Allopoiesis is the process whereby a system produces something other than the system itself. One example of this is an assembly line, where the final product (such as a car) is distinct from the machines doing the producing. This is in contrast with autopoiesis.
An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which parts are added as the semi-finished assembly moves from workstation to workstation where the parts are added in sequence until the final assembly is produced. By mechanically moving the parts to the assembly work and moving the semi-finished assembly from work station to work station, a finished product can be assembled faster and with less labor than by having workers carry parts to a stationary piece for assembly.
The term autopoiesis refers to a system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself. The term was introduced in 1972 by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells. Since then the concept has been also applied to the fields of cognition, systems theory and sociology.
In linguistics, cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. A cognate etymon need not be inherited directly from a proto-language; the etymon can be borrowed from some other language, in which evolution produces cognate forms. For example, the English word dish and the German word Tisch ("table") are cognates because they both come from Latin discus, which relates to their flat surfaces. Cognates may have evolved similar, different or even opposite meanings, but in most cases there are some similar sounds or letters in the words. Some words sound similar, but don't come from the same root; these are called false cognates.
An endothermic process is any process which requires or absorbs energy from its surroundings, usually in the form of heat. It may be a chemical process, such as dissolving ammonium nitrate in water, or simply the melting of ice cubes. The term was coined by Marcellin Berthelot from the Greek roots endo-, derived from the word "endon" (ἔνδον) meaning "within", and the root "therm" (θερμ-), meaning "hot" or "warm" in the sense that a reaction depends on absorbing heat if it is to proceed. The opposite of an endothermic process is an exothermic process, one that releases, "gives out" energy in the form of heat. Thus in each term the prefix refers to where heat goes as the reaction occurs, though in reality it only refers to where the energy goes, without necessarily being in the form of heat.
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It has the longest documented history of any living Indo-European language, spanning more than 3000 years of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history; other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.
Mathematics includes the study of such topics as quantity, structure, space, and change.
Philology is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection between textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics. Philology is more commonly defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist.
Q.E.D. is an initialism of the Latin phrase "quod erat demonstrandum" meaning "what was to be shown" or "thus it has been demonstrated." Traditionally, the abbreviation is placed at the end of a mathematical proof or philosophical argument to indicate that the proof or argument is complete.
Semantics is the linguistic and philosophical study of meaning, in language, programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics. It is concerned with the relationship between signifiers—like words, phrases, signs, and symbols—and what they stand for in reality, their denotation.
Aristocracy is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best-born".
In anthropology, a tribe is a human social group. Exact definitions of what constitutes a tribe vary among anthropologists, and the term is itself considered controversial in academic circles in part due to its association with colonialism. In general use, the term may refer to people perceived by a population to be primitive and may have negative connotations. The concept is often contrasted with other social groups concepts, such as nations, states, and forms of kinship.
Scamander, SkamandrosXanthos (Ξάνθος), was the name of a river god in Greek mythology.
The term apsis refers to an extreme point in the orbit of an object. It denotes either the points on the orbit, or the respective distance of the bodies. The word comes via Latin from Greek, there denoting a whole orbit, and is cognate with apse. Except for the theoretical possibility of one common circular orbit for two bodies of equal mass at diametral positions, there are two apsides for any elliptic orbit, named with the prefixes peri- and ap-/apo- added to a reference to the body being orbited. All periodic orbits are, according to Newton's Laws of motion, ellipses: either the two individual ellipses of both bodies, with the center of mass of this two-body system at the one common focus of the ellipses, or the orbital ellipses, with one body taken as fixed at one focus, and the other body orbiting this focus. All these ellipses share a straight line, the line of apsides, that contains their major axes, the foci, and the vertices, and thus also the periapsis and the apoapsis. The major axis of the orbital ellipse is the distance of the apsides, when taken as points on the orbit, or their sum, when taken as distances.
The Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics is a Braille code for encoding mathematical and scientific notation linearly using standard six-dot Braille cells for tactile reading by the visually impaired. The code was developed by Abraham Nemeth. The Nemeth Code was first written up in 1952. It was revised in 1956, 1965, and 1972, and beginning in 1992 was integrated into Unified English Braille. It is an example of a compact human-readable markup language.
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late ninth or early eighth century BC. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the first alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic and early Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in many different local variants, but, by the end of the fourth century BC, the Eucleidean alphabet, with twenty-four letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard and it is this version that is still used to write Greek today. These twenty-four letters are: Α α, Β β, Γ γ, Δ δ, Ε ε, Ζ ζ, Η η, Θ θ, Ι ι, Κ κ, Λ λ, Μ μ, Ν ν, Ξ ξ, Ο ο, Π π, Ρ ρ, Σ σ/ς, Τ τ, Υ υ, Φ φ, Χ χ, Ψ ψ, and Ω ω.
In a variety of contexts, exogeny or exogeneity is the fact of an action or object originating externally. It contrasts with endogeny or endogeneity, the fact of being influenced within a system.
Meta is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction behind another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.
Proto-Indo-European verbs had a complex system, with verbs categorized according to their aspect: stative, imperfective, or perfective. The system used multiple grammatical moods and voices, with verbs being conjugated according to person, number and tense.
Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair, especially when applied to contrasting features of the common practice music of the period 1600–1900.
Information is the resolution of uncertainty; it is that which answers the question of "what an entity is" and is thus that which specifies the nature of that entity, as well as the essentiality of its properties. Information is associated with data and knowledge, as data is meaningful information and represents the values attributed to parameters, and knowledge signifies understanding of an abstract or concrete concept. The existence of information is uncoupled with an observer, which refers to that which accesses information to discern that which it specifies; information exists beyond an event horizon for example, and in the case of knowledge, the information itself requires a cognitive observer to be accessed.
Female (♀) is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, that produces non-mobile ova. Barring rare medical conditions, most female mammals, including female humans, have two X chromosomes. Female characteristics vary between different species with some species containing more well defined female characteristics. Both genetics and environment shape the prenatal development of a female.
This article describes anatomical terminology that is used to describe the central and peripheral nervous systems - including the brain, brainstem, spinal cord, and nerves.
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