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Propædia
The one-volume ''Propædia'' is the first of three parts of the 15th edition of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', intended as a compendium and topical organization of the 12-volume ''Micropædia'' and the 17-volume ''Macropædia,'' which are organized alphabetically. Introduced in 1974 with the 15th edition, the ''Propædia'' and ''Micropædia'' were intended to replace the Index of the 14th edition; however, after widespread criticism, the ''Britannica'' restored the Index as a two-volume set in 1985. The core of the ''Propædia'' is its Outline of Knowledge, which seeks to provide a logical framework for all human knowledge. However, the ''Propædia'' also has several appendices listing the staff members, advisors and contributors to all three parts of the ''Britannica''. The last edition of the print ''Britannica'' was published in 2010. ''Outline of Knowledge'' Like the ''Britannica'' as a whole, the ''Outline'' has three types of goals: *Epistemological: to provide a systemat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various times through the centuries. The encyclopaedia is maintained by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia. Printed for 244 years, the ''Britannica'' was the longest running in-print encyclopaedia in the English language. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, as three volumes. The encyclopaedia grew in size: the second edition was 10 volumes, and by its fourth edition (1801–1810) it had expanded to 20 volumes. Its rising stature as a scholarly work helped recruit eminent con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of The Encyclopædia Britannica
The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' has been published continuously since 1768, appearing in fifteen official editions. Several editions have been amended with multi-volume "supplements" (3rd, 5th/6th), consisted of previous editions with added supplements (10th, and 12th/13th) or gone drastic re-organizations (15th). In recent years, digital versions of the ''Britannica'' have been developed, both online and on optical media. Since the early 1930s, the ''Britannica'' has developed several "spin-off" products to leverage its reputation as a reliable reference work and educational tool. The Encyclopedia as known up to 2012 was incurring unsustainable losses and the print editions were ended, but it continues on the Internet. Historical context Encyclopedias of various types had been published since antiquity, beginning with the collected works of Aristotle and the '' Natural History'' of Pliny the Elder, the latter having 2493 articles in 37 books. Encyclopedias were published in E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compendium
A compendium (plural: compendia or compendiums) is a comprehensive collection of information and analysis pertaining to a body of knowledge. A compendium may concisely summarize a larger work. In most cases, the body of knowledge will concern a specific field of human interest or endeavour (for example: hydrogeology, logology, ichthyology, phytosociology or myrmecology), while a general encyclopedia can be referred to as a ''compendium of all human knowledge''. The word ''compendium'' arrives from the Latin word ''compendere'', meaning "to weigh together or balance". The 21st century has seen the rise of democratized, online compendia in various fields. Meaning, etymology and definitions The Latin prefix 'con-' is used in compound words to suggest, 'a being or bringing together of many objects' and also suggests striving for completeness with perfection. And ''compenso'' means balance, poise, weigh, offset. The entry on the word 'compendious' in the '' Online Etymology Dicti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Micropædia
The 12-volume ''Micropædia'' is one of the three parts of the 15th edition of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', the other two being the one-volume ''Propædia'' and the 17-volume ''Macropædia''. The name ''Micropædia'' is a neologism coined by Mortimer J. Adler from the ancient Greek words for "small" and "instruction"; the best English translation is perhaps "brief lessons". The ''Micropædia'' was introduced in 1974 with 10 volumes having 102,214 short articles, all of which were strictly fewer than 750 words. This limit was relaxed in the major re-organization of the 15th edition; many articles were condensed together, resulting in roughly 65,000 articles in 12 volumes. In general, the 750-word limit is still respected and most articles are only 1-2 paragraphs; however, a few longer articles can be found in the 2007 ''Micropædia'', such as the Internet entry, which takes up a full page. With rare exceptions (<3%), the ~65,000 articles of the ''Micropædia'' have no bibl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macropædia
The 17-volume ''Macropædia'' is the third part of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica''; the other two parts are the 12-volume ''Micropædia'' and the 1-volume ''Propædia''. The name ''Macropædia'' is a neologism coined by Mortimer J. Adler from the ancient Greek words for "large" and "instruction". Adler's intention was that the ''Macropædia'' serve students who wish to learn a field in depth; for comparison, the short articles of the ''Micropædia'' are intended for quick fact-checking. The ''Macropædia'' was introduced in the 15th edition (1974) with 19 volumes having 4,207 articles. In the drastic reorganization of that edition in 1985, these articles were combined and condensed into 17 volumes with roughly 700 articles, ranging in length from 2-310 pages. The longest article, on the United States, resulted from the merging of the 50 articles on each state. The articles of the ''Macropædia'' are generally written by named contributors and have references, in contrast to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter John Wyllie
Peter John Wyllie (born 8 February 1930, in London, England) is a British petrologist and academic. He was Professor of Geology at the California Institute of Technology from 1983 until his retirement in 1999. Prior to this, he held positions at the University of St Andrews (1955–56), Pennsylvania State University (1958–59 and 1961–66), the University of Leeds (1959–61), and the University of Chicago (1965–83). He is well known for his many contributions to the understanding of magmatism, particularly through his work on the experimental petrology of magmas and volatiles. In the early 1970s, Wyllie wrote two widely used textbooks; ''The Dynamic Earth'' (1971) and ''The Way the Earth Works'' (1976) which integrated the new understanding of magmatism and plate tectonics. He is also famous for his contributions to the coverage of earth sciences in the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', particularly his outline of the field in Part Two of the ''Propædia''. Wyllie was President o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation tends to exist within any given population as a result of genetic mutation and recombination. Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection (including sexual selection) and genetic drift act on this variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or more rare within a population. The evolutionary pressures that determine whether a characteristic is common or rare within a population constantly change, resulting in a change in heritable characteristics arising over successive generations. It is this process of evolution that has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules. The theory of evolution by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Origin Of Life
In biology, abiogenesis (from a- 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis 'origin') or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single event, but an evolutionary process of increasing complexity that involved the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Many proposals have been made for different stages of the process. The study of abiogenesis aims to determine how pre-life chemical reactions gave rise to life under conditions strikingly different from those on Earth today. It primarily uses tools from biology and chemistry, with more recent approaches attempting a synthesis of many sciences. Life functions through the specialized chemistry of carbon and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life
Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy transformation, and reproduction. Various forms of life exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. Biology is the science that studies life. The gene is the unit of heredity, whereas the Cell (biology), cell is the structural and functional unit of life. There are two kinds of cells, prokaryotic and eukaryotic, both of which consist of cytoplasm enclosed within a membrane and contain many biomolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. Cells reproduce through a process of cell division, in which the parent cell divides into two or more daughter cells and passes its genes onto a new generation, sometimes producing genetic variation. Organisms, or the individual entities of life, are generally thought t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar System
The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar System" and "solar system" structures in theinaming guidelines document. The name is commonly rendered in lower case ('solar system'), as, for example, in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' an''Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary''. is the gravity, gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. It Formation and evolution of the Solar System, formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The solar mass, vast majority (99.86%) of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the Jupiter mass, remaining mass contained in the planet Jupiter. The four inner Solar System, inner system planets—Mercury (planet), Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars—are terrest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Earth History
The history of Earth concerns the development of planet Earth from its formation to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to understanding of the main events of Earth's past, characterized by constant geological change and biological evolution. The geological time scale (GTS), as defined by international convention, depicts the large spans of time from the beginning of the Earth to the present, and its divisions chronicle some definitive events of Earth history. (In the graphic, Ma means "million years ago".) Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago, approximately one-third the age of the universe, by accretion from the solar nebula. Volcanic outgassing probably created the primordial atmosphere and then the ocean, but the early atmosphere contained almost no oxygen. Much of the Earth was molten because of frequent collisions with other bodies which led to extreme volcanism. While the Earth was in its earliest stage ( Early Earth), a gi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geomorphology
Geomorphology (from Ancient Greek: , ', "earth"; , ', "form"; and , ', "study") is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features created by physical, chemical or biological processes operating at or near Earth's surface. Geomorphologists seek to understand why landscapes look the way they do, to understand landform and terrain history and dynamics and to predict changes through a combination of field observations, physical experiments and numerical modeling. Geomorphologists work within disciplines such as physical geography, geology, geodesy, engineering geology, archaeology, climatology, and geotechnical engineering. This broad base of interests contributes to many research styles and interests within the field. Overview Earth's surface is modified by a combination of surface processes that shape landscapes, and geologic processes that cause tectonic uplift and subsidence, and shape the coastal geography. Surface processes co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
