to influence our evaluations and processing.
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Acquiescence bias or acquiescence effect states that individuals will tend to answer in a positive manner to a given question, especially if they are asked leading questions. This 'need to please' is driven by a need to be viewed positively by the person or organization asking the question.
Author: Will Brink The Experimental Biology Conference (FASEB) was held this year in New Orleans. The FASEB conference brings in scientists from all over the world, with more then 10,000 in attendance this year. Topics covered are wide ranging, including topics aging, cancer, cardio vascular disease,...
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In September of 2009, Senator Joe Lieberman called a policy of allowing 55 and older Americans the option to buy into Medicare -- the Medicare buy-in -- a good idea. As of Sunday 12/13 Lieberman had changed his mind. The Medicare buy-in suddenly was as objectionable as the public option. Why? Lieberman's...
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Joe Lieberman's flip-flop on the medicare buy-in provision wasn't about ego or stupidity, it was about self-preservation. The flip-flop choice positions Lieberman better for a 2012 re-election, and, should he lose, leaves him with 'good soldier' status with the insurance industry -- aka lobbying options.
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After Joe Lieberman flip-flopped on his longstanding support for a medicare buy-in provision in the senate health care bill, attacks from liberal Democrats came so fast and *so ferocious* David Freddoso theorizes Lieberman is now the new Dede Scozzafava -- another elected official under fire for being moderate.
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TNR's Jonathan Chait explains Lieberman's 180-degree reversal on the medicare buy-in with this theory: "I think one answer here is that Lieberman isn't actually all that smart. He speaks, and seems to think, exclusively in terms of generalities and broad statements of principle. But there's little evidence that he's a sharp or clear thinker, and certainly no evidence that he knows or cares about the details of health care reform."
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The explanation for Lieberman’s 180-degree turn on the Medicare buy-in is that it's all about Joe's ego. Flush with the ability to kill or create this major legislation, the party pariah is letting his ego play kingmaker.
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The explanation for Lieberman’s 180-degree turn on the Medicare buy-in is the senator is a puppet of the insurance industry, which has invested more than $1 million in his campaigns since 1998 and is a major employer in Connecticut, saw the buy-in as a threat to its stranglehold on the 55-plus market. They called in their markers on Joe.
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David Brooks posits the theory that Barack Obama's moral and policy locus is that of a Christian Realist of the John Hibben, Reinhold Niebuhr strain. "Each person is part angel, part devil. Life is a struggle to push back against the evils of the world without succumbing to the passions of the beast lurking inside..."
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Carbon trading reduces emissions by: 1.) Governments set emissions caps and issue allowances or credits for agencies and companies to trade, 2.) Carbon emitters must then either reduce their footprints or purchase additional credits on a market. 3.) The total of all credits can't exceed the cap. The result should deep investment in green technology and lower emissions across the board.
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Heart attacks peak during the winter months and cold weather has been thought to be the
primary culprit. But cardiologist Robert Kloner of the Keck School of Medicine and LA's Good Samaritan Hospital found that heart attack deaths peak on Christmas and New Year's in the mild climate of Los Angeles County. The theory? It's not the cold. It's holiday stress.
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The explosion of pop culture references in high and low art is the result of a overeducated, media-saturated population with no place to put its knowledge.
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Viggo Mortensen theorizes: "Great men don't make history, little men do. Whenever change as happened, it has been through protest, dissent, struggle, social movements, ordinary people picketing, striking, boycotting, sitting down, sitting in." We make history through our everyday decisions.
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Reporting in 'The New Yorker' Atul Gawande says the absence of sweeping cost-control programs in favor of pilot programs in Senate health care legislation is a good thing. In the first third of the 1900s, the USDA took the same approach and transformed American farming and food production from similarly dire straits.
Mario Rizzo of ThinkMarkets has an interesting take on Tiger Woods and Labor Theory.
One of the central premises of family systems theory is that family systems organize themselves to carry out the daily challenges and tasks of life, as well as adjusting to the developmental needs of its members. Critical to this premise is the concept of holism. A family systems approach argues that in order to understand a family system we must look at the family as a whole.
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Rankin and Bass' 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' is an allegory of communism vs. capitalism that ends in a draw. Santa and his elves represent an anti-free market, Stalinist, collectivist state that values conformity above all else. Rudolph and Hermey try to free themselves from the state but eventually become its dupes. Yukon Cornelius is the spirit of independent thinking, self-reliance and free market capitalism.
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Famous, powerful men who stray would be smart to choose women who have just as much to lose if the liaison were exposed.
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People create their own symbolic vocabulary specific to their lives. This “vocabulary,” along with external factors, shapes the individual's interaction with the world.
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People are externally motivated to modify their behavior to match the class, occupation and gender (to name a few) requirements of a social situation.
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The theory of subliminal messaging suggests a signal or message can be introduced to thought at a level below the limits of normal perception. It proposes that audio or visual images can be presented in ways the conscious mind won't perceive, but the deeper or unconscious mind will.
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People define who they are in part by the social groups they align themselves with. Developed by Henri Tejfel and John Turner, it proposes that stereotyping is a normal cognitive process, expressing a natural tendency to group things together. This is done by exaggerating the differences between groups and the similarities of things in the same group.
Katherine G. White of the Addison’s Disease Self-Help Group theorizes Jane Austen probably died of tuberculosis caught from cattle.
Davide Cantoni, a Harvard graduate student in economics deals a deadly blow to Max Weber’s theory that Protestantism favours economic development.
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Those wisps in the sky aren't simple airplane condensation trails: they're 'chemtrails.' Some theorists (including Prince) believe they're evidence of gov't backed chemical and biological testing on the unsuspecting population.
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Large swaths of the conservative movement assert the '08 election was stolen by a concentrated effort at voter fraud by the group ACORN. But, even if you remove EVERY single new voter registration generated by ACORN (and assume each voter would have voted for Obama) the state-by-state math doesn't add up to a stolen election.
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In the 2008 presidential election, ACORN's 1200 chapter network of offices registered enormous #s of fake voters to swing the election for Barack Obama.
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This is the fixing of internal prices charged for transactions within departments in a firm, or within semi-autonomous divisions. It can be used to minimize the payment of tariffs/taxes or to transfer profits from a high-taxation country to a low-taxation one. J Hirshleifer, 'On the Economics of Transfer...
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Named after German-bom American mathematician Max August Zorn(1906- ), this is the result in SET THEORY whereby an ordered set in which every chain has an upper bound must contain a maximal element. A powerful tool in modem mathematics, Zorn's lemma can be used to prove, among other things, that every...
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Astronomy This is the untestable hypothesis that the Earth has been visited by extraterrestrial civilizations whose members have left no signs of their visits, presumably because they did not wish to disturb the development of the primitive life-forms they found. Such visitors might even be observing...
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This term refers to the way in which study of the average pattem of frequently-changing atmospheric pressure zones and wind circulation enables the zonal circulation to be measured in terms of the mean pressure differences between lines of latitude. Strong differences (a high zonal index) generally...
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Concept in GAME THEORY. There are circumstances in which one person can only win at the expense of another, or vice-versa. Such an assumption underlay MERCANTALISM and WAGES FUND THEORY. Roger Scruton, A Dictionary of Political Thought (London, 1982) RB
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Discovered by Andrei Nikolaevich Kolmogorov (1903-87), this is the result of PROBABILITY THEORY whereby an event which does not depend on any finite subsequence of previous successive terms of a sequence of random variables has probability zero or one. JB
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First used by the American economist Peter Pyhrr, this is a budgeting method which starts with an evaluation of projects on their merits to produce a total. Zero-base budgeting contrasts with traditional budgeting, which starts with a fixed sum of money on the basis of which spending decisions are...
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Named after Emst Zermelo (1871-1953) who proved the existence of the ordering. The AXIOM of CHOICE is equivalent to the statement that an order relation can be defned for any set so that there is a least element in every subset. See also ZORN'S LEMMA and WELL-ORDERING PRINCIPLE. JB
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Named after German mathematicians Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Zermelo (1871-1953) and Abraham A Fraenkel (1891-1965). often given the abbreviation ZF, this is now the most widely recognized axiomatization of SET THEORY. When Z^ermelo's axiom of choice is included, the resulting system is denoted ZFC....
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Found by Zeno of Elea (c. 490-435 BC). Examples of this include the Achilles paradox, in which Achilles cannot catch a tortoise since it is always a fraction ahead. To obtain a paradox it must be assumed that a sum of an infinity of terms must be infinite, but both time and distance are given by the...
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Identified by the Russian psychologist B Zeigarnik (1900- ). This refers to the phenomenon whereby the recall ratio for tasks interrupted at the middle or latter end of task completion is higher than for tasks interrupted at or near the beginning. Other research has indicated that: (1) the Zeigarnik...
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Named after its discoverer, Dutch physicist Pieter Zeeman (1865-1943), this is the splitting of optical lines into several closely-spaced components when the source of light is placed in a strong magnetic field. These components are polarized in a way that depends on the direction from which the source...
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The rule states that dehydrohalogenation of an alkyl halide yields the more substituted of the two possible alkenes as the predominant product. Alternatively, hydrogen is preferentially eliminated from the carbon atom joined to the least number of hydrogen atoms. See also MARKOWNIKofF'S RULE. I L Finar,...
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Named after its originator, the British physician Thomas Young (1773-1829) and German physician and physiologist Herman von Helmholtz (1821-94) who refined it. This theory asserts that colour vision is produced by three different kinds of cones in the retina, each containing a different pigment that...
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Formulated by the American Robert Meams Yerkes (1876-1956) and J D Dodson. Yerkes and Dodson discovered that mice were better able to learn a simple task in order to avoid a painful shock, and better able to learn a complex task when doing so to avoid a mild shock. Later researchers interpreted this...
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Named after the Chinese-bom American physicist Chen Ning Yang (1922- ), joint winner of the 1957 Nobel prize for Physics, and the English mathematician Robert Laurence Mills (1927- ). Yang and Mills produced a nonlinear version of Maxwell's equations incorporating a non-Abelian (non-commutative) group....
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Formulated by American economist Harvey Leibenstein (1922- ), this describes the general efficiency of a firm (judged on managerial and technological criteria) in transforming inputs at minimum cost into maximum profits. See THEORY of THE FIRM, MANAGERIAL THEORY of THE FIRM, SATISFICING, AGENCY THEORY,...
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Proposed by the American linguist Avram Noam Chomsky (1928- ). (Notations X', X) Account of the structure of phrases which ensures that a phrase is identified in terms of its 'head'. For example, in 'The President's speech to the alumni' the head is the N(oun) 'speech', and the phrases 'speech to the...
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Label usually applied in a hostile sense to those who advocate - or are wildly optimistic in thinking they can achieve - a state of affairs perfect in some or all respects. One charge is that the excessive and unrealistic pursuit of some good can lead to gross neglect of other goods and even of elementary...
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A theory originally developed by English political philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), this asserts that actions and institutions should be judged by their contribution to utility, which is measured by calculating the relative contribution to happiness or pleasure, as opposed to pain. The aim of...
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Any of a variety of views all of which are consequentialist or teleological, being distinguished from other forms of CONSEQUENTIALISM (if any) by saying that the consequence to be pursued is the maximization of good. This maximization may refer to the greatest total good or the greatest average good,...
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A Latin phrase meaning 'explaining painting and poetry', this argument's origins lie in the comparisons made between the two disciplines in Aristotle's Poetics and Horace's Ars Potica. These formed the bases during the Renaissance and Baroque periods for several treatises on similar theories. The fundamental...
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Proposed by the American psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949). Behavioural responses, functions, associations and so on which are sufficiently practised, exercised or rehearsed are strengthened relative to those which go unused. The law has wide application in teaching, training and education....
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Theories springing mainly from Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), that the meaning of a word or sentence is to be sought in its use, not in its correspondence to some entity (as NAMING and CORRESPONDENCE THEORIES of MEANING in general imply). The use in question normally means actual usage, but may also...
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Named after Russian mathematician Paul Samuilovich Urysohn (1898-1924), this is the result in TOPOLOGY whereby every regular topological space with a countable basis is metrizable; that is, the topological space may be defined by a metric. J R Munkres, Topology: A First Course (Prentice-Hall, 1975)...
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Named after Russian mathematician Paul Samuilovich Urysohn (1898-1924), this is the result in TOPOLOGY whereby a topological space S is normal if and only if any two disjoint closed sets A and B can be separated in the sense that there is a continuous function : S (0,1) with (A) = 0 and (B) = 1. See...
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A German term meaning 'fundamental structure' coined by the music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935). He proposed that, through successive reductions of the contrapuntal fabric of a piece of tonal music, a basic background structure can be identified. This structure comprises a fundamental melodic...
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Proposed by the American psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949). This law forms part of Thomdike's theory of leaming and postulates that an unpleasant effect is produced from the functioning of behavioural 'condition units' which were not ready to function. There is also a corresponding law...
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A complex and controversial notion which has been used both to distinguish the moral from the nonmoral and to distinguish the moral from the immoral - two jobs which tend to get in each other's way. 'What if everyone did that?' is often a relevant question in moral contexts; but 'did what exactly?'....
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Term used - usually in its adjectival forms: universalist(ic) - as a contrast term to EGOISM and ALTRUISM when referring to UTILITARIANISM and similar topics. It is summed up in the slogan of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), 'Everyone to count for one and no-one for more than one'. ARL
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The theory that all forms of life use the genetic code, which consists of systematic strings of nucleotides appearing in groups of three in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). The code governs protein synthesis. Relatively few exceptions exist to this theory. I Asimov, The Genetic...
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The basic idea was articulated by the Greek philosophers Plato (c.427-c.347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC). Literary theory has long stipulated as a fundamental requirement that an artistic text should be an integrated whole, its parts co-operating to a single purpose (though the NOVEL is a permissively...
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Also called the Danielli-Davson-Robertson model, this was proposed by American anatomist, physician and biochemist James David Robertson (1922- ) who used electron microscopy to elaborate on the DANIELLI-DAVSON MODEL. The theory asserts that all cell membranes consist of a biomolecular lipid layer...
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Theory of (nuclear) disarmament. The competition between nuclear states can be broken by one side reducing or disposing of its nuclear weapons, thus removing the threat which had induced the other side to arm in the first place. See also MULTILATERALISM. David Robertson, The Penguin Dictionary of Potitics...
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A claim that may be offered as a grounding for the INDUCTIVE PRINCIPLE, though it is not always distinguished from the principle itself. It may be crudely formulated as 'Nature is uniform', or 'The future will resemble the past', or - in a more refined version like that given under inductive principle...
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Formulated by the Scottish geologist James Hutton (1726-97), this principle was later summarized by the Scottish geologist Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) as 'the present is the key to the past'. This is now taken to mean that all past forces that operated on the Earth's surface can be recognized in...
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Theories which attempt to incorporate the gravitational, electromagnetic, weak and strong forces within a unified framework so that a consistent mathematical formalism can be used to predict all their characteristics. It is not yet certain whether such theories are intrinsically possible, but there...
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Also called the hangman paradox when the event is an execution, this was found by Lennard Ekbom. One day next week there will be an examination but the students will not know the day in advance. As Friday is the last day, students would expect it then, so it cannot be later than Thursday. Similarly...
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The underutilization of labour in the creation of wealth. Unemployment can take many forms (such as voluntary, involuntary, frictional, structural or demand deficient) and it can be measured both as a stock and a flow. Classical economists saw unemployment as a temporary phenomenon until price flexibility...
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A term coined by English linguist Richard Fowler (1938- ) on the basis of Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday's OVERLEXICALiZATiON, of which it is the converse. Lack, in a speaker or a text, of words to designate specific concepts, leading to a use of more general, or tangential, terms; used in LINGUISTIC...
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Analysis of how total output fail to be sold at the cost of production plus normal profit. Such insufficient consumption within a depressed economy aggravates the economic decline of the state. A further theory suggests that when there is inadequate buying power in an economy, the government should...
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Proposed by the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). This is the term given to the memory of prior events, feelings and emotions encountered by the individual which may or may not be available for conscious retrieval. Psychodynamic approaches suggest that unconscious memories...
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The element of risk that is unpredictable and has no measurable probability. Profit is usually regarded as the reward a company earns for enduring uncertainty in business activity. See BOUNDED RATIONALITY. K H Borch, The Economics of Uncertainty (Princeton, N.J., 1968) AV, PH
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Named after the Hungarian-bom American biochemist Albert von Nagyrapolt Szent-Gyrgyi (1893-1986) famous for his discovery of actin and myosin, and the isolation of Vitamin C. He won the Nobel prize in 1937. The hypothesis states that a mechanism exists which allows the energy absorbed from light or...
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The mathematical analysis of models of physical systems in engineering. See also CONTROL THEORY. JB
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Also termed 'systems analysis'. Theory of politics and govemment as a system associated with American political scientist David Easton (1917- ). Government and politics constitute a system of inputs and outputs, with 'gatekeepers' who filter demands upon the system in order to avoid overload. Systems...
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Developed by the British linguist Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (1925- ) from SCALE AND CATEGORY GRAMMAR. A grammar is seen as a network of systems from which options are made to generate particular structures: see for example TRANSITIVITY. See also FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR. C S Butler, Systemic Linguistics...
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Term used by the Pont Aven artists (in particular, Emile Bernard (1868-1941)) for their exhibition at the Exposition Universelle of 1889; and by the Groupe Synthtiste, formed in 1891, which included French painter Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) among its members. The term refers to an emphasis on the simplification...
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The major preoccupation of TRANSFORMATIONALGENERATIVE GRAMMAR since the 1950s. The central component of a GRAMMAR, concerned with patterns of arrangement of words and phrases, not covering patterns of sound or meaning. K Brown and J Miller, Syntax, 2nd edn (London, 1990) RF
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Theory of direct working class or trade union power, founded in the theories of French social philosopher Georges Sorel (1847-1922). Since political POWER arises from economic power, capitalism is most effectively replaced by workers organizing on the basis of their occupation or workplace, and then...
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Colour theory proposed by the American artists Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890-1973) and Morgan Russell (1886-1953) at joint exhibitions held in Munich and Paris. Related to the colour theories of NEO-IMPRESSIONISM and ORPHISM (2), synchromism asserts that colour alone provides the form and subject...
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Relevant sense of the term appears in the thesis 'Audition color' by J Millet. Description of a sense-impression in terms of another sense, for example ioud perfume', 'sparkling noyse' (Donne, Crashaw, early 17th century). A device much used in French Symbolist poetry, but found throughout Western...
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Advocated by Bush, this is the concept that a new species can evolve within the range of the parent population, implying that reproductive isolation can occur biologically (for example, by feeding on different plant species) without the need for geographic isolation. Polyploidy in plants, which causes...
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Direct musical themes may be used as symbols (for example, Richard Wagner's leitmotifs), but more often the musical language of a passage is designed to reveal the emotional state implicit in the narrative; for example, Pellas et Mlisande, music by Claude Debussy (1862-1918), text by Maurice Maeterlinck...
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A movement originating in France and influencing early 20th-century English poetry, it is characterized by uses of language that demand an unusual degree of symbolic interpretation of words and objects, offering novel systems of SYMBOLS. The effect is anti-mimetic and obscure; hence the objections...
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In art, the movement's aims were set out by the French critic Albert Aurier in an article in the Mercure de France (March, 1891). He asserted that a work of art must be 'ideaed'; that is, the expression of the idea. Symbolist, since it expresses idea through form; synthetic as its method of representation...
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This concept has been particularly important in the 20th century: in literary theory since SYMBOLISM; and in SEMIOTICS. An expression which designates an object which stands for something else (for example, 'The Stars and Stripes', and 'The Cross'); secondary signification, less diffuse than connotation....
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Also called endosymbiosis, and hereditary symbiosis, this theory was originated by German botanist Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper (1856-1901) and Altmann in the 1880s and refined by Lynn Margulis (as Lynn Sagan) (1938- ) in 1967. The theory that mitochondria, chloroplasts, and possibly other 'organelles'...
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Proposed as a problem by Joseph Sylvester (1814-97). Show that it is impossible to arrange any finite number of points in the Euclidean plane so that a line through any two of them also passes through a third unless they all lie on one line. The problem was solved by T Gallai in 1933. See also MOTZKIN'S...
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Stated by Joseph Sylvester (1814-97) and proved by Carl Jacobi (1804-51). For a homogeneous quadratic polynomial in a finite number of indeterminates, the number of positive coefficients and the number of non-zero coefficients in any polynomial with square terms only into which Q can be transformed...
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Named after Norwegian mathematician Peter Ludwig Sylow (1832-1918), these are three theorems in GROUP THEORY which assert the existence of subgroups of a certain prescribed order in an arbitrary nite group and describe the properties of such subgroups. (1) Sylow's first theorem asserts that if p is...
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As rain drops of different mass move at different velocities through a cloud, the larger droplets sweep up smaller droplets in their path. See also COALESCENCE THEORY. DT
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Not attributable to any one originator, this is a rarely used term named after the notorious bank robber, Willie Sutton. This principle of diagnosis states that one should look for a disorder where or in whom the disorder is most likely to be found. It supports the hypothesis that all diseases and...
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Named after its discoverer, the Scottish theoretical physicist William Sutherland (1859-1911). If T is the viscosity of the gas at a temperature T and 273 is the viscosity at a temperature of 273 K (INSERT FORMULA HERE) J Thewlis, ed., Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Physics (New York, Oxford and London,...
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Theory of social progress of English social scientist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), wrongly attributed to Charles Darwin (1809-82). If government is kept to its minimum functions of the defence of persons and property, the enforcement of contracts, and the defence of the frontiers, individuals will...
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A phrase coined by British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) in his book Principles of Biology (1864), but often associated with the evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin (1809-82). This is the idea that those individuals best adapted to their environment are those most likely to live to reproduce....
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A term coined by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) in 1917, and adopted as a name in the first Surrealist manifesto (1924), written by poet and critic Andr Breton (1896-1966) in Paris. It included the following declaration: 'Surrealism rests in the belief in the superior reality of...
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Cited by English economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) and German political economist Karl Marx (1818-1883), this term describes the surplus derived from the use of a factor of production over its cost. Marx noted that an employee works more hours than is necessary to provide basic subsistence for himself...
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A movement in ABSTRACT ART launched by Russian Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935). In painting, Suprematism aims for pure art using pristine geometrical shapes (particularly the square) devoid of personal feeling, but expressing 'non-objective sensation'. Art should be non-utilitarian. In the (former) Soviet...
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American STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS in the tradition of Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949). Best-known formulation by George L Trger and H L Smith. Segmental PHONEMES cut up the stream of speech linearly: /b//a//g/. Trger and Smith proposed additional phonemes not tied to single segments: four different degrees...
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One of the key geometric ideas in FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS. If a convex subset C of a real Banach space has a non-empty interior then any point X on the boundary is a support point {see also BISHOP-PHELPS THEOREM). In other words, there is a supporting hyperplane (geometrically a tangent) to C at x. This...
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With its emphasis on aggregate supply, rather than aggregate demand (as in KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS), this theory is concemed with the productive capacity of the economy. Free market supply-side economics emerged in the 1980s as the complement to MONETARISM. Government measures included: tax cuts; measures...
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An invariance symmetry principle which treats bosons and fermions equally. Theories using supersymmetry assign boson partners to fermions and vice versa. For example, the boson partners of fermion electrons, quarks and leptons are called selectrons, squarks and sleptons. Correspondingly, the fermion...
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Coined by literary theorist Richard Harland, this term designates an inclusive intellectual field encompassing not only STRUCTURALISM, POSTSTRUCTURALISM and SEMIOTICS, but also related work in adjacent disciplines such as Foucault's philosophy of knowledge and Althusser's political theory. R F R Harland,...
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A theory combining ideas from string theory with those of supersymmetry which is thought to be a more useful route to a unified theory of fundamental interactions than quantum field theory. Superstring theory avoids the problems of infinities by introducing particles of spin 2, known as gravitons....
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Formulated by the English scientist William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77) and the Belgian physicist Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (1801-83). This principle states that when the rate of a flickering light is sufficiently high it comes to be seen as a continuous steady stream of light with a perceived...
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Term 'tagmeme' coined by American linguist Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949) in 1933. Theory developed by American linguist Kenneth Lee Pike (1912- ) and others; also called 'slot and filler grammar'. A tagmeme is the smallest unit of grammar, analogous to PHONEME in phonology. For Pike, it is not simply...
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When a physical system is acted on by a number of independent influences, the resultant effect is the appropriate sum of the individual influences, provided that the behaviour of the systems can be expressed by linear differential equations. In particular, when several particles interact, the force...
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The principle that any linear combination of solutions to a homogeneous linear DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION is also a solution to that equation. W E Boyle and R C Di Prima, Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems (New York, 1977) ML
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Proposed by the Danish naturalist Nicolas Steno (1638-86), this states that in any undisturbed succession of rocks, the lowest strata are older than the upper beds. This law remains a fundamental principle in the relative dating of rocks. In very disturbed beds, the entire sequence may be inverted...
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A theory in Russian literature, this term was applied by the poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) to the hero of his verse fiction Eugene Onegin (1823-31). The term came into general usage after publication of "Diary of a Superfluous Man" in 1850, a story by Ivan Turgenev (1818-83). Type of...
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Astronomy The cosmological theory that the universe has evolved from a 'superdense' agglomeration of matter that suffered an enormous explosion. See BIG BANG THEORY. S Mitton, ed.. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy (London, 1973) MS
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Advanced by English economist William Jevons (1835-82), this is a TRADE CYCLE THEORY stating that trade is linked to the regular occurrence of solar flares, or spots, which affect the earth's climate and agricultural output. Critics, while acknowledging the cyclical nature of the sunspot activity and...
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The study of methods used to sum quantities, especially of methods of assigning values to divergent series and integrals. See also ABEL SUMMATION, CESARO SUMMATION and TAUBERIAN THEOREMS. K Knopp, Theory and Application of Inflnite Series (New York, 1990) ML
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The theorem that if the matrix of the quadratic form of a sum of squares of normal random variables is independent of rank r, then the sum of squares is distributed proportionally to a chi-square distribution with r degrees of freedom. ML
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Identified by the American psychologists D Salter and J G Colley, this is the phenomenon whereby an extraneous stimulus (the 'suffix') presented immediately after the full list of to-be-recalled materials depresses the recall of that material. This occurs even when the subject is informed in advance...
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Principle that there must be a sufficient reason - causal or otherwise - for why whatever exists or occurs does so, and does so in the place, time and manner that it does. The principle goes back to at least the early 5th century BC - being used by Parmenides (see ELEATICISM) in his Fragment 8, lines...
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A reference to the set of theories that hold that life, usually in the form of a single cell, appeared suddenly on the Earth, without the gradual appearance of pre-biotic forms. These include theories that life came from outer space or was placed on earth by God. See also ORIGINS of LIFE. Compare with...
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Proposed by English physiologist William Croone (1633-84), this was the hypothetical substance that interacts with the blood in muscles to produce contraction. Succus nerveus ('juice of the nerves') was an elaboration of the earlier idea of animal spirits (spiritus animi), and it persisted until German...
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A fundamental part of modern economic theory developed by, among others, Soviet economist Evgeny Slutsky (1880-1948) and English economist John Hicks (1904-89); this is the analysis of the manner in which consumers, faced with a constant level of real income, change purchasing decisions in the wake...
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The theorem of logic that a universally quantified statement implies any instance of it, and that an existentially quantified statement is implied by an instance of it. ML
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Proposed by the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). This states that if psychoneurotic symptoms are superficially treated without dealing with the underlying causes of the disorder, symptom substitution will occur. This effect is frequently used by psychodynamically-oriented...
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Theory of allocation of public or governmental functions associated with the European Community. Tasks should never be allocated to a body higher up in a political hierarchy if they can be effectively carried out by a body lower down. RB
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This emerged as an aesthetic term in 18th century literature and art, denoting the extraordinary and the marvellous, and was initially based on the concept of 'elevation' as propounded by Longinus (c. AD 213-73) in his thesis Peri Hupsous. The 1674 translation of Longinus by French critic Boileau (1636-1711)...
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Theories which analyze probability in terms of beliefs or attitudes rather than anything in the world itself. For one theory, associated mainly with Bruno De Finetti (1906-85), the degree of probability of something is the degree of the speaker's belief, measured by his betting behaviour, but subject...
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Any theory treating a given subject matter as dependent on human beliefs and attitudes, whether those of an individual, a social group, or humanity generally. A subjectivist theory of ethics, for example, might analyze an utterance like 'Abortion is wrong' as meaning that the speaker, or his society,...
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Form of idealism represented primarily by George Berkeley (1685-1753), though his own name for it was 'immaterialism'. Berkeley distinguished minds or spirits (including both God and finite spirits like Us), which are active, from ideas which are their contents and are passive. To be is to perceive,...
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Proposed by the American linguist Avram Noam Chomsky (1928- ). Restriction on how far transformations may move constituents. In GOVERNMENT AND BINDING, items may not be moved across more than one 'bounding node' (S, S', NP); thus sentences like 'Which car did she believe Tom's story that I drove?'...
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(1) Traditional European literary-critical practice, for example Charles Bally (1865-1947); (2) principally American and British application of linguistics, with various pioneers. (1) Study of the characteristic language of an author, period, movement, or genre; may be impressionistic, or (in authorship...
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A problematic concept of traditional origin, much discussed since STYLISTICS became popular in the 1960s. Also some usage in SOCIOLINGUISTICS. A distinctive manner of expression, appropriate to a type of communicative context ('formal style', 'tabloid style'); in literary studies, characteristic of...
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Named after its discoverer Jacques Sturm (1803-55). Let f(x) be a polynomial with real coefficients. Write (INSERT FORMULA 1 HERE) then put (INSERT FORMULA 2 HERE) where (INSERT FORMULA 3 HERE) are successive remainders computed from f(x) and f(x) by the Euclidean algorithm. Let a and b be real numbers...
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Meaning 'Storm and Stress', this phrase originated as the title of a play by the German dramatist Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger (1752-1831). It was adopted as the general label for a German literary movement of the 1770s. Short-lived but important as a precursor to ROMANTICISM, the movement stressed...
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Proposed by the American psychologist L Festinger (1919- ). This posits that one uses other people as a basis for comparison in order to evaluate one's own judgments, ability, attitudes and so on. Social comparisons are particularly important when other objective standards are not available. The theory...
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Application of RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY to the provision of welfare services and public goods and the relation between citizens' preferences and public policy. There are difficulties in rationally translating people's choices into public policy, as indicated in the IMPOSSIBILITY THEORY. Social choice...
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Not attributable to any one individual, this is an approach to the study of attitude formation and change. Theories subsumed under this approach include ASSIMILATION-CONTRAST THEORY and ADAPTATION LEVEL THEORY, and all change in terms of the manner in which an individual lives in and adapts to his/her...
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This is an examination of the NATIONAL INCOME and expenditure accounts, showing all transactions during a given period of time, in different areas of the economy. PH
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A theory to explain the formation of ice sheets. If snow persisted in lowland areas during a summer, it would reflect sunlight back into space and so maintain a lower temperature in the area than before. This would enable the thickness of snow to increase subsequently. DT
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(1) Independent trials where the kth probability of success pk behaves like \kth probability of success up to the nth trial behaves like a Poisson distribution with mean . (2) Informally, mathematicians use the law to say that it is dangerous to infer patterns from a few cases. Encyclopedic Dictionary...
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Theory of the German social scientist Max Weber (1864-1920) regarding the influence of small groups in key positions. 'The ruling minority can quickly reach understanding among its members; it is thus able at any time quickly to initiate that rationally organized action which is necessary to preserve...
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Developed by the German-bom British economist and businessman Ernst Schumacher (1911-77), who advocated 'intermediate' and alternative technologies. The principle challenged the tradition of large organizations, which Schumacher claimed were inefficient and a danger to the environment. He proposed...
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Named after Russian mathematician Evgeny Evgenievich Slutsky (1880-1948), this element of PROBABILITY THEORY asserts that if X1, X2,...Xn, X is a sequence of random variables such that INSERT FORMULA 1 HERE where P(X x) is continuous everywhere for some random variable x, then INSERT FORMULA 2 HERE...
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Named after its proposer, Soviet economist Evgeny Slutsky (1880-1948), this hypothesis was later developed by English economists John Hicks (1904-89) and Roy Allen (1906- ). In its simplest form: Price effect = income effect + substitution efect. Slutsky asserted in 1915 that demand theory is based...
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This is the simplest form of the general theory of the flow of a compressible, inviscid (non-viscous) fluid past a body. The theory requires that the body have a pointed nose and base and a smooth surface; also, the ratio of the maximum thickness of the body to its length must be much less than unity...
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Identified by the American psychologist C I Hovland (1912-61). This effect was devised to describe the 'hidden' impact that a mass communication or propaganda message can have on its audience. The attitude change produced by the message is frequently not detectable until a period of time has passed,...
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Named after its discoverer Thoralf Skolem (1887-1963). As a consequence of the theorem that Skolem proved with L Lowenheim in 1922, he showed that the construction of the real numbers can give an arithmetic in which the numbers can be associated one each with the positive integers, a property the set...
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This is the phenomenon whereby very high frequency alternating currents tend to flow on the surface of a conductor. J Thewlis, ed., Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Physics (New York, Oxford and London, 1962) MS
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Formulated by Ernest B. Skagg (fl. 1920s-40s) using his own work and that of Edward S Robinson (1893-1937) dealing with the effect that similarity has on the recall of successively presented material. Maximum similarity between sets of material leads to maximal recall, and as similarity decreases so...
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This term is applied to works (particularly, large monochromatic paintings) where the spectator's aesthetic response is determined by the intensity and saturation of colour. In Great Britain, the Situation group exhibited together in 1960, its adherents including B Cohen, R Denny, J Hoyland and W Turnbull....
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Advocacy of comprehensive revolution. Radical and not always precise proposal for total revolutionary transformation of every aspect of life, beginning with individual experience; much in evidence in France in May 1968. Alan Bullock, Oliver Stallybrass, and Stephen Trombley, eds. The Fontana Dictionary...
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Ethical doctrine that our moral duty cannot be rigorously subjected to general rules, but must take account of each situation as it arises. Unlike ANTINOMIANISM it does not reject such rules altogether, but insists on flexibility in applying them. Unlike casuistry it does not insist on breaching rules...
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Developed by Collins and Fuller, who studied seizure susceptibility in mice, this is the group of hypotheses holding that one particular gene is responsible for a given characteristic or behaviour. For example, the ability to taste phenylthiocarbamide (PTC) in humans is associated with the presence...
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French school of poets, led by H-M Bazun, who aimed for a coincidence or simultaneity of image and sounds, and mingled human speech and other noises in their verse. Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) also adopted the term in relation to his 'Calligrame' poetry. H-M Bazun, La Trilogie des forces (1908-14)...
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Term adopted by the French painter Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) from an 1839 publication by colour theorist Michel Eugne Chevreul (1786-1889). Delaunay sought to create an ABSTRACTART that was dependent on colour alone to suggest form and movement. Simultaneity became crucial in the arts just before...
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Named after British analyst, geometer, algebraist and probabilist Thomas Simpson (1710-61), although the result was well known in Simpson's lifetime. The method for approximating a definite integral INSERT FORMULA 1 HERE where INSERT FORMULA 2 HERE The error of the approximation is INSERT FORMULA 3...
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Named after its discoverer E H Simpson. In two trials of two brands of hair restorer, Vulpes reactivated 1 hair in 10 and 14 hairs in 40, with success rates 10 per cent and 35 per cent; whereas Lupus reactivated 5 in 40 and 4 in 10, with success rates 12.5 per cent and 40 per cent. The conclusion that...
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Formulated by the German-American psychologist Wolfgang Khlererman (1887-1967). The law of simplicity is derived from the term prgnant in Gestalt Psychology, which, roughly translated, means 'good figure'. It is a law of perceptual organization stating that we perceive the result of stimulus patterns...
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Formulated by the German psychologist Max Wertheimer (1886-1943). This is a principle of Gestalt Psychology which holds that behaviour always follows the simplest path open to the organism at that particular time. It has been used to explain how children learn articulation skills and how economic systems...
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Hadrons are elementary particles which can take part in strong interactions. They are of two kinds: mesons with zero or integer spin and consisting of a quark-antiquark pair, and baryons with half-integer spin and consisting of three quarks. The constituents are bound together within the hadron by...
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Formulated by German-American psychologist Wolfgang Khlererman (1887-1967). One of the Gestalt Psychology laws of perceptual organization which state that physically similar objects tend to be grouped together. This is the generalization that stirriuli are more likely to elicit similar stimuli than...
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Identified by the American psychologists Ernest B Skaggs (fl.1920s-1940s) and Edward S Robinson (1893-1937). This is the paradox in leaming whereby when things are made as similar as possible from trial to trial there exist, on the one hand, conditions for maximal interference (like things interfering...
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The provision of information for decision-making, especially regarding price. Price changes signal producers that supply and demand are no longer in equilibrium. See ADVERSE SELECTION. A M Spence, Market Signalling: Information Transfer in Hiring and Related Processes (Cambridge, Mass., 1973) AV, PH
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Proposed by G Blobel and D D Sabatini, this is an explanation for how newly synthesized proteins are selected and transported to their proper locations in the cell. Specifically, proteins that are to be secreted, sent to lysosomes (digestive organelles), or incorporated into the cell membrane are encoded...
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Proposed by the American psychologist John Arthur Swets (1928- ). The detection of stimuli involves decision processes as well as sensory processes. According to the theory, an organism's capacity to detect a stimulus is determined by the intensity of the stimulus and the level of 'noise' (irrelevant...
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Taught in various countries since the 18th century, it became an important research topic in linguistics from the 1970s onwards. A system of gestures, visually received, for communication among the deaf. It has its own structure, not based on vocal language. Different countries have different sign...
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Formulated by the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). A sign is a union of a signified (concept) and signifier (vocal sound or writing). "The relation between these components is 'arbitrary' in that signifiers vary in different languages: for example, dog, chien, Hund. There is...
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Named after Greek mathematician and astronomer Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c.276-195 BC). Eratosthenes's sieve for primes is a systematic procedure for isolating the prime numbers. Much more sophisticated sieves are used today in prime number theory. See also PRIME NUMBER THEOREM a n d DIRICHLET'S THEOREM...
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Named after the Polish mathematician Waclaw Sierpinski. A FRACTAL object formed using a recursive procedure in which inverted equilateral triangles are repeatedly removed from an initial equilateral triangle. The resulting figure, after this has been repeated infinitely often, is the Sierpinski gasket....
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Proposed by Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915), a German bacteriologist and a winner of the 1908 Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine. This is a model for immunologie specificity, holding that immunocytes come equipped with diverse side-chain groups of chemical receptors on their surface which interact with...
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Distinction particularly associated with the aesthetics of the American novelist Henry James (1843-1916). In narrative fiction, an event or a character may be presented dramatically, apparently without narrator's comment ('shown'); or presented with an obvious narrative presence ('told'). Modern preference...
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Formulated by the Canadian psychologist Donald Olding Hebb (1904- ). The law states that the neurophysiological mechanism underlying the process of a physical activity or a mental process tends to become automatic. By 'automatic', it is meant that no conscious effort of attention is used to perform...
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Formulated by the American psychologist Edward Lee Thomdike (1874-1949). This states that it is relatively easy to elicit a response which an animal is capable of performing in any situation and to which it is sensitive, and thereby form an association between the response and the characteristics of...
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Also referred to as adaptive landscape, this concept was proposed by American population theorist Seawall Wright (1889-1988) and remains controversial. It asserts that evolution often requires combining genes that, if expressed individually, would be harmful to the organism. Wright believed that this...
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Named by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen (1860-1943) in his book Language, but the theoretical importance of the idea was developed by Roman Jakobson (1896-1982). See also 'DEIXIS'. Expressions such as the personal pronouns T, 'you', 'she', and so on, which depend for their meaning on the communicative...
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Identified by the German-American psychologist Kurt Koffka (1886-1941). This refers to the phenomenon whereby when a change of circumstances alters the position of two stimuli on a continuum, the two tend to keep the same relation to each other. See GESTALT THEORY. R H Price, M Glickstein, D L Horton...
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Proposed by Maria Goppert Mayer and by O Haxel, J H D Jansen and Hans E Suess. In this model it is assumed that each nuclen (proton or neutron) moves independently in a potential well which represents the averaged effect of its interactions with all the other nuclons. The wavefunctions and energies...
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Proposed by the American psychologist William Herbert Sheldon (1898-1970). This theory postulates a strong relationship between personality development and physique. According to Sheldon there are three basic body types with three temperament dimensions. Although successful in uncovering a relationship...
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Named after the American applied mathematician and pioneer of information theory Claude Elwood Shannon (1916- ). Information theory is concerned with the encoding, transmitting and interpretation of messages. Shannon proposed a purely mathematical definition of information for any probability distribution...
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A term coined by the American biologist Gairdner B Moment, in The Biology of Aging, this is the popular idea that there exists somewhere in the world a small band of people who, for reasons of diet, culture or climate, are able to live fruitful lives through 140 or more years of age. The habitats of...
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Theory developed by the American artist Charles Bieder, and so named to distinguish it from an earlier concept of 'constmctionism'. With the use of abstract reliefs he attempted to synthesize qualities of painting, sculpture and architecture which he viewed as structural processes of nature. Some confusion...
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Theory developed by the American artist Charles Bieder, and so named to distinguish it from an earlier concept of 'constmctionism'. With the use of abstract reliefs he attempted to synthesize qualities of painting, sculpture and architecture which he viewed as structural processes of nature. Some confusion...
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Central principle of the GENERATIVE GRAMMAR of the American linguist Avram Noam Chomsky (1928- ). Universal 'design feature' of language. Linguistic rules must refer to structural information in order to operate. For example, question-formation in English (for example, 'Is Chomsky famous?') moves the...
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Central principle of the GENERATIVE GRAMMAR of the American linguist Avram Noam Chomsky (1928- ). Universal 'design feature' of language. Linguistic rules must refer to structural information in order to operate. For example, question-formation in English (for example, 'Is Chomsky famous?') moves the...
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This is a model used to link elements of market structure to business conduct and performance in industrialeconomics. PH
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(1) Set of theoretical principles adumbrated by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913); (2) American school of descriptive linguistics, most active during the 1940s and 1950s, based on the work of Leonard Bloomfeld (1887-1949) and of the ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTS before him. (1) For the main...
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A more systematic exposition of FUNCTIONALISM, particularly employed in comparative politics. Societies and political systems may be compared, whatever their formal or institutional differences, in terms of the various functions which contribute to the operation of their overall structures. Geoffrey...
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Introduced into this field by French anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss (1908- ), with whom the theory is strongly associated. Broadly, any approach which emphasizes relations between things rather than things themselves. Structuralists hold that meaning exists only within systems, especially those...
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Proposed by the American psychologist J R Stroop (fl. 1930s). The Stroop interference test consists of a series of colour name words (blue, red, green) printed in non-matching colours; for example, the word 'green' may be printed in red ink. Most people find it extremely difficult to attend to the...
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A precise form of the law of large numbers proved by Emile Borel (1871-1956). See also LARGE NUMBERS, LAW OF and WEAK LAW OF LARGE NUMBERS. JB
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This is so named since it developed from the theory of vibrating strings and was an attempt to create a unified FIELD THEORY in fourdimensional space-time. Dealing with elementary particles, the theory was designed to overcome the singularity problems of general relativity which arise when a quantum...
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Term used by the American psychologist William James (1842-1910) for associatively linked thought. Appropriated for literary criticism in the early 20th century. A range of linguistic techniques for representing the thought-processes of CHARACTERS in FICTION, aiming to imitate the loose, fragmentary,...
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Proposed by the American psychologist William K Estes (1919- ). This mathematical theory of leaming can produce accurate predictions about behaviours in a variety of complex leaming experiments. On each trial of a leaming experiment the subject samples a portion of the elements that form the stimulus,...
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Named after its discoverer Ludwig Stickelberger (1850-1936). We calculate modulo an odd prime number p; that is, we replace each integer by its remainder on division by p. Let f(x) be a polynomial of degree d which is greater than 1 with all coefficients integers and the coefficient ofxd equal to 1....
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Named after the Scottish physicist Balfour Stewart (1828-87) and the German physicist Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1824-87). The law states that for any substance, the ratio of emissive power and absorption coefficient depends only on the temperature and the frequency and plane of polarization of the radiation,...
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Named after its discoverer, the Flemish mathematician and physicist Simon Stevinus (1548-1620), this states that the pressure upon the base of a vessel containing a given liquid is independent of the shape of the vessel, being determined only by the vertical height of the free surface of the liquid...
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Identified by the German-American psychologist Max Wertheimer (1880-1943). The principle that a sequence of separate steps along a continuum is normally perceived as an organized, smooth progression. The stepwise phenomenon occurs with a prothetic continuum but not with a metathetic one; for example,...
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Formulated by the Danish naturalist Niels Steinsen (1638-86) (better known as Nicolas Steno), these recognized the organic origin of fossils. Steno also implicitly established the laws of SUPERPOSITION OF STRATA and CROSSCUTTING RELATIONSHIPS. DT
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Named after its discoverer, the American electrical engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923). This is a useful rule for the approximate calculation of the work W needed to take a ferromagnetic material around its hysteresis loop. (INSERT FORMULA HERE) where Bm is the maximum value of the induction...
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Named after Ernst Steinitz (1871-1928) who proved this extension of a result by Bemhard Riemann (1826-66). Let the infinite series (INSERT FORMULA 1HERE) have a sum to infinity. Then the sums of the various series that can be derived from the equation by changing the order of the terms are either all...
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Named after its discoverer Emst Steinitz (1871-1928). Let k and m be positive integers such that k < m, let u1, u2, . . . ,uk and v1, v2, . . . ,vm be linearly independent sets in a vector space. Then INSERT FORMULA 1 HERE can be written in a different order as INSERT FORMULA 2 HERE such that...
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Also called the starchstatolith hypothesis, this idea was originally proposed by Hungarian botanist Gottlieb Haberlandt (1854-1945) in Austria and Bohumil Nemec in Czechoslovakia, and was refined in the 1970s. The theory that plants perceive gravity because specialized starchy grains in 'amyloplasts'...
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Early contributors to the theory of statistics include the French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre (1752-1833), who developed the method of least squares, as well as Gauss, Laplace and Fermt, Pascal, Huygens, Leibniz, Jakob and Johann Bernoulli and Arbuthnot in probability. Between 1700 and 1900...
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A theory by which the properties of macroscopic systems are predicted from the statistical behaviour of their constituent particles. In a large collection of molecules, for example, the total energy is the sum of the vibrational, rotational, translational and electronic energies of the individual molecules....
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Proposed by the American psychologist William K Estes (1919- ). Introduced in the early 1950s to denote a variety of attempts to formulate and quantify basic principles of learning theory, statistical learning theory introduced a range of statistical and mathematical techniques which proved useful...
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Referred to by Scottish economist Adam Smith (1723-90), this is a situation of zero growth in which the stock of goods is always the same (that is, quantity consumed equals quantity supplied in the same time period) and rewards to factors of production are at a minimum. See SECULAR STAGNATION THEORY...
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Theory frequently employed in conjunction with that of a SOCIAL CONTRACT. Before the formation of society or of states, people lived in a state of nature which has been variously characterized as Utopian or brutal. Government is then a damaging limitation of primal innocence, or a necessary check on...
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Theory of state under COMMUNISM. In Russia after the revolution of 1917, what developed was not communism but the assumption of the powers and functions of capitalism by the state. In an amended version (as 'state monopoly capitalism' or 'STAMOCAP'), it is argued that in western capitalist society...
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Proposed by M J D White, this theory postulates that a new chromosomal arrangement can arise anywhere in the range of a species, becoming increasingly common over time and spreading geographically, until individuals carrying this new trait as htrozygotes become so common that they breed, causing homozygotes...
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The choice of one dialect, or one language, as the official language of a nation: to facilitate communication and education, and to express nationhood. The chosen variety is codified through dictionaries and grammars, and receives prestige through use by privileged groups (therefore, in Great Britain,...
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First major revision of his TRANSFORMATIONALGENERATIVE GRAMMAR by the American linguist Avram Noam Chomsky (1928- ). Transformations do not change meaning. The base (syntactic) component of the grammar now contains the phrase structure rules and information about which transformations (for example....
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Doctrines and policies associated with the Soviet politician Joseph Stalin (1879-1953). A concentration of repressive power in the hands of a single leader and the ruthless suppression of opposition and dissent, combined with the advocacy of SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY. Less a doctrine espoused by Stalin...
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Associated with the work of the American psychologist Arnold Lucius Gesell (1880-1961). This term describes any developmental theory which characterizes growth as a progression through a succession of stages. Stage theories tend to be either maturational or interactionist and usually have at least...
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A paradox ascribed to Zeno of Elea (c.490-435 BC). To put the paradox in a modem form, let us assume that both time and space are quantized; that is, have minimal quantities. If two objects one quantum long travel in opposite directions on parallel tracks at the speed of one quantum of space in one...
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The theorem that if a system of ordinary DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS has a hyperbolic fixed point, then there exist local stable and unstable manifolds of the same dimensions tangent to the corresponding eigenspaces of the linearized system. There are generalizations of this theorem to maps on Banach spaces....
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Discovered by the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), this law states that the strength of any structure which is likely to fail because the material fractures cannot be predicted from models or from scaling up from previous experience. The reason for this is that, in scaling up, the weight...
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Proposed by the American psychologist Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949). To account for the phenomenon of stimulus generalization, Thomdike proposed that the effect of 'satisfiers' or 'annoyers' spread to other stimuli present at the time of the response or to stimuli similar in nature to the originally...
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Proposed by the German physiologist Max von Frey (1852-1932). The skin is tested spot by spot to determine whether different spots respond to different stimuli and thereby yield different sensory qualities. The theory cannot account for a variety of sensory phenomena but was important in discriminating...
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Theory of Austrian social scientist F A Hayek (1899-1992). Social order is not deliberately created but arises out of the natural selection of those institutions and values and practices which are effective, so that a traditional framework develops over time within which individuals may operate securely....
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Theory of Austrian social scientist F A Hayek (1899-1992). Social order is not deliberately created but arises out of the natural selection of those institutions and values and practices which are effective, so that a traditional framework develops over time within which individuals may operate securely....
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This is an ancient concept, but the term was coined by J Duncan in Beetles (1835). Also called abiogenesis, it is the (now discredited) idea that living organisms can arise spontaneously from inanimate matter. This theory was supported by such observations as maggots appearing on rotten meat left outdoors,...
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Theory developed by English poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850). A tenet of ROMANTICISM. Poetry arises naturally in the poet and is not the product of existing ideas or labour with a conventional form. Wordsworth: 'Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. W Wordsworth, 'Preface to the...
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Named after its originator, the German astronomer Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Spoerer (1822-95), this law states that the mean latitude of sunspots varies systematically through a complete cycle. The law was also stated by the English astronomer Richard Christopher Carrington (1826-75). S Mitton, ed.....
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This term was coined in the 1600s, but its meaning was based on a theory of Greek physician Erasistratus of Julius (c.33O BC-C.250 BC). Spiritus animi refers to the hypothetical substance that swells a muscle, causing its contraction. Erasistratus thought this substance was pneuma (Greek for breath),...
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This term was coined in the 1600s, but its meaning was based on a theory of Greek physician Erasistratus of Julius (c.33O BC-C.250 BC). Spiritus animi refers to the hypothetical substance that swells a muscle, causing its contraction. Erasistratus thought this substance was pneuma (Greek for breath),...
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A relativistic quantum field theorem concerning the quantization of spins. Particles with half integer spins must obey Fermi-Dirac statistics to be quantized consistently. Similarly, particles with integer spins must obey BOSE-EINSTEIN statistics. This theorem is the basis for the PAULI EXCLUSION PRINCIPLE....
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In both radiative and radiation-less transitions the principle applies that transitions between terms of the same multiplicity are spinallowed whereas transitions between terms of different multiplicity are spin-forbidden. Compendium of Chemical Terminology: IUPAC Recommendations (Oxford, 1987) MF
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One of the -dimensional analogues of the problem of packing skittle balls in a cuboidal box in order to utilize the space in the box as efficiently as possible. JB
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Named after its discoverer E Spemer. Suppose that an n-dimensional simplex (the n-dimensional analogue of the triangle) is decomposed into simplices of various dimensions, but meeting face to face; and suppose that the vertices of these are numbered onto the set of numbers 0 , 1 , 2, . . ., n so that...
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Always implicit in linguistic theory, particularly DIALECTOLOGY, and much discussed in modem SOCIOLINGUISTICS since the 1960s. A set of people with a common language, or who share a repertoire of varieties (accents, styles, even languages in multilingualism); people who live together and interact through...
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Also 'illocutionary act theory'. Originally formulated by the British philosopher John Langshaw Austin (1911-60), and developed by the American John Rogers Searle (1932- ), it is a branch of PRAGMATICS. When saying something, one is simultaneously doing something. An 'utterance act' is performed in...
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Also 'illocutionary act theory'. Originally formulated by the British philosopher John Langshaw Austin (1911-60), and developed by the American John Rogers Searle (1932- ), it is a branch of PRAGMATICS. When saying something, one is simultaneously doing something. An 'utterance act' is performed in...
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A law which states that the spectrum of an un-ionized atom resembles that of a singlyionized atom of the element one place higher in the periodic table, and that of a doubly-ionized atom two places higher in the table, and so forth. GD
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A bounded linear operator T can be expressed in terms of the complex numbers z such that zl T is not a bounded linear operator; that is, such that z is in the spectrum of T. See also OPERATOR THEORY. JB
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An idea to deal with the problem that we can apparently only be aware of what is present, and what is present must be momentary (otherwise it would include the future or past and not be all present), yet anything real must exist for at least some time: so how can we be aware of anything real, and of...
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A term attributed to British psychologist Richard Ryder, author of Victims of Science (1975), it was popularized by Australian philosopher Peter Singer in Animal Liberation (1975). Speciesism is the doctrine that certain species are innately superior to others; and is used especially to describe the...
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A term attributed to British psychologist Richard Ryder, author of Victims of Science (1975), it was popularized by Australian philosopher Peter Singer in Animal Liberation (1975). Speciesism is the doctrine that certain species are innately superior to others; and is used especially to describe the...
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(Also referred to as the biological species concept, the isolation species concept, the species concept, and the species taxa.) Most often associated with Ernst Mayr (1904- ), an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University (but many other biologists have theorized on the subject before and since)....
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(Also referred to as the biological species concept, the isolation species concept, the species concept, and the species taxa.) Most often associated with Ernst Mayr (1904- ), an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University (but many other biologists have theorized on the subject before and since)....
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Also called the natural state model of species, this was based on the ideas of Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC), and applied by Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-78) and others in their search for the perfect 'type specimen' for each species. It is the concept that all members of a species...
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Outlined by Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-76), among others, as an argument against the Mercantilist view that a nation should have a permanent balance of payments surplus. This is a corrective mechanism in the Gold Standard by which deficits and surpluses are eliminated by an induced flow...
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Also called geographic speciation, this theory is most often associated with Ernst Mayr (1904- ), an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University (although many other biologists have theorized on the subject). It asserts that new species arise among sexually reproducing organisms because geographic...
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Also called geographic speciation, this theory is most often associated with Ernst Mayr (1904- ), an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University (although many other biologists have theorized on the subject). It asserts that new species arise among sexually reproducing organisms because geographic...
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Also called creationism, this is the doctrine that life was created directly by God, often (but not always) accompanied by the idea that species have remained essentially unchanged since creation. L Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism (New York, 1983) KH
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Also called creationism, this is the doctrine that life was created directly by God, often (but not always) accompanied by the idea that species have remained essentially unchanged since creation. L Godfrey, Scientists Confront Creationism (New York, 1983) KH
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Movement founded by the Italian artist Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) as the Movimento Spaziale, its tenets were repeated in manifestos between 1947 and 1954. Combining elements of CONCRETE ART, DADA and TACHISM, the movement's adherents rejected easel painting and embraced new technological developments,...
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Physics A fundamental concept of relativity theory first described by the Russian-bom German mathematician Hermann Minkowski (1864-1909). Space-time is a four-dimensional coordinate system used in certain formulations of relativity theory, in which three dimensions represent the space coordinates and...
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That in which material bodies exist, a three-dimensional continuum. The Greeks, and Aristotle in particular, conceived the notion of absolute space. Newton thought in terms of a Cartesian reference system filling the universe, in a state of absolute rest and to which the motion of all objects could...
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Term coined by the British stylisticians R A Carter and Walter Nash (1926- ). The dissociation of a literary text from any practical communicative context, allowing the new meanings produced by REREGISTRATION. See also AUTONOMY OF LITERARY TEXT. R A Carter and W Nash. 'Language and Literariness'. Prose...
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Theory of the location of legal power. In any territory there must be a sovereign, in the sense of an institution or person with the power to make ultimate and unchallengable legal decisions. There is much disagreement as to the location and character of sovereignty. See also AUSTINIANISM. David Miller...
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Proposed by the German, J R Ewald (1855-1921). This is one of Ewald's theories of hearing developed in an attempt to explain how physical sound vibrations give rise to the neural impulses of hearing. Sound-pattern theory proposes that different patterns of vibrations which impinge on the basilar memory...
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An Italian term meaning 'from below upwards', used from the 15th to the 18th century to describe ceiling painting in which the extreme foreshortening of figures and architecture promotes the impression of objects suspended in space. AB
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Proposed by the American psychologist Robert Sessions Woodworth (1869-1962). This is a change to the STIMULUS-RESPONSE (S-R) FORMULA proposed by Woodworth. Woodworth opposed BEHAVIOURISM to the degree that it neglected the organism in behaviour. Therefore he introduced O for the organism into the S-R...
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Named after the German physicist Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld (1868-1951) who was Professor of Physics at Munich and applied the quantum theory to spectral lines. For relativistic as well as regular doublets, the law states that the splitting in frequency is (INSERT FORMULA HERE) where is the...
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Proposed by G M Edelman and J A Gaily, this theory asserts that new antibodies are formed by recombinations of genes responsible for the synthesis of antibodies. Edelman and Gaily postulate the existence of about 50 antibody genes which evolved in tandem. Because tandem genes would be so similar in...
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Any of several theodes holding that antigens interact with the immune system to provide information for the synthesis of antibodies. A modem version was proposed by Lederberg based on ideas from the 1930s. The mutation of an antibody gene or genes, specifically those in the V-region of the germline,...
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Also called RANDOM HITS THEORY OF AGEING. Proposed by American Leo Szilard, a nuclear physicist known for his work on the first nuclear reactor, this theory is based on observations of radiationinduced cell damage (made from the late 1930s onwards) and asserts that ageing is caused by an accumulation...
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Also called RANDOM HITS THEORY OF AGEING. Proposed by American Leo Szilard, a nuclear physicist known for his work on the first nuclear reactor, this theory is based on observations of radiationinduced cell damage (made from the late 1930s onwards) and asserts that ageing is caused by an accumulation...
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Proposed by German zoologist Theodor Boveri (1862-1915) in his book. Zur Frage der Entstehung Maligner Tumoren (The Origin of Malignant Tumours) (1914). The theory that cancer is caused by at least one mutation in the cells of the body. The existence of widespread chromosomal abnormalities in cancer...
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Named after American economist Robert Solow (1924- ), this principle highlights the relationship of technological change to growth. As the rate of return falls, firms turn to more capital intensive methods of production; therefore the rate of investment increases. However, it is possible to show a...
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A theoretical system in which single syllable labels (for example 'doh, ray, mi' . . .) are assigned to individual pitches, indicating the relative position of each pitch within a fixed pattern, such as a scale. It differs from fixed-pitch scales ('A, B, C . . .') in that any pitch may be designated...
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Literally, 'onlyoneself-ism'. An extreme form of scepticism, saying that nothing exists beyond oneself and one's immediate experiences. Seldom held deliberately, it is more likely to be fallen into by those who find themselves in the EGOCENTRIC PREDICAMENT, perhaps through holding solipsism as a METHODOLOGICAL...
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Named after its discoverer, the German physicist Leonhard Sohncke (1842-97), this law states that when a single crystal ruptures by brittle fracture (that is, with little or no plastic deformation), rupture occurs when the normal component of the stress acting across the plane of rupture (cleavage...
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Also called the salt-gene hypothesis, and the salt hypothesis, this theory was first proposed by French physicians Lon Ambard and E Beaujard, although clinical observations reported in the 18th century provided a basis for their work. The theory asserts that in genetically susceptible individuals,...
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Also called 'sociology of language'. Sociolinguistics is the broad term for studies of relationships between linguistic structure and social structure, and of individual relationships mediating social structures. Linguistic analysis of data often focuses on pre-selected variables (for example phonemes,...
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Developed and popularized by American zoologist Edward O Wilson (1929- ) in his text Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), this is the study of animal and human social behaviour in the light of evolutionary biology. Sociobiology encompasses the idea that evolution by natural selection applies to...
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Developed and popularized by American zoologist Edward O Wilson (1929- ) in his text Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), this is the study of animal and human social behaviour in the light of evolutionary biology. Sociobiology encompasses the idea that evolution by natural selection applies to...
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Developed and popularized by American zoologist Edward O Wilson (1929- ) in his text Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), this is the study of animal and human social Ijehaviour in the light of evolutionary biology. Sociobiology encompasses the idea that evolution by natural selection applies to...
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The official Marxist artistic and literary movement established in the USSR in 1934. Used as a propaganda device and painted in a naturalistic and idealized style, its art was faithfully and unflinchingly to depict history and phenomena relative to Marxism, and to promote the concept of the classless...
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Theory of REVOLUTION associated with the Russian revolutionary and politician Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) and with STALINISM. Against the theory of PERMANENT REVOLUTION, it was argued that socialism could and should be built first in one country (the Soviet Union), thus accommodating MARXISM to Russian...
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Theory of the social nature or aspects of production and of its consequences. Socialism is characterized by enormous variety. It generally involves the argument that economic production has an essential social as distinct from individual element, and that this requires public investment and justifies...
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Introduced by American economist Abram Bergson (1914- ) as a rejection of the cardinal utility approach to welfare economics, this term is understood as meaning the determination of a society's taste for different economic states. There are two approaches to the welfare function: first, that it is...
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Perspective on language developed by the British linguist Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (1925- ) The structure of a language, and the structure of its varieties or REGISTERS, embodies the culture's categorization and evaluation of its experience; reciprocally, language shapes and maintains a...
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Named by French literary historian Louis Cazamian. Certain novels (published c. 1830-60) which concern urban, industrial life, feature working-class characters, and explore moral, political and social issues arising from economic and technological changes within these domains. Prominent writers of...
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Methodological innovation in SOCIOLINGUISTICS, pioneered by Lesley Milroy. A speech community is a network of relationships, of various kinds and strengths, between people. The fieldworker avoids the OBSERVER'S PARADOX by entering the network as a 'friend of a friend' and becomes an 'insider'; thus...
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A social psychological development of SOCIOLINGUISTICS in the 1960s. Speech contains systems of phonetic, syntactic and lexical markers of social group (for example gender, ethnicity, age, personality, and so on) and social situation. These are expressed unconsciously, or may be manipulated towards...
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Proposed by the Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura (1925- ). This postulates that social behaviour develops mainly as a result of observing others ('models') and of reinforcing specific behaviours. Considerable research has been conducted within a paradigm described by Bandura. The theory is regarded...
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Not attributable to any one individual, this is a general term used for psychological theories which address group processes. A social group consists of a number of individuals who define themselves to be members of a group. They interact frequently, are defined as members by people outside the group,...
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Proposed by the American psychologist N Triplett, this is a general theory indicating that the presence of another person has a motivational effect upon the performance of a subject by enhancing dominant responses. This facilitation effect occurs with relatively well-learned/automatic behaviours; the...
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Proposed by the American psychologist Harold H Keliey (1921- ) and John W Thibaut (1917-). The basic principle states that much social interaction involves reciprocal exchange of material things, of ideas, of emotions and of behaviour. This theory expresses the reciprocal rule that one individual gives...
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Theory of democratic socialism. Although social democracy was used to describe 19th century Marxist parties in continental Europe, the phrase established a distinctive, non-Marxist and non-revolutionary meaning after the 1917 Russian Revolution, SOCIALISM can and should be achieved by democratic means,...
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Attempted application of theory of the SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST to public policy. The provision of social services allowed the 'unfit' to survive, and reproduce children who inherited their social characteristics. Such services, therefore, however well-meaning, damaged society. See also EUGENICS. David...
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A theory of extended and distributed purchasing power. Individuals would be benefited, and the economy stimulated, by the distribution of 'social credits.' The theory had little impact, and a short life. John L Finlay, Social Credit (London, 1972) RB
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Theory of punishment whereby all or part of the purpose of punishment is the infliction of pain or disadvantage on an offender which is in some sense commensurate with his offence and which is inflicted independently of reform or deterrence. For a weak theory the commensurate amount need not be inflicted...
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American musicologist Rudoph Rti (1885-1957) postulated that musical composition represents an evolutionary process: the composer begins with a musical motif which he subsequently varies to form themes, chords and key relationships. The motif may even determine structure. Rti's views convincingly challenge...
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Proposed by the American inventor and physicist Edwin Herbert Land (1909- ). This postulates three separate visual systems (retinexes), one primarily responsive to long-wavelength light, one to moderate, and the third to short-wavelength light. Each one is represented as an analogue to a black-and-white...
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A term introduced by G Maruzzi and H W Magoun. This refers to a body of brain tissue called the reticular formation, the arousal and alerting functions of which were discovered by Maruzzi and Magoun. The RAS is now considered to be only that part of the reticular formation of reticular cells which...
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The law states that the physical properties of crystalline mixtures of isomorphous compounds vary in proportion to their percentage compositions. GD
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Proposed by British sociologist Basil Bernstein (1924- ) and much debated in education. Also called PUBLIC LANGUAGE and FORMAL LANGUAGE. Restricted code is a variety of language allegedly characterized by simple syntax, limited evaluative vocabulary, idioms, frequent personal pronouns, and unexplicit...
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Proposed by the American psychologist Ian Oswald. A theory of sleep which argues tham both REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM sleep serve a restorative, replenishing function. It has also been used to account for high levels of REM sleep in babies. A major objection to the theory comes from evidence...
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Proposed by the American psychologist Orval Hobart Mowrer (1907-82). Proposed to account for conflicting evidence relating to the extinction or disappearance of behaviour when it is no longer reinforced. The hypothesis addressed the difficulty of defining a behavioural response: in animal studies a...
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A theory due to the American chemist Linus Pauling (1901- ), winner of the Nobel prizes for Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962). More appropriately called mesomerism, resonance theory is a way of describing molecular structures which cannot be represented by any single Lewis structure. According to the...
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Proposed by the American psychologist Harry Frederick Harlow (1905-81). This theory proposes that items belonging to a certain set are more likely to be recalled or responded to during the time that set is being dealt with or being responded to. The theory can account for only a small set of the learning...
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Proposed by the German physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-94). A theory of hearing to account for the perception of sound. Perceived pitch is hypothesized to be determined by the place within the organ or corti where hairs are stimulated. Loudness and tonal discrimination is determined by the...
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Named after the French mathematician and physicist Baron Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789-1857). This is the result in COMPLEX FUNCTION THEORY whereby if a function is analytic on a simply connected region A except for a finite number of isolated singularities, then the complex line integral of over any...
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Formulated by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). The principle that a thought, idea or feeling tends to bring to mind another that resembles it in some respect. The law is better considered as an empirical generalization than as an explanatory device and is linked with the associationist...
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Some nominalists dispense with substantive universals (see PLATONISM) in treating the ONE OVER MANY PROBLEM by saying that what unites a group of objects of the same kind is that they resemble one of their number taken as a standard. Objections to this are that resemblance itself seems to be an eliminable...
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Term coined by the British stylisticians R A Carter and Walter Nash (1926- ). The incorporation within a literary text of expressions characteristic of a non-literary REGISTER. Out of its normal practical context, the style of the quoted register acquires new components of meaning. See also SOVEREIGNTY....
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Also called field theory, this postulates that the pattern of origin of leaf bud (primordia) at the shoot tip (apex) is regulated by inhibitory substances synthesized by the apex and the older primordia. A new primordium arises in a position where the concentration of these substances has fallen below...
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Theory of government by citizens. In a republic - which is not necessarily presidential - government is in the hands of citizens, or of those accountable to them rather than in the control of a monarch or despot. David Miller et al., eds, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought (Oxford, 1987)...
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Proposed by C Buhler (1893-1974). A theory of development through the lifespan which states that the primary psychosocial phases of life parallel the primary biological phases. These phases are: progressive growth (birth to 15), emergence of sexual reproductive activity (ages 16-25), stability (ages...
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Proposed by O Kulpe (1862-1915). This rather basic theory of imagery states that an image is a copy or point-by-point reproduction of the original stimulus. In 1890 William James (1842-1910), the American philosopher, described this discredited theory as being 'as mythological an entity as the jack...
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Also called representativism or representative theories of perception, memory, thinking, and so on. Any theory holding that these activities (perception is usually meant) involve the existence of mental objects (such as images or 'sense-data') which facilitate the activity by representing the external...
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Theory of political participation in complex, large, or modem societies. The only way in which most people can participate in the govemment of their societies is by being represented by a relatively small number of people who will in some sense act on their behalf. There is disagreement about the most...
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Proposed by one of the most influential leaming theorists, the American psychologist E R Guthrie (1886-1959). This hypothesis posits that, all things being equal, a function or a goal or a behaviour is facilitated by being used or exercised and is weakened by disuse. A limitation of the law is that,...
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Proposed by the German psychologist Max Wertheimer (1886-1943). Derived from gestalt psychology and applying mainly to cognitive and perceptual processes, this theory states that leaming involves the modification or altering of mental structures (the neural make-up). Given recent advances in our ability...
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The term was first used by American economist Ann Krueger (1934- ) for a theory developed by American economist Gordon Tullock (1920- ) in 1967. Tullock's theory addressed the active creation of monopolies, with the aim of achieving supernormal profits or market control, in competitive conditions....
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These four rules state that: (1) species living in colder climates have relatively larger litters and egg clutches than similar species living in warm climates; (2) birds have relatively shorter wings and mammals shorter fur in cold climates than in warm ones (also called the wing rule); (3) land snails...
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The result whereby the remainder upon dividing a polynomial p(x) by (x - c) is equal to p(c) whenever c and the coefficients of p belong to a field. See also FACTOR THEOREM and FIELD THEORY. MB
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Theory that a belief can be called justified if it is formed by a process that is reliable, that is normally produces true beliefs. This is an externalist account of justification if it is not insisted that the believer be aware of the method's reliability. This appeal to reliability may also contribute...
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A term coined by English linguist Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (1925- ). Substitution of invented, unofficial words in certain areas of vocabulary in an ANTILANGUAGE. See also OVER-LEXICALIZATION, UNDERLEXICALIZATION. M A K Halliday, 'Antilanguages' (1976), repr. in Language as Social Semiotic...
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Theory used in defending FALLIBILISM against the charge that it leads to SCEPTICISM. Where P and Q are propositions, P counts for this purpose as an alternative to Q if it is inconsistent with Q, and counts as a relevant alternative if to know that Q we must also know that not-P. Variant formulations...
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Logical systems based on the principle that logical consequence, or entailment, only holds between propositions which are relevant to each other. They were developed, notably by A R Anderson and Nuel D Belnap (1920- ), as a reaction to the claim of Clarence Irving Lewis and C H Langford (in Symbolic...
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PRAGMATIC theory developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. Humans communicate by INFERENCING procedures which draw on MUTUAL KNOWLEDGE, and achieve economy of effort by focusing on the most relevant information. See also CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE OF CONVERSATION. D Sperber and D Wilson, Relevance (Oxford,...
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Proposed by the Hungarian Sndor Ferenczi (1873-1933). This is a modification of psychoanalysis based on the principle that a loving and tender approach to clients allows for more release of repressed feelings than does strict Freudian analysis. Ferenczi also believed in mutual analysis between the...
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A theory proposed by the German-Swiss-American mathematical physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955). The theory gives a unified account of the laws of mechanics and electromagnetism. Einstein rejected the Newtonian concepts of absolute space and time and the 19th century idea that an electromagnetic...
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A theory proposed by the German-Swiss-American mathematical physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955). The theory is a generalized form of the special theory of relativity dealing with relative motion between accelerated frames of reference, and leads to the field theory of gravity in particular. In non-inertial...
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Strictly, any doctrine that something exists, has a property, or obtains, relative to something else. Two forms of relativism have been common, cognitive and moral; both of them are different from SUBJECTIVISM, though some versions are also subjeetivist. Cognitive relativism may say that all beliefs...
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Proposed by James Semble Duesenberry (1918- ) but subsequently overtaken by other studies on the behaviour of saving and consumption, this theory states that an individual's attitude to consumption and saving is guided more by his income in relation to others than by an abstract standard of living....
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A theory of the causes of social and political discontent. People are roused to political action as a result not of absolute changes in their material conditions but of changes relative to the circumstances of those with whom they compare themselves. W G Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice...
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A theory of the causes of social and political discontent. People are roused to political action as a result not of absolute changes in their material conditions but of changes relative to the circumstances of those with whom they compare themselves. W G Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice...
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Account of modem STATE found within recent MARXISM employed by the Greek theorist Nicos Poulantzas (1936-79), States work within the limits set by the socio-economic structures within which they operate and which they function to sustain. Their autonomy is thus relative to this overall constraint,...
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Identified by the American psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-90). This is the problem of how reinforcement can strengthen a response tendency after the response has ceased. Unlike learning a new response or behaviour, the retention (or remembering) of material already learned can be affected...
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A term used importantly in the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) and the American psychologist Clark Leonard Hull (1884-1952), The term 'reinforcement' is used in many different ways and consequently has a variety of meanings: (1) the procedure by which an event (which...
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An organization's evasion of control by a regulatory body, often an anti-trust or takeover body. Organizations will attempt to dilute the effectiveness of regulatory bodies through political control, and by developing superior information and more effective staff, PH
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This term describes govemment intervention in the price, sale and production decisions of a firm. Regulation is often a response to chaotic growth, abuses of monopoly powers and price-fixing, and is seen as a method of consumer protection. See 'LAISSEZ-FAIRE', PHYSIOCRACY, MERCANTILISM, ECONOMIC LIBERALISM...
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Theory - primarily associated with, and originated by, David Hume (1711-76) - which analyzes causation in terms of nothing but regular sequence (together, in Hume's case, with priority in time and contiguity in time and, where relevant, space). The basic form of the theory says that one event causes...
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Originally formulated by the British linguist Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (1925- ). A variety of language according to use. Different styles of language are appropriate in different settings, determined by FIELD (subject and activity), MODE (medium) and TENOR (relationship between participants:...
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An artistic movement that emerged during the 1930s and 1940s from the American 'Ash Can School' of the early decades of the century. Its subject matter was drawn from American urban provincial life. Foremost among its exponents were Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), John Sloan (1871-1951) and Edward...
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When dense, saline water passes through a sediment, it can result in the alteration of pre-existing minerals and the deposition of others. The mechanism behind this is not yet fully understood, but is thought to be mainly driven by evaporation causing the formation of denser, more saline waters which...
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Understood at least as early as the 2nd century BC, these laws state that: (1) the incident ray, reflected ray and normal to the reflecting surface all lie in one plane; (2) the angle of incidence (the angle between the incident ray and the normal) is equal to the angle of reflection (the angle between...
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Proposed by English geneticist and embryologist William Bateson (1861-1926), author of Mendel's Principles of Heredity (1909). This is the mistaken idea that SEGREGATION OF GENES does not occur at the time of meiosis - the special cell division occurring in gametes just before they mature into eggs...
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Also called the no-truth theory. Influenced by the difficulties in formulating a CORRESPONDENCE THEORY OF TRUTH, Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1903-30) proposed in 1927 that to call a proposition true is to do no more than assert the proposition. One objection is that this seems too thin a theory to cover...
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Procedure developed in GENERATIVE GRAMMAR. In COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS (a form of LEXICAL SEMANTICS) and in the DISTINCTIVE FEATURE approach to PHONOLOGY, it is redundant to specify some features. For example, all nasal sounds are 'voiced' (the vocal cords vibrate); all lexical items containing the feature...
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Also called reductivism. The reducing of certain kinds of entities, or of theories, or even of whole sciences, to other, more basic, ones; entities that are reduced may be replaced ('Father Christmas is really Daddy') or simply explained ('Water is really H2O'). PHENOMENALISM, for instance, reduces...
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Also called reductivism. The reducing of certain kinds of entities, or of theories, or even of whole sciences, to other, more basic, ones; entities that are reduced may be replaced ('Father Christmas is really Daddy') or simply explained ('Water is really H2O'). PHENOMENALISM, for instance, reduces...
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Also called mechanism, or mechanistic philosophy. Associated with Carl Ludwig (1816-95), Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-94), Emst von Brcke (1819-92) and Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-96). The theory that life can be understood entirely in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry. Modem bioscience approaches...
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Axiom introduced by English philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in connection with the ramified theory of TYPES. It says that any higher-order property or proposition can be reduced to an equivalent first-order one. The ramified theory caused difficulties for defining real numbers...
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A concept advanced in the work of American psychologists Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-90) and E R Guthrie (1886-1959). Referring to any portion of a reduced stimulus (cue), the term is used in the learning principle which holds that after repeated stimulus-response trials the rponse can be elicited...
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(Also called the law of constant extinction.) Named after the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (1872), who said: 'Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place'. This is the idea that an evolutionary advance by one species represents a deterioration...
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A theory initiated by Alan Mathison Turing (1912-54) conceming computability based on the use of functions defined by the recursion principle. See also COMPUTABILITY THEORY, RECURSION PRINCIPLE and TURING MACHINE. JB
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First used by Leonardo Fibonacci (c. 1170-1250), this is the application of a function to its own values to generate an infinity of values. See also RECURSIVE FUNCTION THEORY and FIBONACCI NUMBERS. JB
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Part of the punctuated equilibrium theory by the American biologists N Eldredge and S J Gould (1941- ). The absence of many evolutionary links between species in the fossil record can be explained if speciation occurs very rapidly after long (>eriods of little evolutionary change. This view is...
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Proposed by Australian entomologist Hugh Paterson, this is a model for SPECIES and SPECIATION which holds that recognizing appropriate mates is essential to the development of a new species, and that a species constitutes what Paterson calls 'the most inclusive population of individual biparental organisms...
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Discovered by the German physicist Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (1811-99) and the British chemist Henry Enfield Roscoe (1833-1915), this law states that when all other conditions are kept constant, the exposure time needed to give a certain photographic density is inversely proportional to the intensity...
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Proposed by the Austrian psychologist F Heider (1896- ). According to this principle, social attraction is mutual; that is, if one individual knows that another person likes him or her, then he/she will tend to like the other person. Heider set out his theory in The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations,...
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A theorem found in several branches of physics. For example, in studies of elasticity, it appears as Betti's theorem; being named after Enrico Betti (1823-92) who proposed it in 1872. See BETTl'S RECIPROCAL THEOREM.
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Law attributed to German chemist Jeremias Benjamin Richter (1762-1807). Also known as the law of EQUIVALENT PROPORTIONS. The law states that when two elements both form chemical compounds with a third, a compound of the first two contains them in the relative proportions they have in compounds with...
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Proposed by Robert Trivers, this theory suggests that individuals engage in self-sacrificing acts because of an implied social contract. The contract is such that the individual enjoying a benefit from another now will likewise engage in altruism to benefit the other later. Examples include the warning...
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Developed by the German theoreticians Hans Robert Jauss (1921- ) - who called it Rezeptionssthetik - and Wolfgang Iser (1926- ); it was strongly influenced by the phenomenonology of Roman Ingarden (1893-1970), The fictional text does not have a determinate meaning; it presents the reader with INDETERMINACY...
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Formulated by the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909), A component of the serial position effect, the law of recency (also referred to as recency effect and the principle of recency) states that in a free recall situation, items presented at the end are more likely to be recalled than...
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Proposed by the American psychologist Granville Stanley Hall (1844-1924). The theory is applied in two ways: (1) to biological and physiological factors (see above); (2) to cognitve and perceptual development. Although if applied literally the theory is not of much value, the concept has sometimes...
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Also known as the biogenetic law; and as Haeckel's law of recapitulation (after its proponent Emst Heinrich Haeckel (1834-1919), a Gennan biologist). This term refers to the re-enactment of evolutionary stages during the embryonic development of an organism; an idea often stated as 'ontogeny recapitulates...
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Identified by the American psychologist W Dement. A period of deprivation or inhibition will be followed by an increase in that physiological function. For instance, one or more nights of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep deprivation will be followed by an increase in REM on subsequent nights. E Hartmann,...
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Proposed by the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). In PSYCHOANALYTICAL THEORY the ego is said to function according to the reality principle because it mediates between the unconscious demands of the id and the realities of the social environment. The validity of the reality...
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Controversial assumption made in earlier versions of TRANSFORMATIONAL GENERATIVE GRAMMAR and LEXICAL-FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR. The form of a grammar should be 'psychologically' realistic; that is, the rules should reflect the mental organization of language and the psychological processes involved in its...
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Realism is the mathematical philosophy asserting that mathematical statements have a reality independent of their proposer which determines whether the statement is true or false; intuitionism asserts that a mathematical statement can be called true only if it has been proved in a finite number of...
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Realism in the NOVEL and in painting was identified and defended in mid-19th century France and applies paradigmatically to the practices of the novelists Stendhal (1783-1842), Honor de Balzac (1799-1850) and Gustave Flaubert (1821-80); by extension, to much 19th-century English fiction. It is a mode...
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Often associated with the work of Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid (1710-96), and German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Usually used in either of two ways: (1) the view that abstract concepts have a real existence and can be studied empirically; (2) the doctrine that the physical world has...
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Often associated with the work of Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid (1710-96), and German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Usually used in either of two ways: (1) the view that abstract concepts have a real existence and can be studied empirically; (2) the doctrine that the physical world has...
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View of international relations as the pursuit of INTERESTS. States pursue their own security and prosperity in international relations, whatever their apparent aims, alliances or moral claims. Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham, The Dictionary of World Politics (Hemel Hempstead, 1990) RB
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Often associated with the work of Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid (1710-96), and German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Usually used in either of two ways: (1) the view that abstract concepts have a real existence and can be studied empirically; (2) the doctrine that the physical world has...
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Realism in the NOVEL and in painting was identified and defended in mid-19th century France and applies paradigmatically to the practices of the novelists Stendhal (1783-1842), Honor de Balzac (1799-1850) and Gustave Flaubert (1821-80); by extension, to much 19th-century English fiction. It is a mode...
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Theory of people's wants and wills found in IDEALISM. People have a real self or 'real will' which is what they would want if they reflected in a fully rational way on their INTERESTS. It will frequently differ from their expressed will, or what they say and believe that they want. Some other person...
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Theory of people's wants and wills found in IDEALISM. People have a real self or 'real will' which is what they would want if they reflected in a fully rational way on their INTERESTS. It will frequently differ from their expressed will, or what they say and believe that they want. Some other person...
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Developed by Scottish economist Adam Smith (1723-90), this asserts that there can never be an inflationary excess issue of commercial bills and other paper money because each bill represents a real transaction. The doctrine was later criticized for failing to recognize that the same sum of money can...
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Named after exactor and former American president Ronald Reagan (1911- 2004 ), who was an advocate of SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS. Reagan stressed the need to reduce taxes, deregulate the economy and modernize US defence as part of his policy. The monetarist economist Milton Friedman (1912-92) acted as his...
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Proposed by the American psychologist Edward Lee Thomdike (1874-1949). One of the necessary additions to Thorndike's LAW OF EFFECT, introduced to account for why learning occurs or fails to occur, the law of readiness was never clearly defined. Basically, it states that in order for an organism to...
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A common feature of criticism and theory since the 1970s has been the growth in importance of the reader or audience. Reader response criticism has been variously realized, but the work of N Holland - The Dynamics of Literary Response (1968) - is exemplary. See also POSTSTRUCTURALISM and RECEPTION...
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Proposed by the American psychologist Jack Williams Brehm. When a person perceives that a specific behavioural freedom is threatened, a motivational state called psychological reactance is aroused. The theory proposes two important hypotheses: (1) the greater the attempt to limit a person's freedom...
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Theory devised by the Russian painter Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964) and his wife Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962). Larionov's manifesto (1913) stated that 'Rayonism is a synthesis of Cubism, Futurism amd Orphism', and much of his thesis was closely linked to Futurist ideas. Colours are dispersed as light...
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Named after its discoverer, the English physicist John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (1842-1919), this law states that when light is scattered from particles that have a refractive index different from that of the surrounding medium, and have linear dimensions considerably smaller than the wavelength...
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Named after the American philosopher John Rawls (1921- ), this theory sees justice as fairness, and its intuitive idea is that the well-being of society depends on cooperation. It is based on the traditional theories of social contract as represented by English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), Swiss...
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Rationing is a deliberate attempt, frequently undertaken by governments, to allocate scarce supplies in the face of high demand. Severe rationing during the 1940s, 1950s and 1970s prompted American and European economists to study this subject and its consequences for product substitution. Rationing...
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Version of MENTALISM IN LINGUISTICS argued by American linguist Avram Noam Chomsky (1928- ). Drawing on the theory of innate knowledge propounded by the rationalist philosophers, especially Ren Descartes (1596-1650), and the linguistics of the Port-Royal grammar (1660), Chomsky opposed the BEHAVIOURISM...
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Any theory emphasizing reason or intuition (usually in contrast to the senses, or, in ethics, to feelings and emotions), whether as the basis for acquiring knowledge, or as the basis for justifying moral judgments. In these uses it contrasts with EMPIRICISM, and has similar varieties. The a priori...
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The result whereby if the rational number p/q, with p and q coprime, is the root of a polynomial having integer coefficients, then p divides the coefficient of the constant term and q divides the coefficient of the leading term. Hence, by considering all the possible divisors of the leading term and...
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Although first established by the Danish naturalist Nicholas Steno (1638-86), this theory is also known as Hauy's law, after the French mineralogist, R J Hauy (1743-1822). It states that the faces of a crystal cut its crystallographic axes in whole number values; 1, 2, 3, and so on. DT
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A law proposed by the German chemist Christian Samuel Weiss (1780-1856) and also known as the law of rational indices. The law states that the intercepts which the planes of a crystal make on the axes of the crystal lattice are in a simple ratio to one another. These have been replaced by easier-tohandle...
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Formulated by the French mineralogist Ren Just Hay (1743-1822), this law states that all planes which can occur as the faces of a crystal have intercepts on the chosen crystal axes which (when expressed as multiples of certain unit lengths along those axes) have ratios that are rational numbers. J...
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Formulated by the French mineralogist Ren Just Hay (1743-1822), this law states that all planes which can occur as the faces of a crystal have intercepts on the chosen crystal axes which (when expressed as multiples of certain unit lengths along those axes) have ratios that are rational numbers. J...
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Formulated by American economist John Muth (1930- ), this states that individuals and companies, acting with complete access to the relevant information, forecast events in the future without bias. Errors in their forecasts are assumed to result from random events. This theory has emerged as an important...
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Theory underlying PUBLIC CHOICE analysis. The behaviour of individuals, groups and institutions can be understood as a series of rational choices designed, in an analogy with economics, to maximize their utility. Patrick Dunleavy, Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice (London, 1991) RB
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A variation of full cost pricing, this formulates a pricing policy on a projected rate of return on capital. It includes the uses of a mark-up on costs to achieve a pre-set return on capital investment, and is particularly useful when dealing with a strong customer such as a state-run body. See MARK-UP...
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Proposed by German physiologist Max Rubner (1854-1932), this is the concept that the lifespan of a mammal, and perhaps also its senescence, is related to its rate of physiological living - that is, how 'fast' the mammal lives. Rubner observed that the total number of calories burned per gram of bodyweight...
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Proposed by German physiologist Max Rubner (1854-1932), this is the concept that the lifespan of a mammal, and perhaps also its senescence, is related to its rate of physiological living - that is, how 'fast' the mammal lives. Rubner observed that the total number of calories burned per gram of bodyweight...
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A mathematical technique for describing the time-dependence of a chemical reaction. According to the law of MASS ACTION, the rate of a chemical reaction is proportional to the product of the active masses (molar concentration) of the reactants, and is by definition the amount of reactant consumed (or...
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Named after the French chemist Franois Marie Raoult (1830-1901) who was Professor of Chemistry at Grenoble. The law states that for solutions of non-electrolytes, the elevation of the boiling p>oint, the depression of the freezing point and the lowering of the vapour pressure are proportional...
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Identified by the Gennan psychologist P Ranschburg, this is the generalization that under tachistoscopic viewing conditions (that is, short visual exposure using specialist instrumentation), more stimuli can be recognized if all are different than if some are similar. R S Woodworth and H Schlosberg,...
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Identified by the Gennan psychologist P Ranschburg, this is the generalization that under tachistoscopic viewing conditions (that is, short visual exposure using specialist instrumentation), more stimuli can be recognized if all are different than if some are similar. R S Woodworth and H Schlosberg,...
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Developed by French mathematician Laplace (1749-1827) Certain theories analyzing probability in terms of ranges of alternatives. W C Kneale (1906- ) introduces such a theory to deal with paradoxes that face the CLASSICAL THEORY OF PROBABILITY when the relevant range of alternatives is infinite, and...
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Developed by French mathematician Laplace (1749-1827) Certain theories analyzing probability in terms of ranges of alternatives. W C Kneale (1906- ) introduces such a theory to deal with paradoxes that face the CLASSICAL THEORY OF PROBABILITY when the relevant range of alternatives is infinite, and...
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First identified by French economist Louis Bachelier (1870-1946) from the study of the French commodity markets, this theory asserts that the random nature of commodity or stock prices cannot reveal trends and therefore current prices are no guide to future prices. The short-term unpredictability of...
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A method of counting devised by Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1903-30). Consider the graphs consisting of edges (lines) joining vertices with at most one edge joining any two vertices and no loops joining a vertex directly to itself. For two positive integers k and m there is a number R(k,m), a 'Ramsey number',...
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Named after English economist Frank Ramsey (1903-60), this policy is concemed with prices that maximize the sum of industry consumer surplus and profits. See AVERAGE COST PRICING, MARGINAL COST PRICING, COSTPUSH INFLATION. F Ramsey, 'A Contribution to the Theory of Taxation', Economic Journal, 37 (March,...
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Named after the Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay (1852-1916) and Sidney Young (1857-1937) who was noted for his formulation of the boiling point laws. This empirical law states that for two chemically similar compounds having the same vapour pressure at different absolute temperatures, the ratio...
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This effect, which was predicted by Adolf Gustav Stephan Smekal (1895-1959) in 1923 and observed by the American physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (1888-1970) in 1928, is the phenomenon of light scattering in which the light undergoes a wavelength change in the scattering process, and the scattered...
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Justification of overriding STATE power. There are circumstances when the need to ensure the security or well-being of the state or the nation justifies governments ignoring the normal considerations of law or morality. David Robertson, The Penguin Dictionary of Politics (London, 1986) RB
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Named after its discoverer Johann Radon (1887-1956), this states that any set of n + 2 points in n-dimensional Euclidean space can be partitioned into two sets so that the convex sets enclosed by level surfaces joining the points in each set do not overlap. JB
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Since for any sample of a radioactive nuclide, half the undecayed atoms present decay in a fixed period of time, the ratio of undecayed atoms to decayed atoms may be used to measure the time elapsed; provided that no decayed atoms were present initially. A useful nuclide for radioactive dating for...
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Theory that political action must aim at fundamental change. It is necessary to identify the root (radix) of current institutions and practices in order to begin afresh on superior foundations. Although radicalism is normally opposed to conservatism, the policies and theories of the NEW RIGHT appeared...
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A notion similar to that of Wilfred Van Orman Quine (1908- ) (INDETERMINACY OF TRANSLATION), thought of primarily in connection with Donald Davidson (1930- ) and his truthconditional theory of meaning (see CONVENTION T). To construct axioms suitable for deriving a theory of meaning for an alien language,...
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Theory of the primacy of sexual division and oppression in human society. The most widely found division of advantage, power, and material well-being is between men and women. This system of oppression, termed PATRIARCHY, is not derived from other systems such as capitalism but is distinct from them....
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Theory of the primacy of sexual division and oppression in human society. The most widely found division of advantage, power, and material well-being is between men and women. This system of oppression, termed PATRIARCHY, is not derived from other systems such as capitalism but is distinct from them....
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Name given by American William James (1842-1910) to his own pragmatist philosophy. See also NEUTRAL MONISM. W James, Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912)
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(1960s) Stylistics Repetition of some aspect of linguistic structure, such as a PHONEME, a clause or part of a clause. (Take for example Bacon's phrase 'Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.') Parallelism underpins many HGURES OF SPEECH in traditional RHETORIC. The theoretical basis...
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(1976) Stylistics Proposed by the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco (1932- ). A level of secondary significance in aesthetic works, over and above the primary meanings they express. Overcoding is achieved through manipulating the expression and content levels by STYLISTIC and RHETORICAL devices. U Eco,...
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(1979) Stylistics Distinction proposed by the Italian semiotician Umberto Eco (1932- ). The distinction hinges on whether or not a text targets a specific kind of reader, imposes a single interpretation: the 'open' text does not. See also 'LISIBLE' AND 'SCRIPTIBLE' in Roland Barthes (1915-80), a similarly...
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(late 1960s) Stylistics Analysis developed by the American sociolinguist William Labov. Stories told orally by people have a regular structure based on a sequence of elements: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, result or resolution, coda. Extended to literary narrative by Mary Louise...
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(1976) Stylistics The idea originates with the Canadian linguist L Dolozel. Refinement of NARRATIVE GRAMMAR; categories of modal logic such as knowledge, possibility, permission, prohibition, obligation (which are implicit in Propp's work) are applied to the categorization of types of narrative. See...
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(1928, 1960s) Stylistics Based on the work of the Russian linguist Vladimir Propp (1895-1970), developed in French STRUCTURALISM, especially by Tzvetan Todorov (1939- ); also in STRUCTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, especially by Claude Lvi-Strauss (1908- ). A story is 'like a sentence': it may be analyzed as having...
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(1977) Stylistics Term coined and defined by the British iinguist Richard Fowler (1938- ). In literary fictions, a character may be experienced as having a particular kind of mental set towards the world. Fowler called this 'mind-style', and showed how the linguistic structures typically chosen for a...
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(1956) Stylistics Pioneer application of linguistics to literature; in 1956 a special edition of the literary journal Kenyon Review was devoted to 'English verse and what it sounds like'. Metrics or prosody is the description of the patterns of extra linguistic regularity - various kinds of pattern -...
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(1970s) Stylistics Modem term applied to a variety of kinds of proposed large textual structures. The broad principle of a text's organization, as opposed to the local linguistic structure of its sentences, and the relationships between sentences (COHESION). Macrostructures may be defined, for example,...
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(20th century) Politics/Sociology Semi-ethical, semi-religious theory of cultural renewal. So called 'new-age theory' is not a coherent doctrine, but a mixture of cultural, ecological, pantheistic and communalist beliefs which from the 1980s, particularly in North American and Westem Europe, were presented...
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(20th century) Politics/ Sociology Theory of modem society. Old hierarchies have been replaced by a society in which everyone is an isolated individual. But because social order is unavoidable, it is created by herding people into organizations and movements led despotically from above. David Miller...
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Politics/Economics/Sociology Theories derived from the work of Karl Marx (1818-83). The influence of Marx and of Marxism may be judged from the fact that Marxism has been compared, in its enormous variety, to Christianity. Starting points, though not conclusions, for Marxism are an understanding of history...
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(20th century) Psychology Proposed by the American psychologist R J House. This contends that the leader must motivate subordinates by: (1) emphasizing the relationship between the subordinates' own needs and the organizational goals; (2) clarifying and facilitating the path subordinates must take to...
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Psychology Pioneered by the American psychologist Joseph Banks Rhine (1895-1980). The branch of psychology concemed with the investigation of psychic phenomena (psi). Two main areas are usually distinguished: (1) extrasensory perception (ESP); (2) psychokinesis (PK), also termed parakinesis. ESP refers...
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Psychology Proposed by the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). In psychoanalytic theory, parapraxis is the disruption of a specific action or mental process by a determinant which has become unconscious as a result of regression. Disruption takes the form of omission (for example,...
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Psychology Associated with the work of the German and Scottish philosophers Gustav Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) and Alexander Bain (1818-1903), and with the empirically-oriented psychology of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Parallelism was an attempt to solve the mind-body problem by assuming...
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Psychology Discovered by the German experimental psychologist Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-87), who developed the field of psychophysics. The law states that if two stimuli of different intensities are presented to a receptor simultaneously, the absolute sensory intensity diminishes but the ratio of...
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Psychology Identified by the German physiologist Max von Frey (1852-1932). The phenomenon whereby spots on the skin which respond to a cold stimulus are subsequently stimulated and give rise to a sensation of cold. The phenomenon, which is difficult to obtain, requires the application of a fairly high...
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Psychology Proposed by the American psychologist J W Papez (1883-1958). One of the first theoretical attempts to delineate the specific cortical mechanisms underlying emotion. Papez proposed three interlocking systems (sensory, hypothalamic and thalamic), all of which he hypothesized to be combined with...
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Psychology Proposed by the Austrian Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) as part of his psychoanalytic theory of personality. The pain principle was Freud's early version of the thanathos concept. It states that we strive for death and hence retum to the form from which we originated. The pain principle has proved...
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(19th century) Biology A term coined by Wilhelm Haacke (1855-1912) and associated with T G H Eimer (1843-98), this describes a specific trend in evolutionary change observed in a related group of organisms (for example, the increase in body size apparent in the fossil record of the evolution of the horse)....
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Psychology Proposed by the Austrian-American psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957). Biological energy flows freely and fully in the healthy body, and psychopathology or physical pathology can result if this energy is blocked. This energy Reich referred to as orgone and the associated threrapeutic breakthrough...
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Psychology Proposed by the Danish psychologist E J Rubin (1886-1951) and later adopted by the influential German-American gestalt theorist Wolfgang Khler (1887-1967). The principle states that in perception the relationship between the individual parts is more important than the parts alone; it is the...
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Psychology Proposed by C Leuba. TTiis is the postulate that an organism tends to learn those responses or reactions that produce an optimal level of stimulation or excitation. Either drive reduction or drive arousal may lead to the optimal level of stimulation. See also DRIVE REDIJCTION THEORY. S Sahakian,...
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(20th century) Psychology Proposed by the American psychologist R L Solomon. This theory assumes that the functioning of an intact organism is predicated on the maintenance of a moderated position of 'motivational normality'. An opponent process is produced by a swing towards either pole on a motivational...
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Psychology Formulated by the German physiologist Ewald Hering (1834-1918), but more accurately known as the opponent process theory of colour vision. This proposes that there are three sets of colour receptor systems: redrgreen, blueyellow, and black-white. Each of the receptors is assumed to be sensitive...
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Psychology Operationalism was espoused mainly by the radical behaviourists, because of their emphasis on the directly observable. However, many concepts in psychology are abstract and the idea that the measurement of a concept provides an adequate definition is now discredited. Operationalization of...
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Psychology A theory of the American psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-90). Oprant theory analyzes the interaction between the organism and its environment into a three-term sequence. A successful experimental analysis identifies the environmental cues (discriminative stimuli) which determine...
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Psychology Proposed by one of the most influential learning theorists, the American psychologist E R Guthrie (1886-1959). Guthrie proposed that learning takes place on a single trial, and improvement with practice represents the acquisition of individual, simple components which make up more complex...
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Psychology Proposed by the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1889-1939). Freud postulated that thoughts alone can satisfy our wishes without use of an external object, but also uses the term 'omnipotency theory' to refer to the belief that our thoughts can influence external events. Both...
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(1843) Physics/Psychology Named after its originator, the German physicist Georg Simon Ohm (1787-1854), this law stated that the ear perceives only simple harmonic vibrations. When a complex sound wave strikes the ear, the ear decomposes it into the same simple harmonic waves that would be obtained mathematically...
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Psychology Formulated by the German physicist Georg Simon Ohm (1787-1854). The law states that a complex tone is analyzed by the hearer into its frequency components. This analysis is normally unconscious, but a trained perceiver can learn to distinguish individual harmonics in a complex sound. S Coren,...
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Psychology Proposed by the Austrian psychologist M Klein (1882-1960), and developed from the ideas of the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). This theory deals with the interaction between an object and a subject. Freud viewed early development of humans as occurring primarily...
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Psychology Proposed by the Austrian-American sociologist Peter Blau (1918- ). This theory prescribes the conditions under which leaders should make decisions autocratically, or in consultation with the group members, or with group members fully participating. The theory assumes: (1) individual decisions...
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Psychology A theory of the American psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-90). The theory argues that an animal in an experiment initially responds to a stimulus on the basis of irrelevant but discriminative features. It is the subsequent training (by reward or punishment) that determines the animal's...
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Psychology Proposed by the British psychiatrist A E Jones (1879-1958). The fewer distinctive reasons an actor has for an action, and the less the reasons are stated in culture, the more informative is the action about the intentions and dispositions of the actor. The disposition of intention begun by...
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(20th century) Psychology Proposed by the American psychologist M R Quillan, this is a generic group of hypothetical models of human semantic memory, based on the assumption that representations in memory are stored in a complex network of interactions and associations. What distinguishes this theory...
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Psychology An hypothesis by the Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936). This holds that all functions of the body are controlled by the nervous system. Greatly influenced by the belief of Ivan Mikhaylovich Sechenov (1829-1905) in the reflexological nature of all psychic activity, Pavlov...
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( -1931) Psychology Formulated by the American psychologist Edward Lee Thomdike (1874-1949). Responses followed by a negative state of affairs are less likely to recur. Therefore one unlearns behaviour which gives rise to negative consequences. Thomdike 'repealed' the negative law of effect in 1931 because...
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Psychology Developed by American psychologist Henry Alexander Murray (1893- ), based on a definition of behaviour (as a function of both personality and the environment) made by the German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890-1947). Press are external and represent features of objects that have implications...
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Psychology One of the most frequently cited theories of motivation, proposed by the American psychologist Abraham Harold Maslow (1908-70). Motivation may be conceptualized as an invariant hierarchy of motives. The five main divisions in Maslow's theory are often represented in pyramid form, with physiological...
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Psychology Identified by the German psychologist L W Stern (1871-1938). If the gratification of a specific need is thwarted, the drive will seek out some other object to satisfy its need, and this object is usually the closest approximation to its previously chosen object. W Stern, Character and Personality...
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(19th century) Biology/Psychology A phrase probably first coined in this sense by British scientist Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) in 1874, but appearing as 'nature nurture' in William Shakespeare's The Tempest (1611), Act iv. Scene 1. Addressed in the work of the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704),...
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Psychology Often accredited to the German, Max Mller (1862-1919), this theory is also known as the Ding-Dong theory of language. One of the hypotheses which seek to explain how humans first developed language. Natural-response theory postulates that language began with vocal expressions being assigned...
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Psychology Advanced in an early form by the Anglo-Irish philosopher William Molyneux (1656-1738). This holds that the ability to perceive time and space is inborn. A distinction can be made between extreme nativism (which emphasizes the ability to perceive independently of experience), and contemporary...
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Psychology Exemplified in the teachings of Gautama the Buddha (563-483 BC). A belief in spiritual sources of knowledge, which knowledge may be gained through contemplation and tuition as well as by sense experiences. Mysticism has been used in this way as a means to understand emotional states and cognition....
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Psychology Formulated by the German, Johannes Peter Mller (1801-58). This law holds that when two items have been associated (learned), it is more difficult to learn/form a new association between a third item than between either of the items individually before they had been paired. J W Kling and L...
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Psychology Proposed by the American psychologist Clark Leonard Hull (1884-1952). The principle that an animal will react to a new or novel situation with a number of potential responses already within its behavioural repertoire. G A Kimble, Hilgard and Marquis Conditioning and Learning (New York, 1961)...
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Psychology Proposed by O Fenichle. A theory and analytic method which postulates that more than one common factor can account for a given phenomenon; for example, intellligence is made up of different abilities or factors. Thus, it is probable that any psychological disorder is caused by multipe factors...
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Psychology Advanced by the American psychologist Karl Spencer Lashiey (1890-1958). This principle maintains that any particular part of the brain is likely to be implicated in the performance of many different types of behaviour. Conversely, a single piece of behaviour involves a number of brain sites....
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(4th century BC- ) Psychology First proposed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC). A general term imjxjrted from philosophy and reflecting recognition of the fact that no one cause can account for the occurrence of a particular behavioural event. Rather, many factors lead to an event and these...
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Psychology Proposed by George Elias Mueller (1850-1934). Similar to Hering's theory, Mueller proposed that all colours were reducible to two pairs of opposed or antagonistic colours with a chemical substance of reversible action in the retina for each pair. Mueller supplanted Hering's theory by proposing...
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Psychology A theory of speech perception proposed by A M Liberman (1917- ). This hypothesizes that speech is perceived by mapping the acoustic properties of an input onto some internal representation of speech. Little physiological evidence exists to support Liberman's theory. G Beaumont, Introduction...
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Psychology Proposed by the American behaviourist John Broadus Watson (1878-1958). This structural psychology doctrine proposes that meaning consists of the images regularly associated with the sensory presentation or sensation. It is further proposed that certain sensory conditions will elicit certain...
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(1920s) Psychology Proposed by the American behaviourist John Broadus Watson (1878-1958). This theory states that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, that what a person experiences is the product of their own actions and what a person perceives is determined by how they react to exterior stimuli. Hence,...
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Psychology Proposed by the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). This is a purposive process of forgetting whereby certain memories or motives are prevented from entering consciousness in order to satisfy unconscious needs to avoid such memories, motives and so on. The process...
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Psychology Advanced by the German experimental psychologist Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-87) and the Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain (1818-1903). Usually in reference to the mind-body problem, monists postulate that the human organism consists of a single unified identity and that empiricism is the...
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Psychology Proposed by the English neurologist John Hughlings Jackson (1835-1911). The theory that speech disorders and some other maladjustments may be due wholly or in part to the fact that one cerebral hemisphere does not consistently lead the other in control of bodily movement. The theory has been...
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(1827) Psychology Proposed by W Cullen, this is an outdated hypothesis proposing mental disorders to be functional rather than organic. For example, there is no known organic pathology responsible for such symptoms as hysteria, hypochondriasis, insanity or malingering. C Bass, ed., Somatization: Physical...
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(1834) Psychology Described in A System of Logic, written by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-73). Mill states five canons prescribing methods of investigating and uncovering causal laws and connections. His logic anticipated the work of Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and is fundamental to GESTALT...
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Psychology Proposed by the American psychologist Frank Anderson Logan (1924- ). The theory states that quantitative dimensions of a response are defining properties and hence are learned. Therefore it is the person's reaction while learning which effects learning of a stimulus. Logan's theory is an assimilation...
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Psychology Formulated by the German 'anatomist Friedrich Siegismund Merkel (1845-1919). The law states that equal sensations above threshold strength correspond to equal stimulus differences; that is, a linear relationship exists between increased stimulation above the threshold necessary to experience...
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Psychology First reported by the Polish psychologist Robert Boleslaw Zajonc (1923- ). The principle that repeated exposure to a neutral stimulus increases the attraction for that stimulus. This effect is not restricted to interpersonal attraction, but also affects the evaluation of various visual, verbal...
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Psychology Proposed by the Irish empiricist philosopher Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753). This doctrine maintains that an adequate explanation of human behaviour is impossible without reference to mental phenomena. Mentalists believe the subject matter of psychology should be the mind, using introspection...
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(4th century BC- ) Psychology This can be traced back to Aristotle (384-322 BC), with more recent examples including the work of the German anatomist Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828). Theories of mental faculties are subsumed under the term faculty psychology, and consider the mind to be divided into a...
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Psychology Proposed by the British philosopher and statistician Kari Pearson (1857-1936), this refers to any theoretical approach to learning that assumes there exist mediating processes between the stimulus (S) and the response (R). The approach is closely associated with the use of statistical techniques...
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Psychology Proposed by the British philosopher and statistician Kari Pearson (1857-1936), this refers to any theoretical approach to learning that assumes there exist mediating processes between the stimulus (S) and the response (R). The approach i closely associated with the use of statistical techniques...
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Psychology Exemplified in the work of the German-American biologist Jacques Loeb (1859-1924). Deriving from the philosophical doctrine of MECHANISM, mechanistic psychology refers to the idea that, although animals (including humans) are complex, they can ultimately be understood in mechanical terms....
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(19th century) Psychology Established by the case of the British defendant Daniel McNaughton, and also known as McNaghten, or M'Naghten rules. This forms a principle for establishing criminal responsibility and state that to establish a defence on the grounds of insanity, it must be proved that the defendant...
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(1960) Psychology Proposed by the American academic Douglas Murray McGregor (1906- 64). The basic assumptions of theory x are that the typical person has a rational aversion to work and because of this will only work when ordered, threatened or coerced. The average person is therefore indolent, irresponsible,...
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Psychology Proposed by the Anglo-American psychologist William McDougall (1871-1938). This early theory of colour vision held that all colours were reducible to three basic or fundamental colours (reds, greens and blues), and that there are in the retina two distinct receptor mechanisms for light: rods...
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Psychology Named after the American C McCullough (ft.1960s). The term refers to any psychological phenomenon which follows removal of a stimulus, but in particular to the after image produced by saturating the eye with red and green patterns set at different angles. Usually, black horizontal lines are...
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(1860) Psychology First used in psychology by the German experimental psychologist Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-87). The term refers to any mathematical formalism which describes an aspect of behaviour. The use of mathematics in this way can be traced back to Fechner's Elements of Psychophysics (1860),...
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Psychology Proposed by the American psychologist Robert Sessions Woodworth (1869-1962). This is a general term referring to the body of evidence on the relative advantages of learning material in an intensive or 'massed' fashion, or with time lapses between each learning session. There are advantages...
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(1864) Chemistry Also known as the Guldberg-Waage law after the Norwegian chemist and mathematician Cato Maximilian Guldberg (1836-1902) and his brother-in-law Peter Waage (1833-1900). The law states that in a reversible system at constant temperature, the rate of the forward or reverse reaction is proportional...
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Psychology Derived from the work of German social theorist Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-83). Marx argued that society is in a constant state of change. He felt that individuals are products of their society and of the social forces imposed upon them. In all stratified societies, he argued, there is inherent...
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(19th century) Psychology Formulated by the German, C Marbe. The law states that the more common a particular response in word association tasks, the quicker that response is likely to be in comparison to responses which are less common. J M Mandler and G Mandler, Thinking: From Association to Gestalt...
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Psychology Proposed by the American psychologist P D MacLean (1913- ). Based on PAPEZ'S THEORY OF EMOTION this hypothesis further asserted that other areas of the limbic system (particularly the hippocampus and amygdaloid complex) are involved in emotion as well as the hypothalamus; and that the more...
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(17th and 20th centuries) Politics/Feminism Rule or domination by kings, fathers, or men in general. Either the argument that authority is derived by kings and aristocrats from God, whose fatherhood of all they represent on earth; or the view that power is divided along lines of gender and in favour...
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Politics Justification of central or professional power. There will in any STATE be those who have a better insight into the needs of society than do ordinary people, and this insight should be employed to shape and implement government policy for the mass of the population. David Miller et al., eds....
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Politics Theory, or phrase, justifying military preparations. The best way to preserve peace is to prepare for war since by so doing you make attack on yourself unlikely. See also DETERRENCE. Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham, The Dictionary of World Politics (Hemel Hempstead. 1990) RB
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Politics Ethical objection to violence. Violence and the taking of life are morally wrong. People should therefore refuse to engage in or support military activity, and no cause can justify the use of military force. There can therefore be no such thing as a JUST WAR. David Miller et al., eds. The Blackwell...
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(19th century) Politics Views of - and following - the Welsh manufacturer and socialist Robert Owen (1771-1858). Human character is shaped by circumstance. It can therefore be transformed by good working conditions, proper housing, and education. Owen himself attempted to promote this by variously exhorting...
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(20th century) Politics Application of CRISIS THEORY to the modem state. Modem states have more demands made upon them than they can meet. They are, by analogy with machines, overloaded and break down, or inefficiency results. The Left sees overload as a failure of capitalism; the Right of welfare socialism....
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(20th century) Politics Theory in military strategy which asserts that if a state has so much weaponry that it can defend itself, destroy any aggressor (and perhaps the world) and still have weapons to spare, it is capable of overkill. Not surprisingly, the concept has been met with a mixture of derision...
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Politics Theory of the STATE as analogous to a natural organism. The state is better understood as a 'natural' rather than a 'mechanical' phenomenon, with different institutions performing different functions, and the good health of the whole being attributable as much to the good working of the whole...
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(1945) Politics Theory of government and social order of the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper (1902- ). An open society, as opposed to a planned or goal-directed society, is one in which governments have no ultimate aims, and hence one where people enjoy the maximum freedom to experiment and innovate....
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Politics Theory that power will normally be concentrated. The term is used by Aristotle to describe the corrupt alternative to aristrocracy. It now commonly denotes the situation described by ELITISM and by the IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY. RB
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Politics Theory of aristocratic duties. Nobility, distinction, ARISTOCRACY or good fortune are privileges which therefore involve corresponding obligations to public service. RB
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(20th century) Politics Phrase attributed to Walton Rodger and widely linked to British Conservative politician and minister Nicholas Ridley (1929-93). There are always those who attempt to exclude themselves from the consequences of policies which in general they support. A house owner might advocate...
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(20th century) Politics Alliance of economic liberal and conservative theory. In economic affairs, the STATE should encourage free markets and private economic enterprise. In cultural and moral affairs it should sustain traditional values in education and family life. Desmond King, The New Right: Politics,...
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(20th century) Politics Adaptation of LIBERALISM to COLLECTIVISM. The liberal demand for freedom was best met, in a DEMOCRACY, by the use of STATE power to enhance the material opportunities of citizens, thus promoting equal liberty. Rodney Barker, Political Ideas in Modern Britain (London, 1987) RB
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(20th century) Politics Body of radical cultural and political theories of the 1960s and 1970s. CONVERGENCE promoted oligarchy, orthodoxy, and the wilting of DEMOCRACY in both Eastern and Western Europe. New participatory and decentralized forms of political and social organization would be an antidote...
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(20th century) New Class theory is a theory of elites in state socialist ('communist') societies created by Yugoslav writer Milovan Djilas (1911- ). Within state socialist societies a 'new class' of party officials - who exercise a command over resources similar to that exercised by capitalists - has...
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(20th century) Politics/Sociology Semi-ethical, semi-religious theory of cultural renewal. So called 'new-age theory' is not a coherent doctrine, but a mixture of cultural, ecological, pantheistic and communalist beliefs which from the 1980s, particularly in North American and Westem Europe, were presented...
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(20th century) Politics Theories of European Marxists after the Russian Revolution. As with all uses of the prefix 'neo', the essential distinction is between contemporary or near contemporary views, and earlier ones (for example, NEO-CONSERVATISM, NEO-CORPORATISM and NEO-LIBERALISM). The theories designated...
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(20th century) Politics Theories of revived classical liberalism in the 20th century. The market is the most effective (or least irrational) method of distributing goods and resources, and the role of the state should be limited to the maintenance of necessary order, legality, and stability. Desmond...
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(20th century) Politics A version of FUNCTIONALISM in international relations theory. An attempt to account for the development of functional relationships which transcend individual states, particularly in regionally limited systems such as Europe and the European Community. Graham Evans and Jeffrey...
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(20th century) Politics A term referring to the views of North American conservatives in the second half of the 20th century. Conservatism in the United States became radical and assertive from the 1960s onwards, combining liberal economics and a suspicion of the state with authoritarian moral attitudes...
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Politics Theory of human RIGHTS. Rights arise from the nature of human or social existence, in the same way as does NATURAL LAW. There is disagreement as to whether rights are surrendered, or transformed, or held in abeyance when people enter political, law-governed society. David Miller et al., eds....
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Politics/Law Theory of basis of human law. There are natural laws, either in the sense of being embedded in the essence of human society or HUMAN NATURE, or as being expressed through its development over time. The justification for 'manufactured' law lies in its expression of natural law, and the task...
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Politics/Law Theory of general or absolute legal principles. There are principles of natural justice which are independent of historical circumstances or the details or conventions of particular legal systems. These principles provide that there shall be redress or protection against injury; and, at...
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Politics Theory of the nation as the basis for govemment. People are identified as members of historically and culturally distinct nations. The frontiers of states and the frontiers of nations should coincide; and where they do not, govemment should be divided or reorganized in order to achieve this....
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Politics Theory of the function of beliefs. Stories about the destiny of nations, races, classes, or political groups have an important function which is quite independent of their truthfulness. The belief in some ultimate goal gives purpose; and the belief in some (mythical) identity as a race, a chosen...
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(20th century) Politics Theory of security through nuclear weaponry. Since each STATE has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other even if attacked frst, any state beginning a nuclear war will cause the destruction of both itself and its opponent. This will deter it from so doing. See also BALANCE...
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(19th century) Politics Theory of bnficient ANARCHISM described by Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921). Mutual assistance amongst members of the same species is as natural as competition. The species - and by implication the societies - that have prospered and will prosper are those characterized...
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(20th century) Politics A theory of (nuclear) disarmament in opposition to UNILATERALISM, this argues that nuclear disarmament can only be achieved by negotiated mutual reductions in weapons by all states. David Robertson, The Penguin Dictionary of Politics (London, 1986) RB
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(20th century) Politics/Marketing Concept in study of public opinion. For the body of public opinion there are 'moods' which are not necessarily rationally derived, and are responses to other events or influenees rather than spontaneous expressions of any coherent view. Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham,...
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(20th century) Politics Theory of rational progress. 'Modem' societies are characterized by the rational use of scientific techniques, and by the application of reason to meet the common INTERESTS of all. Critics have argued that there are neither common problems nor common solutions, and that we have...
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Politics Theory of apocalyptic transformation based on prophecy contained in Revelations. Millenarian theories share an expectation of some transforming change: either the coming of the Kingdom of God, or the just society, or harmony amongst peoples. They differ in almost every other respect. Norman...
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(1958) Politics Mixture of social prediction and description of English sociologist and writer Michael Young (1915- ). Social power, and particularly economic power, will in the future be held by those selected on the basis of measurable merit. In a society nominally egalitarian, these meritocrats will...
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(17th century- ) Politics/Economics Theory of the responsibility of the STATE to protect and promote national wealth by encouraging exports and limiting imports. Since wealth is limited, trade between nations is a ZERO-SUM game, so one country can only benefit at the expense of another. Mercantilism...
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(20th century) Politics Version of RACISM associated with the German Nazi Party. An extreme development of SOCIAL DARWINISM, the theory argued that northern Europeans were superior to other races, and constituted a 'natural' dominant race. The theory was employed to justify mass murder. J Barzun, Race:...
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(20th century) Politics/ Sociology Theory of modem society. Old hierarchies have been replaced by a society in which everyone is an isolated individual. But because social order is unavoidable, it is created by herding people into organizations and movements led despotically from above. David Miller...
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(20th century) Politics/ Feminism Development of MARXISM to add gender division to class conflict. The class analysis of Marxism is inadequate rather than incorrect. It needs to be complemented by an understanding of the divisions, particularly in the household, of work and the control over work along...
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(20th century) Politics/ Feminism Development of MARXISM to add gender division to class conflict. The class analysis of Marxism is inadequate rather than incorrect. It needs to be complemented by an understanding of the divisions, particularly in the household, of work and the control over work along...
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Politics/Economics/Sociology Theories derived from the work of Karl Marx (1818-83). The influence of Marx and of Marxism may be judged from the fact that Marxism has been compared, in its enormous variety, to Christianity. Starting points, though not conclusions, for Marxism are an understanding of history...
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(20th century) Advocacy of markets as an element of SOCIALISM. Markets are effective ways of distributing goods and services, and responding to actual wants. But they are not neutral, and the results they give depend upon the structure of laws and the distribution of wealth within which they operate....
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(20th century) A theory of politics of Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-Tung) (1893-1976). Maoism is an adaption of marxism and stalinism to the conditions of China, in particular to guerrilla war in largely peasant societies. It attempts to combine traditional Marxism with respect for the people and their ideas,...
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(20th century) Politics Ideology of organizational power. Organizations, both public and private, are best run when power is exercised hierarchically by managers who are distinct from the producers of goods or the providers of services, but have general power to dispose of the organization's resources....
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(20th century) A theory associated with James Bumham. The characteristic feature of modem industrial societies is the rise of managers as the effective wielders of power, particularly in the economy. In capitalist societies this means that owners or capitalists are losing power; in state socialist or...
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Pejorative term to describe beliefs or conduct allegedly derived from the views of Italian political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli (1429-1527). The end justifies the means, and moral considerations should be subordinated to the achievement of material or political goals. Used in this way, the term is...
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Physics Named after the Austrian-bom American theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900-58). The rule states that, independent of the coupling scheme, for all states arising from a given electron configuration, the sum of the (Lande) g-factors for levels with the same J value is a constant. GD
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(1925) Chemistry/Physics Named after the Austrian-born American theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900-58) who won the Nobel prize for Physics in 1945. The principle states that no pair of identical particles can simultaneously occupy the same quantum or energy state. For example, electrons occupying...
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Physics Named after its discoverer, the German experimental physicist Louis Carl Heinrich Friedrich Paschen (1865-1947), this law states that for a given gas and electrode material, the breakdown potential difference between large plane and parallel electrodes depends only on the product of the gas pressure...
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(17th century) Physics Named after its originator, the French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-62), this law applies to hydraulics. The application of a force at a distant site is often achieved by means of a uid in a tube connected to a piston and cylinder arrangement. Pascal's principle states that...
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Physics The principle of parity invariance states that the laws of physics hold equally true for both right-handed and left-handed co-ordinate systems for all the phenomena described by classical physics. The parity of the total wave function describing a system of elementary particles is conserved in...
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(1930s) Physics Named after the Norwegian-bom American physical chemist Lars Onsager (1903-76), winner of the 1968 Nobel prize for Chemistry. Onsager's theorem relates to the thermodynamics of linear systems in which he showed that symmetric reciprocal relationships apply between forces and fluxes. A...
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(20th century) Physics A theory of neutron transport in which it is assumed that all the neutrons belong to the same energy group. J Thewlis, ed.. Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Physics (New York, Oxford and London, 1962) MS
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(1843) Physics/Psychology Named after its originator, the German physicist Georg Simon Ohm (1787-1854), this law stated that the ear perceives only simple harmonic vibrations. When a complex sound wave strikes the ear, the ear decomposes it into the same simple harmonic waves that would be obtained mathematically...
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(1827) Physics Named after its discoverer, the German physicist Georg Simon Ohm (1787-1854), this law states that the potential difference V across a metallic conductor is directly proportional to the current / through it, provided that the temperature remains constant. The constant of proportionality...
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Physics See COLLECTIVE MODEL OF THE ATOMIC NUCLEUS, LIQUID DROP MODEL OF THE ATOMIC NUCLEUS, and SHELL MODEL OF THE ATOMIC NUCLEUS.
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Physics A theory which attempts to account for the creation of the lighter chemical elements through nuclear reactions. Various elementary particles and antiparticles were created within a fraction of a second after the big bang; these produced photons of radiation through annihilation. Deuterium and...
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(20th century) Physics This is the view that, following a nuclear war, there would be an enormous reduction in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface as a result of the dust and smoke accumulated in the Earth's atmosphere. Consequently, there would be severe climatic changes ('nuclear winter')....
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Physics See GRAVITATION, LAW OF UNIVERSAL.
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(1687) Physics This is the name given to the set of laws and conditions systematized by English physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) and published in 1687. Newtonian mechanics gives the laws of motion, describes the motion of bodies in the everyday world, and effectively presents the concept of force....
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(1831) Physics Named after its discoverer, the German physicist Franz Ernst Neumann (1798-1895). The product of the relative molecular mass and specific heat capacity is constant for all compounds having the same general formula and being similarly co-ordinated (for example, AI2O3, Cr2O3), but the constant...
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(1911) Physics Named after its originators, the German physical chemist Walther Hermann Nernst (1864-1941) and the British scientist Frederick Alexander Lindemann, Viscount Cherwell (1886-1957). Nernst and Lindemann suggested as an empirical result that the single vibrational frequency v of the atoms...
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(20th century) Physics A theory of neutron transport in which it is assumed that the neutron population may be divided into a number of groups, each of which has a constant neutron energy. J Thewlis, ed.. Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Physics (New York, Oxford and London, 1962) MS
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(1773) Physics Named after its originators, the French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb (1736-1806) and the German engineer Christian Otto Mohr (1835-1918), this theory explains the process of material rupture. Coulomb, in 1773, suggested that failure of a material occurs when the maximum shear...
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Physics Named after their discoverer, the French mathematician Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), these laws refer to the frequency of vibrations. (1) For a given uniform string and given stretching force, the fundamental frequency of vibration varies inversely as the length of the string. (2) For a uniform...
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(1866) Physics Named after its discoverer, the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-79), this states that at constant temperature, the coefficient of viscosity of a gas is independent of its density; that is, of its pressure. The law fails at high pressures, where the mean free path of the molecules...
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(1868) Physics Named after the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-79). Maxwell's demon is an imaginary creature used to illustrate the statistical nature of the second law of thermodynamics. The demon operates a trapdoor between two compartments containing gas in thermal equilibrium, and is...
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(1746) Physics Named after the French mathematician Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759). This states that the principle of least action is sufficient to determine the motion of a mechanical system. See also LEAST ACTION, PRINCIPLE OF.
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(1864) Physics Named after its originator, the English physicist Augustus Matthiessen (1831-70), this states that the electrical resistivity of a metal which contains foreign (impurity) atoms in solid solution is nearly always greater than that of the pure metal. It was first shown by Matthiessen that...
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(1676) Physics The name sometimes used in continental Europe for BOYLE'S LAW, after the French physicist Edm Mariotte (1620-84). GD
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(1957) Physics A hypothesis proposed by the American physicists Hugh Everett in, John ArchibaldWheeler (1911- ) and Neil Graham. This theory is an attempt to solve the problem of measurement in quantum mechanics, typified in the paradox known as SCHRDINGER'S CAT. The hypothesis assumesthat the universe...
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(early 19th century) Physics Named after its discoverer, the French physicist Etienne Louis Malus (1775-1812), this proposes that the optical path between any two wavefronts is the same for any ray. When a pencil of light rays crosses two or more media, so that it has been refracted one or more times,...
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Physics See BAND THEORY OF FERROMAGNETISM, EWING'S THEORY OF FERROMAGNETISM, HEISENBERG'S THEORY OF FERROMAGNETISM, WEISS'S THEORY OF FERROMAGNETISM and LENZ'S LAW.
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(1883) Astronomy/Physics Named after the Austrian philosopher and physicist Emst Mach (183&-1916). Mach raised a number of conceptual objections to the laws of motion as laid down by Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). He argued that unless there is a material background against which motion is to be...
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Philosophy Argument for adopting a divinely favoured way of life - named after French philosopher, mathematician, physicist and pious gambler Blaise Pascal (1623-62) who stated it in his Penses (233) - but apparently stemming from Islam. One statement of it (not Pascal's) is this. Let the utility of...
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Philosophy The view that only particulars exist, and more specifically that the properties and relations of particulars are themselves particulars, not universals {see PLATONISM). A particular has a certain unity in space and time. It cannot appear as a whole at separated places simultaneously (though...
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Philosophy Also called Ockham's Razor. Principle that one should not multiply entities unnecessarily, or make further assumptions than are needed, and in general that one should pursue the simplest hypothesis. Adoption of this principle, though seemingly obvious, leads to problems about the role of simplicity...
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Philosophy View that where one or more objects are of a certain kind or have a certain property, this is to be explained by postulating a non-material abstract entity to serve as a ' paradigm of which they are copies; in other words, universals {see PLATONISM) are to be regarded as (or replaced by) paradigms....
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Philosophy View that there are important paraconsistent logical theories; that is theories that do not allow (as classical logic does: see RELEVANCE LOGICS) that a contradiction has every proposition among its logical consequences. A system which contains contradictory proposition is inconsistent. But...
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Philosophy Literally, 'all-godism'. The view that God and the universe are identical; or that there is no transcendent God outside the universe who created it, but the universe itself is divine. Among philosophers, Baruch de Spinoza (1632-77) is a prominent exponent of such a view, and it appears also...
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Philosophy Literally, 'all-soulism'. The view that matter is intrinsically alive, or is made up from basic entities which are so. Various forms of such a view are found in the philosophies of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), and John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart...
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Philosophy Name for a complex strand in Ancient Greek religious thought, contrasting with the more familiar strand of the Olympian deities (Zeus, Apollo, and so on). A body of religious writings from the 7th and succeeding centuries BC was attributed to the mythical singer Orpheus and his followers....
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(Antiquity- ) Biology/Philosophy The theory or theories that seek to explain how biomolecules, subcellular structures, and ultimately living cells came into existence. Many myths, stories and hypotheses have been proposed. Some are still under investigation, while others remain contested or persist as...
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Philosophy A version of (or perhaps little more than an altemative name for) HOLISM, emphasizing the analogy with living organisms, whose parts only are what they are because of, and can only be understood in terms of, their contributions to the whole. See also ORGANIC UNITIES. ARL
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Philosophy Principle that a whole may have a value which is different from, and not predictable on the basis of, the values of its parts. The attractiveness, for example, of a picture cannot normally be predicted from that of each colour-patch taken separately. The principle was made much of by George...
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Philosophy Theory due to American physicist Percy Williams Bridgman (1882-1961) and saying that scientific concepts must be defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured or applied. The theory is akin to the VERIFIABILITY PRINCIPLE in its strongest form, identifying meaning with method...
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Philosophy Generally, either the study of being, or a particular theory of what there is (as in 'Smith's ontology contains classes but not propositions', meaning that Smith believes there are such things as classes but not such things as propositions). More specifically, part of the logical system underpinning...
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Philosophy Principle which expresses the motivation underlying PLATO'S THEORY OF FORMS and Similar doctrines. Where there are a number of objects of the same kind, or sharing a single property, it seems that there must be a single something which is this kind or property, and which therefore gets treated...
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Philosophy The idea is attributed to L de la Forge (1632-66) in his Treatise on the Spirit of Man (1665), but the chief occasionalist was Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715). See also PSYCHOPHYSICAL PARALLELISM and PRE-ESTABLISHED HARMONY. Occasionalism says that there is only one true cause, God, who causes...
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Philosophy Any theory saying of a given subject-matter that it contains objects existing independently of human beliefs or attitudes, or that there are similarly independent truths in the area, or that there are methods of studying the area and arriving at truths within it which are not arbitrary and...
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Philosophy Associated with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and his followers, notably in England Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924). See also COHERENCE THEORY OF TRUTH. This is a form of idealism whereby reality, though mental or spiritual, does not depend on the human mind in particular but...
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Philosophy Theory that states of consciousness exist in their own right and are not owned by some substantive entity such as a mind, a person, or even a body (or brain). The theory fits with a BUNDLE THEORY of the Self. P F Strawson, Individuals (1959), ch. 3; critical ARL
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Philosophy Theory that there is no such thing as knowledge of truths in a certain sphere because there are no such truths to be known. The sphere normally intended by the term is ethics, and noncognitivists adopt a SPEECH ACT THEORY when analyzing what appear to be moral or value statements, EMOTIVISM...
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Philosophy Any view which analyzes a given subject-matter in terms of words or language, derived from the Latin 'nomen' meaning 'name', 'term' or 'word'. A nominalist view of universals (see PLATONISM) says they are neither substantive realities (REALISM) nor mental concepts (CONCEPTUALISM). Rather,...
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Philosophy Term invented or popularized by Russian novelist Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818-^3) in his novel Fathers and Sons (1861) for the rejection of all traditional values. Literally meaning 'nothingism', the term can be applied to views saying that all knowledge is impossible, that all alleged metaphysical...
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Philosophy A criterion offered by French philosopher Jean Nicod (1893-1924) for when one proposition confirms another. A hypothesis of the form 'All A are B' is confirmed by objects that are A and B, and disconfirmed by objects that are A and not B, objects that are not A being irrelevant. An advantage...
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Philosophy See GOODMAN'S PARADOX.
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Philosophy Theory associated primarily with William James (1842-1910), who named it, and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970); though it has affinities to the views of Emst Mach (1838-1916), Henri Bergson (185^1941) and others. Neutral monism says that mind and matter can both be reduced to a single type of...
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Philosophy A revival in the 1st century BC and the next century or two of various features traditionally associated with the followers of Pythagoras (fl.6th century BC); see PYTHAGOREANISM. Though of some minor importance as an influence on NEO-PLATONISM, the movement largely occupied itself with arithmetic...
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Philosophy Movement initiated by Plotinus (AD 205-70) and carried forward by various philosophers of the next three centuries, having repercussions in the Renaissance especially among the Cambridge Platonists of the 17th century and, later, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Neo-Platonism claimed...
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Philosophy Version of UTILITARIANISM which replaces the maximization of good by the minimization of evil. Supporters of the theory, who include Karl Raimund Popper (1902- ), say that by aiming at removing evils rather than achieving positive goods we shall avoid the disadvantages of UTOPiANiSM usually...
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Philosophy Theory that analyzes negation in terms of a special kind of linguistic activity, negating or denying; so that to say, for example, 'It's not raining' may indeed be (as anyone would agree in straightforward cases) to deny that it is raining, but is also to utter a sentence which gets its meaning...
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Philosophy Term occasionally used for the view that everything that happens is necessitated. The view that every event has a cause is the same, unless causation is distinguished from necessitation. See also DETERMINISM. R R K Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame (1980), chapter 2; distinguishes causation...
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Philosophy A notion introduced explicitly by Willard Van Orman Quine (1908- ) though with roots going back to David Hume (1711-76). The idea is that since it is impossible to achieve a satisfactory justification for our claims to knowledge we should cease to look for one, and construct a scientific account...
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Philosophy Any view holding that things in general, or things in some sphere under investigation, are all of one kind (as opposed to being of radically different kinds), and are amenable to study by scientific methods, without appeal to supernatural intervention or special kinds of intuition. In art...
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(13th century) Natural Sciences/Theology Discussed by Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-74) and advanced by John Ray (1627-1705), author of Wisdom of God in the Creation (1691), and the Reverend William Paley (1743-1805). Derived from combining Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, this doctrine...
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Philosophy Any view claiming that something is innate, such as ideas or perceptual faculties. See also INNATE IDEAS. ARL
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Philosophy Also called denotative or referential theories. Theories which equate the meaning of a word with an object it stands for (like the 'FIDO'-FIDO THEORY), or else with the word's relation to such an object. Proper names form the primary class, but general words can stand for abstract objects...
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Philosophy Theory that we see the world as common sense supposes we do; that is, directly and without recourse to special intermediate 'sensations', 'sensedata', 'images' and so on which some other views involve (see also REPRESENTATIONALISM). We need not, however, always be free from error, any more...
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Philosophy A type of religious attitude (appearing in many guises and within many religions from antiquity onwards) emphasizing various practices - ascetic, contemplative, or other - for obtaining knowledge of and unification with God or spiritual reality by means not open to reason and not relying on...
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Philosophy Theories postulating a special moral sense which either enables us to perceive special moral qualities of virtue and vice in action (which thereupon affect us favourably or unfavourably), or else simply arouses feelings of approval or disapproval in us on contemplating the ordinary qualities...
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Philosophy Any view claiming to find unity in a certain sphere where it might not have been expected. The main forms of monism have been: a strong form, claiming that there is only one object (ELEATICISM, Banich de Spinoza (1632-77), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)); and a weaker form, claiming...
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Philosophy Term used for the theory (going back to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)) of 'possible worlds'; used to analyze necessity and possibility and similar notions, which are known as modal notions. The actual world is regarded as merely one among an infinite set of logically possible worlds,...
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Philosophy The term 'methodological' is prefixed to terms - such as BEHAVIOURISM, HOLISM, INDIVIDUALISM, SCEPTICISM and SOLIPSISM - to indicate that the doctrine in question is being taken to prescribe a certain method rather than to make a substantive claim about reality. This is irrespective of whether...
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(1943) Linguistics/Philosophy Standard distinction, applied to linguistics by Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1965); see also GLOSSEMATICS. Also discussed by Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) - see POETIC PRINCIPLE for reference. Language about language: metalanguage is a system of notation, descriptive...
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Philosophy Literally, 'theory of parts'. Term introduced by the Polish logician Stanislaw Leniewski (1886-1939) to cover a theory which used the whole/part relation as a substitute for the classmembership relation to deal with the structure of classes in ways that would avoid various difficulties connected...
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Philosophy Doctrine that the universe is becoming progressively and inevitably better. This may be for religious reasons involving the working out of some grand design, or for reasons connected with late 18th-century optimism concerning inevitable progress and the perfectibility of man, inspired by scientific...
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Philosophy The Austrian philosopher Alexius von Meinong (1853-1920) thought that since we can apparently refer to things that do not exist (the golden mountain, the prime number between eight and ten, and so on) such things must have some sort of being. This he called 'sosein', or 'being so'. Meinong's...
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Philosophy As a theory, rather than a device, the view that everything happens mechanically; that is, everything can ultimately be explained in terms of certain laws of nature which apply to the behaviour of matter in motion, as in the popular example of clockwork. Ideally the laws should require as...
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(traditional) Discussed BC in both Greek philosophy and Indian linguistics. Much theoretical progress in latter half of the 20th century. An elusive concept which has been theorized from many different perspectives: meaning as use, as behaviour, as intention, as concepts, as images, as truth-conditions,...
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Philosophy The doctrine of Aristotle (384-322 BC) that moral virtue can be defined as a disposition concemed with choice and lying in a mean. Any given virtue lies between two extremes, for example courage lies in a mean between rashness and cowardice. The mean, however, is not an arithmetical mean,...
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Any theory emphasizing the existence, priority, or value of matter or material objects. (The popular sense of emphasizing the value of material things, aka Madonna's 'material girl' is uncommon in philosophy.) Usually materialists say that matter alone exists, everything else (notably minds or spirits...
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Philosophy Religious system founded by Mani of Persia (c. AD 215-76) and emphasizing fundamental dualism of good and evil as independent principles, represented by spirit and body and symbolized by light and dark. Sometimes treated as a Christian heresy, Manicheism is rather a separate religion with...
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(1970s) Music Associated with a number of Dutch and Scandinavian composers, notably Louis Andriessen (1939- ) and Poul Ruders (1949- ), this term denotes a type of music that mixes minimalist techniques with other compositional styles. The resulting works clearly articulate their form and expose their...
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(1980s) Associated with the English composers Brian Femeyhough (1943- ) and James Dillon (1950- ) and some of their contemporaries in France and Germany, this term denotes a type of music produced by combining extremely detailed compositional processes. Micro- intervals, complex rhythms, a wide variety...
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(1970s) A compositional style employing the large forms, smooth orchestral writing and lush harmonies generally associated with the Romantics. Usually viewed as a reaction against the complexities of mid-20th-century music, it has gained little validity as a movement; more often it is associated with...
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(1920s) A compositional style, characterized by its revival of the controlled forms and techniques used by earlier composers, in reaction to the excesses of late-Romanticism. The term often implies an element of parody, particularly through its distortion of established tonal techniques (for example...
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(1948) Mystic music composed and realized in an electronic studio using pre-existing ('concrete') sounds, rather than conceived abstractly, notated onto paper and then performed. The term was coined by the French composer Pierre Schaeffer (1910- ) who first developed this type of music. The natural sounds...
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(Middle Ages) Music First codified by the German musicologist Joachim Burmeister (1564-1629) in his treatise Mtisica Autoschediastike (1601), this is the notion that music makes use of technical devices analogous to rhetorical figures of speech. Some techniques operate on a purely musical level (for...
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(6th century BC) Also known as musica mundana from the Middle Ages onwards, this doctrine (attributed to Pythagoras' school) postulated that each planet produces a musical note; its pitch determined by the planet's speed of revolution and its distance from the earth; the combined notes of the planets...
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(4th century BC- ) Music Derived from the Greek word for 'measure', this term describes the ordering of music which evolved in the Western world after Pythagorus (fl.6th century BC) had devised a pitched scale, based on scientific proportions. This music has a fixed scale of pitches determined by its...
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(1960s) A term derived from the use of minimal means to generate music. Often associated with the American composers Philip Glass (1937- ) and Steve Reich (1936- ), minimalist compositions are sometimes known as systems music. The main element in work of this kind is repetition. A melodic and/or rhythmic...
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(1969) Biology/Medicine Also called the virogene-oncogene hypothesis, this was proposed by American scientists Robert Joseph Huebner (1923- ), George Joseph Todaro (1937- ) and colleagues.The theory postulates that at some point in the evolutionary past, viral genes were integrated into the deoxyribonucleic...
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(1980s) Biology/Medicine A term coined by American scientist Gerald Maurice Edelman (1929- ), who won the Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1972, this is the theory that selection and adaptation shape the human mind throughout life in the same way that they shape the physiology and morphology...
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(1854) Biology/Medicine Coined by Claude Bernard (1813-78), an eminent French physiologist regarded as the founder of experimental medicine, this term refers to the concept that higher animals live in a stable, internal environment of circulating organic liquid which bathes and nourishes the tissues;...
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Mathematics Named after French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal (1623-62). A triangular array of integers with a 1 at the top and with each number below the sum f the two numbers directly above it. The kth element in the th row is the coefficient of xkxn-k in the expansion of (x + y)n. See also...
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(1639) Mathematics Proved at the age of 16 by Blaise Pascal (1623-62) before he turned his attention to literature and theology, this states that the points of intersection of the three pairs of opposite sides of a hexagon which is inscribed in a conic are collinear. From this result Pascal deduced the...
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Mathematics The law for finding the resultant of two vectors by constructing a parallelogram in which each of the parallel sides represents the direction and magnitude of the given vectors and the diagonal represents the direction and magnitude of the resultant. W Gellen, S Gottwald, M Hell wich, H Kstner...
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(c.3OO BC) Mathematics The fifth of the axioms of Euclidean geometry proposed by Euclid of Alexandria. It states that if two lines are cut by a third, the two will meet on the side of the third on which the sum of the interior angles is less than two right angles. As early as AD 150, Ptolemy expressed...
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(c.AD 300) Mathematics Named after its discoverer Pappus of Alexandria, this states that if the six vertices of a hexagon lie alternately on two lines, then the three points of intersection of the opposite sides are collinear. Pappus proved this by methods involving length and angle, but they do not...
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(late 19th century) Mathematics The first general problem conceming the interpolation of given values of a function at specified points by rational approximation was considered by the French mathematician and physicist Baron Augustin Louis Cauchy (1789-1857). Pad approximates are a field concemed with...
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Mathematics The result in GROUP THEORY whereby if a group G acts on a non-empty set X, then the cardinality of the orbit of an element in X is the index of the stabilizer of that element in G. J J Rotman, An Introduction to the Theory of Groups (Allyn-Bacon, 1984) MB
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Mathematics The body of mathematics concemed with maximizing or minimizing objective functions of many variables subject to constraints (see also, for example, FERMAT'S PROBLEM). It developed partly through the classical CALCULUS OF VARIATIONS and Optimal control and approximation theory, where the variables...
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(20th century) Mathematics A generalization of 19th-century ALGEBRA into mathematical analysis, started by David Hubert (1862-1943) among others. A linear operator (or, simply, operator) is a mapping of a vector space V onto another which preserves addition and multiplication by scalars. If V is finite-dimensional...
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(20th century) Mathematics A generalization of 19th-century ALGEBRA into mathematical analysis, started by David Hubert (1862-1943) among others. A linear operator (or, simply, operator) is a mapping of a vector space V onto another which preserves addition and multiplication by scalars. If V is finite-dimensional...
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(20th century) A theory in logic is open if it considers only propositions with variables which are bound only by the universal quantifier 'for all'. Such a theory cannot discuss the man in the moon because this involves the quantifier 'there exists', but can consider all men x such that X is in the...
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Mathematics The result in COMPLEX FUNCTION THEORY which asserts that a ncn- constant analytic function is an open mapping; that is, it is a function which sends open sets in the domain to open sets in the range. Similar results can also be found in the areas of FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS and TOPOLOGY. J E Marsden,...
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Mathematics One of the first problems of the area of COMBINATORICS known as design theory (compare with BRUCK-RYSER-CHOWLA THEOREM), Considered by Leonhard Euler (1707-83). It asks for ways of positioning 36 officers of 6 ranks and 6 regiments in a Latin square, requiring that each row and each column...
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(1950s) Mathematics A function which is 0 outside the ranges from a to and from b to a can be recovered from a sample of values spaced 2b apart. This is crucial to INFORMATION THEORY. JB
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Mathematics The study of the computation of solutions to mathematical problems. Methods generally based on the discretization of equations have been developed for problems in areas including integration, differentiation, solution of linear and non-linear equations, ordinary and partial DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS,...
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Mathematics The branch of mathematics whose principal concern is the study of whole numbers and their extensions both algebraic and analytic. This includes the study of divisibility, primality, and factorization properties for integers, as well as the study of irrational and transcendental numbers. The...
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(c. 1970) Mathematics A decision problem is one with a yes or no answer and it is in the class P if it has a polynomial time algorithm; that is, an algorithm for which the number of individual operations increases like a polynomial as a function of the input. A computation is in the class NP if the decision...
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(20th century) Mathematics A branch of modal logic. Hypotheses or other statements about what is right and wrong, desirable or undesirable, just or unjust in society. The majority of sociologists consider it illegitimate to move from explanation to evaluation. In their view, sociology should strive to...
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Mathematics Named after Jerzy Neymann and Karl Pearson, who is considered to be the founder of 20th century STATISTICS, this is the result whereby of all the tests of a given hypothesis with the same significance level the LIKELIHOOD RATIO TEST has the maximal power. Nearly all tests now in use for testing...
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Mathematics Named after Scottish mathematician John Napier (1550-1617) who invented logarithmic tables and invented the first mechanical calculator. The rules result from the observation that in a right-angled spherical triangle, the cosine of any circular part (the remaining two angles, the hypothenuse...
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Mathematics The presentation of SET THEORY in the style of an informal mathematical theory regarding it as a given body of knowledge rather than the consequences of a collection of uninterpreted axioms. The naive point of view, as originally put forward by the German mathematician Georg Ferdinand Ludwig...
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(20th century) Mathematics This gives more precise details of polynomials which approximately equal continuous functions. See also WEIERSTRASS APPROXIMATION THEOREM. JB
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(1951) Mathematics A positive version of SYLVESTER'S THEOREM proved by T Motzkin. If n > 1 points in aEuclidean plane are not all on one line, then there exists a line containing exactly two of the points. H S M Coxeter, 'Two-dimensional Crystallography', Introduction to Geometry (New York, 1961)...
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Named after German-bom American mathematician Jurgen Kurt Moser (1928- ), this states that for an area preserving map subject to certain differentiability and eigenvalue conditions, there are infinitely many invariant circles around an elliptic point. On these circles, the map is an irrational rotation,...
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(19th century) Mathematics Named after Italian mathematician Giacinto Morera (1856-1909), this is the result that a continuous function with the property that its complex line integral over any closed curve is zero, must be analytic. See also CAUCHY'S INTEGRAL THEOREM, COMPLEX FUNCTION THEORY and GREEN'S...
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(1922) Mathematics Named after British mathematician Louis Joel Mordell (1888-1972), this is the result inNUMBER THEORY and ALGEBRAIC GEOMETRY whereby the group of rational points on the ELLIPTIC CURVE y2 = x2 + t in the real projective plane has a finite basis. This is equivalent to the assertion that...
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(1910) Mathematics Originally proved by Eliakim Hastings Moore (1862-1932) and generalized by William Fogg Osgood (1864-1943). In its simplest form, the theorem asserts that if the limit as x tends to a of the sequence of functions n (x) is n (a) which is attained uniformly in n and the limit as n tends...
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Named after French mathematician Paul Mon tel (1876-1975), this element of COMPLEX FUNCTION THEORY states that non-normal families of functions take all, except possibly one, complex values near every point. JULIA SET theory depends on this finding. J B Conway, Functions of One Complex Variable (New...
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(19th century) Mathematics Named after French mathematician Jean Gaston Darboux (1842-1917), this is the result in COMPLEX FUNCTION THEORY which essentially asserts that if a function is analytic on a region bounded by a simple closed curve, continuous on its closure and one-to-one on the boundary, then...
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Also known as modus tollendo tollens, this is the rule of inference in logic which enables one to deduce the formula -A from the formulae A B and -B. For example, given the statements 'if it's raining this must be London' and 'this is not London,' we can infer it can't be raining. J E Rubin, Mathematical...
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Also known as modus ponendo ponens, or the rule of detachment, this is the rule of inference in logic which enables one to deduce the formula B from the formulas A B and A. For example, given the statements if it's raining this must be Londonandit is raining one can validly detach the consequent of...
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(20th century) Mathematics The branch of logic which studies the semanti (rather than the syntactic) properties offormal theories. In particular, it is concerned with the concepts of truth, satisfaction, and validity, rather than the intrinsic property of formal deduction {compare with proof theory)....
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Mathematics Ned after German mathematician and theoretical astronomer August Ferdinand Mbius (1790-1868), the Mbius strip was presented in a papediscovered after his death. The 19th-century German mathematician Johann Benedict Listing discovered it independently. It is an object having only one side...
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(1956) Mathematics In non-linear FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS one frequently considers set-valued functions F between topological spaces X and y (so the values F(x) are subsets of Y). We say F is lower semicontinuous if the inverse image {x| F(x) B } is open whenever B is open. In this case, if y is a Banach...
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(20th century) Mathematics A fundamental theorem concerning integration (see also MEASURE THEORY), this theorem determines whether a set of points is measurable and therefore provides a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of integrals in the sense of Lebesgue. JB
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Mathematics A FRACTAL object formed by starting with a cube, dividing it into 27 equal smaller cubes, and removing the centre cube as well as the centre cubes of each face and successively repeating this process for each of the remaining smaller cubes. The limiting object is the Menger sponge. Its...
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Economics/Mathematics This is a branch of mathematics dealing with the attribution of measure to subsets of a given set. In economics, measure theory is useful in analyzing the influence that individuals or groups have on market operations. It also underpins probability theory and the measure of the...
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(1902) Mathematics Based on a definition by Henri Lon Lebesgue (1875-1941). A measure is a definition of area and volume which generalizes those of Giuseppe Peano (1887) and Marie-Ennemond Camille Jordan (1892). This leads to a definition of the definite integral which generalizes that of Bernhard...
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Mathematics Also known as the maximum principle and is a part of COMPLEX FUNCTION THEORY. It states that an analytic function which attains its maximum modulus in some open region must be constant. As a consequence, if/is analytic on a bounded region D (and continuous on the closure of D), then |f(z)|...
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Mathematics Also known as the maximum principle and is a part of COMPLEX FUNCTION THEORY. It states that an analytic function which attains its maximum modulus in some open region must be constant. As a consequence, if/is analytic on a bounded region D (and continuous on the closure of D), then |f(z)|...
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Mathematics Also known as the maximum principle and is a part of COMPLEX FUNCTION THEORY. It states that an analytic function which attains its maximum modulus in some open region must be constant. As a consequence, if/is analytic on a bounded region D (and continuous on the closure of D), then |f(z)|...
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Mathematics Also known as the maximum principle and is a part of COMPLEX FUNCTION THEORY. It states that an analytic function which attains its maximum modulus in some open region must be constant. As a consequence, if/is analytic on a bounded region D (and continuous on the closure of D), then |f(z)|...
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(1947) Mathematics Originally proposed by Wilcoxen in 1945 for samples of equal size, but later extended to samples of unequal size by Mann and Whitney, this is a distribution free statistical test based on comparing the distributions of the ranks of the difference of the scores between two distributions...
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Mathematics The theory of the onset of chaos in which a dynamical system undergoes an inverted saddle node bifurcation from periodicity to aperiodic motion on a STRANGE ATTRACTOR. This is also termed intermittent transition to turbulence. See also CHAOS THEORY, RUELLE-TAKENS SCENARIO and FEIGENBAUM...
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(20th century) Managerialism is an ideology of organizational power. Organizations, both public and private, are best run when power is exercised hierarchically by managers who are distinct from the producers of goods or the providers of services, but have general power to dispose of the organization's...
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A 20th century theory associated with James Bumham (1905- ). The characteristic feature of modem industrial societies is the rise of managers as the effective wielders of power, particularly in the economy. In capitalist societies this means that owners or capitalists are losing power; in state socialist...
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(1856) Literary Theory Term coined by the English writer John Ruskin (1819-1900), and derived from the Greek word pathos meaning 'feeling'. Attribution of human feelings and motives to inanimate objects such as landscapes and buildings; a process common in Gothic and Romantic writings, for example...
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(3rd century BC- ) Literary Theory Genre originated with the Idyls of the Greek poet Theocritus. The term derives from the Latin word pastor, meaning 'shepherd'. Poetry or prose depicting idealized, imaginary, rural situations; the activities and relationships of shepherds and shepherdesses. Pastoral...
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(traditional; 1947) Literary Theory Modern usage by New Critic Cleanth Brooks (1906- ). A contradictory statement from which a valid inference may be drawn; in RHETORIC, the FIGURE OF SPEECH 'oxymoron' (for example Milton's 'living death'). Brooks extended the term to other kinds of indirections and...
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(1950s) Literary Theory Term coined by the British writer Colin Wilson (1931-). It refers to a creative personality whose way of life and thought is outside the norms of conventional society; or a character in fiction who is alien to the culture in which s/he lives. Meursault in French novelist Albert...
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(1759) Literary Theory Declaration by English poet Edward Young (1683-1765). See also INVENTION. An 'original' is an organic growth stemming from the genius of the poet, not, as in the classical view, a skilled remaking of an existing subject. An important early statement of a reorientation in literary...
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A literary theory derived from: Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC); English poet Edward Young (1683-1765); English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834); and NEW CRITICISM. 'Organic' views of literature are based on two metaphors, zoological and botanical. Aristotle's organicism views a poem...
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(1930) Literary Theory Concept developed by the American scholars Milman Parry and Albert Bates Lord; in 1953 applied to Anglo-Saxon verse by Francis Peabody Magoun (jnr). In pre-literate cultures, poetry constructed in oral performance on the basis of selections from a stock of conventional phrases...
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(c.l930) Literary Theory Term coined by the American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) for an American school of poetry of the 1920s. Related to IMAGISM, objectivism laid particular stress on precision and detail of image and construction. Its best practitioner was perhaps the American poet...
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(1919) Literary Theory Term coined by the expatriate American poet and critic Thomas Steams Eliot (1888-1965). 'A set of objects, a situation, a chain of events' which are used to symbolize a particular emotion in poetry, preferred by Eliot to the direct statement of emotions as in Romantic poetry....
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(18th century) Literary Theory The dominant literary form in modem times, and subject of intense theoretical discussion in the 20th century. An extended fictional narrative in prose. The novel genre is extremely catholic as regards orientation, content, structure, and style; it has reflected a number...
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(1950s-60s) Literary Theory Meaning the 'new novel', this was a French practice of novel-writing, the best-known exponent of which was Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-). Anti-realist movement in which linguistic FOREGROUNDING and Structural deformations deliberately interfere with the transparency of the...
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(1980s) Literary Theory Largely American critical practice pioneered, and named in 1982, by Stephen J Greenblatt. (More recently termed 'poetics of culture', again by Greenblatt in 1989.) A form of cultural criticism concerned with texts of all genres in their historical situations, particularly in...
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The New Criticism was a dominant American critical approach in the 20th century, the founders of which were John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974) (The New Criticism, 1941), Allen Tate (1899-1979), Robert Penn Warren (1905-89); also Cleanth Brooks (1906- ), William Kurtz Wimsatt (1907-75), Ren Wellek (1903-...
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(1817) Literary Theory Phrase coined by the English poet John Keats (1795-1821). Property of the poet, who is 'capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason'. Beauty and truth are non-rational, non-partisan. J Keats, 'Letter to George and...
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(19th century) Art/Literary Theory Naturalistic aesthetics arose out of 19th-century POSITIVISM, and were developed in literary theory above all by the French writer Emile Zola (1840-1902) who spoke of the 'experimental novel'. Rejecting the emotional emphasis of ROMANTICISM and notions of idealism...
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(traditional) Literary Theory The concept originates with the Greek philosopher Plato (C.427-C.347 BC). See also DIEGESIS. The teller in the tale. The voice which seems to tell the story, which may be anonymous or embodied as a character. Narrators may be first-person (autodiegetic or homodiegetic)...
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(traditional) Literary Theory The theory of narrative has been much discussed in the 20th century, particularly from the 1960s onwards. A story told in oral or printed mode by a NARRATOR to an audience or reader. For technical aspects, see DIEGESIS, 'FABULA' AND 'SJUZHET', FOCALIZATION, KERNEL, CATALYZER,...
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(1971) Literary Theory Term coined by the critic Gerald Prince. The fictional audience or addressee within a narrative, to whom the story is told. May be overtly realized, as Marlow's shipmates in Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' (1902), or implied. To be distinguished from reader and IMPLIED READER....
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(1795-96) Literary Theory Distinction proposed by the German poet and critic Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805). Naive poets are instinctual, spontaneous, representing the world as they experience it; sentimental or classical poets are rational and idealist. These tendencies are synthesized in the...
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(1920s- ) Literary Theory Sources in anthropology and JUNGLAN THEORY (psychology). Myths are symbolic narratives expressing the collective psychological concerns of a culture (Oedipus, The
