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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [1] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
Integral_Yoga_(defs)
Integral_Yoga_(defs)
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
Advanced_Dungeons_and_Dragons_2E
A_Garden_of_Pomegranates_-_An_Outline_of_the_Qabalah
A_Treatise_on_Cosmic_Fire
Concentration_(book)
Essays_Divine_And_Human
Essential_Integral
Evolution_II
Full_Circle
God_Exists
Heart_of_Matter
Let_Me_Explain
Life_without_Death
Modern_Man_in_Search_of_a_Soul
My_Burning_Heart
On_Interpretation
Poetics
Process_and_Reality
Savitri
The_Act_of_Creation
The_Bible
The_Categories
The_Divine_Milieu
The_Republic
The_Seals_of_Wisdom
The_Use_and_Abuse_of_History
The_Wit_and_Wisdom_of_Alfred_North_Whitehead
Toward_the_Future

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
1.05_-_Definition_of_the_Ludicrous,_and_a_brief_sketch_of_the_rise_of_Comedy.
1.06_-_Definition_of_Tragedy.
1.10_-_(Plot_continued.)_Definitions_of_Simple_and_Complex_Plots.
1956-01-11_-_Desire_and_self-deception_-_Giving_all_one_is_and_has_-_Sincerity,_more_powerful_than_will_-_Joy_of_progress_Definition_of_youth

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
0.00a_-_Introduction
0.00_-_The_Book_of_Lies_Text
0.00_-_The_Wellspring_of_Reality
0.01_-_I_-_Sri_Aurobindos_personality,_his_outer_retirement_-_outside_contacts_after_1910_-_spiritual_personalities-_Vibhutis_and_Avatars_-__transformtion_of_human_personality
01.02_-_Sri_Aurobindo_-_Ahana_and_Other_Poems
01.03_-_Mystic_Poetry
01.04_-_The_Intuition_of_the_Age
01.07_-_Blaise_Pascal_(1623-1662)
0.11_-_Letters_to_a_Sadhak
0_1963-06-08
0_1963-07-27
0_1963-10-19
0_1965-07-14
0_1966-06-29
0_1966-12-24
0_1967-06-07
0_1967-06-14
0_1967-07-05
0_1967-08-16
0_1968-03-13
0_1968-05-04
0_1969-12-17
0_1971-04-17
0_1971-07-14
04.03_-_The_Eternal_East_and_West
05.03_-_Bypaths_of_Souls_Journey
05.07_-_The_Observer_and_the_Observed
05.09_-_The_Changed_Scientific_Outlook
05.15_-_Sartrian_Freedom
05.23_-_The_Base_of_Sincerity
05.32_-_Yoga_as_Pragmatic_Power
07.08_-_The_Divine_Truth_Its_Name_and_Form
08.14_-_Poetry_and_Poetic_Inspiration
100.00_-_Synergy
1.001_-_The_Aim_of_Yoga
1.009_-_Perception_and_Reality
1.00a_-_Introduction
1.00e_-_DIVISION_E_-_MOTION_ON_THE_PHYSICAL_AND_ASTRAL_PLANES
1.01_-_An_Accomplished_Westerner
1.01_-_Archetypes_of_the_Collective_Unconscious
1.01_-_Fundamental_Considerations
1.01_-_MAPS_OF_EXPERIENCE_-_OBJECT_AND_MEANING
1.01_-_Newtonian_and_Bergsonian_Time
1.01_-_Prayer
1.01_-_SAMADHI_PADA
1.01_-_Tara_the_Divine
1.01_-_The_Ego
1.01_-_The_Four_Aids
1.01_-_What_is_Magick?
1.02.3.1_-_The_Lord
1.02.3.2_-_Knowledge_and_Ignorance
1.02_-_In_the_Beginning
1.02_-_Karmayoga
1.02_-_MAPS_OF_MEANING_-_THREE_LEVELS_OF_ANALYSIS
1.02_-_SADHANA_PADA
1.02_-_SOCIAL_HEREDITY_AND_PROGRESS
1.02_-_The_7_Habits__An_Overview
1.02_-_The_Child_as_growing_being_and_the_childs_experience_of_encountering_the_teacher.
1.02_-_The_Concept_of_the_Collective_Unconscious
1.02_-_THE_NATURE_OF_THE_GROUND
1.02_-_The_Philosophy_of_Ishvara
1.02_-_The_Pit
1.02_-_The_Principle_of_Fire
1.02_-_The_Recovery
1.02_-_The_Three_European_Worlds
1.02_-_The_Two_Negations_1_-_The_Materialist_Denial
1.02_-_The_Vision_of_the_Past
1.02_-_THE_WITHIN_OF_THINGS
1.02_-_What_is_Psycho_therapy?
1.032_-_Our_Concept_of_God
1.03_-_Bloodstream_Sermon
1.03_-_Concerning_the_Archetypes,_with_Special_Reference_to_the_Anima_Concept
1.03_-_Hieroglypics__Life_and_Language_Necessarily_Symbolic
1.03_-_Meeting_the_Master_-_Meeting_with_others
1.03_-_Questions_and_Answers
1.03_-_Self-Surrender_in_Works_-_The_Way_of_The_Gita
1.03_-_The_Phenomenon_of_Man
1.03_-_The_Sephiros
1.03_-_The_Syzygy_-_Anima_and_Animus
1.03_-_Time_Series,_Information,_and_Communication
1.03_-_YIBHOOTI_PADA
1.04_-_Magic_and_Religion
1.04_-_THE_APPEARANCE_OF_ANOMALY_-_CHALLENGE_TO_THE_SHARED_MAP
1.04_-_The_Paths
1.04_-_The_Self
1.052_-_Yoga_Practice_-_A_Series_of_Positive_Steps
1.056_-_Lack_of_Knowledge_is_the_Cause_of_Suffering
1.057_-_The_Four_Manifestations_of_Ignorance
1.05_-_CHARITY
1.05_-_Christ,_A_Symbol_of_the_Self
1.05_-_Definition_of_the_Ludicrous,_and_a_brief_sketch_of_the_rise_of_Comedy.
1.05_-_Knowledge_by_Aquaintance_and_Knowledge_by_Description
1.05_-_The_Activation_of_Human_Energy
1.05_-_The_Destiny_of_the_Individual
1.05_-_THE_HOSTILE_BROTHERS_-_ARCHETYPES_OF_RESPONSE_TO_THE_UNKNOWN
1.05_-_THE_NEW_SPIRIT
1.060_-_Tracing_the_Ultimate_Cause_of_Any_Experience
1.06_-_Being_Human_and_the_Copernican_Principle
1.06_-_Definition_of_Tragedy.
1.06_-_THE_FOUR_GREAT_ERRORS
1.06_-_Wealth_and_Government
1.078_-_Kumbhaka_and_Concentration_of_Mind
1.07_-_Bridge_across_the_Afterlife
1.07_-_Medicine_and_Psycho_therapy
1.07_-_Samadhi
1.07_-_The_Fire_of_the_New_World
1.07_-_THE_GREAT_EVENT_FORESHADOWED_-_THE_PLANETIZATION_OF_MANKIND
1.07_-_The_Literal_Qabalah_(continued)
1.07_-_The_Plot_must_be_a_Whole.
1.081_-_The_Application_of_Pratyahara
1.089_-_The_Levels_of_Concentration
1.08a_-_The_Ladder
1.08_-_The_Depths_of_the_Divine
1.09_-_Concentration_-_Its_Spiritual_Uses
1.09_-_SKIRMISHES_IN_A_WAY_WITH_THE_AGE
1.09_-_The_Absolute_Manifestation
1.09_-_The_Pure_Existent
1.09_-_The_Secret_Chiefs
1.1.02_-_Sachchidananda
1.10_-_Aesthetic_and_Ethical_Culture
1.10_-_Conscious_Force
1.10_-_Fate_and_Free-Will
1.10_-_(Plot_continued.)_Definitions_of_Simple_and_Complex_Plots.
1.10_-_Theodicy_-_Nature_Makes_No_Mistakes
1.10_-_The_Scolex_School
1.11_-_A_STREET
1.11_-_FAITH_IN_MAN
1.11_-_On_Intuitive_Knowledge
1.11_-_(Plot_continued.)_Reversal_of_the_Situation,_Recognition,_and_Tragic_or_disastrous_Incident_defined_and_explained.
1.11_-_Powers
1.11_-_The_Kalki_Avatar
1.1.2_-_Commentary
1.12_-_The_Significance_of_Sacrifice
1.12_-_The_Sociology_of_Superman
1.12_-_The_Superconscient
1.12_-_Truth_and_Knowledge
1.13_-_Knowledge,_Error,_and_Probably_Opinion
1.13_-_Reason_and_Religion
1.13_-_The_Divine_Maya
1.13_-_THE_HUMAN_REBOUND_OF_EVOLUTION_AND_ITS_CONSEQUENCES
1.14_-_The_Structure_and_Dynamics_of_the_Self
1.15_-_Conclusion
1.15_-_Index
1.15_-_On_incorruptible_purity_and_chastity_to_which_the_corruptible_attain_by_toil_and_sweat.
1.15_-_The_Possibility_and_Purpose_of_Avatarhood
1.15_-_The_Supramental_Consciousness
1.16_-_THE_ESSENCE_OF_THE_DEMOCRATIC_IDEA
1.16_-_The_Triple_Status_of_Supermind
1.17_-_DOES_MANKIND_MOVE_BIOLOGICALLY_UPON_ITSELF?
1.17_-_The_Transformation
1.18_-_Mind_and_Supermind
1.18_-_THE_HEART_OF_THE_PROBLEM
1.19_-_ON_THE_PROBABLE_EXISTENCE_AHEAD_OF_US_OF_AN_ULTRA-HUMAN
1.20_-_Diction,_or_Language_in_general.
1.20_-_Equality_and_Knowledge
1.22_-_THE_END_OF_THE_SPECIES
1.23_-_Improvising_a_Temple
1.25_-_On_the_destroyer_of_the_passions,_most_sublime_humility,_which_is_rooted_in_spiritual_feeling.
1.26_-_Mental_Processes_-_Two_Only_are_Possible
1.28_-_Need_to_Define_God,_Self,_etc.
1.30_-_Do_you_Believe_in_God?
1.31_-_Is_Thelema_a_New_Religion?
1.3.4.01_-_The_Beginning_and_the_End
1.67_-_The_External_Soul_in_Folk-Custom
1.73_-_Monsters,_Niggers,_Jews,_etc.
1.78_-_Sore_Spots
1.83_-_Epistola_Ultima
1914_03_13p
1915_04_19p
1929-05-26_-_Individual,_illusion_of_separateness_-_Hostile_forces_and_the_mental_plane_-_Psychic_world,_psychic_being_-_Spiritual_and_psychic_-_Words,_understanding_speech_and_reading_-_Hostile_forces,_their_utility_-_Illusion_of_action,_true_action
1950-12-30_-_Perfect_and_progress._Dynamic_equilibrium._True_sincerity.
1951-02-22_-_Surrender,_offering,_consecration_-_Experiences_and_sincerity_-_Aspiration_and_desire_-_Vedic_hymns_-_Concentration_and_time
1951-03-01_-_Universe_and_the_Divine_-_Freedom_and_determinism_-_Grace_-_Time_and_Creation-_in_the_Supermind_-_Work_and_its_results_-_The_psychic_being_-_beauty_and_love_-_Flowers-_beauty_and_significance_-_Choice_of_reincarnating_psychic_being
1951-04-14_-_Surrender_and_sacrifice_-_Idea_of_sacrifice_-_Bahaism_-_martyrdom_-_Sleep-_forgetfulness,_exteriorisation,_etc_-_Dreams_and_visions-_explanations_-_Exteriorisation-_incidents_about_cats
1951-05-14_-_Chance_-_the_play_of_forces_-_Peace,_given_and_lost_-_Abolishing_the_ego
1953-05-27
1953-06-17
1953-10-21
1953-12-16
1954-05-19_-_Affection_and_love_-_Psychic_vision_Divine_-_Love_and_receptivity_-_Get_out_of_the_ego
1954-09-29_-_The_right_spirit_-_The_Divine_comes_first_-_Finding_the_Divine_-_Mistakes_-_Rejecting_impulses_-_Making_the_consciousness_vast_-_Firm_resolution
1955-11-16_-_The_significance_of_numbers_-_Numbers,_astrology,_true_knowledge_-_Divines_Love_flowers_for_Kali_puja_-_Desire,_aspiration_and_progress_-_Determining_ones_approach_to_the_Divine_-_Liberation_is_obtained_through_austerities_-_...
1956-01-11_-_Desire_and_self-deception_-_Giving_all_one_is_and_has_-_Sincerity,_more_powerful_than_will_-_Joy_of_progress_Definition_of_youth
1956-08-08_-_How_to_light_the_psychic_fire,_will_for_progress_-_Helping_from_a_distance,_mental_formations_-_Prayer_and_the_divine_-_Grace_Grace_at_work_everywhere
1956-11-28_-_Desire,_ego,_animal_nature_-_Consciousness,_a_progressive_state_-_Ananda,_desireless_state_beyond_enjoyings_-_Personal_effort_that_is_mental_-_Reason,_when_to_disregard_it_-_Reason_and_reasons
1958_09_19
1960_01_05
1961_05_21?_-_62
1967-05-24.1_-_Defining_the_Divine
1967-05-24.2_-_Defining_God
1969_12_15
1.A_-_ANTHROPOLOGY,_THE_SOUL
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Shunned_House
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Trap
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Unnamable
1.fua_-_The_Simurgh
1.jm_-_I_Have_forgotten
1.pbs_-_Queen_Mab_-_Part_VI.
1.poe_-_Eureka_-_A_Prose_Poem
1.rb_-_Caliban_upon_Setebos_or,_Natural_Theology_in_the_Island
1.wby_-_The_People
2.01_-_On_Books
2.01_-_THE_ADVENT_OF_LIFE
2.01_-_The_Attributes_of_Omega_Point_-_a_Transcendent_God
2.01_-_The_Object_of_Knowledge
2.01_-_The_Picture
2.01_-_The_Two_Natures
2.02_-_Brahman,_Purusha,_Ishwara_-_Maya,_Prakriti,_Shakti
2.02_-_Habit_2__Begin_with_the_End_in_Mind
2.03_-_DEMETER
2.03_-_The_Christian_Phenomenon_and_Faith_in_the_Incarnation
2.03_-_THE_ENIGMA_OF_BOLOGNA
2.03_-_The_Eternal_and_the_Individual
2.03_-_The_Purified_Understanding
2.05_-_Habit_3__Put_First_Things_First
2.05_-_The_Religion_of_Tomorrow
2.06_-_On_Beauty
2.06_-_Reality_and_the_Cosmic_Illusion
2.06_-_The_Higher_Knowledge_and_the_Higher_Love_are_one_to_the_true_Lover
2.07_-_On_Congress_and_Politics
2.07_-_The_Supreme_Word_of_the_Gita
2.08_-_ALICE_IN_WONDERLAND
2.0_-_THE_ANTICHRIST
2.1.01_-_God_The_One_Reality
2.1.02_-_Combining_Work,_Meditation_and_Bhakti
2.1.02_-_Nature_The_World-Manifestation
2.11_-_The_Boundaries_of_the_Ignorance
2.11_-_The_Modes_of_the_Self
2.15_-_Reality_and_the_Integral_Knowledge
2.19_-_Feb-May_1939
2.2.03_-_The_Psychic_Being
2.2.03_-_The_Science_of_Consciousness
2.27_-_The_Gnostic_Being
2.2.9.02_-_Plato
2.3.02_-_Opening,_Sincerity_and_the_Mother's_Grace
2.3.02_-_The_Supermind_or_Supramental
3.00.2_-_Introduction
30.08_-_Poetry_and_Mantra
3.00_-_Introduction
3.00_-_The_Magical_Theory_of_the_Universe
30.17_-_Rabindranath,_Traveller_of_the_Infinite
3.01_-_Forms_of_Rebirth
3.01_-_The_Principles_of_Ritual
3.02_-_Mysticism
3.02_-_SOL
3.02_-_THE_DEPLOYMENT_OF_THE_NOOSPHERE
3.03_-_SULPHUR
3.04_-_LUNA
3.05_-_SAL
3.08_-_Of_Equilibrium
3.09_-_Of_Silence_and_Secrecy
3.1.02_-_Spiritual_Evolution_and_the_Supramental
3.10_-_The_New_Birth
3.12_-_Of_the_Bloody_Sacrifice
3.14_-_Of_the_Consecrations
3.16.2_-_Of_the_Charge_of_the_Spirit
3.17_-_Of_the_License_to_Depart
3.18_-_Of_Clairvoyance_and_the_Body_of_Light
3.20_-_Of_the_Eucharist
3.2.1_-_Food
3.3.03_-_The_Delight_of_Works
33.15_-_My_Athletics
3.4.02_-_The_Inconscient
3.4.03_-_Materialism
3-5_Full_Circle
36.07_-_An_Introduction_To_The_Vedas
3.7.1.06_-_The_Ascending_Unity
3.7.1.09_-_Karma_and_Freedom
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.02_-_BEYOND_THE_COLLECTIVE_-_THE_HYPER-PERSONAL
4.02_-_GOLD_AND_SPIRIT
4.02_-_Humanity_in_Progress
4.03_-_Prayer_to_the_Ever-greater_Christ
4.04_-_Conclusion
4.05_-_THE_DARK_SIDE_OF_THE_KING
4.08_-_THE_RELIGIOUS_PROBLEM_OF_THE_KINGS_RENEWAL
4.09_-_REGINA
4.1.3_-_Imperfections_and_Periods_of_Arrest
4.24_-_The_supramental_Sense
4.3.1.11_-_Living_in_the_Divine
4.3.4_-_Accidents,_Possession,_Madness
5.01_-_EPILOGUE
5.08_-_ADAM_AS_TOTALITY
5.4.01_-_Occult_Knowledge
5_-_The_Phenomenology_of_the_Spirit_in_Fairytales
6.01_-_THE_ALCHEMICAL_VIEW_OF_THE_UNION_OF_OPPOSITES
6.06_-_SELF-KNOWLEDGE
6.08_-_THE_CONTENT_AND_MEANING_OF_THE_FIRST_TWO_STAGES
6.0_-_Conscious,_Unconscious,_and_Individuation
7_-_Yoga_of_Sri_Aurobindo
Aeneid
Avatars_of_the_Tortoise
Blazing_P1_-_Preconventional_consciousness
Blazing_P2_-_Map_the_Stages_of_Conventional_Consciousness
Blazing_P3_-_Explore_the_Stages_of_Postconventional_Consciousness
BOOK_II._-_A_review_of_the_calamities_suffered_by_the_Romans_before_the_time_of_Christ,_showing_that_their_gods_had_plunged_them_into_corruption_and_vice
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_I._--_PART_II._THE_EVOLUTION_OF_SYMBOLISM_IN_ITS_APPROXIMATE_ORDER
BOOK_IV._-_That_empire_was_given_to_Rome_not_by_the_gods,_but_by_the_One_True_God
BOOK_IX._-_Of_those_who_allege_a_distinction_among_demons,_some_being_good_and_others_evil
Book_of_Imaginary_Beings_(text)
BOOK_VIII._-_Some_account_of_the_Socratic_and_Platonic_philosophy,_and_a_refutation_of_the_doctrine_of_Apuleius_that_the_demons_should_be_worshipped_as_mediators_between_gods_and_men
BOOK_VII._-_Of_the_select_gods_of_the_civil_theology,_and_that_eternal_life_is_not_obtained_by_worshipping_them
BOOK_V._-_Of_fate,_freewill,_and_God's_prescience,_and_of_the_source_of_the_virtues_of_the_ancient_Romans
BOOK_XIII._-_That_death_is_penal,_and_had_its_origin_in_Adam's_sin
BOOK_XIX._-_A_review_of_the_philosophical_opinions_regarding_the_Supreme_Good,_and_a_comparison_of_these_opinions_with_the_Christian_belief_regarding_happiness
BOOK_XVI._-_The_history_of_the_city_of_God_from_Noah_to_the_time_of_the_kings_of_Israel
BOOK_XV._-_The_progress_of_the_earthly_and_heavenly_cities_traced_by_the_sacred_history
BOOK_XXI._-_Of_the_eternal_punishment_of_the_wicked_in_hell,_and_of_the_various_objections_urged_against_it
BS_1_-_Introduction_to_the_Idea_of_God
DS3
ENNEAD_01.04_-_Whether_Animals_May_Be_Termed_Happy.
ENNEAD_01.05_-_Does_Happiness_Increase_With_Time?
ENNEAD_01.06_-_Of_Beauty.
ENNEAD_01.08_-_Of_the_Nature_and_Origin_of_Evils.
ENNEAD_02.04a_-_Of_Matter.
ENNEAD_02.05_-_Of_the_Aristotelian_Distinction_Between_Actuality_and_Potentiality.
ENNEAD_02.06_-_Of_Essence_and_Being.
ENNEAD_02.07_-_About_Mixture_to_the_Point_of_Total_Penetration.
ENNEAD_02.09_-_Against_the_Gnostics;_or,_That_the_Creator_and_the_World_are_Not_Evil.
ENNEAD_03.06_-_Of_the_Impassibility_of_Incorporeal_Entities_(Soul_and_and_Matter).
ENNEAD_03.07_-_Of_Time_and_Eternity.
ENNEAD_04.02_-_How_the_Soul_Mediates_Between_Indivisible_and_Divisible_Essence.
ENNEAD_04.03_-_Psychological_Questions.
ENNEAD_04.07_-_Of_the_Immortality_of_the_Soul:_Polemic_Against_Materialism.
ENNEAD_06.01_-_Of_the_Ten_Aristotelian_and_Four_Stoic_Categories.
ENNEAD_06.03_-_Plotinos_Own_Sense-Categories.
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_Identical_Essence_is_Everywhere_Entirely_Present.
ENNEAD_06.06_-_Of_Numbers.
ENNEAD_06.07_-_How_Ideas_Multiplied,_and_the_Good.
ENNEAD_06.08_-_Of_the_Will_of_the_One.
Euthyphro
Gorgias
Liber_111_-_The_Book_of_Wisdom_-_LIBER_ALEPH_VEL_CXI
Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries
Liber_71_-_The_Voice_of_the_Silence_-_The_Two_Paths_-_The_Seven_Portals
LUX.04_-_LIBERATION
Meno
Prayers_and_Meditations_by_Baha_u_llah_text
r1913_11_13
r1914_03_14
r1914_03_28
r1915_04_24
r1917_02_03
Sophist
Talks_026-050
Talks_100-125
Talks_151-175
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_2
The_Act_of_Creation_text
Theaetetus
The_Anapanasati_Sutta__A_Practical_Guide_to_Mindfullness_of_Breathing_and_Tranquil_Wisdom_Meditation
The_Coming_Race_Contents
The_Divine_Names_Text_(Dionysis)
The_Dwellings_of_the_Philosophers
The_Library_of_Babel
The_Library_Of_Babel_2
The_Logomachy_of_Zos
The_Monadology
The_Zahir

PRIMARY CLASS

defin
word
SIMILAR TITLES
definition

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

definitional ::: a. --> Relating to definition; of the nature of a definition; employed in defining.

definitional constraint programming ::: (language) (DCP) A declarative, programming paradigm which integrates concurrent constraint programming, constraint logic programming and functional abstractions are reused to define new constraints, as the means of programming logical variables for parallel coordination.Goffin is a DCP language. (1995-03-28)

definitional constraint programming "language" (DCP) A declarative, programming paradigm which integrates {concurrent constraint programming}, {constraint logic programming} and {functional programming}. In this setting a concurrent constraint language becomes a coordination system that organises the concurrent interaction of parallel functional computations. The language is also a generalisation of parallel {functional programming} languages, such as {Id}, where {constraints} and constraint abstractions are reused to define new constraints, as the means of programming logical variables for parallel coordination. {Goffin} is a DCP language. (1995-03-28)

definition ::: n. --> The act of defining; determination of the limits; as, a telescope accurate in definition.
Act of ascertaining and explaining the signification; a description of a thing by its properties; an explanation of the meaning of a word or term; as, the definition of "circle;" the definition of "wit;" an exact definition; a loose definition.
Description; sort.
An exact enunciation of the constituents which make up


Definition: In the development of a logistic system (q. v.) it is usually desirable to introduce new notations, beyond what is afforded by the primitive symbols alone, by means of syntactical definitions or nominal definitions, i.e., conventions which provide that certain symbols or expressions shall stand (as substitutes or abbreviations) for particular formulas of the system. This may be done either by particular definitions, each introducing a symbol or expression to stand for some one formula, or by schemata of definition, providing that any expression of a certain form shall stand for a certain corresponding formula (so condensing many -- often infinitely many -- particular definitions into a single schema). Such definitions, whether particular definitions or schemata, are indicated, in articles herein by the present writer, by an arrow →, the new notation introduced (the definiendum) being placed at the left, or base of the arrow, and the formula for which it shall stand (the definiens) being placed at the right, or head, of the arrow. Another sign commonly employed for the same purpose (instead of the arrow) is the equality sign = with the letters Df, or df, appearing either as a subscript or separately after the definiens.

Definition of a term: (in Scholasticism)

Definitions by Disciples

Definitions by Sri Aurobindo and Mother


TERMS ANYWHERE

1. A critical study of the method or methods of the sciences, of the nature of scientific symbols and of the logical structure of scientific symbolic svstems. Presumably such a study should include both the empirical and the rational sciences. Whether it should also include the methods of the valuational studies (e.g., ethics, esthetics) and of the historical studies, will depend upon the working definition or science accepted by the investigator. Valuational studies are frequently characterized as "normative" or "axiological" sciences. Many of the recognized sciences (e.g., anthropology, geology) contain important historical aspects, hence there is some justification for the inclusion of the historical method in this aspect of the philosophy of science. As a study of method, the philosophy of science includes much of the traditional logic and theory of knowledge. The attempt is made to define and further clarify such terms as induction, deduction, hypothesis, data, discovery and verification. In addition, the more detailed and specialized methods of science (e.g., experimentation, measurement, classification and idealization) (q.v.) are subjected to examination. Since science is a symbolic system, the general theory of signs plays an important role in the philosophy of science.

2. In psychology, the act or process of exercising the mind, the faculty of connecting judgments; the power and fact of using reason; the thought-processes of discussion, debate, argumentation or inference; the manifestation of the discursive property of the mind; the actual use of arguments with a view to convince or persuade; the art and method or proving or demonstrating; the orderly development of thought with a view to, or the attainment of a conclusion believed to be valid. -- The origin, nature and value of reasoning are debated questions, with their answers ranging from spiritualism (reasoning as the exercise of a faculty of the soul) to materialism (reasoning as an epiphenomenon depending on the brain), with all the modern schools of psychology ordering themselves between them. A few points of agreement might be mentioned here: reasoning follows judgment and apprehension, whichever of the last two thought-processes comes first in our psychological development; reasoning proceeds according to four main types, namely deductive, inductive, presumptive and deceptive; reasoning assumes a belief in its own validity undisturbed by doubt, and implies various logical habits and methods which may be organized into a logical doctrine; reasoning requires a reference to some ultimate principles to justify its progress 3. In logic, Reasoning is the process of inference, it is the process of passing from certain propositions already known or assumed to be true, to another truth distinct from them but following from them; it is a discourse or argument which infers one proposition from another, or from a group of others having some common elements between them. The inference is necessary in the case of deductive reasoning; and contingent, probable or wrong, in the case of inductive, presumptive or deceptive reasoning respectively. -- There are various types of reasoning, and proper methods for each type. The definition, discussion, development and evaluation of these types and methods form an important branch of logic and its subdivisions. The details of the application of reasoning to the various sciences, form the subject of methodology. All these types are reducible to one or the other of the two fundamental processes or reasoning, namely deduction and induction. It must be added that the logical study of reasoning is normative logic does not analyze it simply in its natural development, but with a view to guide it towards coherence, validity or truth. -- T.G.

2. Semantics. Theory of the relations between signs and what they refer to (their "designata" or "denotata"). This theory contains also the theory of truth (q.v., semantical definition) and the theory of logical deduction.

abduction "logic" The process of {inference} to the best explanation. "Abduction" is sometimes used to mean just the generation of hypotheses to explain observations or conclusionsm, but the former definition is more common both in philosophy and computing. The {semantics} and the implementation of abduction cannot be reduced to those for {deduction}, as explanation cannot be reduced to implication. Applications include fault diagnosis, plan formation and {default reasoning}. {Negation as failure} in {logic programming} can both be given an abductive interpretation and also can be used to implement abduction. The abductive semantics of negation as failure leads naturally to an {argumentation}-theoretic interpretation of default reasoning in general. [Better explanation? Example?] ["Abductive Inference", John R. Josephson "jj@cis.ohio-state.edu"]. (2000-12-07)

Abstract-Type and Scheme-Definition Language "language" (ASDL) A language developed as part of {Esprit} project {GRASPIN}, as a basis for generating {language-based editors} and environments. It combines an {object-oriented} type system, syntax-directed translation schemes and a target-language interface. ["ASDL - An Object-Oriented Specification Language for Syntax-Directed Environments", M.L. Christ-Neumann et al, European Software Eng Conf, Strasbourg, Sept 1987, pp.77-85]. (1996-02-19)

According to another interpretation of the notion of whole and of the part-whole principle, a whole is an object whose parts are mutually interdependent in the sense that a change affecting one of its parts will bring about changes in all of the other parts, and because of this interdependence the whole is said to be "more" than the sum of its parts. The part-whole principle then obviously is true simply by definition, and again, lacks explanatory value. Besides, if the above interdependence criterion for wholes is taken literally, then any object turns out to be a whole. What the concept of whole is actually meant to refer to, are specific types of interdependence as found in living organisms, etc., but then, again, an adequate description and explanation of those phenomena can be attained only by a study of their special regularities, not by a sweeping use of the vague concept of whole and of the unclear part-whole principle. (For the points referred to in the preceding remarks, see also Emergent Evolution, Gestalt, Holism, Mechanism, Vitalism.)

Ada/Ed "language, education" An {interpreter}, editor, and {run-time environment} for {Ada}, intended as a teaching tool. Ada/Ed does not have the capacity, performance, or robustness of commercial Ada compilers. Ada/Ed was developed at {New York University} as part of a project in language definition and software prototyping. AdaEd runs on {Unix}, {MS-DOS}, {Atari ST}, and {Amiga}. It handles nearly all of {Ada 83} and was last validated with version 1.7 of the {ACVC} tests. Being an interpreter, it does not implement most {representation clauses} and thus does not support systems programming close to the machine level. A later version was known as {GW-Ada}. E-mail: Michael Feldman "mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu". {(ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/amiga/languages/ada)}, {(ftp://cnam.cnam.fr/pub/Ada/Ada-Ed)}. {For Amiga (ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/adaed)}. {RISC OS port (ftp://micros.hensa.ac.uk/micros/arch/riscos/c/c052)}. (1999-11-04)

ADELE "language" A language for specification of {attribute grammars}, used by the {MUG2} {compiler compiler}. ["An Overview of the Attribute Definition Language ADELE", H. Ganziger in GI3, Fachesprach "Compiler-Compiler", W. Henhapl ed, Munchen Mar 1982, pp.22-53]. (1995-01-23)

adequate ::: a. --> Equal to some requirement; proportionate, or correspondent; fully sufficient; as, powers adequate to a great work; an adequate definition.
To equalize; to make adequate.
To equal.


ADL 1. "games" {Adventure Definition Language}. 2. "language" {Ada} Development Language. R.A. Lees, 1989. 3. "programming" {API} Definition Language. A project for Automatic Interface Test Generation. (1995-11-17)

Adventure Definition Language "language, games" (ADL) An {adventure} game language {interpreter} designed by Ross Cunniff "cunniff@fc.hp.com" and Tim Brengle in 1987. ADL is semi-{object-oriented} with {Lisp}-like {syntax} and is a superset of {DDL}. It is available for {Unix}, {MS-DOS}, {Amiga} and {Acorn} {Archimedes}. {(ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/comp.sources.games/volume2)}, {(ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/systems/amiga/fish/fish/f0/ff091)}. (1995-03-20)

A formula of the pure functional calculus of first order which contains no free individual variables is said to be satisfiable if it is possible to determine the underlying non-empty domain of individuals and to give meanings to the propositional and functional variables contained -- namely to each propositional variable a meaning as a particular proposition and to each n-adic functional variable a meaning as an n-adic propositional function of individuals (of the domain in question) -- in such a way that (under the accepted meanings of the sentential connectives, the quantifiers, and application of function to argument) the formula becomes true. The meaning of the last word, even for abstract, not excluding infinite, domains, must be presupposed -- a respect in which this definition differs sharply from most others made in this article.

A function from non-negative integers to non-negative integers is said to be primitive recursive if it can be obtained by a succession of definitions by primitive recursion and composition frorn the following list of initial functions: the successor function S, the function C such that C(x) = 0 for every non-negative integer x, and the functions Uin (i ≤ n, n = 1, 2, 3, . . . ) such that Uin(x1, x2, . . . , xn) = xi. Each successive definition by primitive recursion or composition may employ not only the initial functions but also any of the functions which were introduced by previous definitions.

Again, some further definitions:

Akasa-tattva (Sanskrit) Ākāśa-tattva [from ākāśa ether, space + tattva thatness, reality from tat that] The brilliant, shining, spiritually luminous, evolving substratum of nature; the third in the descending scale of the seven tattvas. According to one manner of enumerating the cosmic procession of consciousnesses, this tattva corresponds to the feminine aspect of the creative or Third Logos; but as nature repeats itself constantly in its processes of evolutionary unfolding, it is likewise proper to derive the subordinate First Logos from akasa when it is considered as virtually identical with mulaprakriti. In view of this repetitive functioning in nature, it is important not to allow the mind to crystallize around any one definition of a stage in any series of “descents” as being the only stage properly so described. This is seen with the First Logos: adi-tattva, first of the five or seven tattvas, may be called the First Logos; from another aspect the First Logos is born from akasa-tattva as the formative or creative mental impulse.

ALADIN 1. "language" {A Language for Attributed Definitions}. 2. "tool" An interactive mathematics system for the {IBM 360}. ["A Conversational System for Engineering Assistance: ALADIN", Y. Siret, Proc Second Symp Symb Algebraic Math, ACM Mar 1971]. (1995-04-13)

A Language for Attributed Definitions "language" (ALADIN) A language for formal specification of {attributed grammars}. ALADIN is the input language for the {GAG} compiler generator. It is {applicative} and {strongly typed}. ["GAG: A Practical Compiler Generator", Uwe Kastens "uwe@uni-paderborn.de" et al, LNCS 141, Springer 1982]. (1995-04-14)

A lengthy and overly detailed definition from Wikipedia:

ALGOL 68 "language" An extensive revision of {ALGOL 60} by Adriaan van Wijngaarden et al. ALGOL 68 was discussed from 1963 by Working Group 2.1 of {IFIP}. Its definition was accepted in December 1968. ALGOL 68 was the first, and still one of very few, programming languages for which a complete formal specification was created before its implementation. However, this specification was hard to understand due to its formality, the fact that it used an unfamiliar {metasyntax} notation (not {BNF}) and its unconventional terminology. One of the singular features of ALGOL 68 was its {orthogonal} design, making for freedom from arbitrary rules (such as restrictions in other languages that arrays could only be used as parameters but not as results). It also allowed {user defined data types}, then an unheard-of feature. It featured {structural equivalence}; automatic type conversion ("{coercion}") including {dereferencing}; {flexible arrays}; generalised loops (for-from-by-to-while-do-od), if-then-else-elif-fi, an integer case statement with an 'out' clause (case-in-out-esac); {skip} and {goto} statements; {blocks}; {procedures}; user-defined {operators}; {procedure parameters}; {concurrent} execution (par-begin-end); {semaphores}; generators "heap" and "loc" for {dynamic allocation}. It had no {abstract data types} or {separate compilation}. {(http://www.bookrags.com/research/algol-68-wcs/)}. (2007-04-24)

ALGOL D "language" ["A Proposal for Definitions in ALGOL", B.A. Galler et al, CACM 10:204-219, 1967].

ALTER "database" An {SQL} {Data Definition Language} command that adds or removes {columns} or {indexes} to/from a {table} or modifies the table definition in some other way. This differs from the INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE ({Data Modification Language}) commands in that those change the data stored in the table but not its definition. {MySQL ALTER TABLE command (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/alter-table.html)}. (2009-11-10)

Although the noun when capitalized refers to an officer of the British judiciary or one of several officials of the Exchequer, formally titled the Queen’s or the King’s Remembrancer, who has the responsibility of collecting debts that are owed to the Crown or an official representing the City of London, especially on various ceremonial occasions, or to represents the inters of Parliament, when defined in lower case the first definition given is person who reminds.

An exact definition is of some importance in view of the tendency of some contemporary logicians to replace the use of the term proposition by that of sentence.

An expression A introduced by contextual definition -- i.e., by a definition which construes particular kinds of expressions containing A, as abbreviations or substitutes for certain expressions not containing A, but provides no such construction for A itself -- is an incomplete symbol in this sense. In Principia Mathematica, notations for classes, and descriptions (more correctly, notations which serve some of the purposes that would be served by notations for classes and by descriptions) are introduced in this way by contextual definition. -- A. C.

Animated GIF "graphics, file format" (GIF89a) A variant of the {GIF} {image} format, often used on {web} pages to provide moving {icons} and banners. The GIF89a format supports multiple "frames" that give the impression of motion when displayed in sequence, much like a flip book. The animation may repeat continuously or play once. Animated GIFs aren't supported by earlier {web browsers}, however the first frame of the image is still shown. There are many utilities to create animated GIFs from a sequence of individual GIF files. There are also utilities that will produce animated GIFs automatically from a piece of text or a single image. One problem with this format is the size of the files produced, as they are by definition a sequence of individual images. Apart from minimising the number of frames, the best way to decrease file size is to assist the {LZW} compression by using blocks of solid colour, avoid {dithering}, and use fewer colours. If areas of an image don't change from one frame to another, they don't need to be redrawn so make the area a transparent block in the second frame. (1999-08-01)

ANSI Z39.50 "networking, standard" Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol Specification for Library Applications, officially known as ANSI/NISO Z39.50-1992, and ANSI/NISO Z39.50-1995. This {standard}, used by {WAIS}, specifies an {OSI} {application layer} service to allow an application on one computer to query a {database} on another. Z39.50 is used in libraries and for searching some databases on the {Internet}. The US {Library of Congress (http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/)} is the official maintanence agency for Z39.50. {Index Data}, a Danish company, have released a lot of Z39.50 code. Their {website} explains the relevant {ISO} {standards} and how they are amicably converging in Z39.50 version 4.0. {Overview (http://nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/VI/5/op/udtop3.htm)}. {Z39.50 resources (http://lamp.cs.utas.edu.au/net.html

Antaskarana(Sanskrit) ::: Perhaps better spelled as antahkarana. A compound word: antar, "interior," "within"; karana,sense organ. Occultists explain this word as the bridge between the higher and lower manas or betweenthe spiritual ego and personal soul of man. Such is H. P. Blavatsky's definition. As a matter of fact thereare several antahkaranas in the human septenary constitution -- one for every path or bridge between anytwo of the several monadic centers in man. Man is a microcosm, therefore a unified composite, a unity indiversity; and the antahkaranas are the links of vibrating consciousness-substance uniting these variouscenters.

antepredicament ::: n. --> A prerequisite to a clear understanding of the predicaments and categories, such as definitions of common terms.

anthorism ::: n. --> A description or definition contrary to that which is given by the adverse party.

apas ::: 1. work, activity. ::: 2. the Waters. ::: 3. [one of the five bhutas]: water [see the following, definition 2].

a posteriori ::: --> Characterizing that kind of reasoning which derives propositions from the observation of facts, or by generalizations from facts arrives at principles and definitions, or infers causes from effects. This is the reverse of a priori reasoning.
Applied to knowledge which is based upon or derived from facts through induction or experiment; inductive or empirical.


applet "web" A {Java} program which can be distributed as an attachment in a {web} document and executed by a Java-enabled {web browser} such as Sun's {HotJava}, {Netscape Navigator} version 2.0, or {Internet Explorer}. Navigator severely restricts the applet's file system and network access in order to prevent accidental or deliberate security violations. Full Java applications, which run outside of the browser, do not have these restrictions. Web browsers can also be extended with {plug-ins} though these differ from applets in that they usually require manual installation and are {platform}-specific. Various other languages can now be embedded within {HTML} documents, the most common being {JavaScript}. Despite Java's aim to be a "write once, run anywhere" language, the difficulty of accomodating the variety of browsers in use on the Internet has led many to abandon client-side processing in favour of {server}-side Java programs for which the term {servlet} was coined. Merriam Webster "Collegiate Edition" gives a 1990 definition: a short application program especially for performing a simple specific task. (2002-07-12)

a priori ::: --> Characterizing that kind of reasoning which deduces consequences from definitions formed, or principles assumed, or which infers effects from causes previously known; deductive or deductively. The reverse of a posteriori.
Applied to knowledge and conceptions assumed, or presupposed, as prior to experience, in order to make experience rational or possible.


A related but different paradox is Grelling's (1908). Let us distinguish adjectives -- ie, words denoting properties -- as autological or i according as they do or do not have the property which they denote (in particular, adjectives denoting properties which cannot belong to words at all will be heterological). Then, e.g., the words polysyllabic, common, significant, prosaic are autological, while new, alive, useless, ambiguous, long are heterological. On their face, these definitions of autological and heterological are unobjectionable (compare the definition of onomatopoetic as similar in sound to that which it denotes). But paradox arises when we ask whether the word heterological is autological or heterological.

argument "programming" (Or "arg") A value or reference passed to a {function}, {procedure}, {subroutine}, command or program, by the caller. For example, in the function definition square(x) = x * x x is the {formal argument} or "parameter", and in the call y = square(3+4) 3+4 is the {actual argument}. This will execute the function square with x having the value 7 and return the result 49. There are many different conventions for passing arguments to functions and procedures including {call-by-value}, {call-by-name}, {call-by-reference}, {call-by-need}. These affect whether the value of the argument is computed by the caller or the callee (the function) and whether the callee can modify the value of the argument as seen by the caller (if it is a variable). Arguments to functions are usually, following mathematical notation, written in parentheses after the function name, separated by commas (but see {curried function}). Arguments to a program are usually given after the command name, separated by spaces, e.g.: cat myfile yourfile hisfile Here "cat" is the command and "myfile", "yourfile", and "hisfile" are the arguments. (2006-05-27)

Arhat is both the way and the waygoer; and while the term is close philosophically to anagamin, the distinction between the two lies in their mystical connotations rather than in their etymological definitions. Arhat has a wider significance inasmuch as it applies to those noblest of the Buddha’s disciples who were “worthy” of receiving, because comprehending, the Tathagata’s heart doctrine, the more esoteric and mystical portions of his message.

Arhat (Sanskrit) Arhat [from the verbal root arh to be worthy, merit, be able] Worthy, deserving; also enemy slayer [from ari enemy + the verbal root han to slay, smite], an arhat being a slayer of the foe of craving, the entire range of passions and desires, mental, emotional, and physical. Buddhists in the Orient generally define arhat in this manner, while modern scholars derive the word from the verbal root arh. Both definitions are equally appropriate (Buddhist Catechism 93).

’Arikh ’Anpin (Aramaic) ’Arīkh ’Anpīn [’arīkh long, great + ’anpīn face, countenance] Long Face or the Great Visage; Qabbalistic term applied to Kether, the first emanation of the Sephirothal Tree, equivalent to the Greco-Latin Macroprosopus. Also called ’Arich ’Appayim, the latter word in the dual, so that the phrase means “long of faces” or “long of countenances”: duality or the upper and the lower being referred to. This first Sephirah is called by at least seven names, among them being Crown, Primordial, White Head, and Long Face. From Kether emanate the remaining nine Sephiroth. “The first emanation is the Ancient, beheld Face to Face, it is the Supreme Head, the Source of all Light, the Principle of all Wisdom, whose definition is, Unity” (Zohar iii, 292b).

Aristocracy: 1. In its original and etymological meaning (Greek: aristos-best, kratos-power), the government by the best; and by extension, the class of the chief persons in a country. As the standards by which the best can be determined and selected may vary, it is difficult to give a general definition of this term (Cf. C. Lewis, Political Terms, X. 73). But in particular, the implications of aristocracy may be rational, historical, political, pragmatic or analogical.

Art, to dialectical materialism, is an activity of human beings which embodies a reflection of the reality surrounding them, a reflection which may be conscious, unconscious, reconstructive or deliberately fantastic, and which possesses positive aesthetic value in terms of rhythm, figure, color, image and the like. Art is good to the extent that it is a faithful and aesthetic reflection of the reality dealt with. Accordingly, proletarian or socialist realism (q.v.) is not photographic, static, but dialectical, conscious that any given period or subject is moving into its future, that class society is becoming classless society. This realism is optimistic, involving a "revolutionary romanticism". Marx, Engels, Lenin, Soviet philosophy, also, separate entries for detailed definitions of specific terms.

ASDL {Abstract-Type and Scheme-Definition Language}

(A situation often arising in practice is that a word -- or symbol or notation -- which already has a vague meaning is to be given a new exact meaning, which is vaguely, or as nearly as possible, the same as the old. This is done by a nominal or semantical definition rather than a real definition; nevertheless it is usual in such a case to speak either of defining the word or of defining the associated notion.)

A somewhat different definition is, “Mind is a name given to the sum of the states of Consciousness grouped under Thought, Will, and Feeling. During deep sleep, ideation ceases on the physical plane, and memory is in abeyance; thus for the time being ‘Mind is not,’ because the organ, through which the ego manifests ideation and memory on the material plane, has temporarily ceased to function. A noumenon can become a phenomenon on any plane of existence only by manifesting on that plane through an appropriate basis or vehicle; and during the long night of rest called Pralaya, when all existences are dissolved, the ‘Universal Mind’ remains as a permanent possibility of mental action, or as that abstract absolute thought, of which mind is the concrete manifestation” (SD 1:38). Here mind is consciousness in action, the phenomenon corresponding to a noumenon which, in the absence of vehicles for its expression, can only be described as mind in latency, or a possibility of mental action. The dhyani-chohans are the expressers of latent cosmic mind, who bring it into various degrees of manifestation. They are vehicles for the expression of divine thought and will, intelligent forces which give to nature its laws.

ASPLE "language" A {toy language}. ["A Sampler of Formal Definitions", M. Marcotty et al, Computing Surveys 8(2):191-276 (Feb 1976)]. (1995-02-08)

Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430.   St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents.   Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided.   Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients.   S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings").   This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism).   (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment.   Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect.   Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good."   In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love.   In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909).   Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint.   The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value.   (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey).   (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience.   (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria.   (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers:   subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists);   logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality);   metaphysical objectivism (values   --or norms or ideals   --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.

A vicious circle in definition (circulus in definiendo) occurs if A1 is used in defining A2, A2 in defining A3, . . . , An-1 in defining An, and finally An in defining A1. (The simplest case is that in which n = l, A1 being defined in terms of itself.) There is, of course, a fallacy if A1, A2, . . . , An are then used as defined absolutely. Apparent exceptions, such as definition by recursion (q.v.), require special justification, e.g., by finding an equivalent form of definition which is not circular.

Backus-Naur Form "language, grammar" (BNF, originally "Backus Normal Form") A formal {metasyntax} used to express {context-free grammars}. Backus Normal Form was renamed Backus-Naur Form at the suggestion of {Donald Knuth}. BNF is one of the most commonly used metasyntactic notations for specifying the {syntax} of programming languages, command sets, and the like. It is widely used for language descriptions but seldom documented anywhere (how do you document a {metasyntax}?), so that it must usually be learned by osmosis (but see {RFC 2234}). Consider this BNF for a US postal address: "postal-address" ::= "name-part" "street-address" "zip-part" "personal-part" ::= "name" | "initial" "." "name-part" ::= "personal-part" "last-name" ["jr-part"] "EOL"     | "personal-part" "name-part" "street-address" ::= ["apt"] "house-num" "street-name" "EOL" "zip-part" ::= "town-name" "," "state-code" "ZIP-code" "EOL" This translates into English as: "A postal-address consists of a name-part, followed by a street-address part, followed by a zip-code part. A personal-part consists of either a first name or an initial followed by a dot. A name-part consists of either: a personal-part followed by a last name followed by an optional "jr-part" (Jr., Sr., or dynastic number) and end-of-line, or a personal part followed by a name part (this rule illustrates the use of recursion in BNFs, covering the case of people who use multiple first and middle names and/or initials). A street address consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consists of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note that many things (such as the format of a personal-part, apartment specifier, or ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These lexical details are presumed to be obvious from context or specified somewhere nearby. There are many variants and extensions of BNF, possibly containing some or all of the {regexp} {wild cards} such as "*" or "+". {EBNF} is a common one. In fact the example above isn't the pure form invented for the {ALGOL 60} report. "[]" was introduced a few years later in {IBM}'s {PL/I} definition but is now universally recognised. {ABNF} is another extension. (1997-11-23)

definitional ::: a. --> Relating to definition; of the nature of a definition; employed in defining.

definitional constraint programming "language" (DCP) A declarative, programming paradigm which integrates {concurrent constraint programming}, {constraint logic programming} and {functional programming}. In this setting a concurrent constraint language becomes a coordination system that organises the concurrent interaction of parallel functional computations. The language is also a generalisation of parallel {functional programming} languages, such as {Id}, where {constraints} and constraint abstractions are reused to define new constraints, as the means of programming logical variables for parallel coordination. {Goffin} is a DCP language. (1995-03-28)

definition ::: n. --> The act of defining; determination of the limits; as, a telescope accurate in definition.
Act of ascertaining and explaining the signification; a description of a thing by its properties; an explanation of the meaning of a word or term; as, the definition of "circle;" the definition of "wit;" an exact definition; a loose definition.
Description; sort.
An exact enunciation of the constituents which make up


belief revision "artificial intelligence" The area of {theory change} in which preservation of the information in the theory to be changed plays a key role. A fundamental issue in belief revision is how to decide what information to retract in order to maintain consistency, when the addition of a new belief to a theory would make it inconsistent. Usually, an ordering on the sentences of the theory is used to determine priorities among sentences, so that those with lower priority can be retracted. This ordering can be difficult to generate and maintain. The postulates of the {AGM Theory for Belief Revision} describe minimal properties a revision process should have. [Better definition?] (1995-03-20)

Bennett and Baylis, Formal Logic, New York. 1937: 6. THEORY OF TYPES. In the functional calculus of first order, variables which appear as arguments of propositional functions or which are bound by quantifiers must be variables which are restricted to a certain limited range, the kinds of propositions about propositional functions which cannot be expressed in the calculus. The uncritical attempt to remove this restriction, by introducing variables of unlimited range (the range covering both non-functions and functions of whatever kind) and modifying accordingly the definition of a formula and the lists of primitive formulas and primitive rules of inference, leads to a system which is formally inconsistent through the possibility of deriving in it certain of the logical paradoxes (q. v.). The functional calculus of first order may, however, be extended in another way, which involves separating propositional functions into a certain array of categories (the hierarchy of types), excluding. propositional functions which do not fall into one of these categories, and -- besides propositional and individual variables -- admitting only variables having a particular one of these categories as range.

Besides the universal intelligible being of things, Aristotle was also primarily concerned with an investigation of the being of things from the standpoint of their generation and existence. But only individual things are generated and exist. Hence, for him, substance was primarily the individual: a "this" which, in contrast with the universal or secondary substance, is not communicable to many. The Aristotelian meaning of substance may be developed from four points of view: Grammar: The nature of substance as the ultimate subject of predication is expressed by common usage in its employment of the noun (or substantive) as the subject of a sentence to signify an individual thing which "is neither present in nor predicable of a subject." Thus substance is grammatically distinguished from its (adjectival) properties and modifications which "are present in and predicable of a subject."   Secondary substance is expressed by the universal term, and by its definition which are "not present in a subject but predicable of it." See Categoriae,) ch. 5. Physics: Independence of being emerges as a fundamental characteristic of substance in the analysis of change. Thus we have:   Substantial change: Socrates comes to be. (Change simply).   Accidental change; in a certain respect only: Socrates comes to be 6 feet tall. (Quantitative). Socrates comes to be musical (Qualitative). Socrates comes to be in Corinth (Local).     As substantial change is prior to the others and may occur independently of them, so the individual substance is prior in being to the accidents; i.e., the accidents cannot exist independently of their subject (Socrates), but can be only in him or in another primary substance, while the reverse is not necessarily the case. Logic: Out of this analysis of change there also emerges a division of being into the schema of categories, with the distinction between the category of substance and the several accidental categories, such as quantity, quality, place, relation, etc. In a corresponding manner, the category of substance is first; i.e., prior to the others in being, and independent of them. Metaphysics: The character of substance as that which is present in an individual as the cause of its being and unity is developed in Aristotle's metaphysical writings, see especiallv Bk. Z, ch. 17, 1041b. Primary substnnce is not the matter alone, nor the universal form common to many, but the individual unity of matter and form. For example, each thing is composed of parts or elements, as an organism is composed of cells, yet it is not merely its elements, but has a being and unity over and above the sum of its parts. This something more which causes the cells to be this organism rather than a malignant growth, is an example of what is meant by substance in its proper sense of first substance (substantia prima). Substance in its secondary sense (substantia secunda) is the universal form (idea or species) which is individuated in each thing.

beta testing "programming" Evaluation of a pre-release (potentially unreliable) version of a piece of {software} (or possibly {hardware}) by making it available to selected users ("beta testers") before it goes on general distribution. Beta testign aims to discover {bugs} that only occur in certain environments or under certain patterns of use, while reducing the volume of feedback to a manageable level. The testers benefit by having earlier access to new products, features and fixes. Beta testing may be preceded by "alpha testing", performed in-house by a handful of users (e.g. other developers or friends), who can be expected to give rapid, high quality feedback on design and {usability}. Once the product is considered to be usable for its intended purpose it then moves on to "beta testing" by a larger, but typically still limited, number of ordinary users, who may include external customers. Some companies such as {Google} or {Degree Jungle (http://www.degreejungle.com/rankings/best-online-colleges)} stretch the definition, claiming their products are "in beta" for many months by millions of users. The term derives from early 1960s terminology for {product cycle} checkpoints, first used at {IBM} but later standard throughout the industry. "{Alpha test}" was the {unit test}, {module test} or {component test} phase; "Beta Test" was initial {system test}. These themselves came from earlier A- and B-tests for hardware. The A-test was a feasibility and manufacturability evaluation done before any commitment to design and development. The B-test was a demonstration that the engineering model functioned as specified. The C-test (corresponding to today's beta) was the B-test performed on early samples of the production design. (2013-06-09)

Bibliography. The various theories outlined in this article do not exhaust the possible definitions and problems concerning probability, but they give an idea of the trend of the discussions. The following works are selected from a considerable literature of the subject. Laplace, Essai sur les Probabilites. Keynes, A Treatise on Probability. Jeffreys, Theory of Probability. Uspensky, Introduction to Mathematical Probability. Borel, Traite de Calcul des Probabilites (especially the last volume dealing with its philosophical aspects). Mises, Probability, Statistics and Truth. Reichenbach, Les Fondements Logiques du Calcul dcs Probabilites. Frechet, Recherches sur le Calcul des Probabilites. Ville, Essai sur la Theorie des Collectifs. Kolmogoroff, Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinhchkeitsrechnung. Wald, Die Widerspruchsfreiheit des Kollektivbegriffes. Nagel, The Theory of Probability.

bindery "networking" A {Novell Netware} database that contains definitions for entities such as users, groups, and {workgroups}. The bindery allows the network supervisor to design an organised and secure operating environment based on the individual requirements of each of these entities. The bindery has three components: objects, properties, and property data sets. Objects represent any physical or logical entity, including users, user groups, file servers. Properties are characteristics of each object (e.g. passwords, account restrictions, {internetwork addresses}). Property data sets are the values assigned to an entity's bindery properties. [Netware Version 3.11 "Concepts" documentation (a glossary of Netware-related terms)]. (1996-03-07)

bliss ::: perfect happiness; serene joy or ecstasy. (See delight for Sri Aurobindo"s definitions.) **self-bliss, World-Bliss.

Boolean algebra "logic" (After the logician {George Boole}) 1. Commonly, and especially in computer science and digital electronics, this term is used to mean {two-valued logic}. 2. This is in stark contrast with the definition used by pure mathematicians who in the 1960s introduced "Boolean-valued {models}" into logic precisely because a "Boolean-valued model" is an interpretation of a {theory} that allows more than two possible truth values! Strangely, a Boolean algebra (in the mathematical sense) is not strictly an {algebra}, but is in fact a {lattice}. A Boolean algebra is sometimes defined as a "complemented {distributive lattice}". Boole's work which inspired the mathematical definition concerned {algebras} of {sets}, involving the operations of intersection, union and complement on sets. Such algebras obey the following identities where the operators ^, V, - and constants 1 and 0 can be thought of either as set intersection, union, complement, universal, empty; or as two-valued logic AND, OR, NOT, TRUE, FALSE; or any other conforming system. a ^ b = b ^ a  a V b = b V a   (commutative laws) (a ^ b) ^ c = a ^ (b ^ c) (a V b) V c = a V (b V c)     (associative laws) a ^ (b V c) = (a ^ b) V (a ^ c) a V (b ^ c) = (a V b) ^ (a V c)  (distributive laws) a ^ a = a  a V a = a     (idempotence laws) --a = a -(a ^ b) = (-a) V (-b) -(a V b) = (-a) ^ (-b)       (de Morgan's laws) a ^ -a = 0  a V -a = 1 a ^ 1 = a  a V 0 = a a ^ 0 = 0  a V 1 = 1 -1 = 0  -0 = 1 There are several common alternative notations for the "-" or {logical complement} operator. If a and b are elements of a Boolean algebra, we define a "= b to mean that a ^ b = a, or equivalently a V b = b. Thus, for example, if ^, V and - denote set intersection, union and complement then "= is the inclusive subset relation. The relation "= is a {partial ordering}, though it is not necessarily a {linear ordering} since some Boolean algebras contain incomparable values. Note that these laws only refer explicitly to the two distinguished constants 1 and 0 (sometimes written as {LaTeX} \top and \bot), and in {two-valued logic} there are no others, but according to the more general mathematical definition, in some systems variables a, b and c may take on other values as well. (1997-02-27)

bound variable 1. A bound variable or {formal argument} in a function definition is replaced by the {actual argument} when the function is applied. In the {lambda abstraction} \ x . M x is the bound variable. However, x is a {free variable} of the term M when M is considered on its own. M is the {scope} of the binding of x. 2. In logic a bound variable is a quantified variable. See {quantifier}.

Brentano (Psychologie, 1874) takes an existential proposition (Existentialsatz) to be one that directly affirms or denies existence, and shows that each of the four traditional kinds of categorical propositions is reducible (i.e., equivalent) to an existential proposition in this sense; thus, e.g., "all men are mortal" becomes "immortal men do not exist." This definition of an existential proposition and the reduction of categorical propositions to existential appears also in Keynes's Formal Logic, 4th edn. (1906). -- A.C.

broadcast quality video "communications, multimedia" Roughly, {video} with more than 30 frames per second at a {resolution} of 800 x 640 {pixels}. The quality of moving pictures and sound is determined by the complete chain from camera to receiver. Relevant factors are the colour temperature of the lighting, the balance of the red, green and blue vision pick-up tubes to produce the correct display colour temperature (which will be different) and the {gamma} pre-correction to cancel the non-linear characteristic of {cathode-ray tubes} in television receivers. The {resolution} of the camera tube and video coding system will determine the maximum number of {pixels} in the picture. Different colour coding systems have different defects. The NTSC system (National Television Systems Committee) can produce {hue} errors. The PAL system (Phase Alternation by Line) can produce {saturation} errors. Television modulation systems are specified by ITU CCIR Report 624. Low-resolution systems have {bandwidths} of 4.2 MHz with 525 to 625 lines per frame as used in the Americas and Japan. Medium resolution of 5 to 6.5 MHz with 625 lines is used in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia. {High-Definition Television} (HDTV) will require 8 MHz or more of bandwidth. A medium resolution (5.5 MHz in UK) picture can be represented by 572 lines of 402 pixels. Note the ratio of pixels to lines is not the same as the {aspect ratio}. A {VGA} display (480n lines of 640 pixels) could thus display 84% of the height of one picture frame. Most compression techniques reduce quality as they assume a restricted range of detail and motion and discard details to which the human eye is not sensitive. Broadcast quality implies something better than amateur or domestic video and therefore can't be retained on a domestic video recorder. Broadcasts use quadriplex or U-matic recorders. The lowest frame rate used for commercial entertainment is the 24Hz of the 35mm cinema camera. When broadcast on a 50Hz television system, the pictures are screened at 25Hz reducing the running times by 4%. On a 60Hz system every five movie frames are screened as six TV frames, still at the 4% increased rate. The six frames are made by mixing adjacent frames, with some degradation of the picture. A computer system to meet international standard reproduction would at least VGA resolution, an interlaced frame rate of 24Hz and 8 bits to represent the luminance (Y) component. For a component display system using red, green and blue (RGB) electron guns and phosphor dots each will require 7 bits. Transmission and recording is different as various coding schemes need less bits if other representations are used instead of RGB. Broadcasts use YUV and compression can reduce this to about 3.5 bits per pixel without perceptible degradation. High-quality video and sound can be carried on a 34 Mbaud channel after being compressed with {ADPCM} and {variable length coding}, potentially in real time. (1997-07-04)

B. The Probability-Relation. Considering the general grounds of probability, it is pertinent to analyze the proper characteristics of this concept and the valid conditions of its use in inferential processes. Probability presents itself as a special relation between the premisses and the conclusion of an argument, namely when the premisses are true but not completely sufficient to condition the truth of the conclusion. A probable inference must however be logical, even though its result is not certain, for its premisses must be a true sign of its conclusion. The probability-relation may take three aspects: it is inductive, probable or presumptive. In strict induction, there is an essential connection between the facts expressed in the premisses and in the conclusion, which almost forces a factual result from the circumstances of the predication. This type of probability-relation is prominent in induction proper and in statistics. In strict probability, there is a logical connection between the premisses and the conclusion which does not entail a definite factual value for the latter. This type of probability-relation is prominent in mathematical probability and circumstantial evidence. In strict presumption, there is a similarity of characteristics between the fact expressed in the conclusion and the real event if it does or did exist. This type of probability-relation is prominent in analogy and testimony. A presumptive conclusion should be accepted provisionally, and it should have definite consequences capable of being tested. The results of an inductive inference and of a probable inference may often be brought closer together when covering the same field, as the relations involved are fundamental enough for the purpose. This may be done by a qualitative analysis of their implications, or by a quantitative comparison of their elements, as it is done for example in the methods of correlation. But a presumptive inference cannot be reduced to either of the other two forms without losing its identity, because the connection between its elements is of an indefinite character. It may be said that inductive and probable inferences have an intrinsic reasonableness, while presumptive inferences have an extrinsic reasonableness. The former involve determinism within certain limits, while the latter display indeterminacy more prominently. That is why very poor, misleading or wrong conclusions are obtained when mathematical methods are applied to moral acts, judiciary decisions or indirect testimony The activity of the human will has an intricate complexity and variability not easily subjected to calculation. Hence the degree of probability of a presumptive inference can be estimated only by the character and circumstances of its suggested explanation. In moral cases, the discussion and application of the probability-relation leads to the consideration of the doctrines of Probabilism and Probabiliorism which are qualitative. The probability-relation as such has the following general implications which are compatible with its three different aspects, and which may serve as general inferential principle: Any generalization must be probable upon propositions entailing its exemplification in particular cases; Any generalization or system of generalizations forming a theory, must be probable upon propositions following from it by implication; The probability of a given proposition on the basis of other propositions constituting its evidence, is the degree of logical conclusiveness of this evidence with respect to the given proposition; The empirical probability (p = S/E) of a statement S increases as verifications accrue to the evidence E, provided the evidence is taken as a whole; and Numerical probabilities may be assigned to facts or statements only when the evidence includes statistical data or other numerical information which can be treated by the methods of mathematical probability. C. Mathematical Probability. The mathematical theory of probability, which is also called the theory of chances or the theory of relative possibilities, is concerned with the application of mathematical methods to the determination of the likelihood of any event, when there are not sufficient data to determine with certainty its occurrence or failure. As Laplace remarked, it is nothing more than common sense reduced to calculation. But its range goes far beyond that of common sense for it has not only conditioned the growth of various branches of mathematics, such as the theory of errors, the calculus of variations and mathematical statistics, but it has also made possible the establishment of a number of theories in the natural and social sciences, by its actual applications to concrete problems. A distinction is usually made between direct and inverse probability. The determination of a direct or a priori probability involves an inference from given situations or sets of possibilities numerically characterized, to future events related with them. By definition, the direct probability of the occurrence of any particular form of an event, is the ratio of the number of ways in which that form might occur, to the whole number of ways in which the event may occur, all these forms being equiprobable or equally likely. The basic principles referring to a priori probabilities are derived from the analysis of the various logical alternatives involved in any hypothetical questions such as the following: (a) To determine whether a cause, whose exact nature is or is not known, will prove operative or not in certain circumstances; (b) To determine how often an event happens or fails. The comparison of the number of occurrences with that of the failures of an event, considered in simple or complex circumstances, affords a baisis for several cases of probable inference. Thus, theorems may be established to deal with the probability of success and the probability of failure of an event, with the probability of the joint occurrence of several events, with the probability of the alternative occurrence of several events, with the different conditions of frequency of occurrence of an event; with mathematical expectation, and with similar questions. The determination of an a posteriori or inverse probability involves an inference from given situations or events, to past conditions or causes which rnay have contributed to their occurrence. By definition, an inverse probability is the numerical value assigned to each one of a number of possible causes of an actual event that has already occurred; or more generally, it is the numerical value assigned to hypotheses which attempt to explain actual events or circumstances. If an event has occurred as a result of any one of n several causes, the probability that C was the actual cause is Pp/E (Pnpn), when P is the probability that the event could be produced by C if present, and p the probability that C was present before the occurrence of that event. Inverse probability is based on general and special assumptions which cannot always be properly stated, and as there are many different sets of such assumptions, there cannot be a coercive reason for making a definite choice. In particular, the condition of the equiprobability of causes is seldom if ever fulfilled. The distinction between the two kinds of probability, which has led to some confusion in interpreting their grounds and their relations, can be technically ignored now as a result of the adoption of a statistical basis for measuring probabilities. In particular, it is the statistical treatment of correlation which led to the study of probabilities of concurrent phenomena irrespective of their direction in time. This distinction may be retained, howe\er, for the purpose of a general exposition of the subject. Thus, a number of probability theorems are obtained by using various cases of direct and inverse probability involving permutations and combinations, the binomial theorem, the theory of series, and the methods of integration. In turn, these theurems can be applied to concrete cases of the various sciences.

Business Application Programming Interface "business, application, programming" (BAPI) /bap'ee/ A set of {methods} provided by an {SAP} business {object}. Release 4.0 of {SAP AG}'s {R/3} system supports {object-oriented programming} via an interface defined in terms of {objects} and {methods} called BAPIs. For example if a material object provides a function to check availability, the corresponding SAP business object type "Material" might provide a BAPI called "Material.CheckAvailability". The definitions of SAP business objects and their BAPIs are kept in an SAP business object repository. SAP provide {classes} and {libraries} to enable a programming team to build SAP applications that use business objects and BAPIs. Supported environments include {COM} and {Java}. The {Open BAPI Network (http://sap.com/solutions/technology/bapis/index.htm)}. gives background information and lists objects and BAPIs. (2002-08-30)

Calculus: The name calculus may be applied to any organized method of solving problems or drawing inferences by manipulation of symbols according to formal rules. Or an exact definition of a calculus may be provided by identifying it with a logistic system, (q.v.) satisfying the requirement of effectiveness.

Capability Maturity Model "software" (CMM) The {Software Engineering Institute}'s model of {software engineering} that specifies five levels of maturity of the processes of a software organisation. CMM offers a framework for evolutionary process improvement. Originally applied to software development (SE-CMM), it has been expanded to cover other areas including Human Resources and Software Acquitition. The levels - focii - and key process areas are: Level 1 Initial - Heroes - None. Level 2 Repeatable - Project Management - Software Project Planning, Software Project Tracking and Oversight, Software Subcontract Management, Software Quality Assurance, Software Configuration Management, Requirements Management. Level 3 Defined - Engineering Process - Organisation Process Focus, Organisation Process Definition, Peer Reviews, Training Program, Inter-group Coordination, Software Product Engineering, Integrated Software Management. Level 4 Managed - Product and Process Quality - Software Quality Management, Quantitative Process Management. Level 5 Optimising - Continuous Improvement - Process Change Management, Technology Change Management, Defect Prevention. {(http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmm/cmm.html)}. (2001-04-28)

Carnap proposes a purely syntactical definition of equipollence by defining two sentences (or two classes of sentences) to be equipollent if they have the same class of non-valid consequences. See the article Valid. -- A.C.

CDL 1. Computer Definition [Design?] Language. A hardware description language. "Computer Organisation and Microprogramming", Yaohan Chu, P-H 1970. 2. Command Definition Language. Portion of ICES used to implement commands. Sammet 1969, p.618-620. 3. Compiler Description Language. C.H.A. Koster, 1969. Intended for implementation of the rules of an affix grammar by recursive procedures. A procedure may be a set of tree-structured alternatives, each alternative is executed until one successfully exits. Used in a portable COBOL-74 compiler from MPB, mprolog system from SzKI, and the Mephisto chess computer. "CDL: A Compiler Implementation Language", in Methods of Algorithmic Language Implementation, C.H.A. Koster, LNCS 47, Springer 1977, pp.341-351. "Using the CDL Compiler Compiler", C.H.A. Koster, 1974. Versions: CDL2, CDLM used at Manchester. 4. Common Design Language. "Common Design Language", IBM, Software Engineering Inst, Sept 1983. 5. Control Definition Language. Ideas which contributed to Smalltalk. ["Control Structures for Programming Languges", David A. Fisher, PhD Thesis, CMU 1970].

Characterology: This name originally was used for types; thus in Aristotle and Theophrastus, and even much later, e.g. in La Bruyere. Gradually it came to signify something individual; a development paralleled by the replacement of "typical" figures on the stage by individualities. There is no agreement, even today, on the definition; confusion reigns especially because of an insufficient distinction between character, personality, and person. But all agree that character manifests itself in the behavior of a person. One can distinguish a merely descriptive approach, one of classification, and one of interpretation. The general viewpoints of interpretation influence also description and classification, since they determine what is considered "important" and lay down the rules by which to distinguish and to classify. One narrow interpretation looks at character mainly as the result of inborn properties, rooted in organic constitution; character is considered, therefore, as essentially unchangeable and predetermined. The attempts at establishing correlations between character and body-build (Kretschmer a.o.) are a special form of such narrow interpretation. It makes but little difference if, besides inborn properties, the influence of environmental factors is acknowledged. The rationalistic interpretation looks at character mainly as the result of convictions. These convictions are seen as purely intellectual in extreme rationalism (virtue is knowledge, Socrates), or as referring to the value-aspect of reality which is conceived as apprehended by other than merely intellectual operations. Thus, Spranger gives a classification according to the "central values" dominating a man's behavior. (Allport has devised practical methods of character study on this basis.) Since the idea a person has of values and their order may change, character is conceived as essentially mutable, even if far going changes may be unfrequent. Character-education is the practical application of the principles of characterology and thus depends on the general idea an author holds in regard to human nature. Character is probably best defined as the individual's way of preferring or rejecting values. It depends on the innate capacities of value-apprehension and on the way these values are presented to the individual. Therefore the enormous influence of social factors. -- R.A.

Church-Rosser Theorem "theory" A property of a {reduction} system that states that if an expression can be reduced by zero or more reduction steps to either expression M or expression N then there exists some other expression to which both M and N can be reduced. This implies that there is a unique {normal form} for any expression since M and N cannot be different normal forms because the theorem says they can be reduced to some other expression and normal forms are irreducible by definition. It does not imply that a normal form is reachable, only that if reduction terminates it will reach a unique normal form. (1995-01-25)

cognitive architecture "architecture" A computer architecure involving {non-deterministic}, multiple {inference} processes, as found in {neural networks}. Cognitive architectures model the human brain and contrast with single processor computers. The term might also refer to software architectures, e.g. {fuzzy logic}. [Origin? Better definition? Reference?] (1995-11-29)

colorless ::: a. --> Without color; not distinguished by any hue; transparent; as, colorless water.
Free from any manifestation of partial or peculiar sentiment or feeling; not disclosing likes, dislikes, prejudice, etc.; as, colorless music; a colorless style; definitions should be colorless.


Common Object Request Broker Architecture "standard, programming" (CORBA) An {Object Management Group} specification which provides a standard messaging interface between distributed {objects}. The original CORBA specification (1.1) has been revised through version 2 (CORBA 2) with the latest specification being version 3 (CORBA 3). In its most basic form CORBA consists of the {Interface Definition Language} (IDL) and the Dynamic Invocation Interface (DII). The IDL definition is complied into a Stub (client) and Skeleton (server) component that communicate through an {Object Request Broker} (ORB). When an ORB determines that a request is to a remote object, it may execute the request by communicating with the remote ORB. The Corba IDL can be mapped to a number of languages including {C}, {C++}, {Java}, {COBOL}, {Smalltalk}, {Ada}, {Lisp}, {Python}, and {IDLscript}. CORBA ORBs are widely available for a number of platforms. The OMG standard for inter-ORB communication is {IIOP}, this ensures that all CORBA 2 compliant ORBS are able to interoperate. See also {COSS}, {Component Object Model}, {RMI}. {OMG CORBA specs (http://www.omg.org/technology/documents/corba_spec_catalog.htm)}. (2007-09-04)

Commonwealth Hackish "jargon" Hacker jargon as spoken outside the US, especially in the British Commonwealth. It is reported that Commonwealth speakers are more likely to pronounce truncations like "char" and "soc", etc., as spelled (/char/, /sok/), as opposed to American /keir/ and /sohsh/. Dots in {newsgroup} names (especially two-component names) tend to be pronounced more often (so soc.wibble is /sok dot wib'l/ rather than /sohsh wib'l/). The prefix {meta} may be pronounced /mee't*/; similarly, Greek letter beta is usually /bee't*/, zeta is usually /zee't*/, and so forth. Preferred {metasyntactic variables} include {blurgle}, "eek", "ook", "frodo", and "bilbo"; "wibble", "wobble", and in emergencies "wubble"; "banana", "tom", "dick", "harry", "wombat", "frog", {fish}, and so on and on (see {foo}). Alternatives to verb doubling include suffixes "-o-rama", "frenzy" (as in feeding frenzy), and "city" (examples: "barf city!" "hack-o-rama!" "core dump frenzy!"). Finally, note that the American terms "parens", "brackets", and "braces" for (), [], and {} are uncommon; Commonwealth hackish prefers "brackets", "square brackets", and "curly brackets". Also, the use of "pling" for {bang} is common outside the United States. See also {attoparsec}, {calculator}, {chemist}, {console jockey}, {fish}, {go-faster stripes}, {grunge}, {hakspek}, {heavy metal}, {leaky heap}, {lord high fixer}, {loose bytes}, {muddie}, {nadger}, {noddy}, {psychedelicware}, {plingnet}, {raster blaster}, {RTBM}, {seggie}, {spod}, {sun lounge}, {terminal junkie}, {tick-list features}, {weeble}, {weasel}, {YABA}, and notes or definitions under {Bad Thing}, {barf}, {bum}, {chase pointers}, {cosmic rays}, {crippleware}, {crunch}, {dodgy}, {gonk}, {hamster}, {hardwarily}, {mess-dos}, {nibble}, {proglet}, {root}, {SEX}, {tweak} and {xyzzy}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-01-18)

Composite idea: Any idea that consists of a fusion of sentient elements, which together are presumed to pass the threshold of consciousness. In logic, a compound of undefined ideas by way of definition. -- C.K.D.

computability theory "mathematics" The area of theoretical computer science concerning what problems can be solved by any computer. A function is computable if an {algorithm} can be implemented which will give the correct output for any valid input. Since computer programs are {countable} but {real numbers} are not, it follows that there must exist real numbers that cannot be calculated by any program. Unfortunately, by definition, there isn't an easy way of describing any of them! In fact, there are many tasks (not just calculating real numbers) that computers cannot perform. The most well-known is the {halting problem}, the {busy beaver} problem is less famous but just as fascinating. ["Computability", N.J. Cutland. (A well written undergraduate-level introduction to the subject)]. ["The Turing Omnibus", A.K. Dewdeney]. (1995-01-13)

computer literacy "education" Basic skill in use of computers, from the perspective of such skill being a necessary societal skill. The term was coined by Andrew Molnar, while director of the Office of Computing Activities at the {National Science Foundation}. "We started computer literacy in '72 [...] We coined that phrase. It's sort of ironic. Nobody knows what computer literacy is. Nobody can define it. And the reason we selected [it] was because nobody could define it, and [...] it was a broad enough term that you could get all of these programs together under one roof" (cited in Aspray, W., (September 25, 1991) "Interview with Andrew Molnar," OH 234. Center for the History of Information Processing, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota). The term, as a coinage, is similar to earlier coinages, such as "visual literacy", which {Merriam-Webster (http://m-w.com/)} dates to 1971, and the more recent "media literacy". A more useful definition from {(http://www.computerliteracyusa.com/)} is: Computer literacy is an understanding of the concepts, terminology and operations that relate to general computer use. It is the essential knowledge needed to function independently with a computer. This functionality includes being able to solve and avoid problems, adapt to new situations, keep information organized and communicate effectively with other computer literate people. (2007-03-23)

condela {Connection Definition Language}

Conference On DAta SYstems Languages "body, data processing" (CODASYL) A consortium that developed {database models} and standard {database} extensions for {COBOL}. CODASYL was formed in 1959 to guide the development of a {standard} {programming language} that could be used on many computers. Members came from industry and government {data processing} departments. Its goal was to promote more effective data {systems analysis}, design and implementation. It published specifications for various languages over the years, handing these over to official standards bodies ({ISO}, {ANSI} or their predecessors) for formal standardisation. The 1965 List Processing Task Force worked on the {IDS/I} database extension. It later renamed itself to the Data Base Task Group (DBTG) and publishing the Codasyl Data Model, the first to allow one-to-many {relations}. This work also introduced {data definition languages} (DDLs) to define the {database schema} and a {data manipulation language} (DML) to be embedded in COBOL programs to request and update data in the database. Interest in CODASYL declined with the rise of {relational databases} beginning in the early 1980s. (2013-12-29)

Connection Definition Language "language" (condela) A {procedural}, parallel language for defining {neural networks}. {(ftp://tut.cis.ohio-state.edu/pub/condela)}. (1994-11-30)

Consciousness: (Lat. conscire, to know, to be cognizant of) A designation applied to conscious mind as opposed to a supposedly unconscious or subconscious mind (See Subconscious Mind; Unconscious Mind), and to the whole domain of the physical and non-mental. Consciousness is generally considered an indefinable term or rather a term definable only by direct introspective appeal to conscious experiences. The indefinability of consciousness is expressed by Sir William Hamilton: "Consciousness cannot be defined: we may be ourselves fully aware what consciousness is, but we cannot without confusion convey to others a definition of what we ourselves clearly apprehend. The reason is plain: consciousness lies at the root of all knowledge." (Lectures on Metaphysics, I, 191.) Ladd's frequently quoted definition of consciousness succeeds only in indicating the circumstances under which it is directly observable: "Whatever we are when we are awake, as contrasted with what we are when we sink into a profound and dreamless sleep, that is to be conscious."

Contextual definition: See incomplete symbol. Contiguity, Association by: A type of association, recognized by Aristotle, whereby one of two states of mind, which have been coexistent or successive, tends to recall the other. This type of association has sometimes been considered the basic type to which all others are reducible. See Association, laws of. -- L.W.

continuous function "mathematics" A {function} f : D -" E, where D and E are {cpos}, is continuous if it is {monotonic} and f (lub Z) = lub { f z | z in Z } for all {directed} sets Z in D. In other words, the image of the lub is the lub of any directed image. All {additive} functions (functions which preserve all lubs) are continuous. A continuous function has a {least fixed point} if its {domain} has a least element, {bottom} (i.e. it is a cpo or a "pointed cpo" depending on your definition of a cpo). The {least fixed point} is fix f = lub {f^n bottom | n = 0..infinity} (1994-11-30)

Coordinated Universal Time "time, standard" (UTC, World Time) The standard time common to every place in the world. UTC is derived from {International Atomic Time} (TAI) by the addition of a whole number of "leap seconds" to synchronise it with {Universal Time} 1 (UT1), thus allowing for the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit, the rotational axis tilt (23.5 degrees), but still showing the Earth's irregular rotation, on which UT1 is based. Coordinated Universal Time is expressed using a 24-hour clock and uses the {Gregorian calendar}. It is used in aeroplane and ship navigation, where it also sometimes known by the military name, "Zulu time". "Zulu" in the phonetic alphabet stands for "Z" which stands for longitude zero. UTC was defined by the International Radio Consultative Committee ({CCIR}), a predecessor of the {ITU-T}. CCIR Recommendation 460-4, or ITU-T Recommendation X.680 (7/94), contains the full definition. The language-independent international abbreviation, UTC, is neither English nor French. It means both "Coordinated Universal Time" and "Temps Universel Coordonné". {BIPM (http://www.bipm.org/enus/5_Scientific/c_time/time_1.html)}. {The Royal Observatory Greenwich (http://rog.nmm.ac.uk/leaflets/time/time.html)}. {History of UTC and GMT (http://ecco.bsee.swin.edu.au/chronos/GMT-explained.html)}. {U.S. National Institute of Standards & Technology (http://its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-009/_1277.htm)}. {UK National Physical Laboratory (http://npl.co.uk/npl/ctm/time_scales.html)}. {US Naval Observatory (http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/systime.html)}. {International Telecommunications Union (http://itu.int/radioclub/rr/arts02.htm)}. {Earth's irregular rotation (/pub/misc/earth_rotation)}. (2001-08-30)

copyright "legal" The exclusive rights of the owner of the copyright on a work to make and distribute copies, prepare derivative works, and perform and display the work in public (these last two mainly apply to plays, films, dances and the like, but could also apply to software). A work, including a piece of software, is under copyright by default in most coutries, whether of not it displays a copyright notice. However, a copyright notice may make it easier to assert ownership. The copyright owner is the person or company whose name appears in the copyright notice on the box, or the disk or the screen or wherever. Most countries have agreed to uphold each others' copyrights. A copyright notice has three parts. The first can be either the {copyright symbol} (a letter C in a circle), the word "Copyright" or the abbreviation "Copr". Only the first of these is recognised internationally and the common {ASCII} rendering "(C)" is not valid anywhere. This is followed by the name of the copyright holder and the year of publication. The year should be the year of _first_ publication, it is not necessary as some believe to update this every year to the current year. Copyright protection in most countries extends for 50 years after the author's death. Originally, most of the computer industry assumed that only the program's underlying instructions were protected under copyright law but, beginning in the early 1980s, a series of lawsuits involving the video screens of game programs extended protections to the appearance of programs. Use of copyright to restrict redistribution is immoral, unethical and illegitimate. It is a result of brainwashing by monopolists and corporate interests and it violates everyone's rights. Such use of copyrights and patents hamper technological progress by making a naturally abundant resource scarce. Many, from communists to right wing libertarians, are trying to abolish intellectual property myths. See also {public domain}, {copyleft}, {software law}. {Universal Copyright Convention (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/creativity/creative-industries/copyright/)}. {US Copyright Office (http://copyright.gov/)}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:misc.legal.computing}. [Is this definition correct in the UK? In the US? Anywhere?] (2014-01-08)

CORAL 66 A real-time system programming language derived from {JOVIAL} and {ALGOL 60}. It was adopted as the British military standard from 1970 until the arrival of {Ada}. ["Official Definition of CORAL 66", P.M. Woodward et al, HMSO, London, 1970].

CP A concurrent Prolog. "The Concurrent Logic Programming Language CP": Definition and Operational Semantics", V. Saraswat, 14th POPL, ACM 1987, pp.49-62.

CPL Combined Programming Language. U Cambridge and U London. A very complex language, syntactically based on ALGOL 60, with a pure functional subset. Provides the ..where.. form of local definitions. Strongly typed but has a "general" type enabling a weak form of polymorphism. Functions may be defined as either normal or applicative order. Typed array and polymorphic list structures. List selection is through structure matching. Partially implemented on the Titan (Atlas 2) computer at Cambridge. Led to the much simpler BCPL. "The Main Features of CPL", D.W. Barron et al, Computer J 6(2):134-143 (Jul 1963).

C preprocessor "tool, programming" (cpp) The standard {Unix} {macro}-expansion utility run as the first phase of the {C} compiler, {cc}. Cpp interprets lines beginning with "

cproto "programming, tool" A translator , written by Chin Huang at canrem.com, that generates {ANSI C} {function prototypes} from {K&R} {C} function definitions. It can also translate function definition heads between {K&R} style and {ANSI C} style. Posted to {comp.sources}.misc, volume 29. Runs under {Unix}, {MS-DOS}. (1992-07-18)

Criterion ethical: In ethics the main problem is often said to be the finding of a criterion of virtue, or of rightness, or of goodness, depending on which of these concepts is taken as basic; and the quest for a moral standard, or for an ethical first principle, or for a summum bonum may generally be construed as a quest for such a criterion (e.g., Kant's first form of the categorical imperative may be interpreted as a criterion of rightness). Hence to find a criterion of, say, goodness is to find a characteristic whose presence, absence, or degree may be taken as a mark of the presence, absence, or degree of goodness. Thus hedonists hold pleasantness to be such a characteristic. Often, finding a criterion of a characteristic is taken as equivalent to finding a definition of that characteristic. Strictly, this is not the case, for a characteristic may serve as a criterion of another with which it is not identical. Pleasantness might be a criterion of goodness without being identical with it, if only the above relation held between pleasantness and goodness. However, the discovery of a definition of a characteristic does normally furnish a criterion of that characteristic. Vide the definition of a right act as an act conducive to the greatest happiness.

cybernetics "robotics" /si:`b*-net'iks/ The study of control and communication in living and man-made systems. The term was first proposed by {Norbert Wiener} in the book referenced below. Originally, cybernetics drew upon electrical engineering, mathematics, biology, neurophysiology, anthropology, and psychology to study and describe actions, feedback, and response in systems of all kinds. It aims to understand the similarities and differences in internal workings of organic and machine processes and, by formulating abstract concepts common to all systems, to understand their behaviour. Modern "second-order cybernetics" places emphasis on how the process of constructing models of the systems is influenced by those very systems, hence an elegant definition - "applied epistemology". Related recent developments (often referred to as {sciences of complexity}) that are distinguished as separate disciplines are {artificial intelligence}, {neural networks}, {systems theory}, and {chaos theory}, but the boundaries between those and cybernetics proper are not precise. See also {robot}. {The Cybernetics Society (http://cybsoc.org)} of the UK. {American Society for Cybernetics (http://asc-cybernetics.org/)}. {IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society (http://isye.gatech.edu/ieee-smc/)}. {International project "Principia Cybernetica" (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DEFAULT.html)}. ["Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine", N. Wiener, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1948] (2002-01-01)

database 1. "database" One or more large structured sets of persistent data, usually associated with software to update and {query} the data. A simple database might be a single file containing many {records}, each of which contains the same set of {fields} where each field is a certain fixed width. A database is one component of a {database management system}. See also {ANSI/SPARC Architecture}, {atomic}, {blob}, {data definition language}, {deductive database}, {distributed database}, {fourth generation language}, {functional database}, {object-oriented database}, {relational database}. {Carol E. Brown's tutorial (http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aies/www.bus.orst.edu/faculty/brownc/lectures/db_tutor/db_tutor.htm)}. 2. "hypertext" A collection of {nodes} managed and stored in one place and all accessible via the same {server}. {Links} outside this are "external", and those inside are "internal". On the {World-Wide Web} this is called a {website}. 3. All the facts and rules comprising a {logic programming} program. (2005-11-17)

Data definition language "language, database" (DDL) 1. A language enabling the structure and instances of a {database} to be defined in a human-, and machine-readable form. {SQL} contains DDL commands that can be used either interactively, or within programming language {source code}, to define databases and their components, e.g. CREATE and DROP. See also {Data manipulation language} (DML). 2. A specification language for databases, based on the {entity-relationship model}. It is used in the {Eli} {compiler-compiler} to manage type definitions. ["DDL Reference Manual", ECE Dept U Colorado, 1991]. (1999-04-26)

Data Manipulation Language "language, database" (DML, or {Data Management Language}) A language for the manipulation of data in a {database} by applications and/or directly by end-users. {SQL} contains DML commands such as INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE. See also {Data Definition Language} (DDL). (1999-04-26)

DCP {definitional constraint programming}

dd A {Unix} copy command with special options suitable for block-oriented devices; it was often used in heavy-handed system maintenance, as in "Let's "dd" the {root partition} onto a tape, then use the {boot PROM} to load it back on to a new disk". dd had a distinctly non-Unixy keyword option syntax reminiscent of {IBM} {System/360} JCL (which had an elaborate DD "Dataset Definition" specification for I/O devices). Though the command filled a need, the interface design was clearly a prank. [{Jargon File}] (2005-08-08)

DDL 1. ["A Digital System Design Language (DDL)", J.R. Duley, IEEE Trans on Computers c-17(9), pp. 850-861, Sep 1968]. 2. "language, games" An {adventure} language developed by M. Urban, C. Kostanick et al of the {UCLA} Computer Club. DDL was the forerunner of {ADL}. 3. {Data Definition Language}. 4. {Document Description Language}. 5. {Dynamic Data Exchange}. (Originally "Linking"). (1997-06-05)

debugging an empty file "programming, humour" A humourous definition of {programming} that considers a complete absence of any code as a {bug} to be fixed. {test-driven development} proceeds by the programmer writing tests for code that doesn't exist yet, which could be described as testing an empty file. (2012-05-01)

Deduction: (Lat. deductio, a leading down) Necessary analytical inference. (a) In logic: inference in which a conclusion follows necessarily from one or more given premisses. Definitions given have usually required that the conclusion be of lesser generality than one of the premisses, and have sometimes explicitly excluded immediate inference; but neither restriction fits very well with the ordinary actual use of the word. (b) In psychology, analytical reasoning from general to particular or less general. The mental drawing of conclusions from given postulates. Deduction of the Categories: (In Kant: Deduktion der Kategorien) Transcendental deduction: An exposition of the nature and possibility of a priori forms and the explanation and justification of their use as necessary conditions of experience. Empirical deduction: Factual explanation of how concepts arise in experience and reflection. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

definable ::: a. --> Capable of being defined, limited, or explained; determinable; describable by definition; ascertainable; as, definable limits; definable distinctions or regulations; definable words.

definement ::: n. --> The act of defining; definition; description.

Definition: In the development of a logistic system (q. v.) it is usually desirable to introduce new notations, beyond what is afforded by the primitive symbols alone, by means of syntactical definitions or nominal definitions, i.e., conventions which provide that certain symbols or expressions shall stand (as substitutes or abbreviations) for particular formulas of the system. This may be done either by particular definitions, each introducing a symbol or expression to stand for some one formula, or by schemata of definition, providing that any expression of a certain form shall stand for a certain corresponding formula (so condensing many -- often infinitely many -- particular definitions into a single schema). Such definitions, whether particular definitions or schemata, are indicated, in articles herein by the present writer, by an arrow →, the new notation introduced (the definiendum) being placed at the left, or base of the arrow, and the formula for which it shall stand (the definiens) being placed at the right, or head, of the arrow. Another sign commonly employed for the same purpose (instead of the arrow) is the equality sign = with the letters Df, or df, appearing either as a subscript or separately after the definiens.

Definition of a term: (in Scholasticism)

Definitions by Disciples

Definitions by Sri Aurobindo and Mother

Delta-4 Definition and Design of an open Dependable Distributed system architecture. An Esprit project investigating the achievement of dependability in open distributed systems, including real-time systems.

Descartes, Rene: See Cartesianism. Description, Knowledge by: (Lat. de + scribere, to write) Knowledge about things in contrast to direct acquaintance with things. See Acquaintance, Knowledge by. Description is opposed to exact definition in the Port Royal Logic (Part II, ch. XVI). Among the first to contrast description and acquaintance was G. Grote (Exploratio Philosophica, p. 60. See also W. James, Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 221 ff. and B. Russell, Problems of Philosophy, ch. V.) -- L.W.

Diallelon: A vicious circle (q. v.) in definition. -- A. C.

Dictionary.com gives us these definitions.

dictionary flame [{Usenet}] An attempt to sidetrack a debate away from issues by insisting on meanings for key terms that presuppose a desired conclusion or smuggle in an implicit premise. A common tactic of people who prefer argument over definitions to disputes about reality. Compare {spelling flame}. [{Jargon File}]

Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures "algorithm" (DADS) A dictionary of {algorithms}, algorithmic techniques, {data structures}, archetypal problems and related definitions started by Paul Black in 1998. {(https://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/)}. (2019-04-26)

differentiation ::: n. --> The act of differentiating.
The act of distinguishing or describing a thing, by giving its different, or specific difference; exact definition or determination.
The gradual formation or production of organs or parts by a process of evolution or development, as when the seed develops the root and the stem, the initial stem develops the leaf, branches, and flower buds; or in animal life, when the germ evolves the


D. Interpretations of Probability. The methods and results of mathematical probability (and of probability in general) are the subject of much controversy as regards their interpretation and value. Among the various theories proposed, we shall consider the following Probability as a measure of belief, probability as the relative frequency of events, probability as the truth-frequency of types of argument, probability as a primitive notion, probability as an operational concept, probability as a limit of frequencies, and probability as a physical magnitude determined by axioms. I. Probability as a Measure of Belief: According to this theory, probability is the measure or relative degree of rational credence to be attached to facts or statements on the strength of valid motives. This type of probability is sometimes difficult to estimate, as it may be qualitative as well as quantitative. When considered in its mathematical aspects, the measure of probable inference depends on the preponderance or failure of operative causes or observed occurrences of the case under investigation. This conception involves axioms leading to the classic rule of Laplace, namely: The measure of probability of any one of mutually exclusive and apriori equiprobable possibilities, is the ratio of the number of favorable possibilities to the total number of possibilities. In probability operations, this rule is taken as the definition of direct probability for those cases where it is applicable. The main objections against this interpretation are: that probability is largely subjective, or at least independent of direct experience; that equiprobability is taken as an apriori notion, although the ways of asserting it are empirical; that the conditions of valid equiprobability are not stated definitely; that equiprobability is difficult to determine actually in all cases; that it is difficult to attach an adequate probability to a complex event from the mere knowledge of the probabilities of its component parts, and that the notion of probability is not general, as it does not cover such cases as the inductive derivation of probabilities from statistical data. II. Probability as a Relative Frequency. This interpretation is based on the nature of events, and not on any subjective considerations. It deals with the rate with which an event will occur in a class of events. Hence, it considers probability as the ratio of frequency of true results to true conditions, and it gives as its measure the relative frequency leading from true conditions to true results. What is meant when a set of calculations predict that an experiment will yield a result A with probability P, is that the relative frequency of A is expected to approximate the number P in a long series of such experiments. This conception seems to be more concerned with empirical probabilities, because the calculations assumed are mostly based on statistical data or material assumptions suggested by past experiments. It is valuable in so far as it satisfies the practical necessity of considering probability aggregates in such problems. The main objections against this interpretation are: that it does not seem capable of expressing satisfactorily what is meant by the probability of an event being true; that its conclusions are more or less probable, owing to the difficulty of defining a proper standard for comparing ratios; that neither its rational nor its statistical evidence is made clear; that the degree of relevance of that evidence is not properly determined, on account of the theoretical indefinite ness of both the true numerical value of the probability and of the evidence assumed, and that it is operational in form only, but not in fact, because it involves the infinite without proper limitations. III. Probability as Truth-Frequency of Types of Arguments: In this interpretation, which is due mainly to Peirce and Venn, probability is shifted from the events to the propositions about them; instead of considering types and classes of events, it considers types and classes of propositions. Probability is thus the ability to give an objective reading to the relative tiuth of propositions dealing with singular events. This ability can be used successfully in interpreting definite and indefinite numerical probabilities, by taking statistical evaluations and making appropriate verbal changes in their formulation. Once assessed, the relative truth of the propositions considered can be communicated to facts expressed by these propositions. But neither the propositions nor the facts as such have a probability in themselves. With these assumptions, a proposition has a degree of probability, only if it is considered as a member of a class of propositions; and that degree is expressed by the proportion of true propositions to the total number of propositions in the class. Hence, probability is the ratio of true propositions to all the propositions of the class examined, if the class is finite, or to all the propositions of the same type in the long run, if the class is infinite. In the first case, fair sampling may cover the restrictions of a finite class; in the second case, the use of infinite series offers a practical limitation for the evidence considered. But in both cases, probability varies with the class or type chosen, and probability-inferences are limited by convention to those cases where numerical values can be assigned to the ratios considered. It will be observed that this interpretation of probability is similar to the relative frequency theory. The difference between these two theories is more formal than material in both cases the probability refers ultimately to kinds of evidence based on objective matter of fact. Hence the Truth-Frequency theory is open to the sime objections as the Relative-Frequency theory, with proper adjustments. An additional difficulty of this theory is that the pragmatic interpretation of truth it involves, has yet to be proved, and the situation is anything but improved by assimilating truth with probability.

diorism ::: n. --> Definition; logical direction.

Diorism: The Greek term in Plato's usage signifies division, distinction; in that of Aristotle, distinction, definition, which is also the meaning today. In mathematics, a statement of the conditions needed in order to solve a problem. -- J.J.R.

distinguish ::: v. t. --> Not set apart from others by visible marks; to make distinctive or discernible by exhibiting differences; to mark off by some characteristic.
To separate by definition of terms or logical division of a subject with regard to difference; as, to distinguish sounds into high and low.
To recognize or discern by marks, signs, or characteristic quality or qualities; to know and discriminate


distributed data warehouse "database" (DDW) Data shared across multiple data repositories, for the purpose of {OLAP}. Each data warehouse may belong to one or many organisations. The sharing im;plies a common format or definition of data elements (e.g. using XML). (2008-03-15)

Divisibility: The property in virtue of which a whole (whether physical, psychical or mathematical) may be divided into parts which do not thereby necessarily sever their relation with the whole. Divisibility usually implies not merely analysis or distinction of parts, but actual or potential resolution into parts. From the beginning philosophers have raised the question whether substances are infinitely or finitely divisible. Ancient materialism conceived of the physical atom as an indivisible substance. Descartes, however, and after him Leibniz, maintained the infinite divisibility of substance. The issue became the basis of Kant's cosmological antinomy (Crit. of pure Reason), from which he concluded that the issue was insoluble in metaphysical terms. In recent decades the question has had to take account of (1) researches in the physical atom, before which the older conception of physical substance has steadily retreated; and (2) the attempt to formulate a satisfactory definition of infinity (q.v.). -- O.F.K.

Document Type Definition "text, standard" (DTD) The definition of a document type in {SGML} or {XML}, consisting of a set of {mark-up} tags and their interpretation. {Docbook DTD home (http://oasis-open.org/docbook/)}. {XML DTD Tutorial (http://xml101.com/dtd)}. (2001-04-30)

Dogma: The Greek term signified a public ordinance of decree, also an opinion. A present meaning: an established, or generally admitted, philosophic opinion explicitly formulated, in a depreciative sense; one accepted on authority without the support of demonstration or experience. Kant calls a directly synthetical proposition grounded on concepts a dogma which he distinguishes from a mathema, which is a similar proposition effected by a construction of concepts. In the history of Christianity dogmas have come to mean definition of revealed truths proposed by the supreme authority of the Church as articles of faith which must be accepted by all its members. -- J.J.R.

Domain Analysis "systems analysis" 1. Determining the operations, data objects, properties and {abstractions} appropriate for designing solutions to problems in a given {domain}. 2. The {domain engineering} activity in which domain knowledge is studied and formalised as a domain definition and a domain specification. A {software reuse} approach that involves combining software components, subsystems, etc., into a single application system. 3. The process of identifying, collecting organising, analysing and representing a {domain model} and software architecture from the study of existing systems, underlying theory, emerging technology and development histories within the domain of interest. 4. The analysis of systems within a domain to discover commonalities and differences among them. (1997-12-26)

domain engineering "systems analysis" 1. The development and evolution of {domain} specific knowledge and artifacts to support the development and evolution of systems in the domain. Domain engineering includes engineering of {domain models}, components, methods and tools and may also include {asset management}. 2. The engineering process of analysing and modelling a domain, designing and modelling a generic solution architecture for a product line within that domain, implementing and using reusable components of that architecture and maintaining and evolving the domain, architecture and implementation models. 3. A reuse-based approach to defining the scope ({domain definition}), specifying the structure ({domain architecture}) and building the Assets (requirements, designs, software code, documentation) for a class of systems, subsystems or applications. Domain engineering can include domain definition, domain analysis, developing the domain architecture domain implementation.

domain model "systems analysis" 1. A definition of the functions, objects, data, requirements, relationships and variations in a particular {domain}. 2. A product of {domain analysis} which provides a representation of the requirements of the domain. The domain model identifies and describes the structure of data, flow of information, functions, constraints and controls within the Domain that are included in software systems in the domain. The Domain Model describes commonalities and variabilities among requirements for software systems in the domain. (1997-12-26)

domain-specific language "language" A machine-processable language whose terms are derived from a {domain model} and that is used for the definition of components or software architectures supporting that domain. A domain-specific language is often used as input to an application generator. (1997-12-26)

domain theory "theory" A branch of mathematics introduced by Dana Scott in 1970 as a mathematical theory of programming languages, and for nearly a quarter of a century developed almost exclusively in connection with {denotational semantics} in computer science. In {denotational semantics} of programming languages, the meaning of a program is taken to be an element of a domain. A domain is a mathematical structure consisting of a set of values (or "points") and an ordering relation, "= on those values. Domain theory is the study of such structures. (""=" is written in {LaTeX} as {\subseteq}) Different domains correspond to the different types of object with which a program deals. In a language containing functions, we might have a domain X -" Y which is the set of functions from domain X to domain Y with the ordering f "= g iff for all x in X, f x "= g x. In the {pure lambda-calculus} all objects are functions or {applications} of functions to other functions. To represent the meaning of such programs, we must solve the {recursive} equation over domains, D = D -" D which states that domain D is ({isomorphic} to) some {function space} from D to itself. I.e. it is a {fixed point} D = F(D) for some operator F that takes a domain D to D -" D. The equivalent equation has no non-trivial solution in {set theory}. There are many definitions of domains, with different properties and suitable for different purposes. One commonly used definition is that of Scott domains, often simply called domains, which are {omega-algebraic}, {consistently complete} {CPOs}. There are domain-theoretic computational models in other branches of mathematics including {dynamical systems}, {fractals}, {measure theory}, {integration theory}, {probability theory}, and {stochastic processes}. See also {abstract interpretation}, {bottom}, {pointed domain}. (1999-12-09)

double-ended queue "algorithm" /dek/ (deque) A {queue} which can have items added or removed from either end[?]. The Knuth reference below reports that the name was coined by E. J. Schweppe. [D. E. Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming. Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms", second edition, Sections 2.2.1, 2.6, Addison-Wesley, 1973]. {Silicon Graphics (http://sgi.com/tech/stl/Deque.html)}. [Correct definition? Example use?] (2003-12-17)

DTD {Document Type Definition}

Ease General purpose parallel programming language, combining the process constructs of CSP and the distributed data structures of Linda. "Programming with Ease: Semiotic Definition of the Language", S.E. Zenith, "zenith-steven@yale.edu" Yale U TR-809, Jul 1990.

ECIP2 An {Esprit} project on the definition of a specification language at the requirement level.

effective number of bits "hardware" (ENOB) An indication of the quality of an {analog to digital converter}. The measurement is related to the test frequency and the {signal-to-noise ratio}. [Better definition?] (1998-06-15)

Eiffel "language" An {object-oriented} language produced by {Bertrand Meyer} in 1985. Eiffel has {classes} with {multiple inheritance} and {repeated inheritance}, {deferred class}es (like {Smalltalk}'s {abstract class}), and {clusters} of classes. Objects can have both {static types} and {dynamic types}. The dynamic type must be a descendant of the static (declared) type. {Dynamic binding} resolves {multiple inheritance} clashes. It has flattened forms of classes, in which all of the inherited features are added at the same level and {generic class}es parametrised by type. Other features are {persistent objects}, {garbage collection}, {exception} handling, {foreign language interface}. Classes may be equipped with {assertions} (routine preconditions and postconditions, class {invariants}) implementing the theory of "{Design by Contract}" and helping produce more reliable software. Eiffel is compiled to {C}. It comes with libraries containing several hundred classes: data structures and {algorithms} (EiffelBase), graphics and user interfaces (EiffelVision) and language analysis (EiffelLex, EiffelParse). The first release of Eiffel was release 1.4, introduced at the first {OOPSLA} in October 1986. The language proper was first described in a University of California, Santa Barbara report dated September 1985. Eiffel is available, with different libraries, from several sources including {Interactive Software Engineering}, USA (ISE Eiffel version 3.3); Sig Computer GmbH, Germany (Eiffel/S); and {Tower, Inc.}, Austin (Tower Eiffel). The language definition is administered by an open organisation, the Nonprofit International Consortium for Eiffel (NICE). There is a standard kernel library. An {Eiffel source checker} and compiler {front-end} is available. See also {Sather}, {Distributed Eiffel}, {Lace}, {shelf}. E-mail: "queries@eiffel.com". ["Eiffel: The Language", Bertrand Meyer, P-H 1992]. (1998-11-15)

Eiffel source checker A compiler {front-end} for {Eiffel} 3 by Olaf Langmack "langmack@inf.fu-berlin.de" and Burghardt Groeber. It was generated automatically with the {Karlsruhe toolbox} for compiler construction according to the most recent public language definition. The {parser} derives an easy-to-use {abstract syntax tree}, supports elementary error recovery and provides a precise source code indication of errors. It performs a strict syntax check and analyses 4000 lines of source code per second on a {Sun} {SPARC} {workstation}. {(ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/heron/ep.tar.Z)}. (1992-12-14)

Ekam adwaitam: Sanskrit for the One without a second; the famous definition of God in the Chandogya Upanishad.

elegant (From Mathematics) Combining simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of design. Higher praise than "clever", "winning" or even {cuspy}. The French aviator, adventurer, and author Antoine de Saint-Exup'ery, probably best known for his classic children's book "The Little Prince", was also an aircraft designer. He gave us perhaps the best definition of engineering elegance when he said "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-29)

Ellie "language" An {object-oriented} language with {fine-grained parallelism} for {distributed computing}. Ellie is based on {BETA}, {Smalltalk}, and others. Parallelism is supported by {unbounded RPC} and "{future}" {objects}. Synchronisation is by {dynamic interfaces}. {Classes}, {methods}, {blocks}, and {objects} are all modelled by {first-class} "Ellie objects". It supports {genericity}, {polymorphism}, and {delegation}/{inheritance}. {(http://diku.dk/ellie/papers/)}? ["Ellie Language Definition Report", Birger Andersen "birger.andersen@acm.org", SIGPLAN Notices 25(11):45-65, Nov 1990]. (2000-04-02)

Empiricism: (1) A proposition about the sources of knowledge: that the sole source of knowledge is experience, or that either no knowledge at all or no knowledge with existential reference is possible independently of experience. Experience (q.v.) may be understood as either all conscious content, data of the senses only, or other designated content. Such empiricism may take the form of denial that any knowledge or at least knowledge about existents can be obtained a priori (q.v.), that is, denial that there are universal and necessary truths, denial that there is knowledge which holds regardless of past, present, or future experience; denial that there is instinctive, innate, or inborn knowledge; denial that the test of truth is clarity to natural reason or self-evidence, denial that one can gain certain knowledge by finding something the opposite of which is inconceivable; denial thit there are any necessary presuppositions of all knowledge or of anything known certainly, denial that any truths can be established by the fact that to deny them implies their reaffirmation; or denial that conventional or aibitrary definitions or assumptions yield knowledge.

enumerated type "programming" (Or "enumeration") A {type} which includes in its definition an exhaustive list of possible values for variables of that type. Common examples include {Boolean}, which takes values from the list [true, false], and day-of-week which takes values [Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday]. Enumerated types are a feature of {strongly typed languages}, including {C} and {Ada}. Characters, (fixed-size) integers and even {floating-point} types could be (but are not usually) considered to be (large) enumerated types. (1996-11-28)

equivalence ::: n. --> The condition of being equivalent or equal; equality of worth, value, signification, or force; as, an equivalence of definitions.
Equal power or force; equivalent amount.
The quantity of the combining power of an atom, expressed in hydrogen units; the number of hydrogen atoms can combine with, or be exchanged for; valency. See Valence.
The degree of combining power as determined by


Essence: (Lat. essentia, fr. essens, participle of esse, to be) The being or power of a thing; necessary internal relation or function. The Greek philosophers identified essence and substance in the term, ousia. In classic Latin essence was the idea or law of a thing. But in scholastic philosophy the distinction between essence and substance became important. Essence began to be identified, as in its root meaning, with being, or power. For Locke, the being whereby a thing is what it is. For Kant, the primary internal principle of all that belongs to the being of a thing. For Peirce, the intelligible element of the possibility of being. (a) In logic: definition or the elements of a thing; the genus and differentia. See Definition. (b) In epistemology: that intelligible character which defines what an indefinite predicate asserts. The universal possibility of a thing. Opposite of existence. Syn. with being, possibility. See Santayana's use of the term in Realm of Essence, as a hybrid of intuited datum and scholastic essence (q.v.). See Eternal object. -- J.K.F.

Essence, (Scholastic): The essence of a thing is its nature considered independently of its existence. Also non-existent things and those which cannot exist at all have a proper essence. The definition details all properties making up the essence. It is doubtful whether we can give of a ny thing a truly essential definition with the one exception of man: man is a rational animal. Most of the definitions have to be content with naming accidental features, because we do not attain a direct knowledge of substances. Synonymously the term "quiddity" is used. The essence implies, in the case of corporeal beings, matter, but not as actually contained, since the essence is individualized by prime matter. But it is of the essence of material things to be material. Thus, Essence is not "form" properly speaking. See Distinction, Form, Individuation, Matter. -- R.A.

Eternity [from Latin aeternus, aeviternus from aevum an age] Originally eternity signified time divided into endless cycles stretching from the indefinite past through the present into the indefinite future, comprised within encompassing frontierless duration. Eternity therefore is the abstract sum total of endlessly cyclical time periods. As used in The Secret Doctrine, eternity often means a kosmic mahakalpa or manifestation period; thus the seven eternities means seven kosmic periods equivalent to 100 Years of Brahma or 311,040,000,000,000 human years. Even in the Hindu Vishnu-Purana, immortality, which is given as a definition of eternity, means merely “existence to the end of the Kalpa” (2:8). Occasionally used as a synonym for duration.

EULER [Named after the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-1783)] A revision of {ALGOL} by {Niklaus Wirth}. A small predecessor of {Pascal}. ["EULER: A Generalisation of ALGOL and Its Formal Definition", N. Wirth, CACM 9(1) (Jan 1966) and 9(2) (Feb 1966)].

European Computer-Industry Research Centre GmbH "body" (ECRC) A joint research organisation founded in 1984 on the initiative of three major European manufacturers: {Bull} (France), {ICL} (UK) and {Siemens} (Germany). Its activities were intended to enhance the future competitive ability of the European {Information Technology} industry and thus complement the work of national and international bodies. The Centre is intended to be the breeding ground for those ideas, techniques and products which are essential for the future use of electronic information processing. The work of the Centre will focus on advanced information processing technology for the next generation of computers. ECRC is an independent company, owned equally by its shareholders. The formal interface between ECRC and its shareholders consists of two bodies: The Shareholders' Council, which approves the Centre's programmes and budgets and supervises their execution and the Scientific Advisory Board, which advises the Shareholders' Council in determining future research directions. There are many collaborations between ECRC and its shareholders' companies on specific projects (Technology Transfer, prospective studies etc). The Centre is staffed by highly qualified scientists drawn from different countries. Research staff are hired directly by ECRC, as well as some who come on assignment from the member companies, and others seconded from public research agencies and universities. Seminars are held which bring together specialists from the Centre and the member companies. ECRC's mission is to pursue research in fundamental areas of computer science. The aim is to develop the theory, methodologies and tools needed to build innovative computer applications. ECRC contributes actively to the international effort that is expanding the frontiers of knowledge in computer science. It plays an important role in bridging the gap between research and industry by striving to work at the highest academic level with a strong industrial focus. ECRC constitutes an opportunity in Europe for the best scientists and offers young researchers the possibility to mature in an environment which exposes them to both fundamental research and the process of delivering the results to industry. ECRC plays an important role in Europe and is involved in several European Community initiatives. It is regularly consulted by the Commission of the European Communities on strategic issues, such as the definition of future research plans, international co-operation and relationships between academia and industry. Address: ECRC GmbH, Arabellastrasse 17, D-81925 Munich, Germany. {(http://ecrc.de/)}. Telephone: +49 (89) 926 99 0. Fax: +49 (89) 926 99 170. (1994-12-01)

exabyte "unit, data" (EB) A unit of {data} equal to 10^18 {bytes} but see {binary prefix} for other definitions. An exabyte is exactly 1000^6 bytes or 1000 {petabytes}. 1000 exabytes are one {zettabyte}. See {prefix}. (2013-11-04)

Experience: (Lat. Experientia, from experiri: to test) The condition or state of subjectivity or awareness. (The term differs from Consciousness by emphasizing the temporal or passing character of affective undergoing. Usage, however, is not uniform, since its definition involves a theoretical standpoint. Thus Bradley identified it with Consciousness, while W. James used it to mean neutral phenomenon, a That or Given, without implications of either subjectivity or objectivity.) -- W.L.

explanation ::: n. --> The act of explaining, expounding, or interpreting; the act of clearing from obscurity and making intelligible; as, the explanation of a passage in Scripture, or of a contract or treaty.
That which explains or makes clear; as, a satisfactory explanation.
The meaning attributed to anything by one who explains it; definition; interpretation; sense.
A mutual exposition of terms, meaning, or motives,


Express 1. A language supporting {concurrency} through {message passing} to named message queues from {ParaSoft} Corporation {(ftp://ftp.parasoft.com/express/docs)}. 2. Data definition language, meant to become an ISO standard for product data representation and exchange. TC 184/SC4 N83, ISO, 1991-05-31. E-mail: "smith@cme.nist.gov". 3. A data modelling language adopted by the {ISO} working group on {STEP}.

Extended Self-containing Prolog "language" (ESP) An {object-oriented} extension of {KL0} by Chikayama. ESP has {backtracking}-based control, {unification}-based parameter passing and {object-oriented} calling. An {object} in ESP is an {axiom} set. A {class} definition consists of nature definitions ({inheritance}), slot definitions ({class variables}) and {clause} definitions. ESP has {multiple inheritance} similar to {Flavors}. It has been implemented for {ICOT}'s {PSI} Sequential Inference machine. See also {CESP}. E-mail: "k-hata@air.co.jp". ["Unique Features of ESP", T. Chikayama, Proc Intl Conf 5th Gen Comp Sys, ICOT 1984]. (1994-12-08)

F. B. Fitch, The consistency of the ramified Principia, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 3 (1938), pp. 140-149. Ramsey, Frank Plumpton: (1903-1930) In the light of Wittgenstein's work, he proposed several modifications in the Principia Mathematica treatment of functions. These, he urged, made possible the omission of the Axiom of Reducibility, a simplification of the Theory of Types and an improved definition of identity. In stimulating philosophical papers he denied any ultimate distinction between particulars and universals, defended a Wittgensteinian interpretation of general propositions, proposed a subjective theory of probability and a pragmatic view of induction, and offered a theory of theories and a theory of the nature of causal propositions. Most of his work is included in The Foundations of Mathematics, London, Kegan Paul, 1931. -- C.A.B.

FEL Function Equation Language. Programs are sets of definitions. Sequences are lists stored in consecutive memory. "FEL Programmer's Guide", R. M. Keller, AMPS TR 7, U Utah, March 1982.

Figure (syllogistic): The moods of the categorical syllogism (see Logic, formal, § 5) are divided into four figures, according as the middle term is subject in the major premiss and predicate in the minor premiss (first figure), or predicate in both premisses (second figure), or subject in both premisses (third figure), or predicate in the major premiss and subject in the minor premiss (fourth figure). Aristotle recognized only three figures, including the moods of the fourth figure among those of the first. The separation of the fourth figure from the first (ascribed to Galen) is accompanied by a redefinition of "major" and "minor" -- so that the major premiss is that involving the predicate of the conclusion, and the minor premiss is that involving the subject of the conclusion. -- A.C.

F+L "language" Functions plus Logic. Equational clauses within function definitions to solve for {logic variable} bindings. ["Functions plus Logic in Theory and Practice", R.B. Kieburtz, Feb 1987, unpublished]. (1994-10-20)

F. Logos: (Gr. logos) A term denoting either reason or one of the expressions of reason or order in words or things; such as word, discourse, definition, formula, principle, mathematical ratio. In its most important sense in philosophy it refers to a cosmic reason which gives order and intelligibility to the world. In this sense the doctrine first appears in Heraclitus, who affirms the reality of a Logos analogous to the reason in man that regulates all physical processes and is the source of all human law. The conception is developed more fully by the Stoics, who conceive of the world as a living unity, perfect in the adaptation of its parts to one another and to the whole, and animated by an immanent and purposive reason. As the creative source of this cosmic unity and perfection the world-reason is called the seminal reason (logos spermatikos), and is conceived as containing within itself a multitude of logoi spermatikoi, or intelligible and purposive forms operating in the world. As regulating all things, the Logos is identified with Fate (heimarmene); as directing all things toward the good, with Providence (pronoia); and as the ordered course of events, with Nature (physis). In Philo of Alexandria, in whom Hebrew modes of thought mingle with Greek concepts, the Logos becomes the immaterial instrument, and even at times the personal agency, through which the creative activity of the transcendent God is exerted upon the world. In Christian philosophy the Logos becomes the second person of the Trinity and its functions are identified with the creative, illuminating and redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Finally the Logos plays an important role in the system of Plotinus, where it appears as the creative and form-giving aspect of Intelligence (Nous), the second of the three Hypostases. -- G. R.

Fohat ::: An extremely mystical term used in the occultism of Tibet for what in Sanskrit is called daiviprakriti,which means "divine nature" or "primordial nature," and which also can be called "primordial light." Inone sense of the word fohat may be considered as almost identical with the old mystical Greek eros, butfohat as a technical term contains within itself a far wider range of ideas than does the Greek term.Fohat may be considered as the essence of kosmic electricity, provided, however, that in this definitionwe endow the term electricity with the attribute of consciousness; or, to put it more accurately, providedthat we understand that the essence of electricity is indeed consciousness. It is ever-present and activefrom the primordial beginnings of a manvantara to its last end, nor does it then actually pass out ofexistence, but becomes quiescent or latent as it were, sleeping or dormant during the kosmic pralaya. Inone sense of the word it may be called kosmic will, for the analogy with the conscious will in humanbeings is exceedingly close. It is the incessantly active, ever-moving, impelling or urging force in nature,from the beginning of the evolution of a universe or of a solar system to its end.H. P. Blavatsky, quoting one of the ancient mystically occult works, says in substance: "Fohat is thesteed and thought is the rider." If, however, we liken fohat to what the conscious will is in the humanbeing, we must then think only of the lower or substantial parts -- the pranic activities -- of the humanwill, for behind the substantial parts stands always the directing and guiding consciousness. Fohat beingincessantly active is therefore both formative and destructive, because it is through the ceaseless workingof fohat that unending change continues -- the passing of one phase of manifested existence to anotherphase, whether this manifested existence be a solar system or a planetary chain or a globe or humanbeing or, indeed, any entity.Fohat is as active among the electrons of an atom and among the atoms themselves as it is among thesuns. In one sense it may be called the vital force of the universe, corresponding from this viewpoint tothe pranic activity on all the seven planes of the human constitution.

font "text" A set of {glyphs} ({images}) representing the {characters} from some particular {character set} in a particular size and {typeface}. The image of each character may be encoded either as a {bitmap} (in a {bitmap font}) or by a higher-level description in terms of lines and areas (an {outline font}). There are several different computer representations for fonts, the most widely known are {Adobe Systems, Inc.}'s {PostScript} font definitions and {Apple}'s {TrueType}. {Window systems} can display different fonts on the screen and print them. [Other types of font?] (2001-04-27)

For convenience of statement, we confine attention to the pure functional calculus of first order. The first step in the extension consists in introducing quantifiers such as (F1), (EF1), (F2), (EF3), etc., binding n-adic functional variables. Corresponding changes are made in the definition of a formula and in the lists of primitive formulas and primitive rules of inference, allowing for these new kinds of bound variables. The resulting system is the functional calculus of second order. Then the next step consists in introducing new kinds of functional variables; namely for every finite ordered set k, l, m, . . . , p of i non-negative integers (i = 1, 2, 3, . . .) an infinite list of functional variables Fklm . . .p, Gklm . . .p, . . . , each of which denotes ambiguously any i-adic propositional function for which the first argument may be any (k-1)-adic propositional function of individuals, the second argument any (l-1)-adic propositional function of individuals, etc. (if one of the integers k, l, m, . . . , p is 1 the corresponding argument is a proposition -- if 0, an individual). Then quantifiers are introduced binding these new kinds of functional variables; and so on. The process of alternately introducing new kinds of functional variables (denoting propositional functions which take as arguments propositional functions of kinds for which variables have already been introduced) and quantifiers binding the new kinds of functional variables, with appropriate extension at each stage of the definition of a formula and the lists of primitive formulas and primitive rules of inference, may be continued to infinity. This leads to what we may call the functional calculus of order omega, embodying the (so-called simple) theory of types.

formal argument "programming" (Or "parameter") A name in a {function} or {subroutine} definition that is replaced by, or bound to, the corresponding {actual argument} when the function or subroutine is called. In many languages formal arguments behave like {local variables} which get initialised on entry. See: {argument}. (2002-07-02)

FORTH 1. "language" An interactive extensible language using {postfix syntax} and a data stack, developed by Charles H. Moore in the 1960s. FORTH is highly user-configurable and there are many different implementations, the following description is of a typical default configuration. Forth programs are structured as lists of "words" - FORTH's term which encompasses language keywords, primitives and user-defined {subroutines}. Forth takes the idea of subroutines to an extreme - nearly everything is a subroutine. A word is any string of characters except the separator which defaults to space. Numbers are treated specially. Words are read one at a time from the input stream and either executed immediately ("interpretive execution") or compiled as part of the definition of a new word. The sequential nature of list execution and the implicit use of the data stack (numbers appearing in the lists are pushed to the stack as they are encountered) imply postfix syntax. Although postfix notation is initially difficult, experienced users find it simple and efficient. Words appearing in executable lists may be "{primitives}" (simple {assembly language} operations), names of previously compiled procedures or other special words. A procedure definition is introduced by ":" and ended with ";" and is compiled as it is read. Most Forth dialects include the source language structures BEGIN-AGAIN, BEGIN-WHILE-REPEAT, BEGIN-UNTIL, DO-LOOP, and IF-ELSE-THEN, and others can be added by the user. These are "compiling structures" which may only occur in a procedure definition. FORTH can include in-line {assembly language} between "CODE" and "ENDCODE" or similar constructs. Forth primitives are written entirely in {assembly language}, secondaries contain a mixture. In fact code in-lining is the basis of compilation in some implementations. Once assembled, primitives are used exactly like other words. A significant difference in behaviour can arise, however, from the fact that primitives end with a jump to "NEXT", the entry point of some code called the sequencer, whereas non-primitives end with the address of the "EXIT" primitive. The EXIT code includes the scheduler in some {multi-tasking} systems so a process can be {deschedule}d after executing a non-primitive, but not after a primitive. Forth implementations differ widely. Implementation techniques include {threaded code}, dedicated Forth processors, {macros} at various levels, or interpreters written in another language such as {C}. Some implementations provide {real-time} response, user-defined data structures, {multitasking}, {floating-point} arithmetic, and/or {virtual memory}. Some Forth systems support virtual memory without specific hardware support like {MMUs}. However, Forth virtual memory is usually only a sort of extended data space and does not usually support executable code. FORTH does not distinguish between {operating system} calls and the language. Commands relating to I/O, {file systems} and {virtual memory} are part of the same language as the words for arithmetic, memory access, loops, IF statements, and the user's application. Many Forth systems provide user-declared "vocabularies" which allow the same word to have different meanings in different contexts. Within one vocabulary, re-defining a word causes the previous definition to be hidden from the interpreter (and therefore the compiler), but not from previous definitions. FORTH was first used to guide the telescope at NRAO, Kitt Peak. Moore considered it to be a {fourth-generation language} but his {operating system} wouldn't let him use six letters in a program name, so FOURTH became FORTH. Versions include fig-FORTH, FORTH 79 and FORTH 83. {FAQs (http://complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/faq/faq-general-2.html)}. {ANS Forth standard, dpANS6 (http://taygeta.com/forth/dpans.html)}. FORTH Interest Group, Box 1105, San Carlos CA 94070. See also {51forth}, {F68K}, {cforth}, {E-Forth}, {FORML}, {TILE Forth}. [Leo Brodie, "Starting Forth"]. [Leo Brodie, "Thinking Forth"]. [Jack Woehr, "Forth, the New Model"]. [R.G. Loeliger, "Threaded Interpretive Languages"]. 2. {FOundation for Research and Technology - Hellas}. (1997-04-16)

:::   "For the impersonal Divine is not ultimately an abstraction or a mere principle or a mere state or power and degree of being any more than we ourselves are really such abstractions. The intellect first approaches it through such conceptions, but realisation ends by exceeding them. Through the realisation of higher and higher principles of being and states of conscious existence we arrive not at the annullation of all in a sort of positive zero or even an inexpressible state of existence, but at the transcendent Existence itself which is also the Existent who transcends all definition by personality and yet is always that which is the essence of personality.” *The Synthesis of Yoga

“For the impersonal Divine is not ultimately an abstraction or a mere principle or a mere state or power and degree of being any more than we ourselves are really such abstractions. The intellect first approaches it through such conceptions, but realisation ends by exceeding them. Through the realisation of higher and higher principles of being and states of conscious existence we arrive not at the annullation of all in a sort of positive zero or even an inexpressible state of existence, but at the transcendent Existence itself which is also the Existent who transcends all definition by personality and yet is always that which is the essence of personality.” The Synthesis of Yoga

Fortran IV IBM 1962. For the IBM 7090/94. Many implementations went well beyond the original definition.

fractal "mathematics, graphics" A fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a smaller copy of the whole. Fractals are generally self-similar (bits look like the whole) and independent of scale (they look similar, no matter how close you zoom in). Many mathematical structures are fractals; e.g. {Sierpinski triangle}, {Koch snowflake}, {Peano curve}, {Mandelbrot set} and {Lorenz attractor}. Fractals also describe many real-world objects that do not have simple geometric shapes, such as clouds, mountains, turbulence, and coastlines. {Benoit Mandelbrot}, the discoverer of the {Mandelbrot set}, coined the term "fractal" in 1975 from the Latin fractus or "to break". He defines a fractal as a set for which the {Hausdorff Besicovich dimension} strictly exceeds the {topological dimension}. However, he is not satisfied with this definition as it excludes sets one would consider fractals. {sci.fractals FAQ (ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/usenet/usenet-by-group/sci.fractals/)}. See also {fractal compression}, {fractal dimension}, {Iterated Function System}. {Usenet} newsgroups: {news:sci.fractals}, {news:alt.binaries.pictures.fractals}, {news:comp.graphics}. ["The Fractal Geometry of Nature", Benoit Mandelbrot]. [Are there non-self-similar fractals?] (1997-07-02)

free software "software" Software that everyone is free to copy, redistribute and modify. That implies free software must be available as {source code}, hence "free open source software" - "FOSS". It is usually also free of charge, though anyone can sell free software so long as they don't impose any new restrictions on its redistribution or use. The widespread acceptance of this definition and free software itself owes a great deal to {Richard Stallman} and the {Free Software Foundation}. There are many other kinds of "free software" in the sense of "free of charge". See "{-ware}". {This dictionary} is free in both senses, though since it is documentation not {software} it is distributed under the {GFDL}. (2007-02-09)

Frege, (Friedrich Ludwig) Gottlob, 1848-1925, German mathematician and logician. Professor of mathematics at the University of Jena, 1879-1918. Largely unknown to, or misunderstood by, his contemporaries, he is now regarded by many as "beyond question the greatest logician of the Nineteenth Century" (quotation from Tarski). He must be regarded -- after Boole (q. v.) -- as the second founder of symbolic logic, the essential steps in the passage from the algebra of logic to the logistic method (see the article Logistic system) having been taken in his Begriffsschrift of 1879. In this work there appear tor the first time the propositional calculus in substantially its modern form, the notion of propositional function, the use of quantifiers, the explicit statement of primitive rules of inference, the notion of an hereditary property and the logical analysis of proof by mathematical induction or recursion (q. v.). This last is perhaps the most important element in the definition of an inductive cardinal number (q.v.) and provided the basis for Frege's derivation of arithmetic from logic in his Grundlagen der Anthmetik (1884) and Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, vol. 1 (1893), and vol. 2 (1903). The first volume of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik is the culmination of Frege's work, and we find here many important further ideas. In particular, there is a careful distinction between using a formula to express something else and naming a formula in order to make a syntactical statement about it, quotation marks being used in order to distinguish the name of a formula from the formula itself. In an appendix to the second volume of Grundgesetze , Frege acknowledges the presence of an inconsistency in his system through what is now known as the Russel paradox (see Paradoxes , logical), as had been called to his attention by Russell when the book was nearly through the press. -- A.C.

frob /frob/ 1. [MIT] The {TMRC} definition was "FROB = a protruding arm or trunnion"; by metaphoric extension, a "frob" is any random small thing; an object that you can comfortably hold in one hand; something you can frob (sense 2). See {frobnitz}. 2. Abbreviated form of {frobnicate}. 3. [{MUD}] A command on some {MUDs} that changes a player's experience level (this can be used to make wizards); also, to request {wizard} privileges on the "professional courtesy" grounds that one is a wizard elsewhere. The command is actually "frobnicate" but is universally abbreviated to the shorter form. [{Jargon File}]

functional programming "programming" (FP) A program in a functional language consists of a set of (possibly {recursive}) {function} definitions and an expression whose value is output as the program's result. Functional languages are one kind of {declarative language}. They are mostly based on the {typed lambda-calculus} with constants. There are no {side-effects} to expression evaluation so an expression, e.g. a function applied to certain arguments, will always evaluate to the same value (if its evaluation terminates). Furthermore, an expression can always be replaced by its value without changing the overall result ({referential transparency}). The order of evaluation of subexpressions is determined by the language's {evaluation strategy}. In a {strict} ({call-by-value}) language this will specify that arguments are evaluated before applying a function whereas in a non-strict ({call-by-name}) language arguments are passed unevaluated. Programs written in a functional language are generally compact and elegant, but have tended, until recently, to run slowly and require a lot of memory. Examples of purely functional languages are {Clean}, {FP}, {Haskell}, {Hope}, {Joy}, {LML}, {Miranda}, and {SML}. Many other languages such as {Lisp} have a subset which is purely functional but also contain non-functional constructs. See also {lazy evaluation}, {reduction}. {Lecture notes (ftp://ftp.cs.olemiss.edu/pub/tech-reports/umcis-1995-01.ps)}. or the same {in dvi-format (ftp://ftp.cs.olemiss.edu/pub/tech-reports/umcis-1995-01.dvi)}. {FAQ (http://cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/gmh/faq.html)}. {SEL-HPC Article Archive (http://lpac.ac.uk/SEL-HPC/Articles/)}. (2003-03-25)

Functional variables and functional constants are together called functional symbols (the adjective functional being here understood to refer to propositional functions). Functional symbols are called n-adic if they are either functional variables with subscript n or functional constants denoting n-adic propositional functions of individuals. The formulas of the functional calculus of first order (relative to the given lists of symbols (1), (2), (3), (4)) are all the expressions determined by the eight following rules: all the propositional variables are formulas; if F is a monadic functional symbol and X is an individual variable, [F](X) is a formula; if F is an n-adic functional symbol and X1, X2, . . . , Xn are individual variables (which may or may not be all different), [F](X1, X2, . . . , Xn) is a formula; if A is a formula, ∼[A] is a formula; if A nnd B are formulas, [A][B] is a formula; if A and B are formulas, [A] ∨ [B] is a formula; if A is a formula and X is an individual variable, (X)[A] is a formula; if A is a formula and X is an individual variable, (EX)[A] is a formula. In practice, we omit superfluous brackets and braces (but not parentheses) in writing formulas, nnd we omit subscripts on functional variables in cases where the subscript is sufficiently indicated by the form of the formula in which the functional variable appears. The sentential connectives |, ⊃, ≡, +, are introduced as abbreviations in the same way as in § 1 for the propositional calculus. We make further the following definitions, which are also to be construed as abbreviations, the arrow being read "stands for": [A] ⊃x [B] → (X)[[A] ⊃ [B]]. [A] ≡x [B] → (X)[[A] ≡ [B]]. [A] ∧x [B] → (EX)[[A][B]]. (Here A and B are any formulas, and X is any individual variable. Brackets may be omitted when superfluous.) If F and G denote monadic propositional functions, we say that F(X) ⊃x G(X) expresses formal implication of the function G by the function F, and F(X) ≡x G(X) expresses formal equivalence of the two functions (the adjective formal is perhaps not well chosen here but has become established in use).

fuzzy logic A superset of {Boolean logic} dealing with the concept of partial truth -- {truth values} between "completely true" and "completely false". It was introduced by Dr. Lotfi Zadeh of {UCB} in the 1960's as a means to model the uncertainty of {natural language}. Any specific theory may be generalised from a discrete (or "crisp") form to a continuous (fuzzy) form, e.g. "fuzzy calculus", "fuzzy differential equations" etc. Fuzzy logic replaces Boolean truth values with degrees of truth which are very similar to probabilities except that they need not sum to one. Instead of an assertion pred(X), meaning that X definitely has the property associated with {predicate} "pred", we have a truth function truth(pred(X)) which gives the degree of truth that X has that property. We can combine such values using the standard definitions of fuzzy logic: truth(not x) = 1.0 - truth(x) truth(x and y) = minimum (truth(x), truth(y)) truth(x or y) = maximum (truth(x), truth(y)) (There are other possible definitions for "and" and "or", e.g. using sum and product). If truth values are restricted to 0 and 1 then these functions behave just like their Boolean counterparts. This is known as the "extension principle". Just as a Boolean predicate asserts that its argument definitely belongs to some subset of all objects, a fuzzy predicate gives the degree of truth with which its argument belongs to a {fuzzy subset}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.ai.fuzzy}. E-mail servers: "fuzzynet@aptronix.com", "rnalib@its.bldrdoc.gov", "fuzzy-server@til.com". {(ftp://ftp.hiof.no/pub/Fuzzy)}, {(ftp://ntia.its.bldrdoc.gov/pub/fuzzy)}. {FAQ (ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/comp.answers/fuzzy-logic)}. {James Brule, "Fuzzy systems - a tutorial", 1985 (http://life.anu.edu.au/complex_systems/fuzzy.html)}. {STB Software Catalog (http://krakatoa.jsc.nasa.gov/stb/catalog.html)}, includes a few fuzzy tools. [H.J. Zimmerman, "Fuzzy Sets, Decision Making and Expert Systems", Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1987]. ["Fuzzy Logic, State of the Art", Ed. R. Lowen, Marc Roubens, Theory and Decision Library, D: System theory, Knowledge Engineering and Problem Solving 12, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1993, ISBN 0-7923-2324-6]. (1995-02-21)

GDMO Guidelines for the Definition of Managed Objects. A standard (ISO/IEC 10165-4) for defining data models on ASN.1

gigabyte "unit, data" (GB or colloquially "gig") A unit of {data} equal to one billion {bytes} but see {binary prefix} for other definitions. A gigabyte is 1000^3 {bytes} or 1000 {megabytes}. A human gene sequence (including all the redundant codons) contains about 1.5 gigabytes of data. 1000 gigabytes are one {terabyte}. See {prefix}. {Human genome data content (http://bitesizebio.com/articles/how-much-information-is-stored-in-the-human-genome/)}. (2013-11-03)

Given the relation (dyadic propositional function) ε, the relations of equality and class inclusion may be introduced by the following definitions: ZεY → ε(Z, Y). Z=Y → ZεX ⊃x YεX. Z⊂Y → XεZ ⊃x XεY. Here X, Y, and Z are to be taken as individual variables ("individual" in the technical sense of § 3), and X is to be determined according to an explicit rule so as to be different from Y and Z.

glossary ::: a list of terms in a special subject, field, or area of usage, with accompanying definitions; a partial dictionary.

glossology ::: n. --> The definition and explanation of terms; a glossary.
The science of language; comparative philology; linguistics; glottology.


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TERMINATION You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. 10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See {here (http://gnu.org/copyleft/)}. Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. End of full text of GFDL. (2002-03-09)

Gofer "language" A {lazy} {functional language} designed by Mark Jones "mpj@cs.nott.ac.uk" at the {Programming Research Group}, Oxford, UK in 1991. It is very similar to {Haskell} 1.2. It has {lazy evaluation}, {higher order functions}, {pattern matching}, and {type class}es, lambda, case, conditional and let expressions, and wild card, "as" and {irrefutable patterns}. It lacks {modules}, {arrays} and standard {classes}. Gofer comes with an {interpreter} (in C), a {compiler} which compiles to {C}, documentation and examples. Unix Version 2.30 (1994-06-10) Mac_Gofer version 0.16 beta. Ported to {Sun}, {Acorn} {Archimedes}, {IBM PC}, {Macintosh}, {Atari}, {Amiga}. Version 2.30 added support for contexts in datatype and member function definitions, Haskell style {arrays}, an external function calling mechanism for gofc, an experimental implementation of Launchbury/Peyton Jones style lazy functional state threads, an experimental implementation of "do" notation for {monad comprehensions}. ["Introduction to Gofer 2.20", M.P. Jones.] [The implementation of the Gofer functional programming system, Mark P. Jones, Research Report YALEU/DCS/RR-1030, Yale University, Department of Computer Science, May 1994. FTP: nebula.cs.yale.edu/pub/yale-fp/reports]. {(http://cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/mpj/)}. {FTP Yale (ftp://nebula.cs.yale.edu/)}, {FTP Glasgow (ftp://ftp.dcs.glasgow.ac.uk/)}, {FTP Chalmers (ftp://ftp.cs.chalmers.se/pub/haskell/gofer/)}. (1995-02-14)

Goffin "language" A {definitional constraint language} for {declarative} parallel programming. Goffin systematically integrates {equational constraints} and functions within a uniform framework of {concurrent} programming. Goffin is an embedding of a functional language kernel ({Haskell}) into a layer of constraint logic, which allows {logical variables} inside functional expressions. In order to preserve {referential transparency}, functional {reduction} suspends until logical variables become bound. Logical variables are bound by equational constraints, which impose relations over expressions. Hence, constraints are the means to structure the concurrent reduction of functional expressions. (1995-02-21)

Good, Highest: (sometimes the greatest, or supreme, good. Lat. summum bonum) That good which transcends yet includes all the others. According to Augustine, Varro was able to enumerate 288 definitions. For Plato, the supreme Idea, the totality of being. For Aristotle, eudemonism (q.v.), which consists in the harmonious satisfaction of all rational powers. For the Epicureans, pleasure. For Aquinas, obedience to and oneness with God. The all-inclusive object of desire. -- J.K.F.

gorets /gor'ets/ The unknown ur-noun, fill in your own meaning. Found especially on the {Usenet} newsgroup alt.gorets, which seems to be a running contest to redefine the word by implication in the funniest and most peculiar way, with the understanding that no definition is ever final. [A correspondent from the Former Soviet Union informs me that "gorets" is Russian for "mountain dweller" - ESR] Compare {frink}. [{Jargon File}]

grammar "language" A formal definition of the syntactic structure (the {syntax}) of a language. A grammar is normally represented as a set of {production rules} which specify the order of constituents and their sub-constituents in a {sentence} (a well-formed string in the language). Each rule has a left-hand side symbol naming a syntactic category (e.g. "noun-phrase" for a {natural language} grammar) and a right-hand side which is a sequence of zero or more symbols. Each symbol may be either a {terminal symbol} or a non-terminal symbol. A terminal symbol corresponds to one "{lexeme}" - a part of the sentence with no internal syntactic structure (e.g. an identifier or an operator in a computer language). A non-terminal symbol is the left-hand side of some rule. One rule is normally designated as the top-level rule which gives the structure for a whole sentence. A {parser} (a kind of {recogniser}) uses a grammar to parse a sentence, assigning a terminal syntactic category to each input token and a non-terminal category to each appropriate group of tokens, up to the level of the whole sentence. Parsing is usually preceded by {lexical analysis}. The opposite, generation, starts from the top-level rule and chooses one alternative production wherever there is a choice. In computing, a formal grammar, e.g. in {BNF}, can be used to {parse} a linear input stream, such as the {source code} of a program, into a data structure that expresses the (or a) meaning of the input in a form that is easier for the computer to work with. A {compiler compiler} like {yacc} might be used to convert a grammar into code for the parser of a {compiler}. A grammar might also be used by a {transducer}, a {translator} or a {syntax directed editor}. See also {attribute grammar}. (2009-02-06)

(g) The problem of the structure of the knowledge-situation is to determine with respect to each of the major kinds of knowledge just enumerated -- but particularly with respect to perception -- the constituents of the knowledge-situation in their relation to one another. The structural problem stated in general but rather vague terms is: What is the relation between the subjective and objective components of the knowledge-situation? In contemporary epistemology, the structural problem has assumed a position of such preeminence as frequently to eclipse other issues of epistemology. The problem has even been incorporated by some into the definition of philosophy. (See A. Lalande, Vocabulaire de la Philosophie, art. Theorie de la Connaissance. I. and G.D. Hicks, Encycl. Brit. 5th ed. art. Theory of Knowledge.) The principal cleavage in epistemology, according to this formulation of its problem, is between a subjectivism which telescopes the object of knowledge into the knowing subject (see Subjectivism; Idealism, Epistemological) and pan-objectivism which ascribes to the object all qualities perceived or otherwise cognized. See Pan-obiectivism. A compromise between the extrernes of subjectivism and objectivism is achieved by the theory of representative perception, which, distinguishing between primary and secondary qualities, considers the former objective, the latter subjective. See Representative Perception, Theory of; Primary Qualities; Secondary Qualities.

guard "programming" 1. In {functional programming}, a {Boolean} expression attached to a function definition specifying when (for what arguments) that definition is appropriate. 2. In (parallel) {logic programming}, a Boolean expression which is used to select a {clause} from several alternative matching clauses. See {Guarded Horn Clauses}. 3. In {parallel} languages, a {Boolean} expression which specifies when an message may be sent or received. (1995-05-09)

Gypsy Specification and verification of {concurrent} systems software. {Message} passing using named {mailbox}es. Separately compilable units: routine (procedure, function, or process), type and constant definition, each with a list of access rights. ["Report on the Language Gypsy", A.L. Ambler et al, UT Austin ICSCS-CMP-1976-08-1].

hacker "person, jargon" (Originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe) 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating {hack value}. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in "a {Unix} hacker". (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. (Deprecated) A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence "password hacker", "network hacker". The correct term is {cracker}. The term "hacker" also tends to connote membership in the global community defined by the net (see {The Network} and {Internet address}). It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the {hacker ethic}. It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly welcome. Thus while it is gratifying to be called a hacker, false claimants to the title are quickly labelled as "bogus" or a "{wannabee}". 9. (University of Maryland, rare) A programmer who does not understand proper programming techniques and principles and doesn't have a Computer Science degree. Someone who just bangs on the keyboard until something happens. For example, "This program is nothing but {spaghetti code}. It must have been written by a hacker". [{Jargon File}] (1996-08-26)

HASL "language" {SASL} plus {conditional unification}. ["A Prological Definition of HASL, A Purely Functional Language with Unification Based Conditional Binding Expressions", H. Abramson in Logic Programming: Functions, Relations and Equations, D. DeGroot et al eds, P-H 1986]. (1996-08-21)

HDMI {High-Definition Multimedia Interface}

HDTV {High Definition Television}

HERAKLIT "language" A distributed {object-oriented} language. ["Definition einer objektorientierten Programmiersprache mit hierarchischem Typkonzept", B. Hindel, diss U Erlangen-Nuernberg, Dec 1987]. (1995-03-16)

Here is a formal definition:

High-Definition Multimedia Interface "video, standard" (HDMI) an industry standard for connecting digital audio and video devices via a single cable. HDMI can connect any audio/video source, such as a {set-top box}, {DVD player}, or {A/V receiver} to an audio and/or video {output device} such as a digital television (DTV). HDMI supports standard, enhanced, or high-definition video, plus multi-channel digital audio. It transmits all {ATSC} HDTV standards and supports 8-channel, 192kHz, uncompressed digital audio and all currently-available compressed formats (such as {Dolby Digital} and {DTS}), HDMI 1.3 adds additional support for new lossless digital audio formats {Dolby TrueHD} and {DTS-HD Master Audio} with {bandwidth} to spare to accommodate future enhancements. HDMI 1.4 incorporates connection via {Ethernet}. HDMI was created by {Hitachi}, {Panasonic Corporation}, {Philips}, {Sony}, {Thomson} (RCA), {Toshiba} and {Silicon Image} and has the support of several major motion picture producers and distributors. {hdmi.org (http://hdmi.org/)}. (2009-06-29)

higher-order macro "functional programming" A means of expressing certain {higher-order functions} in a {first-order language}, proposed by {Phil Wadler}. Higher-order macros cannot be {recursive} at the top level but they may contain recursive definitions. For example, the normal, definition of the {map} function, map f []   = [] map f (x:xs) = f x : map f xs is higher-order because its argument, f, is a function. The alternative formulation map f l = map_f l where map_f []   = [] map_f (x:xs) = f x : m xs defines a first-order function, map_f, that is a specialisation of map in its first argument. This can be considered a {macro} because it works purely by textual substitution, requiring no knowledge about f for its validity. This is an example of {partial evaluation} - the call, map f l, has been partially evaluated to yeild an intermediate result. This may be useful in optimising compilation or execution, e.g. if the call to f can be subject to {in-lining} or when executing map_f on a long list. (2018-05-25)

highest representative ideality ::: in October 1920, equivalent to logos vijñana in the sense of full revelatory ideality; also called representative vijñana, which is said to have three elements: representative, interpretative and imperative. The meaning of "representative" earlier . 68 in 1920, when it referred to the highest intuitive revelatory logistis, was preserved at this time in the definition of logos reason as the "lower representative idea".

homaloidal ::: a. --> Flat; even; -- a term applied to surfaces and to spaces, whether real or imagined, in which the definitions, axioms, and postulates of Euclid respecting parallel straight lines are assumed to hold true.

HP-UX "operating system" The version of {Unix} running on {Hewlett-Packard} {workstations}. HP-UX conforms to {X/Open}'s Portability Guide Issue 4 ({XPG4}), Federal Information Processing Specification (FIPS) 151.1, {POSIX} 1003.1, POSIX 1003.2, {AT&T}'s System V Interface Definition 2 ({SVID} 2). HP-UX incorporates selected features from the University of California at Berkeley Software Distribution 4.3 ({4.3BSD}). It is known by some as "{HP-SUX}". [Features?] (1997-05-12)

href "web" ({hypertext} reference) The attribute of an {HTML} "a" (anchor or link) tag, whose value gives the {URL} of the {web page} or other resource that the link points to. For example, "a href="http://foldoc.org/""FOLDOC href definition"/a" would display an anchor pointing to this dictionary. (2008-02-22)

hue "graphics" (Or "tint") The coordinate in the {HSB} {colour model} that determines the frequency of light or the position in the spectrum or the relative amounts of red, green and blue. Hue corresponds to the common definition of colour, e.g. "red", "orange", "violet" etc. The other coordinates are {saturation} and {brightness}. (1999-07-05)

humma "chat" A filler word used on various "chat" and "talk" programs when you had nothing to say but felt that it was important to say something. The word apparently originated (at least with this definition) on the MECC Timeshare System (MTS, a now-defunct educational {time-sharing} system running in Minnesota during the 1970s and the early 1980s) but was later sighted on early Unix systems. [{Jargon File}] (1999-02-27)

Hypothesis: In general, an assumption, a supposition, a conjecture, a postulate, a condition, an antecedent, a contingency, a possibility, a probability, a principle, a premiss, a ground or foundation, a tentative explanation, a probable cause, a theoretical situation, an academic question, a specific consideration, a conceded statement, a theory or view for debate or action, a likely relation, the conditioning of one thing by another. In logic, the conditional clause or antecedent in a hypothetical proposition. Also a thesis subordinate to a more general one. In methodology, a principle offered as a conditional explanation of a fact or a group of facts; or again, a provisional assumption about the ground of certain phenomena, used as a guiding norm in making observations and experiments until verified or disproved by subsequent evidence. A hypothesis is conditional or provisional, because it is based on probable and insufficient arguments or elements; yet, it is not an arbitrary opinion, but a justifiable assumption with some foundation in fact, this accounts for the expectation of some measure of agreement between the logical conclusion or implications drawn from a hypothesis, and the phenomena which are known or which may be determined by further tests. A scientific hypothesis must be   proposed after the observations it must explain (a posteriori),   compatible with established theories,   reasonable and relevant,   fruitful in its applications and controllable,   general in terms and more fundamental than the statements it has to explain. A hypothesis is descriptive (forecasting the external circumstances of the event) or explanatory (offering causal accounts of the event). There are two kinds of explanatory hypotheses   the hypothesis of law (or genetic hypothesis) which attempts to determine the manner in which the causes or conditions of a phenomenon operate and   the hypothesis of cause (or causal hypothesis) which attempt to determine the causes or conditions for the production of the phenomenon. A working hypothesis is a preliminary assumption based on few, uncertain or obscure elements, which is used provisionally as a guiding norm in the investigation of certain phenomena. Often, the difference between a working hypothesis and a scientific hypothesis is one of degree; and in any case, a hypothesis is seldom verified completely with all its detailed implications. The Socratic Method of Hypothesis, as developed by Plato in the Phaedo particularly, consists in positing an assumption without questioning its value, for the purpose of determining and analyzing its consequences only when these are clearly debated and judged, the assumption itself is considered for justification or rejection. Usually, a real condition is taken as a ground for inferences, as the aim of the method is to attain knowledge or to favor action. Plato used more specially the word "hypothesis" for the assumptions of geometry (postulates and nominal definitions) Anstotle extended this use to cover the immediate principles of mathematics. It may be observed that the modern hypothetico-deductive method in logical and mathematical theories, is a development of the Socratic method stripped of its ontological implications and purposes.

Ich: (Ger. I, myself, me, the ego (q.v.)) In the German idealistic movement from Kant through Schopenhauer, the Ich, the final, ultimate conscious subject, plays a central and dynamic role. Kant discredited the traditional Cartesian conception of a simple, undecomposable, substantial I, intuitively known. On his view, the Ich is not a substance, but the functional, dynamic unity of consciousness -- a necessary condition of all experience and the ultimate subject for which all else is object. This "transcendental unity of apperception," bare consciousness as such, is by its very nature empty, it is neither a thing nor a concept. For the pute transcendental I, my empirical self is but one experience among others in the realm of phenomena, and one of which Kant does not seek an adequate definition. The stress on the pure I as opposed to the empirical self is carried over into his practical philosophy, where the moral agent becomes, not the concrete personality, but a pure rational will, i.e., a will seeking to act in accordance with an absolute universal law of duty, the categorical imperative (q.v.).

IDEAL 1. Ideal DEductive Applicative Language. A language by Pier Bosco and Elio Giovannetti combining {Miranda} and {Prolog}. Function definitions can have a {guard} condition (introduced by ":-") which is a conjunction of equalities between arbitrary terms, including functions. These guards are solved by normal {Prolog} {resolution} and {unification}. It was originally compiled into {C-Prolog} but was eventually to be compiled to {K-leaf}. 2. A numerical {constraint} language written by Van Wyk of {Stanford} in 1980 for {typesetting} graphics in documents. It was inspired partly by {Metafont} and is distributed as part of {Troff}. ["A High-Level Language for Specifying Pictures", C.J. Van Wyk, ACM Trans Graphics 1(2):163-182 (Apr 1982)]. (1994-12-15)

IDEF {ICAM} Definition.

idempotent 1. A function f : D -" D is idempotent if f (f x) = f x for all x in D. I.e. repeated applications have the same effect as one. This can be extended to functions of more than one argument, e.g. Boolean & has x & x = x. Any value in the {image} of an idempotent function is a {fixed point} of the function. 2. This term can be used to describe {C} header files, which contain common definitions and declarations to be included by several source files. If a header file is ever included twice during the same compilation (perhaps due to nested

IDL "language" 1. {Interactive Data analysis Language} ({Xerox}). 2. {Interface Description Language} (Snodgrass, UNC, Arizona). 3. {Interface Definition Language} ({SunSoft}, {OMG}). 4. {Interactive Data Language} ({Research Systems}). (2004-05-07)

If the Peano postulates are formulated on the basis of an interpretation according to which the domain of individuals coincides with that of the non-negative integers, the undefined term N may be dropped and the postulates reduced to the three following: (x)(y)[[S(x) = S(y)] ⊃[x = y]]. (x) ∼[S(x) = 0]. F(0)[F(x) ⊃x F(S(x))] ⊃F (x)F(y). It is possible further to drop the undefined term 0 and to replace the successor function S by a dyadic propositional function S (the contemplated interpretation being that S(x,y) is the proposition y = x+l). The Peano postulates may then be given the following form: (x)(Ey)S(x, y). (x)[S(x,y) ⊃y [S(x,z) ⊃x [y = z]]]. (x)[S(y,x) ⊃y [S(z,x) ⊃x [y = z]]]. (Ex)[[(x) ∼S(x,y)] ≡y [y = z]]. [(x) ∼S(x,z)] ⊃x [F(z)[F(x) ⊃x [S(x, y) ⊃y F(y)]] ⊃F (x)F(x)]. For this form of the Peano postulates the underlying logic may be taken to be simply the functional calculus of second order without additions. In this formulation, numerical functions can be introduced only by contextual definition as incomplete symbols.

  “If we bear in mind the definition of the chief Egyptian gods by Plutarch, these myths will become more comprehensible; as he well says: ‘Osiris represents the beginning and principle; Isis, that which receives; and Horus, the compound of both. Horus engendered between them, is not eternal nor incorruptible, but, being always in generation, he endeavours by vicissitudes of imitations, and by periodical passion [suffering] (yearly re-awakening to life) to continue always young, as if he should never die.’ Thus, since Horus is the personified physical world, Aroueris, or the ‘elder Horus’ is the ideal Universe; and this accounts for the saying that ‘he was begotten by Osiris and Isis when these were still in the bosom of their mother’ — Space” (TG 31).

“If we bear in mind the definition of the chief Egyptian gods by Plutarch, these myths will become more comprehensible; as he well says: ‘Osiris represents the beginning and principle; Isis, that which receives; and Horus, the compound of both. Horus engendered between them, is not eternal nor incorruptible, but, being always in generation, he endeavours by vicissitudes of imitations, and by periodical passion (yearly re-awakening to life) to continue always young, as if he should never die.’ Thus, since Horus is the personified physical world, Aroueris, or the ‘elder Horus,’ is the ideal Universe; and this accounts for the saying that ‘he was begotten by Osiris and Isis when these were still in the bosom of their mother’ — Space” (TG 31). See also HORUS

Impredicative definition: Poincare in a proposed resolution (1906) of the paradoxes of Burali-Forti and Richard (see Paradoxes, logical), introduced the principle thnt, in making a definition of a particular member of any class, no reference should be allowed to the totality of members of that class. Definitions in violation of this principle were called impredicative (non predicatives) and were held to involve a vicious circle.

In addition to syntactical or nominal definition we may distinguish another kind of definition, which is applicable only in connection with interpreted logistic systems, and which we shall call semantical definition. This consists in introducing a new symbol or notation by assigning a meaning to it. In an interpreted logistic system, a nominal definition carries with it implicitly a semantical definition, in that it is intended to give to the definiendum the meaning expressed by the definiens; but two different nominal definitions may correspond to the same semantical definition. Consider, for example, the two following schemata of nominal definition in the propositional calculus (Logic, formal, § 1): [A] ⊃ [B] → ∼A ∨ B. [A] ⊃ [B] → ∼[A ∼B]. As nominal definitions these are inconsistent, since they represent [A] ⊃ [B] as standing for different formulas: either one, but not both, could be used in a development of the propositional calculus. But the corresponding semantical definitions would be identical if -- as would be possible -- our interpretation of the propositional calculus were such that the two definientia had the same meaning for any particular A and B.

Indeterminacy Used in science to mean that the investigation of intra-atomic phenomena has (for the time being) reached the limits of human power to determine the behavior of a particle. The Heisenberg principle of uncertainty states that it is impossible to increase the accuracy of measurement of the velocity of a particle without by this very observational act introducing an uncertainty into the determination of its position. The attempt to represent phenomena as a chain of cause and effect must lead sooner or later to a point where we can no longer trace the cause — not because causes vanish, but because of the imperfection of our observation and of our instruments, so that the chain of causation continues until we lose track of it because of incapacity. Hence we are unable to predict the behavior of a particle. Subsequent investigation may enable us to carry the chain of causation farther, but the process cannot go on indefinitely without carrying us beyond the physical plane. The standards of measurement successfully adopted for molar physics and for phenomena within terrestrial limits have proved inadequate for the definition of phenomena outside those limits; and both theory and experiment show that these standards are largely conceptual and must be changed to suit new conditions.

infinite "mathematics" 1. Bigger than any {natural number}. There are various formal set definitions in {set theory}: a set X is infinite if (i) There is a {bijection} between X and a {proper subset} of X. (ii) There is an {injection} from the set N of natural numbers to X. (iii) There is an injection from each natural number n to X. These definitions are not necessarily equivalent unless we accept the {Axiom of Choice}. 2. The length of a line extended indefinitely. See also {infinite loop}, {infinite set}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-03-29)

infinite set "mathematics" A set with an infinite number of elements. There are several possible definitions, e.g. (i) ("Dedekind infinite") A set X is infinite if there exists a {bijection} (one-to-one mapping) between X and some proper subset of X. (ii) A set X is infinite if there exists an {injection} from N (the set of {natural numbers}) to X. In the presence of the {Axiom of Choice} all such definitions are equivalent. (1995-03-27)

In formulating the pure propositional calculus the primitive formulas may (if desired) be reduced to a finite number, e.g., to the seven listed above with A, B, C taken to be the particular variables p, q, r. A second primitive rule of inference, the rule of substitution is then required, allowing the inference from a formula A to the formula obtained from A by substituting a formula B for a particular variable in A (the same formula B must be substituted for all occurrences of that variable in A). The definition of a theorem is then given in the same way as before, allowing for the additional primitive rule, the definition of a valid inference must, however, be modified.

In geometry, a figure is said to be symmetric with respect to a point P if the points of the figure can be grouped in pairs in such a way that the straight-line segment joining any pair has P as its midpoint. A figure is symmetric with respect to a straight line l if the points can be grouped in pairs in such way that the straight-line segment joining any pair has l as a perpendicular bisector. These definitions apply in geometry of any number of dimensions. Similar definitions may be given of symmetry with respect to a plane, etc. -- A.C.

In his chief work, the Ethica, Spinoza's teaching is expressed in a manner for which geometry supplies the model. This expository device served various purposes. It may be interpreted as a clue to Spinoza's ideal of knowledge. So understood, it represents the condensed and ordered expression, not of 'philosophy' alone, but rather of all knowledge, 'philosophy' and 'science', as an integrated system. In such an ideal ordering of ideas, (rational) theology and metaphysics provide the anchorage for the system. On the one hand, the theology-metaphysics displays the fundamental principles (definitions, postulates, axioms) upon which the anchorage depends, and further displays in deductive fashion the primary fund of ideas upon which the inquiries of science, both 'descriptive' and 'normative' must proceed. On the other hand, the results of scientific inquiry are anchored at the other end, by a complementary metaphysico-theological development of their significance. Ideally, there obtains, for Spinoza, both an initial theology and metaphysics -- a necessary preparation for science -- and a culminating theology and metaphysics, an interpretative absorption of the conclusions of science.

initialise "programming" To give a {variable} its first value. This may be done automatically by some languages or it may require explicit code by the programmer. Some languages allow initialisation to be combined with variable definition, e.g. in {C}: int i = 0; Failing to initialise a variable before using it is a common programming error, but one which compilers and automatic checkers like {lint} can easily detect. (1997-06-08)

In logic: Given a relation R which is transitive, symmetric, and reflexive, we may introduce or postulate "new elements corresponding to the members of the field of R, in such a way that the same new element corresponds to two members x and y of the field of R if and only if xRy (see the article relation). These new elements are then said to be obtained by abstraction with respect to R. Peano calls this a method or kind of definition, and speaks, e.g., of cardinal numbers (q.v.) as obtained from classes by abstraction with respect to the relation of equivalence -- two classes having the same cardinal number if and only if they are equivalent.

In Peano's postulates for arithmetic (see Arithmetic, foundations of) the possibility of proof by recursion is secured by the last postulate, which, indeed, merely states the leading principle of the simplest form of proof by recursion. In the Frege-Russell derivation of arithmetic from logic, the non-negative integers are identified with the inductive cardinal numbers (q.v.), the possibility of proof by recursion being implicit in the definition of inductive. -- A.C.

In Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York, 1920, p. 156), Dewey states "When the claim or pretension or plan is acted upon it guides us truly or falsely; it leads us to our end or away from it. Its active, dynamic function is the all-important thing about it, and in the quality of activity induced by it lies all its truth and falsity. The hypothesis that works is the true one, and truth is an abstract noun applied to the collection of cases, actual, foreseen and desired, that receive confirmation in their work and consequences". The needs and desires which truth must satisfy, however, are not conceived as personal and emotional (as with James) but rather as "public" in some not altogether explicit sense. Although Dewey emphasizes the functional role of propositions and laws (and even of sensations, facts and objects), and describes these materials of knowledge as means, tools, instruments or operations for the transformation of an indeterminate situation into a determinate one in the process of inquiry (Logic, The Theory of Inquiry, N. Y., 1938), he does not clearly deny that they have a strictly cognitive role as well, and he once states that "the essence of pragmatic instrumentalism is to conceive of both knowledge and practice as means of making goods -- excellencies of all kinds -- secure in experienced existence". (The Quest for Certainty, N. Y., 1929, p. 37.) Indeed, in his Logic (p. 345), he quotes with approval Peirce's definition "truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless inquiry would tend to bring scientific belief, . . ." Here truth seems to be represented as progressive approximation to reality, but usually it is interpreted as efficacy, verification or practical expediency.

In scholasticism: The classic definition is given by Boethius: person is an individual substance of rational nature. As individual it is material, since matter supplies the principle of individuation. The soul is not person, only the composite is. Man alone is among the material beings person, he alone having a rational nature. He is the highest of the material beings, endowed with particular dignity and rights. -- R.A.

In Scholasticism: Until the revival of Aristotelianism in the 13th century, universals were considered by most of the Schoolmen as real "second substances." This medieval Realism (see Realism), of those who legebant in re, found but little opposition from early Nominalists, legentes in voce, like Roscellin. The latter went to the othei extreme by declaring universal names to be nothing but the breath of the voice -- flatus vocis. Extreme realism as represented by William of Champeaux, crumbled under the attacks of Abelard who taught a modified nominalism, distinguishing, howevei, sharply between the mere word, vox, as a physical phenomenon, and the meaningful word, sermo.. His interests being much more in logic than in ontology, he did not arrive at a definite solution of the problem. Aquinas summarized and synthetisized the ideas of his predecessors by stating that the universal had real existence only as creative idea in God, ante rem, whereas it existed within experienced reality only in the individual things, in re, and as a mental fact when abstracted from the particulars in the human mind, post rem. A view much like this had been proposed previously by Avicenna to whom Aquinas seems to be indebted. Later Middle-Ages saw a rebirth of nominalistic conceptions. The new school of Terminists, as they called themselves, less crude in its ideas than Roscellin, asserted that universals are only class names. Occam is usually considered as the most prominent of the Terminists. To Aquinas, the universal was still more than a mere name; it corresponded to an ontologicil fact; the definition of the universal reproduces the essence of the things. The universals are with Occam indeed natural signs which the mind cannot help forming, whereas the terms are arbitiary, signa ad placitum. But the universal is only a sign and does not correspond to anything ontological. -- R.A.

In Spinoza's sense, that which "is", preeminently and without qualification -- the source and ultimate subject of all distinctions. Being is thus divided into that which is "in itself" and "in another" (Ethica, I, Ax. 4; see also "substance" and "mode", Defs. 3 and 5). Being is likewise distinguished with respect to "finite" and "infinite", under the qualifications of absolute and relative, thus God is defined (Ibid, I, Def. 6) as "Being absolutely infinite". Spinoza seems to suggest that the term, Being, has, in the strict sense, no proper definition (Cog. Met., I, 1). The main characteristics of Spinoza's treatment of this notion are (i) his clear-headed separation of the problems of existence and Being, and (ii) his carefully worked out distinction between ens reale and ens rationis by means of which Spinoza endeavors to justify the ontological argument (q.v.) in the face of criticism by the later Scholastics. -- W.S.W.

instance "programming" An individual {object} of a certain {class}. While a class is just the type definition, an actual usage of a class is called "instance". Each instance of a class can have different values for its {instance variables}, i.e. its {state}. (1998-03-06)

Instinct The vegetative, passive, or automatic side of intuition, which expresses itself all through natural existences. The atoms move and sing by instinct, and by the instinctual faculty the animal guides its life. In human beings are the divine instincts of love, forgiveness, and pity. “Instinct, as a divine spark, lurks in the unconscious nerve-centre of the ascidian mollusk, and manifests itself at the first stage of action of its nervous system as what the physiologist terms the reflex action. It exists in the lowest classes of the acephalous animals as well as in those that have distinct heads; it grows and develops according to the law of the double evolution, physically and spiritually; and entering upon its conscious stage of development and progress in the cephalous species already endowed with a sensorium and symmetrically-arranged ganglia, this reflex action, whether men of science term it automatic, as in the lowest species, or instinctive, as in the more complex organisms which act under the guidance of the sensorium and the stimulus originating in distinct sensation, is still one and the same thing. It is the divine instinct in its ceaseless progress of development. This instinct of the animals, which act from the moment of their birth each in the confines prescribed to them by nature, and which know how, save in accident proceeding from a higher instinct than their own, to take care of themselves unerringly — this instinct may, for the sake of exact definition, be termed automatic; but it must have either within the animal which possesses it or without, something’s or some one’s intelligence to guide it” (IU 1:425).

instructional technology "education" Design, development, use, management and evaluation of process and resources for learning. Instructional technology aims to promote the application of validated, practical procedures in the design and delivery of instruction. It is often defined either in terms of media and other technology used (e.g. {audiovisual media} and equipment and computers), or in terms of a systematic process which encompasses instructional design, development, delivery and evaluation. ["Instructional Technology: The Definition and Domains of the Field", 1994, Barbara Seels and Rita Richey, Washington, D.C., Association for Educational Communications and Technology]. (2010-01-29)

instruction set architecture "architecture" (ISA) The parts of a {processor}'s design that need to be understood in order to write {assembly language}, such as the {machine language} instructions and {registers}. Parts of the architecture that are left to the implementation, such as number of {superscalar} {functional units}, {cache} size and {cycle} speed, are not part of the ISA. The definition of {SPARC}, for example, carefully distinguishes between an implementation and a specification. (1999-01-16)

integer "mathematics" (Or "whole number") One of the numbers in the set ..., -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ... There are an {infinite} number of integers, though each one is {finite}. An {inductive definition} of an integer is a number that is either zero or an integer plus or minus one. An integer has no {fractional} part. If written as a {real} number, e.g. 42.0, the part after the decimal point will be zero. A {natural number} is a non-negative integer. Computers usually store integers in {binary}. Natural numbers can be stored as {unsigned integers} and integers that may be negative require a {sign bit} and typically use {twos complement} representation. Other representations have been used, such as {binary-coded decimal}. Computers are particularly fast when operating on integers as the operations are built into the {central processing unit}, in contrast to {floating point} numbers, which typically require the use of a separate {floating-point unit}. (2019-08-31)

Intelligible: Understandable; comprehensible; knowable; meaningful; Orderly; logical; coherent; rational; Communicable; expressible; Having unity of principle; capable of complete rational explanation or understanding; capable of causal explanation; Clear to natural or pure reason; apprehensible by the intellect (q.v.) only as against apprehensible through the senses; conceptual as against perceptual; conceptually describable or explainable; Capable of being known synoptically or as it is in itself or in essence; capable of being known through itself as against by agency of something else; graspable by in tuition, self-explanatory; Capable of being appreciated or sympathized with; Super-sensible; of the nature of mind, reason, or their higher powers. . -- M.T.K Intension and extension: The intension of a concept consists of the qualities or properties which go to make up the concept. The extension of a concept consists of the things which fall under the concept; or, according to another definition, the extension of a concept consists of the concepts which are subsumed under it (determine subclasses). This is the old distinction between intension and extension, and coincides approximately with the distinction between a monadic proposittonal function (q. v.) in intension and a class (q. v.). The words intension and extension are also used in connection with a number of distinctions related or analogous to this one, the adjective extensional being applied to notions or points of view which in some respect confine attention to truth-values of propositions as opposed to meanings constituting propositions. In the case of (interpreted) calculi of propositions or propositional functions, the adjective intensional may mean that account is taken of modality, extensional that all functions of propositions which appear are truth-functions. The extreme of the extensional point of view does away with propositions altogether and retains only truth-values in their place. -- A.C.

Intentional Theory of Mind: The definition of mind in terms of intentionality (See Intentionality) which originated in the Scholastic doctrine of intentio, was revived by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen standpunkte, 1874) though his influence has become a characteristic theory of German phenomenology. See Phenomenology. -- L.W.

Interface Definition Language (IDL) 1. An {OSF} standard for defining {RPC} stubs. [Details?] 2. Part of an effort by {Project DOE} at {SunSoft, Inc.} to integrate distributed {object} technology into the {Solaris} {operating system}. IDL provides the standard interface between objects, and is the base mechanism for object interaction. The {Object Management Group}'s {CORBA} 1.1 (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) specifies the interface between objects. IDL (Interface Definition Language) is the base mechanism for object interaction. The SunSoft OMG IDL CFE (Compiler Front End) version 1.2 provides a complete framework for building CORBA 1.1-compliant preprocessors for OMG IDL. To use it you write a back-end. A complete compiler of IDL would translate IDL into {client} side and {server} side routines for remote communication in the same manner as {Sun}'s current {RPCL} compiler. The IDL compiler front end allows integration of new back ends which can translate IDL to various programming languages. Several companies including Sunsoft are building back ends to the CFE which translate IDL into target languages, e.g. {Pascal} or {C++}, in the context of planned CORBA-compliant products. IDL requires C++ 2.1. Not to be confused with any of the other {IDLs}. E-mail: "idl-cfe@sun.com". {(ftp://omg.org/pub/omg_idl_cfe.tar.Z)}, {(ftp://omg.org/pub/OMG_IDL_CFE_1.2/)}. Telephone: Mache Creeger, SunSoft, Inc. +1 (415) 336 5884. (1993-05-04)

Interface Description Language (IDL) A language designed by Nestor, Lamb and Wulf of {CMU} in 1981 for describing the data structures passed between parts of an application, to provide a language-independent intermediate representation. It forms part of Richard Snodgrass "rts@cs.arizona.edu"'s {Scorpion} environment development system. Not to be confused with any of the other {IDLs}. Mailing list: info-idl@sei.cmu.edu. ["The Interface Description Language: Definition and Use," by Richard Snodgrass, Computer Science Press, 1989, ISBN 0-7167-8198-0]. [SIGPLAN Notices 22(11) (Nov 1987) special issue]. (1994-11-11)

Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol "networking, protocol" (ISAKMP) The definitions and procedures for {authenticating} communication between 2 {peers}. This includes the creation and management of {Security Associations}, {key} generation techniques, and {threat mitigation}. ISAKMP is proposed in {RFC 2408}. (2000-02-08)

In the formal development of a logistic system, since no reference may be made to an intended interpretation, semantical definitions are precluded, and must be replaced by corresponding nominal definitions.

In the functional calculi of second and higher orders, we may introduce the definitions: X = Y → (F)[F(X) ⊃ F(Y)], where X and Y are any two variables of the same type and F is a monadic functional variable of appropriate type. The notation X = Y may then be interpreted as denoting equality or identity.

In theosophical philosophy, the cosmic divine in the hierarchical sense is both transcendent and immanent, during manifestation breaking as it were into innumerable rays which produce the various deific powers in inner and outer nature; each such immanent divinity, however, itself emanating from the all-encompassing and forever unmanifest Rootless Root or parabrahman. The various universes, sometimes referred to as sparks of eternity, spring from parabrahman at periodic intervals called manvantaras, and then resolve back into the pre-manvantaric condition or pralaya, only to issue forth again when the pralaya of whatever magnitude has run its course. Therefore, at one and the same time divinity is transcendent and immanent, eternal and unmanifest, while its rays or cosmic sparks of whatever magnitude are periodic and manifested. Hence from each such manifested One or cosmic hierarch proceed the multiple rays, to which in various theogonies are given names and attributes of superior deities. Thus the words god and deity become generic, and the general definition may be applied to the core of the core of any being, great or small, cosmic or human, for all are sparks of the cosmic flame of life.

In the theory of obligation we find on the question of the meaning and status of right and wrong the same variety of views as obtain in the theory of value: "right," e.g., has only an emotive meaning (Ayer); or it denotes an intuited indefinable objective quality or relation of an act (Price, Reid, Clarke, Sidgwick, Ross, possibly Kant); or it stands for the attitude of some mind or group of minds towards an act (the Sophists, Hume, Westermarck). But it is also often defined as meaning that the act is conducive to the welfare of some individual or group -- the agent himself, or his group, or society as a whole. Many of the teleological and utilitarian views mentioned below include such a definition.

In the theory of value the first question concerns the meaning of value-terms and the status of goodness. As to meaning the main point is whether goodness is definable or not, and if so, how. As to status the main point is whether goodness is subjective or objective, relative or absolute. Various positions are possible. Recent emotive meaning theories e.g. that of A. J. Ayer, hold that "good" and other value-terms have only an emotive meaning, Intuitionists and non-naturalists often hold that goodness is an indefinable intrinsic (and therefore objective or absolute) property, e.g., Plato, G. E. Moore, W. D. Ross, J. Laird, Meinong, N. Hartman. Metaphysical and naturalistic moralists usually hold that goodness can be defined in metaphysical or in psychological terms, generally interpreting "x is good" to mean that a certain attitude is taken toward x by some mind or group of minds. For some of them value is objective or absolute in the sense of having the same locus for everyone, e.g., Aristotle in his definition of the good as that at which all things aim, (Ethics, bk. I). For others the locus of value varies from individual to individual or from group to group, i.e. different things will be good for different individuals or groups, e.g., Hobbes, Westermarck, William James, R. B. Perry.

In this article we explore definitions of the words ‘artifice’ and ‘artificer’ from various dictionary sources, their use in two poems, one by Marge Percy, The Bonsai Tree and the other, Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats, followed by all the brilliant uses by Sri Aurobindo in his magnum opus, Savitri.

In this series we explore the words of other languages and list their definitions given by major dictionaries as well as by other disciples and Sri Aurobindo in his letters on Savitri.

introspection "programming, philosophy" A feature of some {programming languages} that allows a running {program} to obtain information about its own implementation. For example, the {Lisp} function, "symbol-function" takes a Lisp symbol and returns the function definition associated with that symbol. Lisp is particularly suited to introspection because its {source code} uses the same underlying representation as its data. Another example is {Perl}'s "can" {method} which returns true if a given {object}'s {class} provides a given method. (2010-01-19)

I. Period of Preparation (9-12 cent.). Though he does not belong in time to this period, the most dominant figure in Christian thought was St. Augustine (+430), who constructed the general framework within which all subsequent Scholastic speculation operated. Another influential figure was Boethius (+525) whose opuscula sacra established the Scholastic method and who furnished many of the classical definitions and axioms. The first great figure of this period was John Scottus Erigena (+c. 877) who introduced to Latin thought the works of Denis the Pseudo-Areopagite, broadened the Scholastic method by his glossary on Boethius' opuscule sacra and made an unfruitful attempt to interest his contemporaries in natural philosophy by his semi-pantheistic De Divisione Naturae. Other figures of note: Gerbert (+1003) important in the realm of mathematics and natural philosophy; Fulbert of Chartres (+1028) influential in the movement to apply dialectics to theology; Berengar of Tours (+1088) Fulbert's disciple, who, together with Anselm the Peripatetic, was a leader in the movement to rationalize theology. Peter Damiani (+1072), preached strongly against this rationalistic spirit. More moderate and more efficacious in his reaction to the dialectical spirit of his age was Lawfranc (+1089), who strove to define the true boundaries of faith and reason.

IRDS Information Resource Dictionary System. A set of ISO standards for CASE repositories. It governs the definition of data dictionaries to be implemented on top of relational databases (see repository, data dictionary).

→ is used to express definitions, the definiendum being placed to the left and the definiens to the right. An alternative notation is the sign = (or, in connection with the propositional calculus, ≡) with the letters Df, or df, written above it, or as a subscript, or separately after the definiens.

ISWIM "language" (If You See What I Mean) An influential but unimplemented computer programming language described in the article by {Peter J. Landin} cited below. Landin attempted to capture all known programming language concepts, including {assignment} and control operators such as {goto} and {coroutines}, within a single {lambda calculus} based framework. ISWIM is an {imperative language} with a functional core, consisting of {sugared} {lambda calculus} plus {mutable variables} and {assignment}. A powerful control mechanism, Landin's {J operator}, enables capture of the current {continuation} (the {call/cc} operator of {Scheme} is a simplified version). Being based on lambda calculus ISWIM had {higher order functions} and {lexically scoped} variables. The {operational semantics} of ISWIM are defined using Landin's {SECD machine} and use {call-by-value} ({eager evaluation}). To make ISWIM look more like mathematical notation, Landin replaced {ALGOL}'s semicolons and begin end blocks with the {off-side rule} and scoping based on indentation. An ISWIM program is a single {expression} qualified by "where" clauses (auxiliary definitions including equations among variables), conditional expressions and function definitions. With {CPL}, ISWIM was one of the first programming languages to use "where" clauses. New {data types} could be defined as a (possibly recursive) {sum of products} like the {algebraic data types} found in modern functional languages. ISWIM variables were probably {dynamically typed} but Landin may have planned some form of {type inference}. Concepts from ISWIM appear in Art Evan's {PAL} and John Reynold's {Gedanken}, Milner's {ML} and purely functional languages with lazy evaluation like {SASL}, {Miranda} and {Haskell}. [{"The Next 700 Programming Languages" (http://www.cs.utah.edu/~wilson/compilers/old/papers/p157-landin.pdf)}, P.J. Landin, CACM 9(3):157-166, Mar 1966]. (2007-03-20)

jala ::: water; [as one of the five bhutas. see apas, definition 2]

James' definition of pragmatism, written for Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy, is simply a restatement, or "exegesis", of Peirce's definition (see first definition listed above) appearing in the same place. The resemblance between their positions is illustrated by their common insistence upon the feasibility and desirability of resolving metaphysical problems by practical distinctions, unprejudiced by dogmatic presuppositions, their willingness to put every question to the test. "The pragmatic method", says James, "tries to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. . . . If no practical difference whatever can be traced", between two alternatives, they "mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle". (Pragmatism, p. 45. See also Chapters III and IV.)

Jargon File "jargon, publication, humour" The on-line hacker Jargon File maintained by {Eric S. Raymond}. A large collection of definitions of computing terms, including much wit, wisdom, and history. {Many definitions (/contents/jargon.html)} in {this dictionary} are from v3.0.0 of 1993-07-27. {Jargon File Home (http://catb.org/jargon/)}. See also {Yellow Book, Jargon}. (2014-08-14)

Jivatman(Sanskrit) ::: An expressive word having much the same significance as jiva, but with emphasis laid uponthe last element of the compound, atman, "self." Jivatman is perhaps a better term for monad even thanjiva is, because it carries the clear idea of the monad in which the individual self is predominant over allother monadic attributes. One may perhaps describe it by a paraphrase as "the essential self orindividuality of the monad."Jivatman is also a term sometimes used for the universal life; but this definition, while correct in a way,is rather confusing because suggesting similarity if not identity with paramatman. Paramatman is theBrahman or universal spirit of a solar system, for instance; and paramatman is therefore the convergingpoint of a kosmic consciousness in which all the hosts of jivatmans unite as in their hierarchical head.The jivatmans of any hierarchy are like the rays from the paramatman, their divine-spiritual sun. Thejivatman, therefore, in the case of the human being, or indeed of any other evolving entity, is the spiritualmonad, or better perhaps the spiritual ego of that monad.

Karanopadhi(Sanskrit) ::: A compound meaning the "causal instrument" or "instrumental cause" in the long series ofreimbodiments to which human and other reimbodying entities are subject. Upadhi, the second elementof this compound, is often translated as "vehicle"; but while this definition is accurate enough for popularpurposes, it fails to set forth the essential meaning of the word which is rather "disguise," or certainnatural properties or constitutional characteristics supposed to be the disguises or clothings or masks inand through which the spiritual monad of man works, bringing about the repetitive manifestations uponearth of certain functions and powers of this monad, and, indeed, upon the other globes of the planetarychain; and, furthermore, intimately connected with the peregrinations of the monad through the variousspheres and realms of the solar kosmos. In one sense of the word, therefore, karanopadhi is almostinterchangeable with the thoughts set forth under the term maya, or the illusory disguises through whichspirit works, or rather through which spiritual monadic entities work and manifest themselves.Karanopadhi, as briefly explained under the term "causal body," is dual in meaning. The first and moreeasily understood meaning of this term shows that the cause bringing about reimbodiment is avidya,nescience rather than ignorance; because when a reimbodying entity through repeated reimbodiments inthe spheres of matter has freed itself from the entangling chains of the latter, and has risen intoself-conscious recognition of its own divine powers, it thereby shakes off the chains or disguises of mayaand becomes what is called a jivanmukta. It is only imperfect souls, or rather monadic souls, speaking ina general way, which are obliged by nature's cyclic operations and laws to undergo the repetitivereimbodiments on earth and elsewhere in order that the lessons of self-conquest and mastery over all theplanes of nature may be achieved. As the entity advances in wisdom and knowledge, and in the acquiringof self-conscious sympathy for all that is, in other words, as it grows more and more like unto itsdivine-spiritual counterpart, the less is it subject to avidya. It is, in a sense, the seeds of kama-manas leftin the fabric or being of the reincarnating entity, which act as the karana or reproducing cause, orinstrumental cause, of such entity's reincarnations on earth.The higher karanopadhi, however, although in operation similar to the lower karanopadhi, orkarana-sarira just described, nevertheless belongs to the spiritual-intellectual part of man's constitution,and is the reproductive energy inherent in the spiritual monad bringing about its re-emergence after thesolar pralaya into the new activities and new series of imbodiments which open with the dawn of thesolar manvantara following upon the solar pralaya just ended. This latter karanopadhi or karana-sarira,therefore, is directly related to the element-principle in man's constitution called buddhi -- a veil, as itwere, drawn over the face or around the being of the monadic essence, much as prakriti surroundsPurusha, or pradhana surrounds Brahman, or mulaprakriti surrounds and is the veil or disguise or sakti ofparabrahman. Hence, in the case of man, this karanopadhi or causal disguise or vehicle corresponds in ageneral way to the buddhi-manas, or spiritual soul, in which the spiritual monad works and manifestsitself.It should be said in passing that the doctrine concerning the functions and operations of buddhi in thehuman constitution is extremely recondite, because in buddhi lie the causal impulses or urges bringingabout the building of the constitution of man, and which, when the latter is completed, and when formingman as a septenary entity, express themselves as the various strata or qualities of the auric egg.Finally, the karana-sarira, the karanopadhi or causal body, is the vehicular instrumental form orinstrumental body-form, produced by the working of what is perhaps the most mysterious principle orelement, mystically speaking, in the constitution not only of man, but of the universe -- the verymysterious spiritual bija.The karanopadhi, the karana-sarira or causal body, is explained with minor differences of meaning invarious works of Hindu philosophy; but all such works must be studied with the light thrown upon themby the great wisdom-teaching of the archaic ages, esoteric theosophy. The student otherwise runs everyrisk of being led astray.I might add that the sushupti state or condition, which is that of deep dreamless sleep, involving entireinsensibility of the human consciousness to all exterior impressions, is a phase of consciousness throughwhich the adept must pass, although consciously pass in his case, before reaching the highest state ofsamadhi, which is the turiya state. According to the Vedanta philosophy, the turiya (meaning "fourth") isthe fourth state of consciousness into which the full adept can self-consciously enter and wherein hebecomes one with the kosmic Brahman. The Vedantists likewise speak of the anandamaya-kosa, whichthey describe as being the innermost disguise or frame or vehicle surrounding the atmic consciousness.Thus we see that the anandamaya-kosa and the karana-sarira, or karanopadhi, and the buddhi inconjunction with the manasic ego, are virtually identical.The author has been at some pains to set forth and briefly to develop the various phases of occult andesoteric theosophical thought given in this article, because of the many and various misunderstandingsand misconceptions concerning the nature, characteristics, and functions of the karana-sarira or causalbody.

kilobyte "unit, data" (KB) A unit of {data} equal to 1000 {bytes} (but see {binary prefix} for other definitions). One kilobyte is the amount of data in 1000 {ASCII} (or {UTF-8}) characters or about 250 English words (whose average length is about four characters). 1000 kilobytes are one {megabyte}. (2014-07-21)

lattice "theory" A {partially ordered set} in which all finite subsets have a {least upper bound} and {greatest lower bound}. This definition has been standard at least since the 1930s and probably since Dedekind worked on lattice theory in the 19th century; though he may not have used that name. See also {complete lattice}, {domain theory}. (1999-12-09)

Lazy Standard ML "language" (LSML) A {lazy} varient of {SML}, allowing cyclic val definitions, by Prateek Mishra "mishra@sbcs.sunysb.edu". Not to be confused with {LML}. {(ftp://sbcs.sunysb.edu/pub/lsml)}. (1999-08-30)

Legal Philosophy: Deals with the philosophic principles of law and justice. The origin is to be found in ancient philosophy. The Greek Sophists criticized existing laws and customs by questioning their validity: All human rules are artificial, created by enactment or convention, as opposed to natural law, based on nature. The theory of a law of nature was further developed by Aristotle and the Stoics. According to the Stoics the natural law is based upon the eternal law of the universe; this itself is an outgrowth of universal reason, as man's mind is an offshoot of the latter. The idea of a law of nature as being innate in man was particularly stressed and popularized by Cicero who identified it with "right reason" and already contrasted it with written law that might be unjust or even tyrannical. Through Saint Augustine these ideas were transmitted to medieval philosophy and by Thomas Aquinas built into his philosophical system. Thomas considers the eternal law the reason existing in the divine mind and controlling the universe. Natural law, innate in man participates in that eternal law. A new impetus was given to Legal Philosophy by the Renaissance. Natural Jurisprudence, properly so-called, originated in the XVII. century. Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Benedictus Spinoza, John Locke, Samuel Pufendorf were the most important representatives of that line of thought. Grotius, continuing the Scholastic tradition, particularly stressed the absoluteness of natural hw (it would exist even if God did not exist) and, following Jean Bodin, the sovereignty of the people. The idea of the social contract traced all political bodies back to a voluntary compact by which every individual gave up his right to self-government, or rather transferred it to the government, abandoning a state of nature which according to Hobbes must have been a state of perpetual war. The theory of the social compact more and more accepts the character of a "fiction" or of a regulative idea (Kant). In this sense the theory means that we ought to judge acts of government by their correspondence to the general will (Rousseau) and to the interests of the individuals who by transferring their rights to the commonwealth intended to establish their real liberty. Natural law by putting the emphasis on natural rights, takes on a revolutionary character. It played a part in shaping the bills of rights, the constitutions of the American colonies and of the Union, as well as of the French declaration of the rights of men and of citizens. Natural jurisprudence in the teachings of Christian Wolff and Thomasius undergoes a kind of petrification in the vain attempt to outline an elaborate system of natural law not only in the field of international or public law, but also in the detailed regulations of the law of property, of contract, etc. This sort of dogmatic approach towards the problems of law evoked the opposition of the Historic School (Gustav Hugo and Savigny) which stressed the natural growth of laws ind customs, originating from the mysterious "spirit of the people". On the other hand Immanuel Kant tried to overcome the old natural law by the idea of a "law of reason", meaning an a priori element in all existing or positive law. In his definition of law ("the ensemble of conditions according to which everyone's will may coexist with the will of every other in accordance with a general rule of liberty"), however, as in his legal philosophy in general, he still shares the attitude of the natural law doctrine, confusing positive law with the idea of just law. This is also true of Hegel whose panlogism seemed to lead in this very direction. Under the influence of epistemological positivism (Comte, Mill) in the later half of the nineteenth century, legal philosophy, especially in Germany, confined itself to a "general theory of law". Similarily John Austin in England considered philosophy of law concerned only with positive law, "as it necessarily is", not as it ought to be. Its main task was to analyze certain notions which pervade the science of law (Analytical Jurisprudence). In recent times the same tendency to reduce legal philosophy to logical or at least methodological tasks was further developed in attempting a pure science of law (Kelsen, Roguin). Owing to the influence of Darwinism and natural science in general the evolutionist and biological viewpoint was accepted in legal philosophy: comparative jurisprudence, sociology of law, the Freirecht movement in Germany, the study of the living law, "Realism" in American legal philosophy, all represent a tendency against rationalism. On the other hand there is a revival of older tendencies: Hegelianism, natural law -- especially in Catholic philosophy -- and Kantianism (beginning with Rudolf Stammler). From here other trends arose: the critical attitude leads to relativism (f.i. Gustav Radbruch); the antimetaphysical tendency towards positivism -- though different from epistemological positivism -- and to a pure theory of law. Different schools of recent philosophy have found their applications or repercussions in legal philosophy: Phenomenology, for example, tried to intuit the essences of legal institutions, thus coming back to a formalist position, not too far from the real meaning of analytical jurisprudence. Neo-positivism, though so far not yet explicitly applied to legal philosophy, seems to lead in the same direction. -- W.E.

lexicon ::: n. --> A vocabulary, or book containing an alphabetical arrangement of the words in a language or of a considerable number of them, with the definition of each; a dictionary; especially, a dictionary of the Greek, Hebrew, or Latin language.

lexigraphy ::: n. --> The art or practice of defining words; definition of words.

L. Kalmar, On the possibility of definition by recursion, Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum (Szeged), vol. 9 (1940), pp. 227-232.

locust ::: n. --> Any one of numerous species of long-winged, migratory, orthopterous insects, of the family Acrididae, allied to the grasshoppers; esp., (Edipoda, / Pachytylus, migratoria, and Acridium perigrinum, of Southern Europe, Asia, and Africa. In the United States the related species with similar habits are usually called grasshoppers. See Grasshopper.
The locust tree. See Locust Tree (definition, note, and phrases).


logical (From the technical term "logical device", wherein a physical device is referred to by an arbitrary "logical" name) Having the role of. If a person (say, Les Earnest at SAIL) who had long held a certain post left and were replaced, the replacement would for a while be known as the "logical" Les Earnest. (This does not imply any judgment on the replacement). Compare {virtual}. At Stanford, "logical" compass directions denote a coordinate system in which "logical north" is toward San Francisco, "logical west" is toward the ocean, etc., even though logical north varies between physical (true) north near San Francisco and physical west near San Jose. (The best rule of thumb here is that, by definition, El Camino Real always runs logical north-and-south.) In giving directions, one might say: "To get to Rincon Tarasco restaurant, get onto {El Camino Bignum} going logical north." Using the word "logical" helps to prevent the recipient from worrying about that the fact that the sun is setting almost directly in front of him. The concept is reinforced by North American highways which are almost, but not quite, consistently labelled with logical rather than physical directions. A similar situation exists at MIT: Route 128 (famous for the electronics industry that has grown up along it) is a 3-quarters circle surrounding Boston at a radius of 10 miles, terminating near the coastline at each end. It would be most precise to describe the two directions along this highway as "clockwise" and "counterclockwise", but the road signs all say "north" and "south", respectively. A hacker might describe these directions as "logical north" and "logical south", to indicate that they are conventional directions not corresponding to the usual denotation for those words. (If you went logical south along the entire length of route 128, you would start out going northwest, curve around to the south, and finish headed due east, passing along one infamous stretch of pavement that is simultaneously route 128 south and Interstate 93 north, and is signed as such!) [{Jargon File}] (1995-01-24)

logical relation A {relation} R satisfying f R g "=" For all a, b, a R b =" f a R g b This definition, by Plotkin, can be used to extend the definition of a relation on the types of a and b to a relation on functions.

Lout Lout is a batch text formatting system and an embedded language by Jeffrey H. Kingston "jeff@cs.su.oz.au". The language is procedural, with {Scribe}-like {syntax}. Lout features equation formatting, tables, diagrams, rotation and scaling, sorted indexes, bibliographic databases, running headers and odd-even pages and automatic cross-referencing. Lout is easily extended with definitions which are very much easier to write than {troff} of {TeX} {macros} because Lout is a {high-level language}, the outcome of an eight-year research project that went back to the beginning. Version 2.05 includes a translator from Lout to {PostScript} and documentation. and runs under {Unix} and on the {Amiga}. {Author's site (ftp://ftp.cs.su.oz.au/jeff/lout.2.03.tar.Z)}, {(ftp://ftp.uu.net/tmp/lout.tar.Z)}. {Amiga (ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/aminet/text/dtp/loutBin203.lha)}. (1993-07-30)

maieutical ::: a. --> Serving to assist childbirth.
Fig. : Aiding, or tending to, the definition and interpretation of thoughts or language.


Materialism In the rigid philosophical sense, any theory which considers the facts of the universe to be sufficiently explained by the existence and nature of matter. A familiar form of this is what has been called the atomo-mechanical theory, which derives all phenomena from the movements of material atoms in space. The philosophical definition of materialism differs according to the meaning of the word matter; as for instance, when we limit matter by no physical attributes or implications alone, but see in it the sevenfold prakritis or pradhanas of Hindu philosophers and mystics, matter is then seen to be but a name for the veil or shadow of spirit — the other side of spirit as it were. This distinction makes materialism but a synonym for spiritualism — i.e., the profound philosophic theory that the universe is built throughout, from and of the substances and attributes of spirit, which become matter in its innumerable and manifold forms and phases on the lower cosmic planes. What physicists have been calling matter is a percept derived from the interaction of the physical senses with the physical plane of prakriti or nature.

Mathematics: The traditional definition of mathematics as "the science of quantity" or "the science of discrete and continuous magnitude" is today inadequate, in that modern mathematics, while clearly in some sense a single connected whole, includes many branches which do not come under this head. Contemporary accounts of the nature of mathematics tend to characterize it rather by its method than by its subject matter.

Meaning: A highly ambiguous term, with at least four pivotal senses, involving intention or purpose, designation or reference, definition or translation, causal antecedents or consequences. Each of these provides overlapping families of cases generated by some or all of the following types of systematic ambiguity: -- Arising from a contrast between the standpoints of speaker and interpreter. arising from contrast between the meaning of specific utterances (tokens) and that of the general (type) symbol. arising from attention to one rather than another use of language (e.g., to the expressive rather than the evocative or referential uses). Some of these ambiguities are normally eliminated by attention to the context in which the term 'meaning' occurs. Adequate definition, would, accordingly, involve a detailed analysis of the types of context which are most common. The following is a preliminary outline. "What does X {some event, not necessarily linguistic) mean?" =   "Of what is X an index?"   "Of what is X a sign?" "What does S (a speaker) mean by X (an utterance)?" =   "What are S's interests, intentions, purposes in uttering X?"   "To whom (what) is he referring?"   "What effect does he wish to produce in the hearer?"   "What other utterance could he have used to express the same interest, make the same reference, or produce the same effect?" "What does X (an utterance of a speaker) mean to an interpreter?" =   "What does I take S to have meant by X (in any of the senses listed under B)?" "What does X (a type symbol) mean in language L?"   "What symbols (in L) can be substituted for X (in specified contexts) without appreciable loss of expressive, evocative or referential function?"   In a translation from L into another language M, either of X or of a more complex symbol containing X as part, what portion of the end-product corresponds to X?"   In addition to the above, relatively nontechnical senses, many writers use the word in divergent special ways based upon and implying favored theories about meaning.

Meaning the same as essentially, so that the predicate which is said to belong the subject formally, enters into the essence and definition of the subject. Thus man is formally animal. Formally, so understood has various correlatives, according to the various aspects under which the essence of a thing can be considered:

megabyte "unit, data" (MB, colloquially "meg") A Unit of {data} equal to one million {bytes} but see {binary prefix} for other definitions. A megabyte is 1000^2 bytes or 1000 {kilobytes}. The text of a six hundred page paperback book stored as {ASCII} {characters} contains about one megabyte of data. The complete King James bible is 5.2 megabytes. 1000 megabytes are one {gigabyte}. See {prefix}. (2013-11-04)

Mesa Xerox PARC, 1977. System and application programming for proprietary hardware: Alto, Dolphin, Dorado and Dandelion. Pascal-like syntax, ALGOL68-like semantics. An early version was weakly typed. Mesa's modules with separately compilable definition and implementation parts directly led to Wirth's design for Modula. Threads, coroutines (fork/join), exceptions, and monitors. Type checking may be disabled. Mesa was used internally by Xerox to develop ViewPoint, the Xerox Star, MDE, and the controller of a high-end copier. It was released to a few universitites in 1985. Succeeded by Cedar. ["Mesa Language Manual", J.G. Mitchell et al, Xerox PARC, CSL-79-3 (Apr 1979)]. ["Early Experience with Mesa", Geschke et al, CACM 20(8):540-552 (Aug 1977)].

metadata "data, data processing" /me't*-day`t*/, or combinations of /may'-/ or (Commonwealth) /mee'-/; /-dah`t*/ (Or "meta-data") Data about {data}. In {data processing}, metadata is definitional data that provides information about or documentation of other data managed within an application or environment. For example, metadata would document data about {data elements} or {attributes}, (name, size, data type, etc) and data about {records} or {data structures} (length, fields, columns, etc) and data about data (where it is located, how it is associated, ownership, etc.). Metadata may include descriptive information about the context, quality and condition, or characteristics of the data. A collection of metadata, e.g. in a {database}, is called a {data dictionary}. Myers of {The Metadata Company} claims to have coined the term in 1969 though it appears in the book, "Extension of programming language concepts" published in 1968, by {Philip R. Bagley}. Bagley was a pioneer of computer document retrieval. "A survey of extensible programming languages" by Solntsseff and Yezerski (Annual Review in Automatic Programming, 1974, pp267-307) cites "the notion of 'metadata' introduced by Bagley". (2010-05-15)

METAL 1. Mega-Extensive Telecommunications Applications Language. BBS language for PRODOS 8 on Apple II. 2. The syntax-definition formalism of the Mentor system. Metal specifications are compiled to specifications for a scanner/parser generator such as Lex/Yacc. "Metal: A Formalism to Specify Formalisms", G. Kahn et al, Sci Comp Prog 3:151-188 (1983).

Methodology: The systematic analysis and organization of the rational and experimental principles and processes which must guide a scientific inquiry, or which constitute the structure of the special sciences more particularly. Methodology, which is also called scientific method, and more seldom methodeutic, refers not only to the whole of a constituted science, but also to individual problems or groups of problems within a science. As such it is usually considered as a branch of logic; in fact, it is the application of the principles and processes of logic to the special objects of the various sciences; while science in general is accounted for by the combination of deduction and induction as such. Thus, methodology is a generic term exemplified in the specific method of each science. Hence its full significance can be understood only by analyzing the structure of the special sciences. In determining that structure, one must consider the proper object of the special science, the manner in which it develops, the type of statements or generalizations it involves, its philosophical foundations or assumptions, and its relation with the other sciences, and eventually its applications. The last two points mentioned are particularly important: methods of education, for example, will vary considerably according to their inspiration and aim. Because of the differences between the objects of the various sciences, they reveal the following principal methodological patterns, which are not necessarily exclusive of one another, and which are used sometimes in partial combination. It may be added that their choice and combination depend also in a large degree on psychological motives. In the last resort, methodology results from the adjustment of our mental powers to the love and pursuit of truth. There are various rational methods used by the speculative sciences, including theology which adds certain qualifications to their use. More especially, philosophy has inspired the following procedures:   The Soctattc method of analysis by questioning and dividing until the essences are reached;   the synthetic method developed by Plato, Aristotle and the Medieval thinkers, which involves a demonstrative exposition of the causal relation between thought and being;   the ascetic method of intellectual and moral purification leading to an illumination of the mind, as proposed by Plotinus, Augustine and the mystics;   the psychological method of inquiry into the origin of ideas, which was used by Descartes and his followers, and also by the British empiricists;   the critical or transcendental method, as used by Kant, and involving an analysis of the conditions and limits of knowledge;   the dialectical method proceeding by thesis, antithesis and synthesis, which is promoted by Hegelianlsm and Dialectical Materialism;   the intuitive method, as used by Bergson, which involves the immediate perception of reality, by a blending of consciousness with the process of change;   the reflexive method of metaphysical introspection aiming at the development of the immanent realities and values leading man to God;   the eclectic method (historical-critical) of purposive and effective selection as proposed by Cicero, Suarez and Cousin; and   the positivistic method of Comte, Spencer and the logical empiricists, which attempts to apply to philosophy the strict procedures of the positive sciences. The axiomatic or hypothetico-deductive method as used by the theoretical and especially the mathematical sciences. It involves such problems as the selection, independence and simplification of primitive terms and axioms, the formalization of definitions and proofs, the consistency and completeness of the constructed theory, and the final interpretation. The nomological or inductive method as used by the experimental sciences, aims at the discovery of regularities between phenomena and their relevant laws. It involves the critical and careful application of the various steps of induction: observation and analytical classification; selection of similarities; hypothesis of cause or law; verification by the experimental canons; deduction, demonstration and explanation; systematic organization of results; statement of laws and construction of the relevant theory. The descriptive method as used by the natural and social sciences, involves observational, classificatory and statistical procedures (see art. on statistics) and their interpretation. The historical method as used by the sciences dealing with the past, involves the collation, selection, classification and interpretation of archeological facts and exhibits, records, documents, archives, reports and testimonies. The psychological method, as used by all the sciences dealing with human behaviour and development. It involves not only introspective analysis, but also experimental procedures, such as those referring to the relations between stimuli and sensations, to the accuracy of perceptions (specific measurements of intensity), to gradation (least noticeable differences), to error methods (average error in right and wrong cases), and to physiological and educational processes.

metre "unit" (US "meter") The fundamental {SI} unit of length. From 1889 to 1960, the metre was defined to be the distance between two scratches in a platinum-iridium bar kept in the vault beside the Standard Kilogram at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures near Paris. This replaced an earlier definition as 10^-7 times the distance between the North Pole and the Equator along a meridian through Paris; unfortunately, this had been based on an inexact value of the circumference of the Earth. From 1960 to 1984 it was defined to be 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red line of krypton-86 propagating in a vacuum. It is now defined as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in the time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. (1998-02-07)

Missing definition "introduction" First, this is an (English language) __computing__ dictionary. It includes lots of terms from related fields such as mathematics and electronics, but if you're looking for (or want to submit) words from other subjects or general English words or other languages, try {(http://wikipedia.org/)}, {(http://onelook.com/)}, {(http://yourdictionary.com/)}, {(http://www.dictionarist.com/)} or {(http://reference.allrefer.com/)}. If you've already searched the dictionary for a computing term and it's not here then please __don't tell me__. There are, and always will be, a great many missing terms, no dictionary is ever complete. I use my limited time to process the corrections and definitions people have submitted and to add the {most frequently requested missing terms (missing.html)}. Try one of the sources mentioned above or {(http://techweb.com/encyclopedia/)}, {(http://whatis.techtarget.com/)} or {(http://google.com/)}. See {the Help page (help.html)} for more about missing definitions and bad cross-references. (2014-09-20)! {exclamation mark}!!!Batch "language, humour" A daft way of obfuscating text strings by encoding each character as a different number of {exclamation marks} surrounded by {question marks}, e.g. "d" is encoded as "?!!!!?". The language is named after the {MSDOS} {batch file} in which the first converter was written. {esoteric programming languages} {wiki entry (http://esolangs.org/wiki/!!!Batch)}. (2014-10-25)" {double quote}

missing {Missing definition}

ML Kit The ML Kit is a straight translation of the Definition of Standard ML into a collection of Standard ML modules. For example, every inference rule in the Definition is translated into a small piece of Standard ML code which implements it. The translation has been done with as little originality as possible - even variable conventions from the Definition are carried straight over to the Kit. The Kit is intended as a tool box for those people in the programming language community who may want a self-contained parser or type checker for full Standard ML but do not want to understand the clever bits of a high-performance compiler. We have tried to write simple code and modular interfaces. Version 1 interpreter, documentation Nick Rothwell, David N. Turner, Mads Tofte "tofte@diku.dk", and Lars Birkedal at Edinburgh and Copenhagen Universities. {(ftp://ftp.diku.dk/diku/users/birkedal/)}. UK: ftp export/ml/mlkit/ from lfcs.ed.ac.uk (1993-03-12)

Modality: (Kant. Ger. Modalität) Concerning the mode -- actuality, possibility or necessity -- in which anything exists. Kant treated these as a priori categories or necessary conditions of experience, though in his formulation they are little more than definitions. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

MODEF Pascal-like language with polymorphism and data abstraction. "Definition of the Programming Language MODEF", J. Steensgard-Madsen et al, SIGPLAN Notices 19(2):92-110 (Feb 1984).

Mode "language" An {object-oriented language}. ["The Programming Language Mode: Language Definition and User Guide", J. Vihavainen, C-1987-50, U Helsinki, 1987]. [{Jargon File}] (1994-10-21)

Modula-2 "language" A high-level programming language designed by {Niklaus Wirth} at {ETH} in 1978. It is a derivative of {Pascal} with well-defined interfaces between {modules}, and facilities for parallel computation. Modula-2 was developed as the system language for the {Lilith} {workstation}. The central concept is the {module} which may be used to encapsulate a set of related subprograms and data structures, and restrict their visibility from other portions of the program. Each module has a definition part giving the interface, and an implementation part. The language provides limited single-processor {concurrency} ({monitors}, {coroutines} and explicit transfer of control) and hardware access ({absolute address}es and {interrupts}). It uses {name equivalence}. {DEC FTP archive (ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/.1/DEC/Modula-2/m2.tar.Z)}. ["Programming in Modula-2", N. Wirth, Springer 1985]. (1995-10-25)

Modula-3pi Machine-independent intermediate language for compilation of Modula-3*. "Modula-3pi Language Definition", E.A. Heinz, TR, U Karlsruhe 1993.

Modula-P "Modula-P: A Language for Parallel Programming Definition and Implementation on a Transputer Network", R. Hoffart et al, IEEE Conf Comp Langs 1992.

More general kinds of definition by recursion allow sets of recursion equations of various forms, the essential requirement being that the equations specify the value of the function being introduced (or the values of the functions being introduced), for any given set of arguments, either absolutely, or in terms of the value (values) for preceding sets of arguments. The word preceding here may refer to the natural order or order of magnitude of the non-negative integers, or it may refer to some other method of ordering arguments or sets of arguments, but the method of ordering shall be such that infinite descending sequences ot sets of arguments (in which each set of arguments is preceded by the next set) are impossible.

More general notions of recursiveness result from admitting in addition to primitive recursion, also more general kinds of definition by recursion, including those in which several functions are introduced simultaneously by a single set of recursion equations. The most general such notion is that of general recursiveness -- see the first paper of Kleene cited below. Notions of recursiveness may also be introduced for a function whose range consists of only a portion of the non-negative integers (in the case of a monadic function) or of only a portion of the ordered sets of n non-negative integers (in the case of an n-adic function) -- see the second paper of Kleene cited.

Ṁ tat sat ::: a mantra said to be "the triple definition" of the brahman: OM, also spelled AUM, is the "Word of Manifestation", symbolising "the outward-looking, the inward or subtle and the superconscient causal Purusha", indicated respectively by the letters A, U and M, while "the syllable as a whole brings out the fourth state, Turiya, which rises to the Absolute"; tat, That, "indicates the Absolute"; sat "indicates the supreme and universal existence in its principle". [cf.Gita 17.23]

multi-user "operating system" A term describing an {operating system} or {application program} that can be used by several people concurrently; opposite of {single-user}. {Unix} is an example of a multi-user operating system, whereas most (but not all) versions of {Microsoft Windows} are intended to support only one user at a time. A multi-user system, by definition, supports {concurrent processing} of multiple tasks (once known as "{time-sharing}") or true {parallel processing} if it has multiple {CPUs}. While {batch processing} systems often ran jobs for serveral users concurrently, the term "multi-user" typically implies {interactive} access. Before {Ethernet} networks were commonplace, multi-user systems were accessed from a {terminal} (e.g. a {vt100}) connected via a {serial line} (typically {RS-232}). This arrangement was eventually superseded by networked {personal computers}, perhaps sharing files on a {file server}. With the wide-spread availability of Internet connections, the idea of sharing centralised resources is becoming trendy again with {cloud computing} and {managed applications}, though this time it is the overhead of administering the system that is being shared rather than the cost of the hardware. In gaming, both on PCs and {games consoles}, the equivalent term is {multi-player}, though the first multi-player games (e.g. {ADVENT}) were on multi-user computers. (2009-11-23)

Mysticism ::: A word originally derived from the Greek and having a wide range of meaning in modern Occidentalreligious and philosophical literature. A mystic may be said to be one who has intuitions or intimations ofthe existence of inner and superior worlds, and who attempts to ally himself or to come intoself-conscious communion with them and the beings inhabiting these inner and invisible worlds.The word mysticism, of course, has various shades of significance, and a large number of definitionscould easily be written following the views of different mystical writers on this theme. From thetheosophical or occult point of view, however, a mystic is one who has inner convictions often based oninner vision and knowledge of the existence of spiritual and ethereal universes of which our outerphysical universe is but the shell; and who has some inner knowledge that these universes or worlds orplanes or spheres, with their hosts of inhabitants, are intimately connected with the origin, destiny, andeven present nature of the world which surrounds us.Genuine mysticism is an ennobling study. The average mystic, however, is one who lacks the directguidance derived from personal teaching received from a master or spiritual superior.

namespace "systems" The {set} of all possible identifiers for some kind of object. From the definition of a set, all names in a namespace are unique and there is some rule to determine whether a potential name is an element of the set. For example, the {Domain Name System} includes rules for determining what constitutes a valid host name. (2008-12-09)

Napier Atkinson & Morrison, St Andrews U; design began ca. 1985, first implementation Napier88, 1988. Based on {orthogonal persistence}, permits definition and manipulation of namespaces. ["The Napier88 Reference Manual", R. Morrison et al, CS Depts St Andrews U and U Glasgow, Persistent Programming Research Report PPRR-77-89, 1989].

National Database Language "database, standard" (NDL) A US {standard} for portability of {database} definitions and {application programs}. (1996-06-24)

NDL 1. {National Database Language}. 2. {Network Definition Language}.

negation ::: adv. --> The act of denying; assertion of the nonreality or untruthfulness of anything; declaration that something is not, or has not been, or will not be; denial; -- the opposite of affirmation.
Description or definition by denial, exclusion, or exception; statement of what a thing is not, or has not, from which may be inferred what it is or has.


nested class "Java" In {Java}, a {class} defined within an enclosing class definition. A {static} nested class has no direct access to the members of its enclosing class whereas a non-static nested class, known as an "inner class", is associated with an instance of the enclosing class and an instance of the inner class has direct access to the members of its enclosing instance. {Java Tutorial (http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/java/javaOO/nested.html)}. [Other languages?] (2006-11-19)

Network Definition Language (NDL) The language used to program the DCP (Data Communications Processor) on {Burroughs Large System}. Version: NDL II. (1994-12-12)

Nihil (Sri Aurobindo’s Definitions)

No hard and fast enumeration can be made as to the number of planes in the kosmos. The number assigned depends on the particular purpose for which the definition is made. The septenary classification is often used, as in the seven planes of prakriti or the seven states of consciousness pertaining to each. But other enumerations may equally be made, and any plane is subdivided into subplanes.

nominal ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a name or names; having to do with the literal meaning of a word; verbal; as, a nominal definition.
Existing in name only; not real; as, a nominal difference. ::: n. --> A nominalist.
A verb formed from a noun.


Note that all definitions are taken from the Lexicon of an Infinite Mind, published by the Savitri Foundation and available through Amazon and Create Space. Words that have gravitated in the English language and are well used, such as those from classical mythology, Dionysian, Circean, etc. are not included.

No very precise definition of the term is possible since the discipline shades imperceptibly into science, on the one hand, and into philosophy in genetal, on the other. A working division of its subject-matter into three fields is helpful in specifying its problems, though the three fields should not be too sharply differentiated or separated.

NPL 1. New Programming Language. IBM's original (temporary) name for PL/I, changed due to conflict with England's "National Physical Laboratory." MPL and MPPL were considered before settling on PL/I. Sammet 1969, p.542. 2. A {functional language} with {pattern matching} designed by Rod Burstall and John Darlington in 1977. The language allowed certain sets and logic constructs to appear on the right hand side of definitions, E.g. setofeven(X) "= ":x: x in X & even(x) :" The NPL {interpreter} evaluates the list of {generators} from left to right so conditions can mention any bound variables that occur to their left. These were known as {set comprehensions}. NPL eventually evolved into {Hope} but lost set comprehensions which were called {list comprehensions} in later functional languages. [John Darlington, "Program Transformation and Synthesis: Present Capabilities", Research Report No. 77/43, Dept. of Computing and Control, Imperial College of Science and Technology, London September 1977.] 3. NonProcedural Language. A {relational database} language developed by T.D. Truitt et al in 1980 for {Apple II} and {MS-DOS}. ["An Introduction to Nonprocedural Languages Using NPL", T.D. Truitt et al, McGraw-Hill 1983].

Nuprl /nyu p*rl/ Nearly Ultimate PRL. A system for interactive creation of formal mathematics, including definitions and proofs. It has an extremely rich type system, including dependent functions, products, sets, quotients and universes. Types are first-class citizens. It is built on {Franz Lisp} and {Edinburgh ML}. ["Implementing Mathematics in the Nuprl Proof Development System", R.L. Constable et al, P-H 1986]. (1994-12-13)

Object Constraint Language "language" (OCL) A formal specification language extension to {UML}. The Object Constraint Language is a precise text language that provides {constraint} and {object query} expressions on an {object-oriented} model that cannot otherwise be expressed by diagrammatic notation. OCL supplements UML by providing expressions that have neither the ambiguities of {natural language} nor the inherent difficulty of using complex mathematics. OCL is a descendent of {Syntropy}, a second-generation object-oriented analysis and design method. The OCL 1.4 definition specified a constraint language. In OCL 2.0, the definition has been extended to include general object query language definitions. {OMG UML Home (http://uml.org/)}. {Rational UML Resource Center (http://rational.com/uml/index.jsp)}. {OCL 2.0 Submission to UML (http://omg.org/docs/ad/03-01-07.pdf)}. (2003-11-15)

object-oriented database "database" (OODB) A system offering {DBMS} facilities in an {object-oriented programming} environment. Data is stored as {objects} and can be interpreted only using the {methods} specified by its {class}. The relationship between similar objects is preserved ({inheritance}) as are references between objects. Queries can be faster because {joins} are often not needed (as in a {relational database}). This is because an object can be retrieved directly without a search, by following its object id. The same programming language can be used for both data definition and data manipulation. The full power of the database programming language's {type system} can be used to model {data structures} and the relationship between the different data items. {Multimedia} {applications} are facilitated because the {class} {methods} associated with the data are responsible for its correct interpretation. OODBs typically provide better support for {versioning}. An object can be viewed as the set of all its versions. Also, object versions can be treated as full fledged objects. OODBs also provide systematic support for {triggers} and {constraints} which are the basis of {active databases}. Most, if not all, object-oriented {application programs} that have database needs will benefit from using an OODB. {Ode} is an example of an OODB built on {C++}. (1997-12-07)

Of quite a different kind are so-called real definitions, which are not conventions for introducing new symbols or notations -- as syntactical and semantical definitions are -- but are propositions of equivalence (material, formal, etc.) between two abstract entities (propositions, concepts, etc.) of which one is called the definiendum and the other the definiens. Not all such propositions of equivalence, however, are real definitions, but only those in which the definiens embodies the "essential nature" (essentia, ουσια) of the definiendum. The notion of a real definition thus has all the vagueness of the quoted phrase, but the following may be given as an example. If all the notations appearing, including ⊃x, have their usual meanings (regarded as given in advance), the proposition expressed by (F)(G)[[F(x) ⊃x G(x)] ≡ (x)[∼F(x) ∨ G(x)]] is a real definition of formal implication -- to be contrasted with the nominal definition of the ¦notation for formal implication which is given in the article Logic, formal, § 3. This formula, expressing a real definition of formal implication, might appear, e.g., as a primitive formula in a logistic system.

Often, however, the assumption is made that two propositional functions are identical if corresponding values are materially equivalent, and in this case we speak of propositional functions in extension (the definition in the preceding paragraph applying rather to propositional functions in intension). The values of a propositional function in extension are truth-values (q.v.) rather than propositions. A monadic propositional function in extension is not essentially different from a class (q. v.)

On-Line Analytical Processing "database" (OLAP) A category of {database} software which provides an interface such that users can transform or limit raw data according to user-defined or pre-defined functions, and quickly and interactively examine the results in various dimensions of the data. OLAP primarily involves aggregating large amounts of diverse data. OLAP can involve millions of data items with complex relationships. Its objective is to analyze these relationships and look for patterns, trends, and exceptions. The term was originally coined by {Dr. Codd} in 1993 with 12 "rules". Since then, the {OLAP Council}, many vendors, and Dr. Codd himself have added new requirements and confusion. Richard Creeth and Nigel Pendse define OLAP as fast analysis of shared multidimensional information. Their definition requires the system to respond to users within about five seconds. It should support logical and statistical processing of results without the user having to program in a {4GL}. It should implement all the security requirements for confidentiality and concurrent update locking. The system must provide a multidimensional conceptual view of the data, including full support for multiple hierarchies. Other aspects to consider include data duplication, {RAM} and disk space requirements, performance, and integration with {data warehouses}. Various bodies have attempted to come up with standards for OLAP, including The {OLAP Council} and the {Analytical Solutions Forum} (ASF), however, the {Microsoft OLE DB for OLAP API} is the most widely adopted and has become the {de facto standard}. {(http://access.digex.net/~grimes/olap/)}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.databases.olap}. {(http://arborsoft.com/papers/finkTOC.html)}. [What's a "multidimensional conceptual view"?] (1996-09-24)

ontology 1. "philosophy" A systematic account of Existence. 2. "artificial intelligence" (From philosophy) An explicit formal specification of how to represent the objects, concepts and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them. For {AI} systems, what "exists" is that which can be represented. When the {knowledge} about a {domain} is represented in a {declarative language}, the set of objects that can be represented is called the {universe of discourse}. We can describe the ontology of a program by defining a set of representational terms. Definitions associate the names of entities in the {universe of discourse} (e.g. classes, relations, functions or other objects) with human-readable text describing what the names mean, and formal {axioms} that constrain the interpretation and well-formed use of these terms. Formally, an ontology is the statement of a {logical theory}. A set of {agents} that share the same ontology will be able to communicate about a domain of discourse without necessarily operating on a globally shared theory. We say that an agent commits to an ontology if its observable actions are consistent with the definitions in the ontology. The idea of ontological commitment is based on the {Knowledge-Level} perspective. 3. "information science" The hierarchical structuring of knowledge about things by subcategorising them according to their essential (or at least relevant and/or cognitive) qualities. See {subject index}. This is an extension of the previous senses of "ontology" (above) which has become common in discussions about the difficulty of maintaining {subject indices}. (1997-04-09)

Opal 1. A {DSP} language. ["OPAL: A High Level Language and Environment for DSP boards on PC", J.P. Schwartz et al, Proc ICASSP-89, 1989]. 2. The language of the {object-oriented database} {GemStone}. ["Making Smalltalk a Database System", G. Copeland et al, Proc SIGMOD'84, ACM 1984, pp.316- 325]. 3. A {simulation} language with provision for {stochastic variables}. An extension of {Autostat}. ["C-E-I-R OPAL", D. Pilling, Internal Report, C.E.I.R. Ltd. (1963)]. 4. A language for compiler testing said to be used internally by {DEC}. 5. A {functional programming} language designed at the {Technische Universitaet Berlin} as a testbed for the development of {functional programs}. OPAL integrates concepts from Algebraic Specification and Functional Programming, which favour the (formal) development of (large) production-quality software written in a {purely functional} style. The core of OPAL is a {strongly typed}, {higher-order}, {strict} applicative language which belongs to the tradition of {Hope} and {ML}. The algebraic flavour of OPAL is visible in the syntactical appearance and in the preference of {parameterisation} to {polymorphism}. OPAL supports: {information hiding} - each language unit is divided into an interface (signature) and an implementation part; selective import; {parameterised modules}; free constructor {views} on {sorts}, which allow pattern-based function definitions despite quite different implementations; full {overloading} of names; puristic scheme language with no {built-in} data types (except {Booleans} and denotations). OPAL and its predecessor OPAL-0 have been used for some time at the Technische Universitaet Berlin in CS courses and for research into optimising compilers for applicative languages. The OPAL compiler itself is writte entirely in OPAL. An overview is given in "OPAL: Design And Implementation of an Algebraic Programming Language". {(http://cs.tu-berlin.de/~opal/)}. {(ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/local/uebb/papers/DesignImplOpal.ps.gz)}. (1995-02-16)

Open Source Definition "standard" (OSD) Definition of distribution terms for {open source} software, promoted by the {Open Source Initiative}. {(http://opensource.org/osd.html)}. (1999-11-28)

Open Source Initiative "body" (OSI) An organisation dedicated to managing and promoting the {Open Source Definition} for the good of the community. {(http://opensource.org/)}. (1999-11-28)

open source "philosophy, legal" A method and philosophy for software licensing and distribution designed to encourage use and improvement of software written by volunteers by ensuring that anyone can copy the {source code} and modify it freely. The term "open source" is now more widely used than the earlier term "{free software}" (promoted by the {Free Software Foundation}) but has broadly the same meaning - free of distribution restrictions, not necessarily free of charge. There are various {open source licenses} available. Programmers can choose an appropriate license to use when distributing their programs. The {Open Source Initiative} promotes the {Open Source Definition}. {The Cathedral and the Bazaar (http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar.html)}. was a seminal paper describing the open source phenomenon. {Open Sources - O'Reilly book with full text online (http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/perens.html)}. {Articles from ZDNet (http://zdnet.com/pcmag/features/opensource/)}. (1999-12-29)

ORKID {Open Real-time Kernel Interface Definition}

OSD {Open Source Definition}

Ox "language, tool" A {preprocessor}, written by Kurt Bischoff of {Iowa State University}, that extends and generalises the {syntax} and {semantics} of {Yacc}, {Lex}, and {C}. Ox's support of {LALR1 grammars} generalises {yacc} in the way that {attribute grammars} generalise {context-free grammars}. It augments Yacc and {Lex} specifications with definitions of synthesised and inherited attributes written in {C} {syntax}. Ox checks these specifications for consistency and completeness, and generates a program that builds and decorates {attributed parse trees}. Ox accepts a most general class of attribute grammars. The user may specify postdecoration traversals for easy ordering of {side effects} such as {code generation}. {(ftp://ftp.cs.iastate.edu/pub/ox/)}. Info: "ox-request@cs.iastate.edu". ["User Manual for Ox: An Attribute-Grammar Compiling System based on Yacc, Lex and C", K.M. Bischoff, TR92-30, Iowa State U, Dec 1992]. (2000-04-03)

partial evaluation "compiler, algorithm" (Or "specialisation") An {optimisation} technique where the {compiler} evaluates some subexpressions at {compile-time}. For example, pow x 0 = 1 pow x n = if even n then pxn2 * pxn2 else x * pow x (n-1) where pxn2 = pow x (n/2) f x = pow x 5 Since n is known we can specialise pow in its second argument and unfold the recursive calls: pow5 x = x * x4 where x4 = x2 * x2    x2 = x * x f x = pow5 x pow5 is known as the residual. We could now also unfold pow5 giving: f x = x * x4 where x4 = x2 * x2   x2 = x * x It is important that the partial evaluation algorithm should terminate. This is not guaranteed in the presence of recursive function definitions. For example, if partial evaluation were applied to the right hand side of the second clause for pow above, it would never terminate because the value of n is not known. Partial evaluation might change the termination properties of the program if, for example, the expression (x * 0) was reduced to 0 it would terminate even if x (and thus x * 0) did not. It may be necessary to reorder an expression to partially evaluate it, e.g. f x y = (x + y) + 1 g z = f 3 z If we rewrite f: f x y = (x + 1) + y then the expression x+1 becomes a constant for the function g and we can say g z = f 3 z = (3 + 1) + z = 4 + z Partial evaluation of {built-in functions} applied to constant arguments is known as {constant folding}. See also {full laziness}. (1999-05-25)

Part of the purpose of the definition of analyticity is to secure that every logical sentence is either analytic or contradictory. (The corresponding situation with demonstrability and refutability is impossible in many significant cases in consequence of Gödel's theorem -- see logic, formal, § 6.)

passion-play ::: a dramatic performance, of medieval origin, that represents the events associated with the Passion of Jesus; also transf. See also passion, definition 7.

pattern matching 1. A function is defined to take arguments of a particular type, form or value. When applying the function to its actual arguments it is necessary to match the type, form or value of the actual arguments against the formal arguments in some definition. For example, the function length []   = 0 length (x:xs) = 1 + length xs uses pattern matching in its argument to distinguish a null list from a non-null one. There are well known {algorithm} for translating pattern matching into conditional expressions such as "if" or "case". E.g. the above function could be transformed to length l = case l of [] -" 0 x:xs -" 1 : length xs Pattern matching is usually performed in textual order though there are languages which match more specific patterns before less specific ones. 2. Descriptive of a type of language or utility such as {awk} or {Perl} which is suited to searching for strings or patterns in input data, usually using some kind of {regular expression}. (1994-11-28)

Peano arithmetic "mathematics" {Giuseppe Peano}'s system for representing {natural numbers} {inductively (induction)} using only two symbols, "0" (zero) and "S" (successor). This system could be expressed as a {recursive} data type with the following {Haskell} definition: data Peano = Zero | Succ Peano The number three, usually written "SSS0", would be Succ (Succ (Succ Zero)). Addition of Peano numbers can be expressed as a simple syntactic transformation: plus Zero   n = n plus (Succ m) n = Succ (plus m n) (1995-03-28)

petabyte "unit, data" (PB) A unit of data equal to one quadrillion {bytes} but see {binary prefix} for other definitions. A petabyte is 10^15 bytes or 1000^5 bytes or 1000 {terabytes}. As of 2013-11-05, the {Internet Archive} {Wayback Machine} contains almost two petabytes of data. A petabyte is the amount of data that would be required to store a 2000 by 1600 pixel image of every one of the 314 million people living in the USA in 2012. 1000 petabytes are one {exabyte}. See {prefix}. (2007-09-13)

Philosophers have in the past been concerned with two questions covered by our definition, though attempts to organize the subject as an autonomous department of philosophy are of recent date. Enquiries into the origin of language (e.g. in Plato's Kratylos) once a favorite subject for speculation, are now out of fashion, both with philosophers and linguists. Enquiries as to the nature of language (as in Descartes, Leibniz, and many others) are, however, still central to all philosophical interest in language. Such questions as "What are the most general characters of symbolism?", "How is 'Language' to be defined?", "What is the essence of language?", "How is communication possible?", "What would be the nature of a perfect language?", are indicative of the varying modulations which this theme receives in the works of contemporaries.   Current studies in the philosophy of language can be classified under five hends:   Questions of method, relation to other disciplines, etc. Much discussion turns here upon the proposal to establish a science and art of symbolism, variously styled semiotic, semantics or logical syntax,   The analysis of meaning. Problems arising here involve attention to those under the next heading.   The formulation of general descriptive schemata. Topics of importance here include the identification and analysis of different ways in which language is used, and the definition of men crucial notions as "symbol'', "grammar", "form", "convention", "metaphor", etc.   The study of fully formalized language systems or "calculi". An increasingly important and highly technical division which seeks to extend and adapt to all languages the methods first developed in "metamathematics" for the study of mathematical symbolism.   Applications to problems in general philosophy. Notably the attempt made to show that necessary propositions are really verbal; or again, the study of the nature of the religious symbol. Advance here awaits more generally acceptable doctrine in the other divisions.   References:

pinkroot ::: n. --> The root of Spigelia Marilandica, used as a powerful vermifuge; also, that of S. Anthelmia. See definition 2 (below).
A perennial North American herb (Spigelia Marilandica), sometimes cultivated for its showy red blossoms. Called also Carolina pink, Maryland pinkroot, and worm grass.
An annual South American and West Indian plant (Spigelia Anthelmia).


Plato: (428-7 - 348-7 B.C.) Was one of the greatest of the Greek philosophers. He was born either in Athens or on the island of Aegina, and was originally known as Aristocles. Ariston, his father, traced his ancestry to the last kings of Athens. His mother, Perictione, was a descendant of the family of Solon. Plato was given the best elementary education possible and he spent eight years, from his own twentieth year to the death of Socrates, as a member of the Socratic circle. Various stories are told about his supposed masters in philosophy, and his travels in Greece, Italy, Sicily and Egypt, but all that we know for certain is that he somehow acquired a knowledge of Pythagoreanisrn, Heracleitanism, Eleaticism and othei Pre-Socratic philosophies. He founded his school of mathematics and philosophy in Athens in 387 B.C. It became known as the Academy. Here he taught with great success until his death at the age of eighty. His career as a teacher was interrupted on two occasions by trips to Sicily, where Plato tried without much success to educate and advise Dionysius the Younger. His works have been very well preserved; we have more than twenty-five authentic dialogues, certain letters, and some definitions which are probably spurious. For a list of works, bibliography and an outline of his thought, see Platonism. -- V.J.B.

PL/I "language" Programming Language One. An attempt to combine the best features of {Fortran}, {COBOL} and {ALGOL 60}. Developed by George Radin of {IBM} in 1964. Originally named NPL and Fortran VI. The result is large but elegant. PL/I was one of the first languages to have a formal {semantic} definition, using the {Vienna Definition Language}. {EPL}, a dialect of PL/I, was used to write almost all of the {Multics} {operating system}. PL/I is still widely used internally at {IBM}. The PL/I standard is ANS X3.53-1976. PL/I has no {reserved words}. Types are fixed, float, complex, character strings with maximum length, bit strings, and label variables. {Arrays} have lower bounds and may be dynamic. It also has summation, multi-level structures, {structure assignment}, untyped pointers, {side effects} and {aliasing}. {Control flow} constructs include goto; do-end groups; do-to-by-while-end loops; external procedures; internal nested procedures and blocks; {generic procedures} and {exception handling}. Procedures may be declared {recursive}. Many implementations support {concurrency} ('call task' and 'wait(event)' are equivalent to {fork}/join) and compile-time statements. {LPI} is a PL/I {interpreter}. ["A Structural View of PL/I", D. Beech, Computing Surveys, 2,1 33-64 (1970)]. (1994-10-25)

Poincare, Henri: (1854-1912) French mathematician and mathematical physicist to whom many important technical contributions are due. His thought was occupied by problems on the borderline of physics and philosophy. His views reflect the influence of positivism and seem to be closely related to pngmatism. Poincare is known also for his opposition to the logistic method in the foundations of mathematics, especially as it was advocated by Bertrand i (q.v.) and Louis Couturat, and for his proposed resolution of the logical paradoxes (q.v.) by the prohibition of impredicattve definition (q.v.). Among his books, the more influential are Science and Hypothesis, Science and Method, and Dernieres Pensees. -- R.B.W.

point 1. "unit, text" (Sometimes abbreviated "pt") The unit of length used in {typography} to specify text character height, {rule} width, and other small measurements. There are six slightly different definitions: {Truchet point}, {Didot point}, {ATA point}, {TeX point}, {Postscript point}, and {IN point}. In Europe, the most commonly used is Didot and in the US, the formerly standard ATA point has essentially been replaced by the PostScript point due to the demise of traditional typesetting systems and rise of desktop computer based systems running software such as {QuarkXPress}, {Adobe InDesign} and {Adobe Pagemaker}. There are 20 {twips} in a point and 12 points in a {pica} (known as a "Cicero" in the Didot system). {Different point systems (http://vakcer.com/oberon/dtp/fonts/point.htm)}. (2004-12-23) 2. "hardware" To move a {pointing device} so that the on-screen pointer is positioned over a certain object on the screen such as a {button} in a {graphical user interface}. In most {window systems} it is then necessary to {click} a (physical) button on the pointing device to activate or select the object. In some systems, just pointing to an object is known as "mouse-over" {event} which may cause some help text (called a "tool tip" in {Windows}) to be displayed. (2001-05-21)

POOL-T Object-oriented, concurrent, synchronous. Predecessor of POOL2. ["Definition of the Programming Language POOL-T", Esprit Project 415, Doc. 0091, Philips Research Labs, Eindhoven, Netherlands, June 1985]. (1995-02-07)

powerdomain "theory" The powerdomain of a {domain} D is a domain containing some of the {subsets} of D. Due to the asymmetry condition in the definition of a {partial order} (and therefore of a domain) the powerdomain cannot contain all the subsets of D. This is because there may be different sets X and Y such that X "= Y and Y "= X which, by the asymmetry condition would have to be considered equal. There are at least three possible orderings of the subsets of a powerdomain: Egli-Milner: X "= Y iff for all x in X, exists y in Y: x "= y     and for all y in Y, exists x in X: x "= y ("The other domain always contains a related element"). Hoare or Partial Correctness or Safety: X "= Y iff for all x in X, exists y in Y: x "= y ("The bigger domain always contains a bigger element"). Smyth or Total Correctness or Liveness: X "= Y iff for all y in Y, exists x in X: x "= y ("The smaller domain always contains a smaller element"). If a powerdomain represents the result of an {abstract interpretation} in which a bigger value is a safe approximation to a smaller value then the Hoare powerdomain is appropriate because the safe approximation Y to the powerdomain X contains a safe approximation to each point in X. (""=" is written in {LaTeX} as {\sqsubseteq}). (1995-02-03)

PowerOpen Environment "operating system" (POE) A definition containing {API} and {ABI} specifications based on the {PowerPC} architecture. It is not an {operating system}. The presence of the ABI specification in the POE distinguishes it from other open systems (POSIX, XPG4, etc.) since it allows {platform} independent binary compatibility which is otherwise typically limited to particular hardware. The POE is an {open standard}, derived from {AIX} and conforming to industry open standards including {POSIX}, {XPG4} and {Motif}. The POE specification will be publicly available to anyone wishing to produce either {application programs} or hardware {platforms}. The {PowerOpen Association} will provide the necessary {conformance test}ing and POE branding. The POE is hardware {bus} independent. System implementations can range from {laptop computers} to {supercomputers}. It requires a multi-user, {multitasking} {operating system}. It provides networking support, an {X Window System} extension, a {Macintosh} Application Services extension and {Motif}. It is {conformance test}ed and certified by an independent party (the {PowerOpen Association}). The POE specification is targeted for availability in the first quarter of 1994. The {PowerOpen Association} will soon have some of the information material available on-line. (1994-11-08)

Pragmaticism: Pragmatism in Peirce's sense. The name adopted in 1905 by Charles S. Peirce (1893-1914) for the doctrine of pragmatism (q.v.) which had been enunciated by him in 1878. Peirce's definition was as follows: "In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception, and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire meaning of the conception". According to Peirce, W. James had interpreted pragmatism to mean "that the end of man is action", whereas Peirce intended his doctrine as "a theory of logical analysis, or true definition," and held that "its merits are greatest in its application to the highest metaphysical conceptions". "If one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it". Peirce hoped that the suffix, -icism, might mark his more strictly defined acception of the doctrine of pragmatism, and thus help to distinguish it from the extremes to which it had been pushed by the efforts of James, Schiller, Papini, and others. -- J.K.F.

Pragmatism is first and always a doctrine of meaning, and often a definition of truth as well, but as to the latter, not all pragmatists are in complete agreement. Neither Peirce nor Dewey, for example, would accept James' view that if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily for the individual, it is true. Pragmatism is also a method of interpreting ideas in terms of their consequences. James, however, apparently does not believe that this method entails his specific philosophical doctrines -- his pluralism, individualism, neutralism, indeterminism, meliorism, pragmatic theism, "crass" supernaturalism, etc. In fact, he states that pragmatism is independent of his new philosophy of "radical empiricism" and agrees with the anti-intellectualist bent of the Italian pragmatist, Papini, who sees the pragmatic method available to the atheist, the praying penitent, the investigating chemist, the metaphysician and the anti-metaphysician ("What Pragmatism Means".) On the other hand, insofar as pragmatism is practically identified with the scientific method (as is allegedly the case with Dewey) it appears that the pragmatic method might be expected to yield much the same conclusions for one philosopher as for another. In general, pragmatism as a method, does not seem to imply any final philosophical conclusions. It may imply a general direction of thought, such as empiricism. Although pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey) frequently attack older forms of empiricism, or crude empiricism, and necessarily reject truth as a simple or static correspondence of propositions with sense data, they nevertheless continue to describe themselves as empiricists, so that today pragmatism (especially in Dewey's case) is often regarded as synonymous with empiricism. See Empiricism.

prana ::: 1. Life-energy; life; the breath of life. ::: 2. the five pranas: the five workings of the life-force: [prana (see definition 3 below), apana, vydna, samana, udana]. ::: 3. [one of the five pranas]: it moves in the upper part of the body and is pre-eminently the breath of life, because it brings the universal force into the physical system and gives it there to be distributed.

Predicables: (Lat. praedicabilia) In Aristotle's logic the five types of predicates that may be affirmed or denied of a subject in a logical proposition, viz. definition, genus, differentia, property, and accident. The list of predicables as formulated by Porphyry and later logicians omits definition and includes species. See Definition: Genus; Species; Differentia; Property; Accident. -- G.R.M.

programming language "language" A {formal language} in which {computer programs} are written. The definition of a particular language consists of both {syntax} (how the various symbols of the language may be combined) and {semantics} (the meaning of the language constructs). Languages are classified as low level if they are close to {machine code} and high level if each language statement corresponds to many machine code instructions (though this could also apply to a low level language with extensive use of {macros}, in which case it would be debatable whether it still counted as low level). A roughly parallel classification is the description as {first generation language} through to {fifth generation language}. The other major classification of languages distinguishes between {imperative languages}, {procedural language} and {declarative languages}. {Programming languages in this dictionary (/contents/language.html)}. {Programming languages time-line/family tree (http://levenez.com/lang/history.html)}. (2004-05-17)

Protocol Sentences: See Basic Sentences. Proximum genus: (Lat. nearest kind) In Aristotelian theory of definition (q.v.), must be used with differentia. -- R.B.W.

Purple Book 1. "publication" The "System V Interface Definition". The covers of the first editions were an amazingly nauseating shade of off-lavender. 2. "publication" The {Wizard Book}. See also {book titles}. [{Jargon File}]

purus.a (purusha) ::: man; person; soul; spirit; the Self (atman) "as purusa originator, witness, support and lord and enjoyer of the forms and works of Nature" (prakr.ti); the conscious being, universal or individual, observing and upholding the activity of Nature on any plane of existence; the infinite divine Person (purus.ottama), "the Existent who .. transcends all definition by personality and yet is always that which is the essence of personality"; any of the ten types of consciousness (dasa-gavas) in the evolutionary scale. purusa purus

quality The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. Not to be mistaken for "degree of excellence" or "fitness for use" which meet only part of the definition. [{ISO8402}]. (1995-11-10)

Quidditative: In the strict sense, is that which arises from the proper image of an object, like intuitive knowledge, and besides, penetrates distinctly, with a clear, proper, and positive concept, the essential predicates of a thing even to the last difference. The knowledge which God has of Himself is of this kind. But quidditative knowledge in the wide sense is any knowledge of the quiddity or essence of an object, or any definition explaining what a thing is. -- H.G.

Quiddity: Essence; that property, quality, etc., which is described in a definition.

Quiddity: (Lat quidditas, whatness) Essence; that which is described in a definition. -- V.J.B.

Ramified theory of types: See impredicative definition, and paradoxes, logical.

random 1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird. "The system's been behaving pretty randomly." 2. Assorted; undistinguished. "Who was at the conference?" "Just a bunch of random business types." 3. (pejorative) Frivolous; unproductive; undirected. "He's just a random loser." 4. Incoherent or inelegant; poorly chosen; not well organised. "The program has a random set of misfeatures." "That's a random name for that function." "Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly." 5. In no particular order, though {deterministic}. "The I/O channels are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly." 6. Arbitrary. "It generates a random name for the scratch file." 7. Gratuitously wrong, i.e. poorly done and for no good apparent reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting in a particularly useless way, or an assembler routine that could easily have been coded using only three registers, but redundantly uses seven for values with non-overlapping lifetimes, so that no one else can invoke it without first saving four extra registers. What {randomness}! 8. A random hacker; used particularly of high-school students who soak up computer time and generally get in the way. 9. Anyone who is not a hacker (or, sometimes, anyone not known to the hacker speaking). "I went to the talk, but the audience was full of randoms asking bogus questions". 10. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. See also {J. Random}, {some random X}. [{Jargon File}] (1995-12-05)

Rebirth ::: One of the several aspects or branches of the general doctrine of reimbodiment. A word of large andgeneralized significance. Signifying merely a succession of rebirths, the definition becomes generalized,excluding specific explanations as to the type or kind of reimbodiment. The likeness between the ideacomprised in this word and that belonging to the term reincarnation is very close, yet the two ideas arequite distinct. (For this difference see Reincarnation; also Preexistence, Metempsychosis,Transmigration, etc.)

Recursion, definition by: A method of introducing, or "defining," functions from non-negative integers to non-negative integers, which, in its simplest form, consists in giving a pair of equations which specify the value of the function when the argument (or a particular one of the arguments) is 0, and supply a method of calculating the value of the function when the argument (that particular one of the arguments) is x+l, from the value of the function when the argument (that particular one of the arguments) is x. Thus a monadic function f is said to be defined by primitive recursion in terms of a dyadic function g -- the function g being previously known or given -- by the pair of equations, f(0) = A, f(S(x)) = g(x, f(x)), where A denotes some particular non-negative integer, and S denotes the successor function (so that S(x) is the same as x+l), and x is a variable (the second equation being intended to hold for all non-negative integers x). Similarly the dyadic function f is said to be defined by primitive recursion in terms of a triadic function g and a monadic function h by the pair of equations, f(a, 0) = h(a), f(a, S(x)) = g(a, x, f(a,x)), the equations being intended to hold for all non-negative integers a and x. Likewise for functions f of more than two variables. -- As an example of definition by primitive recursion we may take the "definition" of addition (i.e., of the dyadic function plus) employed by Peano in the development of arithmetic from his postulates (see the article Arithmetic, foundations of): a+0 = a, a+S(x) = S(a+x). This comes under the general form of definition by primitive recursion, just given, with h and g taken to be such functions that h(a) = a and g(a, x, y) = S(y). Another example is Peano's introduction of multiplication by the pair of equations aX0 = 0, aXS(x) = (aXx)+a. Here addition is taken as previously defined, and h(a) = 0, g(a, x, y) = y + a.

recursion "mathematics, programming" When a {function} (or {procedure}) calls itself. Such a function is called "recursive". If the call is via one or more other functions then this group of functions are called "mutually recursive". If a function will always call itself, however it is called, then it will never terminate. Usually however, it first performs some test on its arguments to check for a "base case" - a condition under which it can return a value without calling itself. The {canonical} example of a recursive function is {factorial}: factorial 0 = 1 factorial n = n * factorial (n-1) {Functional programming languages} rely heavily on recursion, using it where a {procedural language} would use {iteration}. See also {recursion}, {recursive definition}, {tail recursion}. [{Jargon File}] (1996-05-11)

recursion theory "theory" The study of problems that, in principle, cannot be solved by either computers or humans. [Proper definition?] (1999-03-01)

recursive definition See {recursive definition}.

Recursiveness: The notion of definition by recursion, and in particular of definition by primitive recursion, is explained in the article recursion, definition by. An n-adic function f (from non-negative integers to non-negative integers) is said to be defined by composition in terms of the m-adic function g and the n-adic functions h1, h2, . . . , hm by the equation: f(x1, x2, . . . , xn) = g(h1((x1, x2, . . . , xn), h2(x1, x2, . . . , xn) = hm (x1, x2, . . . , xn)). (The case is not excluded that m = 1, or n = 1, or both.)

redex Reducible Expression. An expression matching the left hand side of a {reduction rule} or definition.

Reducibility, axiom of: An axiom which (or some substitute) is necessary in connection with the ramified theory of types (q.v.) if that theory is to be adequate for classical mathematics, but the admissibility of which has been much disputed (see Paradoxes, logical). An exact statement of the axiom can be made only in the context of a detailed formulation of the ramified theory of types -- which will not here be undertaken. As an indication or rough description of the axiom of reducibility, it may be said that it cancels a large part of ihe restrictive consequences of the prohibition against impredicative definition (q.v.) and, in approximate effect, reduces the ramified theory of types to the simple theory of types (for the latter see Logic, formal, § 6). -- A.C.

References: J. Ries, Was ist ein Satz? 208, ff. (for quoted definitions). R. Carnap, Logical Syntax of language, 26. -- M.B.

referential transparency "programming" An expression E is referentially transparent if any subexpression and its value (the result of evaluating it) can be interchanged without changing the value of E. This is not the case if the value of an expression depends on global state which can change value. The most common example of changing global state is assignment to a global variable. For example, if y is a global variable in: f(x) { return x+y; } g(z) {  a = f(1);  y = y + z;  return a + f(1); } function g has the "{side-effect}" that it alters the value of y. Since f's result depends on y, the two calls to f(1) will return different results even though the argument is the same. Thus f is not referentially transparent. Changing the order of evaluation of the statements in g will change its result. {Pure functional languages} achieve referential transparency by forbidding {assignment} to global variables. Each expression is a constant or a function application whose evaluation has no side-effect, it only returns a value and that value depends only on the definition of the function and the values of its arguments. We could make f above referentially transparent by passing in y as an argument: f(x, y) = x+y Similarly, g would need to take y as an argument and return its new value as part of the result: g(z, y) {  a = f(1, y);  y' = y+z;  return (a + f(1, y'), y'); } Referentially transparent programs are more amenable to {formal methods} and easier to reason about because the meaning of an expression depends only on the meaning of its subexpressions and not on the order of evaluation or side-effects of other expressions. We can stretch the concept of referential transparency to include input and output if we consider the whole program to be a function from its input to its output. The program as a whole is referentially transparent because it will always produce the same output when given the same input. This is stretching the concept because the program's input may include what the user types, the content of certain files or even the time of day. If we do not consider global state like the contents of files as input, then writing to a file and reading what was written behaves just like assignment to a global variable. However, if we must consider the state of the universe as an input rather than global state then any {deterministic} system would be referentially transparent! See also {extensional equality}, {observational equivalence}. (1997-03-25)

refutable "programming" In {lazy functional languages}, a refutable pattern is one which may fail to match. An expression being matched against a refutable pattern is first evaluated to {head normal form} (which may fail to terminate) and then the top-level constructor of the result is compared with that of the pattern. If they are the same then any arguments are matched against the pattern's arguments otherwise the match fails. An irrefutable pattern is one which always matches. An attempt to evaluate any {variable} in the pattern forces the pattern to be matched as though it were refutable which may fail to match (resulting in an error) or fail to terminate. Patterns in {Haskell} are normally refutable but may be made irrefutable by prefixing them with a tilde (~). For example, (\ (x,y) -" 1) undefined ==" undefined (\ ~(x,y) -" 1) undefined ==" 1 Patterns in {Miranda} are refutable, except for {tuples} which are irrefutable. Thus g [x] = 2 g undefined ==" undefined f (x,y) = 1 f undefined ==" 1 Pattern bindings in local definitions are irrefutable in both languages: h = 1 where [x] = undefined ==" 1 Irrefutable patterns can be used to simulate {unlifted products} because they effectively ignore the top-level constructor of the expression being matched and consider only its components. (2013-11-03)

Reichenbach's work has been devoted mainly to the philosophy of empirical science; for a brief general survey of the problems which have particularly attracted his attention, and of his conception of an adequate method for their solution, cf. his Raum. Zeit Lehre. His contributions center around (I) the problems of space and time, and (II) those of causality, induction and probability. His studies of the first group of problems include thorough analyses of the nature of geometry and of the logical structure of relativistic physics, these researches led Reichenbach to a rejection of the aprioristic theory of space and time. Reichenbach's contributions to the second group of problems pivot around his general theory of probability which is based on a statistical definition of the probability concept. In terms of this probabilistic approach, Relchenbach has carried out comprehensive analyses of methodological and epistemological problems such as those of causality and induction. He has also extended his formal probability theory into a probability logic in which probabilities play the part of truth values. -- C.G.H.

Reincarnation ::: An anglicized word of Latin derivation, meaning "reinfleshment," the coming again into a human bodyof an excarnate human soul. The repetitive reimbodiment of the reincarnating human ego in vehicles ofhuman flesh -- this being a special case of the general doctrine of reimbodiment. This general doctrine ofreimbodiment applies not solely to man, but to all centers of consciousness whatsoever, or to all monadswhatsoever -- wheresoever they may be on the evolutionary ladder of life, and whatsoever may be theirparticular developmental grade thereon.The meaning of this general doctrine is very simple indeed. It is as follows: everylife-consciousness-center, in other words, every monad or monadic essence, reincorporates itselfrepeatedly in various vehicles or bodies, to use the popular word. These bodies may be spiritual, or theymay be physical, or they may be of a nature intermediate between these two, i.e., ethereal. This rule ofnature, which applies to all monads without exception, takes place in all the different realms of thevisible and invisible universe, and on all its different planes, and in all its different worlds.There are eight words used in the theosophical philosophy in connection with reimbodiment, which arenot all synonymous, although some of these eight words have almost the same specific meaning. Theyare: preexistence, rebirth, reimbodiment, palingenesis, metensomatosis, metempsychosis, transmigration,reincarnation (see under each word for definition). Of these eight words, four only may be said to containthe four different basic ideas of the general doctrine of reimbodiment, and these four are preexistence,reimbodiment, metempsychosis, and transmigration.In no case is the word reincarnation identical with any of the other seven words, though of course it hasgrounds of strong similarity with them all, as for instance with preexistence, because obviously the entitypreexists before it reincarnates; and on the same grounds it is similar to rebirth, reimbodiment, andmetensomatosis.The meaning of the word reincarnation differs specifically from rebirth in this, that the latter word simplymeans rebirth in human bodies of flesh on this earth; while the former term also contains the implication,tacit if not expressed, of possible incarnations in flesh by entities which have finished their earthlypilgrimage or evolution, but who can and sometimes do return to this earth in order to incarnate for thepurpose of aiding their less evolved brothers.

Rejected in particular by intuitionism are the use of impredicative definition (q. v.); the assumption that all things satisfying a given condition can be united into a set and this set then treated as an individual thing --or even the weakened form of this assumption which is found in Zermelo's Aussonderungsaxiom or axiom of subset formation (see logic, formal, § 9); the law of excluded middle as applied to propositions whose expression lequires a quantifier for which the variable involved has an infinite range. As an example of the rejection of the law of excluded middle, consider the proposition, "Either every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers or else not every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers." This proposition is intuitionistically unacceptable, because there are infinitely many even numbers greater than 2 and it is impossible to try them all one by one and decide of each whether or not it is the sum of two prime numbers. An intuitionist would accept the disjunction only after a proof had been given of one or other of the two disjoined propositions -- and in the present state of mathematical knowledge it is not certain that this can be done (it is not certain that the mathematical problem involved is solvable). If, however, we replace "greater than 2" by "greater than 2 and less than 1,000,000,000," the resulting disjunction becomes intuitionistically acceptable, since the number of numbers involved is then finite. The intuitionistic rejection of the law of excluded middle is not to be understood as an assertion of the negation of the law of excluded middle; on the contrary, Brouwer asserts the negation of the negation of the law of excluded middle, i.e., ∼∼[p ∨ ∼p]. Still less is the intuitionistic rejection of the law of excluded middle to be understood as the assertion of the existence of a third truth-value intermediate between truth and falsehood.

relational database "database" (RDBMS - relational database management system) A {database} based on the {relational model} developed by {E.F. Codd}. A relational database allows the definition of data structures, storage and retrieval operations and {integrity constraints}. In such a database the data and relations between them are organised in {tables}. A table is a collection of rows or {records} and each row in a table contains the same {fields}. Certain fields may be designated as {keys}, which means that searches for specific values of that field will use indexing to speed them up. Where fields in two different tables take values from the same set, a {join} operation can be performed to select related records in the two tables by matching values in those fields. Often, but not always, the fields will have the same name in both tables. For example, an "orders" table might contain (customer_id, product_code) pairs and a "products" table might contain (product_code, price) pairs so to calculate a given customer's bill you would sum the prices of all products ordered by that customer by joining on the product-code fields of the two tables. This can be extended to joining multiple tables on multiple fields. Because these relationships are only specified at retreival time, relational databases are classed as {dynamic database management system}. The first commercial RDBMS was the {Multics Relational Data Store}, first sold in 1978. {INGRES}, {Oracle}, {Sybase, Inc.}, {Microsoft Access}, and {Microsoft SQL Server} are well-known database products and companies. Others include {PostgreSQL}, {SQL/DS}, and {RDB}. ["Managing Data Bases, Four Critical Factors" Michael M. Gorman, QED Information Sciences, Inc.]. ["An Introduction To Database Systems" (6th ed) C. J. Date, Addison Wesley (an excellent source of detailed info)]. ["An End-User's Guide to Data Base" James Martin, Prentice Hall (excellent place to begin learning about DBMS)]. (2002-06-10)

Relative inclusion, ⊂, may be introduced by the definition: R ⊂ S → R ∩ −S = ∧. When R ⊂ S, we say that R is contained in S, or that S contains R.

Renaissance: (Lat. re + nasci, to be born) Is a term used by historians to characterize various periods of intellectual revival, and especially that which took place in Italy and Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The term was coined by Michelet and developed into a historical concept by J. Burckhardt (1860) who considered individualism, the revival of classical antiquity, the "discovery" of the world and of man as the main characters of that period as opposed to the Middle Ages. The meaning, the temporal limits, and even the usefulness of the concept have been disputed ever since. For the emphasis placed by various historians on the different fields of culture and on the contribution of different countries must lead to different interpretations of the whole period, and attempts to express a complicated historical phenomenon in a simple, abstract definition are apt to fail. Historians are now inclined to admit a very considerable continuity between the "Renaissance" and the Middle Ages. Yet a sweeping rejection of the whole concept is excluded, for it expresses the view of the writers of the period itself, who considered their century a revival of ancient civilization after a penod of decay. While Burckhardt had paid no attention to philosophy, others began to speak of a "philosophy of the renaissance," regarding thought of those centuries not as an accidental accompaniment of renaissance culture, but as its characteristic philosophical manifestation. As yet this view has served as a fruitful guiding principle rather than as a verified hypothesis. Renaissance thought can be defined in a negative way as the period of transition from the medieval, theological to the modern, scientific interpretation of reality. It also displays a few common features, such as an emphasis on man and on his place in the universe, the rejection of certain medieval standards and methods of science, the increased influence of some newly discovered ancient sources, and a new style and literary form in the presentation of philosophical ideas. More obvious are the differences between the various schools and traditions which cannot easily be brought to a common denominator Humimsm, Platonism, Aristotelianism, scepticism and natural philosophy, to which may be added the group of the founders of modern science (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo). -- P.O.K.

Resource Description Framework "web, specification, data" (RDF) A specification being developed in 2000 by the {W3C} as a foundation for processing {metadata} regarding resources on the {Internet}, including the {web}. Resource Description Framework data consists of resources ({nodes}), and property/value pairs describing the resource. A node is any object which can be pointed to by a {URI}, properties are attributes of the node, and values can be either atomic values for the attribute, or other nodes. For example, information about a particular {web page} (a node), might include the property "Author". The value for the Author property could be either a string giving the name of the author, or a {link} to a resource describing the author. Resource Description Framework only specifies a mechanism for encoding and transferring metadata. It does not specify what that metadata should, or can be. RDF does not, for example, define an "Author" attribute. Sets of properties are defined within RDF Vocabularies (or Schemas). Anynone can create an RDF schema, describing a specialized set of properties, by creating a resource, referenced by the Schema URI, which provides a human- and machine-understandable definition of the schema's properties. The description of a node may include properties defined in different schemas. The properties within a resource description are associated with a certain schema definition using the {XML} {namespace} mechanism. Schemas currently being developed include a content screening system modeled after {PICS}, and a bibliographic vocabulary, such as the {Dublin Core Initiative}. {(http://w3c.org/RDF/)}. {W3C Resource Description Framework-RDF Model and Syntax Specification (http://w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/)}. (2000-03-25)

RFC 1123 "networking, standard" The {RFC} "Requirements for Internet Hosts Application and Support" which clarifies or changes the specification of protocols given in earlier RFCs. RFC 1123 defines the terms "MUST", "SHOULD", "MAY", "unconditionally compliant", "conditionally compliant". Capitals are used to emphasise that the official definition of the word is being used. MUST or REQUIRED means an absolute requirement for conformance. SHOULD or RECOMMENDED means the item can be ignored under certain circumstances, although the full implications should be understood. MAY or OPTIONAL means the implementor can choose, usually depending on whether it is needed or not. Something "unconditionally compliant" meets all the MUST and SHOULD requirements, "conditionally compliant" meets all the MUST requirements and "not compliant" - does not meet some MUST requirement. For example, RFC 1123 amends RFC952 to say software MUST handle either a letter or a digit as the first character of a {hostname}. {(rfc:1123)}. (1996-01-13)

rigorous ::: a. --> Manifesting, exercising, or favoring rigor; allowing no abatement or mitigation; scrupulously accurate; exact; strict; severe; relentless; as, a rigorous officer of justice; a rigorous execution of law; a rigorous definition or demonstration.
Severe; intense; inclement; as, a rigorous winter.
Violent.


rl Kent Wittenburg "kentw@bellcore.com". The RL files contain code for defining {relational grammars} and using them in a bottom-up parser to recognise and/or parse expressions in Relational Languages. The approach is a simplification of that described in Wittenburg, Weitzman, and Talley (1991), Unification-Based Grammars and Tabular Parsing for Graphical Languages, Journal of Visual Languages and Computing 2:347-370. This code is designed to support the definition and parsing of Relational Languages, which are characterised as sets of objects standing in user-defined relations. Correctness and completeness is independent of the order in which the input is given to the parser. Data to be {parsed} can be in many forms as long as an interface is supported for queries and predicates for the relations used in grammar productions. To date, this software has been used to parse recursive pen-based input such as math expressions and {flow charts}; to check for {data integrity} and design conformance in databases; to automatically generate constraints in drag-and-drop style graphical interfaces; and to generate graphical displays by parsing relational data and generating output code. requires: Common Lisp ports: Allegro Common Lisp 4.1, Macintosh Common Lisp 2.0 {(ftp://flash.bellcore.com/rl/)}. (1992-10-31)

RRS An early definition of {Scheme}. Revised in {R2RS}. ["The Revised Report on Scheme", G.L. Steele et al, AI Memo 452, MIT, Jan 1978]. (1994-10-28) [Was the original "Report on Scheme" published?]

RULES. ::: In the things of the subtle kind having to do with the working of consciousness in the sadhana. one has to Icam to feel and observe and sec with the inner consciousness and to decide by the intuition with a plastic look on things which docs not make set definitions and rules as one has to do in ouUvard life.

SAD {Systems Analysis Definition}

Sakti(Sanskrit) ::: A term which may be briefly defined to mean one of what in modern Occultism are called theseven forces of nature, of which six are manifest and the seventh unmanifest, or only partly manifest.Sakti in general may be described as universal energy, and is, as it were, the feminine aspect of fohat. Inpopular Hinduism the various saktis are the wives or consorts of the gods, in other words, the energies oractive powers of the deities represented as feminine influences or energies.These anthropomorphic definitions are unfortunate, because misleading. The saktis of nature are reallythe veils, or sheaths, or vehicular carriers, through which work the inner and ever-active energies. Assubstance and energy, or force and matter, are fundamentally one, as modern science in its researches hasbegun to discover, it becomes apparent that even these saktis or sheaths or veils are themselves energic tolower spheres or realms through which they themselves work.The crown of the astral light, as H. P. Blavatsky puts it, is the generalized sakti of universal nature in so far as our solar system is concerned.

Sat-cit-ananda, saccidananda: (Skr.) "Being-awareness-bliss", a Vedantic (s.v.) definition of the highest, all-inclusive reality, also of the atman (q.v.) insofar as it has attained its full realization. -- K.F.L.

saturation 1. "graphics" In colour theory, the "colourfulness" of a stimulus relative to its {brightness}, the amount of the dominant wavelength relative to other wavelengths in the colour, one of the three coordinates in the {hue, saturation, value} (HSV) and {hue, saturation, brightness} (HSB) {colour models}. White, black and grey contain equal amounts of red, green and blue light and are completely unsaturated. A pure colour with very little gray in it is highly saturated. The amount of saturation does not affect the {hue} of a colour and is unrelated to the {value} (total amount of light in a colour). There are several competing mathematical definitions of saturation. {(http://www.ncsu.edu/scivis/lessons/colormodels/color_models2.html

Scheler, Max (1874-1928) was originally a disciple of Rudolf Eucken, but joined early -- at the University of Munich -- the Husserl circle of phenomenologists, of which school he became one of the leading exponents. Moving from Kantianism and Eucken-personalism into phenomenology, he later espoused successively positions which may be called a synthesis between phenomenology and Catholic philosophy, sociological dynamism, and ideo-realistic humanism. He was the psychologist, ethicist, and religious and social philosopher of the phenomenological movement. In common with other phenomenologists, Scheler's doctrine begins with the assertion of an inherent correlation of the essences of objects with the essences of intentional experience. His unique contributions lie in the comprehensiveness of his vision, in his interpretation of the value-qualities of being; of emotional experience, especially love, as the key for the disclosure of being; of a hierarchy of concrete ("material" as against formal) values; of an analysis of "resentment" as a thorough grudge (rancour) perverted emotional attitude towards the values of life; of his definition of "person" as the concrete unity of acts; of his acknowledgment of total personality beyond individual persons; of his definition of "ethos" as a preferential system of values determinative for the validity of any specific thought-form; of his development of the sociology of knowledge as a distinct discipline within cultural sociology; and of his working out of a philosophical anthropology showing man's position in and towards the whole of being. His most important works include: Die transzendentale und die psychologische Methode (1900); Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (1916); Vom Ewigen in Menschen (1921); Wesen und Formen der Sympathie (1923); Schriften zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre (3 vols., 1923-1924); Die Wissensformen und dte Gesellschaft (1926); Die Stellung des Menschen in Kosmos (1928); Philosophische Weltanschauung (1929); Zur Ethik und Erkenntnislehre (1933).

Schema Definition Set (SDS) Something in {Portable Common Tool Environment}. [What?] (2001-03-03)

Schlick, Moritz: (1882-1936) Taught at Rostock, Kiel, Vienna, also visit, prof.; Stanford, Berkeley. Founder of the Vienna Circle (see Scientific empiricism.) Called his own view "Consistent Empiricism." Main contributions: A logically revised correspondence view of the nature of truth. A systematic epistemology based on the distinction of (immediate) experience and (relational) knowledge. Clarified the analytic -- a priori character of logic and mathematics (by disclosing the "implicit definitions" in postulate systems). Repudiation of Kantian and phenomenological (synthetic) apriorism. Physicalistic, epistemological solution of the psycho-physical problem in terms of a double language theory. Earlier critical-realistic views were later modified and formulated as Empirical Realism. Greatly influenced in this final phase by Carnap and especially Wittgenstein, he considered the logical clarification of meanings the only legitimate task of a philosophy destined to terminate the strife of systems. Important special applications of this general outlook to logic and methodology of science (space, time, substance, causality, probability, organic life) and to problems of ethics (meaning of value judgments, hedonism, free-will, moral motivation). An optimistic, poetic view of the meaning of life is expressed in only partly published writings on a "Philosophy of Youth."

Scholz and Schweitzer, Die sogenannten Definitionen durch Abstraktion, Leipzig, 1935.

Screamer An extension of {Common Lisp} providing {nondeterministic} {backtracking} and {constraint} programming. {(ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/screamer.tar.Z)}. [Isn't all backtracking nondeterministic by definition?]

SCSI-2 "hardware" A version of the {SCSI} command specification. SCSI-2 shares the original SCSI's {asynchronous} and {synchronous} modes and adds a "{Fast SCSI}" mode ("10MB/s) and "{Wide SCSI}" (16 bit, "20MB/s or rarely 32 bit). Another major enhancement was the definition of command sets for different device classes. SCSI-1 was rather minimalistic in this respect which led to various incompatibilities especially for devices other than {hard-disks}. SCSI-2 addresses that problem. allowing {scanners}, {hard disk drives}, {CD-ROM} drives, tapes and many other devices to be connected. Normal SCSI-2 equipment (not wide or {differential}) can be connected to a SCSI-1 bus and vice versa. (1995-04-19)

SCSI-3 "hardware" An ongoing standardisation effort to extend the capabilities of {SCSI-2}. SCSI-3's goals are more devices on a bus (up to 32); faster data transfer; greater distances between devices (longer cables); more device classes and command sets; structured documentation; and a structured {protocol} model. In SCSI-2, data transmission is parallel (8, 16 or 32 bit wide). This gets increasingly difficult with higher data rates and longer cables because of varying signal delays on different wires. Furthermore, wiring cost and drive power increases with wider data words and higher speed. This has triggered the move to serial interfacing in SCSI-3. By embedding clock information into a serial data stream signal delay problems are eliminated. Driving a single signal also consumes less driving power and reduces connector cost and size. To allow for backward compatibility and for added flexibility SCSI-3 allows the use of several different transport mechanisms, some serial and some parallel. The software {protocol} and command set is the same for each transport. This leads to a layered protocol definition similar to definitions found in networking. SCSI-3 is therefore in fact the sum of a number of separate standards which are defined by separate groups. These standards and groups are currently: X3T9.2/91-13R2 SCSI-3 Generic Packetized Protocol X3T9.2/92-141  SCSI-3 Queuing Model X3T9.2/92-079  SCSI-3 Architecture Model IEEE P1394   High Performance Serial Bus X3T9.2/92-106  SCSI-3 Block Commands X3T9.2/91-189  SCSI-3 Serial Bus Protocol X3T9.2/92-105  SCSI-3 SCSI-3 Core Commands SCSI-3 Common Command Set X3T9.2/92-108  SCSI-3 Graphic Commands X3T9.2/92-109  SCSI-3 Medium Changer Commands X3T9.2/91-11   SCSI-3 Interlocked Protocol X3T9.2/91-10   SCSI-3 Parallel Interface X3T9.2/92-107  SCSI-3 Stream Commands SCSI-3 Scanner Commands Additional Documents for the Fibre Channel are also meant to be included in the SCSI-3 framework, i.e.: Fibre Channel SCSI Mapping Fibre Channel Fabric Requirements Fibre Channel Low Cost Topologies X3T9.3/92-007  Fibre Channel Physical and Signalling Interface Fibre Channel Single Byte Commands Fibre Channel Cross Point Switch Topology X3T9.2/92-103  SCSI-3 Fibre Channel Protocol (GPP & SBP) As all of this is an ongoing effort of considerable complexity, document structure and workgroups may change. No final standard is issued yet. In the meantime a group of manufacturers have proposed an extension of {SCSI-2} called {Ultra-SCSI} which doubles the transfer speed of {Fast-SCSI} to give 20MByte/s on an 8 bit connection and 40MByte/s on a 16-bit connection. [Hermann Strass: "SCSI-Bus erfolgreich anwenden", Franzis-Verlag Muenchen 1993]. (1995-04-19)

SDF Syntax Definition Formalism. A language for lexical and syntactic specification. ["The Syntax Definition Formalism SDF - Reference Manual", J. Heering et al, Centre for Math & CS, Amsterdam]. ["Algebraic Specification", J.A. Bergstra et al eds, ACM Press 1989, Chap 6. To appear]. (1994-10-27)

SDL Specification and Design Language. Defined by the {ITU-T} (recommendation Z100) to provide a tool for unambiguous specification and description of the behaviour of telecommunications systems. The area of application also includes process control and real-time applications. SDL provides a Graphic Representation (SDL/GR) and a textual Phrase Representation (SDL/PR), which are equivalent representations of the same semantics. A system is specified as a set of interconnected {abstract machines} which are extensions of the {Finite State Machine} (FSM). 1. System Software Development Language. System software for the B1700. "System Software Development Language Reference Manual", 1081346, Burroughs Corp (Dec 1974). 2. Specification and Description Language. {ITU-T}. Specification language with both graphical and character-based syntaxes for defining interacting extended finite state machines. Used to specify discrete interactive systems such as industrial process control, traffic control, and telecommunication systems. Proc Plenary Assembly, Melbourne 14-1988-11-25, Fasc X.1, CCITT. "Telecommunications Systems Engineering Using SDL", R. Saracco et al, N-H 1989. Available from Verilog, MD. (See XDL). 3. Shared Dataspace Language. "A Shared Dataspace Language Supporting Large-Scale Concurrency", G. Roman et al, Proc 8th Intl Conf Distrib Comp Sys, IEEE 1988, pp.265-272. 4. Structure Definition Language. Used internally by DEC to define and generate the symbols used for VAX/VMS internal data structures in various languages. 5. System Description Language. language used by the Eiffel/S implementation of Eiffel to assemble clusters into a system. (see Lace).

SDS 1. "company" {Scientific Data Systems}. 2. "tool" {Schema Definition Set}. (2001-03-03)

Secondary Qualities: Those sensible qualities which are "nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities." This is the definition of John Locke. Such qualities (colors, sounds, tastes, smells) are distinguishable from primary in that they are highly variable, less constant. They appear in human consciousness in various forms, whereas the primary ones remain the same. See Primary Qualities. -- V.F.

See further the articles Recursion, definition by, and Recursion, proof by. -- A.C.

self-seeking ::: [Ed. note: In this instance the meaning of the word is seeking for itself, rather than the usual definition which is the seeking of one"s own interest or selfish ends.]

SFL System Function Language. Assembly language for the ICL2900. "SFL Language Definition Manual", TR 6413, Intl Computers Ltd.

Simple Network Management Protocol version 2 "protocol" (SNMP v2) A revision of {Simple Network Management Protocol} (not just a new {MIB}) which includes improvements in the areas of performance, security, confidentiality, and manager-to-manager communications. The major components of SNMPv2 are defined in the following {RFCs}: {RFC 1089} - SNMP over Ethernet {RFC 1140} - IAB Official Protocol Standards {RFC 1155} - Structure and Identification of Management    Information for TCP/IP based internets {RFC 1156} (H) - Management Information Base Network Management of TCP/IP based internets {RFC 1157} - A Simple Network Management Protocol {RFC 1158} - Management Information Base Network    Management of TCP/IP based internets: MIB-II {RFC 1161} (H) - SNMP over OSI {RFC 1187} - Bulk Table Retrieval with the SNMP {RFC 1212} - Concise MIB Definitions {RFC 1213} - Management Information Base for Network    Management of TCP/IP-based internets: MIB-II {RFC 1215} (I) - A Convention for Defining Traps for use with the SNMP {RFC 1224} - Techniques for Managing    Asynchronously Generated Alerts {RFC 1270} (I) - SNMP Communication Services {RFC 1303} (I) - A Convention for Describing SNMP-based Agents {RFC 1470} (I) - A Network Management Tool Catalog {RFC 1298} - SNMP over IPX {RFC 1418} - SNMP over OSI {RFC 1419} - SNMP over IPX {RFC 1441} - Introduction to SNMP v2 {RFC 1442} - SMI For SNMP v2 {RFC 1443} - Textual Conventions for SNMP v2 {RFC 1444} - Conformance Statements for SNMP v2 {RFC 1445} - Administrative Model for SNMP v2 {RFC 1446} - Security Protocols for SNMP v2 {RFC 1447} - Party MIB for SNMP v2 {RFC 1448} - Protocol Operations for SNMP v2 {RFC 1449} - Transport Mappings for SNMP v2 {RFC 1450} - {MIB} for SNMP v2 {RFC 1451} - Manager to Manger MIB {RFC 1452} - Coexistance between SNMP v1 and SNMP v2 {FAQ (http://cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/snmp-faq)}. {Introduction (http://gt-er.cg.org.br/documentacao/buffer/gerencia/faq1.html)}. {Cisco (http://cisco.com/cpropub/univ-src/ccdcp/data/doc/software/11_1/mib/mover.htm)}. (1997-12-02)

Since this definition of consistency is relative to the choice if a particular notation as representing negation, the following definition is sometimes used instead: (2) A logistic system is consistent if not every formula (not every sentence) is a theorem. In the case of many familiar systems, under the usual choice as to which notation represents negation, the equivalence of this sense of consistency to the previous one is immediate.

single static assignment "compiler" (Also known as SSA form) A special form of code where each variable has only one single definition in the program code. "Static" comes from the fact that the definition site may be in a loop, thus dynamically executed several times. SSA form is used for program optimization or {static analysis} and {optimisation}. (2003-04-12)

Skandha(s)(Sanskrit) ::: Literally "bundles," or groups of attributes, to use H. P. Blavatsky's definition. When deathcomes to a man in any one life, the seeds of those causes previously sown by him and which have not yetcome forth into blossom and full-blown flower and fruit, remain in his interior and invisible parts asimpulses lying latent and sleeping: lying latent like sleeping seeds for future flowerings into action in thenext and succeeding lives. They are psychological impulse-seeds lying asleep until their appropriatestage for awakening into action arrives at some time in the future.In the case of the cosmic bodies, every solar or planetary body upon entering into its pralaya, itsprakritika-pralaya -- the dissolution of its lower principles -- at the end of its long life cycle, exists inspace in the higher activity of its spiritual principles, and in the dispersion of its lowest principles, whichlatter latently exist in space as skandhas in a laya-condition.When a laya-center is fired into action by the touch of wills and consciousnesses on their downward way,becoming the imbodying life of a solar system, or of a planet of a solar system, the center manifests firston its highest plane, and later on its lower plane. The skandhas are awakened into life one after another:first the highest ones, next the intermediate ones, and lastly the inferior ones, cosmically and qualitativelyspeaking.The term skandhas in theosophical philosophy has the general significance of bundles or groups ofattributes, which together form or compose the entire set of material and also mental, emotional, andmoral qualities. Exoterically the skandhas are "bundles" of attributes five in number, but esoterically theyare seven. These unite at the birth of man and constitute his personality. After the death of the body theskandhas are separated and so remain until the reincarnating ego on its downward path into physicalincarnation gathers them together again around itself, and thus reforms the human constitutionconsidered as a unity.In brief, the skandhas can be said to be the aggregate of the groups of attributes or qualities which makeeach individual man the personality that he is; but this must be sharply distinguished from theindividuality.

SMoLCS Specification metalanguage used for a formal definition of Ada. "An Introduction to the SMoLCS Methodology", E. Astesiano, U Genova 1986.

smrtikara (Smritikara) ::: [the maker or author of a smrti (definition 2) ].

Socrates: (c. 470-399 B.C.) Was one of the most influential teachers of philosophy. The son of an Athenian stone cutter, named Sophroniscus, and of a mid-wife, Socrates learned his father's trade, but, in a sense, practised his mother's. Plato makes him describe himself as one who assists at the birth of ideas. With the exception of two periods of military service, he remained in Athens all his life. He claimed to be guided by a daimon which warned him against what was wrong, and Plato suggests that Socrates enjoyed mystic experiences. Much of his tirne was spent in high-minded philosophic discussion with those he chanced to meet in the public places of Athens. The young men enjoyed his easy methods of discussion and delighted in his frequent quizzing of the Sophists. He was eventually charged in the Athenian citizen court with being irreligious and corrupting the young. Found guilty, he submitted to the court and drank the poison which ended the life of one of the greatest of Athenians. He wrote nothing and is known through three widely divergent contemporary accounts. Aristophanes has caricatured him in the Clouds, Xenophon has described him, with personal respect but little understanding of his philosophical profundity; Plato's dialogues idealize him and probably develop the Socratic philosophy far beyond the original thought of his master. Socrates personifies the Athenian love of reason and of moderation; he probably taught that virtue is knowledge and that knowledge is only true when it reaches the stage of definition. See Socratic method. -- V.J.B.

Sometimes, however, the distinction between nominal definitions and real definitions is made on the basis that the latter convey an assertion of existence, of the defimendum, or rather, where the definiendum is a concept, of things falling thereunder (Saccheri, 1697); or the distinction may be made on the basis that real definitions involve the possibility of what is defined (Leibniz, 1684). Ockham makes the distinction rather on the basis that real definitions state the whole nature of a thing and nominal definitions state the meaning of a word or phrase, but adds that non-existents (as chimaera) and such parts of speech as verbs, adverbs, and conjunctions may therefore have only nominal definition. -- A.C.

Sometimes referred to as generalizations or analogues of De Morgan's laws are the two dually related theorems of the functional calculus of first order, ∼(Ex)F(x) ≡ (x)∼F(x), ∼(x)F(x) ≡ (Ex)∼F(x), and similar theorems in higher functional calculi. These make possible the definition of the existential quantifier in terms of the universal quantifier (or inversely). -- A.C.

SPIRITUAL LIFE. ::: The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule ; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom poten- tially larger than the other kuigdoms below it, with a hundred

SQL "language, database, standard" /S Q L/ An industry-standard language for creating, updating and, querying {relational database management systems}. SQL was developed by {IBM} in the 1970s for use in {System R}. It is the {de facto standard} as well as being an {ISO} and {ANSI} {standard}. It is often embedded in general purpose programming languages. The first SQL standard, in 1986, provided basic language constructs for defining and manipulating {tables} of data; a revision in 1989 added language extensions for {referential integrity} and generalised {integrity} {constraints}. Another revision in 1992 provided facilities for {schema} manipulation and {data administration}, as well as substantial enhancements for data definition and data manipulation. Development is currently underway to enhance SQL into a computationally complete language for the definition and management of {persistent}, complex objects. This includes: generalisation and specialisation hierarchies, {multiple inheritance}, user defined {data types}, {triggers} and {assertions}, support for {knowledge based systems}, {recursive query expressions}, and additional data administration tools. It also includes the specification of {abstract data types} (ADTs), object identifiers, {methods}, {inheritance}, {polymorphism}, {encapsulation}, and all of the other facilities normally associated with object data management. The emerging {SQL3} standard is expected to be complete in 1998. According to Allen G. Taylor, SQL does __not__ stand for "Structured Query Language". That, like "SEQUEL" (and its pronunciation /see'kw*l/), was just another unofficial name for a precursor of SQL. However, the IBM SQL Reference manual for DB2 and Craig Mullins's "DB2 Developer's Guide" say SQL __does__ stand for "Structured Query Language". {SQL Standards (http://jcc.com/sql_stnd.html)}. {An SQL parser (ftp://ftp.ora.com/published/oreilly/nutshell/lexyacc/)} is described in "Lex & Yacc", by Levine, Mason & Brown published by O'Reilly. {The 1995 SQL Reunion: People, Projects, and Politics (http://mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/)}. ["A Guide to the SQL Standard", C.J. Date, A-W 1987]. ["SQL for Dummies", Allen G. Taylor, IDG Books Worldwide]. (2005-11-17)

Sri Aurobindo uses the word in the sense of the definition for imager.

Standard Generalized Markup Language "language, text" (SGML) A generic {markup} language for representing documents. SGML is an International Standard that describes the relationship between a document's content and its structure. SGML allows document-based information to be shared and re-used across applications and computer {platforms} in an open, vendor-neutral format. SGML is sometimes compared to {SQL}, in that it enables companies to structure information in documents in an open fashion, so that it can be accessed or re-used by any SGML-aware application across multiple platforms. SGML is defined in "ISO 8879:1986 Information processing -- Text and office systems -- Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)", an {ISO} standard produced by {JTC} 1/SC 18 and amended by "Amendment 1:1988". Unlike other common document file formats that represent both content and presentation, SGML represents a document's content {data} and structure (interrelationships among the data). Removing the presentation from content establishes a neutral format. SGML documents and the information in them can easily be re-used by publishing and non-publishing {applications}. SGML identifies document elements such as titles, paragraphs, tables, and chapters as distinct objects, allowing users to define the relationships between the objects for structuring data in documents. The relationships between document elements are defined in a {Document Type Definition} (DTD). This is roughly analogous to a collection of {field} definitions in a {database}. Once a document is converted into SGML and the information has been 'tagged', it becomes a database-like document. It can be searched, printed or even programmatically manipulated by SGML-aware applications. Companies are moving their documents into SGML for several reasons: Reuse - separation of content from presentation facilitates multiple delivery formats like {CD-ROM} and {electronic publishing}. Portability - SGML is an international, platform-independent, standard based on {ASCII} text, so companies can safely store their documents in SGML without being tied to any one vendor. Interchange - SGML is a core data standard that enables SGML-aware applications to inter-operate and share data seamlessly. A central SGML document store can feed multiple processes in a company, so managing and updating information is greatly simplified. For example, when an aeroplane is delivered to a customer, it comes with thousands of pages of documentation. Distributing these on paper is expensive, so companies are investigating publishing on CD-ROM. If a maintenance person needs a guide for adjusting a plane's flight surfaces, a viewing tool automatically assembles the relevant information from the document {repository} as a complete document. SGML can be used to define attributes to information stored in documents such as security levels. There are few clear leaders in the SGML industry which, in 1993, was estimated to be worth US $520 million and is projected to grow to over US $1.46 billion by 1998. A wide variety tools can be used to create SGML systems. The SGML industry can be separated into the following categories: Mainstream Authoring consists of the key {word processing} vendors like {Lotus}, {WordPerfect} and {Microsoft}. SGML Editing and Publishing includes traditional SGML authoring tools like {ArborText}, {Interleaf}, {FrameBuilder} and {SoftQuad Author}/Editor. SGML Conversions is one of the largest sectors in the market today because many companies are converting legacy data from mainframes, or documents created with mainstream word processors, into SGML. Electronic Delivery is widely regarded as the most compelling reason companies are moving to SGML. Electronic delivery enables users to retrieve information on-line using an intelligent document viewer. Document Management may one day drive a major part of the overall SGML industry. SGML Document Repositories is one of the cornerstone technologies that will affect the progress of SGML as a data standard. Since 1998, almost all development in SGML has been focussed on {XML} - a simple (and therefore easier to understand and implement) subset of SGML. {"ISO 8879:1986//ENTITIES Added Latin 1//EN" (http://ucc.ie/info/net/isolat1.html)} defines some characters. [How are these related to {ISO 8859}-1?]. {ISO catalogue entry (http://iso.ch/cate/d16387.html)}. SGML parsers are available from {VU, NL (ftp://star.cs.vu.nl/Sgml)}, {FSU (ftp://mailer.cc.fsu.edu/pub/sgml)}, {UIO, Norway (ftp://ifi.uio.no/pub/SGML/SGMLS)}. See also {sgmls}. {Usenet} newsgroup: {news:comp.text.sgml}. ["The SGML Handbook", Charles F. Goldfarb, Clarendon Press, 1991, ISBN 0198537379. (Full text of the ISO standard plus extensive commentary and cross-referencing. Somewhat cheaper than the ISO document)]. ["SGML - The User's Guide to ISO 8879", J.M. Smith et al, Ellis Harwood, 1988]. [Example of some SGML?] (2000-05-31)

String PRocessING language "language" (SPRING) ["From SPRING to SUMMER: Design, Definition and Implementation of Programming Languages for String Manipulation and Pattern Matching", Paul Klint, Math Centre, Amsterdam 1982]. (1996-02-06)

sublanguage "database, language" One of the languages associated with a {DBMS}, for example a {data-definition language} or {query language}. (1999-10-18)

Such methods of introducing new concepts, functions, etc. as definition by abstraction (q. v.), definition by recursion (q. v.), definition by composition (see Recursiveness) may be dealt with by reducing them to nominal definitions; i.e., by finding a nominal definition such that the definiens (and therefore also the definiendum) turns out, under an intended interpretation of the logistic system, to mean the concept, function, etc. which is to be introduced.

supercomputer "computer" A broad term for one of the fastest computers currently available. Such computers are typically used for {number crunching} including scientific {simulations}, (animated) {graphics}, analysis of geological data (e.g. in petrochemical prospecting), structural analysis, computational fluid dynamics, physics, chemistry, electronic design, nuclear energy research and meteorology. Perhaps the best known supercomputer manufacturer is {Cray Research}. A less serious definition, reported from about 1990 at The {University Of New South Wales} states that a supercomputer is any computer that can outperform {IBM}'s current fastest, thus making it impossible for IBM to ever produce a supercomputer. (1996-12-13)

superscalar "architecture" A superscalar architecture is a {uniprocessor} that can execute two or more {scalar} operations in parallel. Some definitions include {superpipelined} and {VLIW} architectures; others do not. Superscalar architectures (apart from superpipelined architectures) require multiple {functional units}, which may or may not be identical to each other. In some superscalar processors the order of instruction execution is determined statically (purely at compile-time), in others it is determined dynamically (partly at run time).

supramental gnosis ::: (in April 1927) a term comprising the planes called (gnostic) intuition, supermind and gnostic supermind as defined before the introduction of the term overmind and the redefinition of these planes as parts of the overmind system.

SVID {System V Interface Definition}

Syntax language: See Object language. Syntax, logical: "By the logical syntax of a language," according to Carnap, "we mean the formal theory of the linguistic forms of that language -- the systematic statement of the formal rules which govern it together with the development of the consequences which follow from these rules. A theory, a rule, a definition, or the like is to be called formal when no reference is made in it either to the meaning of the symbols or to the sense of the expressions, but simply and solely to the kinds and order of the symbols from which the expressions are constructed."

Systems Analysis Definition "programming" (SAD) The analysis of the role of a proposed system and the identification of the requirements that it should meet. SAD is the starting point for system design. The term is most commonly used in the context of commercial programming, where software developers are often classed as either {systems analysts} or programmers. The systems analysts are responsible for identifying requirements (i.e. systems analysis) and producing a design. The programmers are then responsible for implementing it. (1996-03-07)

Systems Network Architecture "networking" (SNA) {IBM}'s proprietary high level networking {protocol} {standard}, used by IBM and IBM compatible {mainframes}. Also referred to as "Blue Glue", SNA is a bletcherous protocol once widely favoured at commercial shops. The official IBM definition is "that which binds blue boxes together." It may be relevant that {Blue Glue} is also a 3M product commonly used to hold down carpets in {dinosaur pens}. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-23)

System V 1. The other major versions of the {Unix} {operating system} apart from {BSD}. Developed by {AT&T}. Later versions of Unix such as {SunOS} combined the best features of {System V} and {BSD} Unix. (1994-10-31) [Differences?] 2. A supplier of {Unix} {open systems} for {Intel x86} processors. They supply products from {SCO} and {Solaris} and offer general support for {Unix}, {TCP/IP}, and {Internet}. They serve and create third-party {WWW} pages and provide on-line support for commercial and non-commercial applications. {(http://systemv.com/)}. See also {System V Interface Definition}. (1994-12-12)

System V Interface Definition (SVID) A standard allowing source code portability between different {platforms} running Unix System V. (1995-03-28)

Tarski's concept of truth, obtained thus by a syntactical definition, is closely related to Carnap's concept of analyticity. According to Tarski, they are the same in the case that L is a "logical language." See further semiotic 2. -- A.C.

tat ::: that; "That which escapes definition or description and is yet not only real but attainable", a word used to indicate parabrahman as "something utterly Transcendent, something that is unnameable and mentally unknowable, a sheer Absolute". Since this Absolute "is in itself indefinable by reason, ineffable to the speech", it can only "be approached through experience", either "through an absolute negation of existence, as if it were itself a supreme Non-Existence, a mysterious infinite Nihil" (asat) or else "through an absolute affirmation of all the fundamentals of our own existence, . . . through an inexpressible absolute of being" (sat).

tejas, tejah ::: light of energy; force; puissance; energy and soul-force; [as one of the five bhutas: light and heat energy, see agni, definition 2].

Temple, William: For many years Archbishop of York, Temple (born 1881) has written extensively on the philosophy of religion. In Mens Creatrix and most recently in Nature Man and God, he has argued for a universe of levels, culminating in value, and pointing to God as Supreme Value and hence Ultimate Reality. Recent work on the nature of revelation has given him the definition of revelation as "coincidence of divinely guided event and divinely guided apprehension", in this setting he places (see Christ the Truth) the Incarnation as central and most significant event apprehended by the Christian community. He is a Platonist in tendency, although within recent years this has been modified by scholasticism, and a study of Marxian philosophy. -- W.N.P.

test-driven development "programming, testing" (TDD) An iterative {software development} process where each iteration consists of the developer writing an automated {test case} for an unimplemented improvement or function, then producing code to pass that test and finally {refactoring} the code to acceptable standards. {Kent Beck}, who is credited with having developed or "rediscovered" the technique, stated in 2003 that TDD encourages simple designs and inspires confidence. TDD is related to the humourous definition of programming as the process of {debugging an empty file}. (2012-05-01)

Text Encoding Initiative "text, project, standard" (TEI) A project working to establish a standard for interchanging {electronic text} for scholarly research. The TEI has adopted {SGML} and implemented the TEI standard as an SGML {Document Type Definition}. The TEI was incorporated as a not-for-profit consortium in December 2000, with host sites in Bergen, Oxford, Virginia, and Providence RI, USA. {(http://tei-c.org/)}. See also {Corpus Processing}. [Any connection with {Computational Linguistics} or {Natural Language Processing}?] (2001-03-23)

The addition to the functional calculus of first order of individual constants (denoting particular individuals) is not often made -- unless symbols for functions from individuals to individuals (so-called "mathematical" or "descriptive" functions) are to be added at the same time. Such an addition is, however, employed in the two following sections as a means of representing certain forms of inference of traditional logic. The addition is really non-essential, and requires only minor changes in the definition of a formula and the list of primitive formulas (allowing the alternative of individual constants at certain places where the above given formulation calls for free individual variables).

The analysis of conscioisness proceeds in two principal directions: a distinction may be drawn between the act of consciousness and the content of consciousness and the two may even be considered as separable ingredients of consciousness, and consciousness is analyzed into its three principal functions: cognition, affection and conation. Locke, Reid and others restricted consciousness to the reflective apprehension of the mind of its own processes but this usage has been abandoned in favor of the wider definition indicated above and the term introspection is used to designate this special kind of consciousness. See Behaviorism. -- L.W.

The definition is intended to cover the communication of attitudes, evaluations, desires, etc., as well as of judgments or assertions. See Functions of Language, Speech Situation. -- M.B.

The definition is suggested by that of Jeremy Bentham. Reference: C. K. Ogden, Bentham's Theory of Fictions, 12. See also Incomplete Symbol, Construction. -- M.B.

The capital roman letters here denote arbitrary formulas of the propositional calculus (in the technical sense defined below) and the arrow is to be read "stands for" or "is an abbreviation for." Suppose that we have given some specific list of propositional symbols, which may be infinite in number, and to which we shall refer as the fundamental propositional symbols. These are not necessarily single letters or characters, but may be expressions taken from any language or system of notation; they may denote particular propositions, or they may contain variables and denote ambiguously any proposition of a certain form or class. Certain restrictions are also necessary upon the way in which the fundamental propositional symbols can contain square brackets [ ]; for the present purpose it will suffice to suppose that they do not contain square brackets at all, although they may contain parentheses or other kinds of brackets. We call formulas of the propositional calculus (relative to the given list of fundamental propositional symbols) all the expressions determined by the four following rules: all the fundamental propositional symbols are formulas if A is a formula, ∼[A] is a formula; if A and B are formulas [A][B] is a formula; if A and B are formulas [A] ∨ [B] is a formula. The formulas of the propositional calculus as thus defined will in general contain more brackets than are necessary for clarity or freedom from ambiguity; in practice we omit superfluous brackets and regard the shortened expressions as abbreviations for the full formulas. It will be noted also that, if A and B are formulas, we regard [A] | [B], [A] ⊃ [B], [A] ≡ [B], and [A] + [B], not as formulas, but as abbreviations for certain formulas in accordance with the above given definitions.

"The Divine Force concealed in the subconscient is that which has originated and built up the worlds. At the other end in the superconscient it reveals itself as the Divine Being, Lord and Knower who has manifested Himself out of the Brahman.” The Upanishads ::: See also divine Force for additional definitions.

The employment of definition by recursion in the development of arithmetic from Peano's postulates, or in the Frege-Russell derivation of arithmetic from logic, requires justification, which most naturallv takes the form of finding a method of replacing a definition by recursion by a nominal definition, or a contextual definition, serving the same purpose. In particular it is possible, by a method due to Dedekind or by any one of a number of modifications of it, to prove the existence of a function f satisfying the conditions expressed by an admissible set of recursion equations, and f may then be given a definition employing descriptions as the function f such that the recursion equations, with suitable quantifiers prefixed, hold. See the paper of Kalmar cited below.

The explicit definition of analyticity (etc.) for a particular language of course requires statement of the c-rules. Actually, in the case of his "Language II," Carnap prefers to define analytic and contradictory first, and consequence in terms of these.

The first paper of Tarski cited below is devoted to the problem of finding a definition of semantical truth for a logistic system L, not in L itself but in another system (metasystem) containing notations for the formulas of L and for syntactical relations between them. This is attractive as an alternative to the method of introducing the concept of truth by arbitrarily adding a notation for it, with appropriate new primitive formulas, to the metasystem, but in many important cases it is possible only if the metasystcm is in some essential respect logically stronger than L.

The important matter is not the definition of number (or of particular numbers), which may be made in various ways more or less indifferently, but the internal structure of the number system.

The Method of Statistics. The basic principle of statistical method is that of simplification, which makes possible a concise and comprehensive knowledge of a mass of isolated facts by correlating them along definite lines. The various stages of this method are:   precise definition of the problem or field of inquiry;   collection of material required by the problem;   tabulation and measurement of material in a manner satisfying the purpose of the problem;   clear presentation of the significant features of tabulated material (by means of charts, diagrams, symbols, graphs, equations and the like),   selection of mathematical methods for application to the material obtained;   necessary conclusion from the facts and figures obtained;   general interpretation within the limits of the problem and the procedure used. The special methods of treating statistical data are: collecting, sampling, selecting, tabulating, classifying, totaling or aggregating, measuring, averaging, relating and correlating, presenting symbolically. Each one of these methods uses specialized experimental or mathematical means in its actual application. The special methods of interpreting statistical data already treated are: analyzing, estimiting, describing, comparing, explaining, applying and predicting. In order to be conclusive, the various stages and types of the statistical method must avoid   loose definitions,   cross divisions resulting ftom conflicting interpretations of the problem,   data which are not simultaneous or subject to similar conditions,   conclusions from poor oi incomplete data,   prejudices in judging, even when there is no conuption of evidence. The philosophy of statistics is concerned in general with the discussion and evaluation of the mathematical principles, methods and results of this science; and in particular with a critical analysis of the fitness of biological, psychological, educational, economic and sociological materials, for various types of statistical treatment. The purpose of such an inquiry is to integrate its results into the general problems and schemes of philosophy proper. Cf.. Richard von Mises, Statistics, Probability, and Truth.

"The mind is ignorance seeking for the Truth, the supramental by its very definition is the Truth-Consciousness, Truth in possession of itself and fulfilling itself by its own power.” Letters on Yoga

“The mind is ignorance seeking for the Truth, the supramental by its very definition is the Truth-Consciousness, Truth in possession of itself and fulfilling itself by its own power.” Letters on Yoga

The notion of an ordered pair can be introduced into the theory by definition, in a way which amounts to identifying the ordered pair (x, y) with the set a which has two and only two members, x' and y', x' being the set which has x as its only member, and y' being the set which has x and y as its only two members. (This is one of various similar possible methods.) Relations in extension may then be treated as sets of ordered pairs.

The notion of definition by recursion may be extended to functions whose ranges consist of only a portion of the non-negative integers (in the case of monadic functions) or of only a portion of the ordered sets of n non-negative integers (in the case of n-adic functions); also to functions for which the range of the dependent variable may consist wholly or partly of other things than non-negative integers (in particular, propositional functions -- properties, relations -- of integers may receive definition by recursion).

Theory: (Gr. theoria, viewing) The hypothetical universal aspect of anything. For Plato, a contemplated truth. For Aristotle, pure knowledge as opposed to the practical. An abstraction from practice. The principle from which practice proceeds. Opposite of practice. -- J.K.F. Hypothesis. More loosely: supposition, whatever is problematic, verifiable but not verified. (As opposed to practice) systematically organized knowledge of relatively high generality. (See "the theory of light"). (As opposed to laws and observations): explanation. The deduction of the axioms and theorems of one system from assertions (not necessarily verified) from another system and of a relatively less problematic and more intelligible nature. (Note: Since criteria of what is 'intelligible' and 'problematic' are subjective and liable to fluctuation, any definition of the term is bound to be provisional. It might be advisable to distinguish between laws (general statements in a system), principles (axioms), and theories (methods for deriving the axioms by means of appropriate definitions employing terms from other systems). -- M.B.

Theosophy ::: A compound Greek word: theos, a "divine being," a "god"; sophia, "wisdom"; hence divine wisdom.Theosophy is the majestic wisdom-religion of the archaic ages and is as old as thinking man. It wasdelivered to the first human protoplasts, the first thinking human beings on this earth, by highlyintelligent spiritual entities from superior spheres. This ancient doctrine, this esoteric system, has beenpassed down from guardians to guardians to guardians through innumerable generations until our owntime. Furthermore, portions of this original and majestic system have been given out at various periods oftime to various races in various parts of the world by those guardians when humanity stood in need ofsuch extension and elaboration of spiritual and intellectual thought.Theosophy is not a syncretistic philosophy-religion-science, a system of thought or belief which has beenput together piecemeal and consisting of parts or portions taken by some great mind from other variousreligions or philosophies. This idea is false. On the contrary, theosophy is that single system orsystematic formulation of the facts of visible and invisible nature which, as expressed through theilluminated human mind, takes the apparently separate forms of science and of philosophy and ofreligion. We may likewise describe theosophy to be the formulation in human language of the nature,structure, origin, destiny, and operations of the kosmical universe and of the multitudes of beings whichinfill it.It might be added that theosophy, in the language of H. P. Blavatsky (Theosophical Glossary, p. 328), is"the sub-stratum and basis of all the world-religions and philosophies, taught and practiced by a few electever since man became a thinking being. In its practical bearing, Theosophy is purely divine ethics; thedefinitions in dictionaries are pure nonsense, based on religious prejudice and ignorance." (See alsoUniversal Brotherhood)

The precipitates of the propaedeutical effort are to be found, for Spinoza, in the definitions, axioms, postulates, and within the structural plan expressed in the geometrical ordering. It is highly probable that Spinoza would have admitted the tentative character of at least some of the definitions, axioms, and postulates formulated by him. He doubtless saw the possibility that the process of inquiry, revising, augmenting, and re-coordinating the fund of knowledge, might demand alteration in the structural bases of systematic expression as well as in the knowledge to be ordered. Such changes, however, would occur within limits set by the propaedeutical disclosures and the general framework. Advance might require the abandonment of an older metaphysical element, and the substitution of a new one. But with equal likelihood, the advance of knowledge would make possible a richer and deeper apprehension of the content of fixed principles. To illustrate: The first definition of the Ethica, that of Causa sui, might well be for Spinoza a principle that awakened reason must accept, a truth whose priority and validity could not be undermined. He might regard it as a minimal definition of reality, of the nature of the ultimate object of inquiry. On the other hand, Spinoza, it may be conjectured, would not claim for every element of his system a similar finality. Just as he recognizes the role of hypothesis in science, in a similar way, he would recognize the tentative character of some metaphysical and theological elements.

The prohibition against impredicative definition was incorporated by Russell into his ramified theory of types (1908) and is now usually identified with the restriction to the ramified theorv of types without the axiom of reducibility. (Poincare, however, never made his principle exact and may have intended, vaguely, a less severe restriction than this -- as indeed some passages in later writings would indicate.) -- A. C.

There is also another sense in which it has been held that mathematics is reducible to logic, namely that in the expressions for the postulates of a mathematical discipline the undefined terms are to be given definitions which involve logical terms only, in such a way that postulates and theorems of the discipline thereby become propositions of pure logic, demonstrable on the basis of logical principles only. This view was first taken, as regards arithmetic and analysis, by Frege, and was afterwards adopted by Russell, who extended it to all mathematics.

There is little agreement as to the correct analytical definition. To define a sentence as a complete utterance (Bloomfield, Language, 27) merely shifts the difficulty to that of deciding when symbols are not incomplete. A similar objection applies to Gardiner's definition (Speech and Language, 182) "those single words or combinations of words which taken as complete in themselves give satisfaction by shadowing forth the intelligible purpose of a speaker."

The relation of class inclusion, ⊂, may be introduced by the definition: A ⊂ B → A ? −B = A. Instead of algebra of classes, the term Boolean algebra is used primarily when it is intended that the formal system shall remain uninterpreted or that interpretations other than that described above shall be admitted. For the related idea of a Boolean ring see the paper of Stone cited below.

These are perhaps the most salient definitions along with relevant poems by two great poets, Walt Whitman and William Wordsworth.

The term continuity is also employed in mathematics in connection with functions of various kinds. We shall state the definition for the case of a monadic function f for which the range of the independent variable and the range of the dependent variable both consist of real numbers (see the article Function).

The term "empiricism" has been used with extreme looseness and confused with numerous related propositions, practices, and attitudes. Many definitions here listed are themselves ambiguous, but to remove their ambiguity would require misrepresentation of usage of the term. See also Scepticism, Sensationalism, Pluralism, Phenomenalism, Pragmatism, Positivism, Intuitionalism, Nativism, Rationalism, A Priorism, Intellectualism, Idealism, Transcendentalism, Scientific Empiricism. -- M.T.K.

The term vicious circle fallacy is used by Whitehead and Russell (1910) for arguments violating their ramified theory of types (q.v.). Similarly, the name circulus vitiosus is applied by Hermann Weyl (1918) to an argument involving impredicative definition (q.v). -- A.C.

The Unmanifested Supreme is beyond all definition and description by mind or speech; no definition the mind can make, affirmative or negative, can be at all expressive of it or adequate.

This definition would make logical syntax coincide with Hilbertian proof theory (q.v.), and in fact the adjectives syntactical, metalogical, metamathematical are used nearly interchangeably. Carnap, however, introduces many topics not considered by Hilbert, and further treats not only the syntax of particular languages but also general syntax, i.e., syntax relating to all languages in general or to all languages of a given kind.

This use of nominal definition (including contextual definition -- see the article Incomplete symbol) in connection with a logistic system is extraneous to the system in the sense that it may theoretically be dispensed with, and all formulas written in full. Practically, however, it may be necessary for the sake of brevity or perspicuity, or for facility in formal work.

Three senses of "Ockhamism" may be distinguished: Logical, indicating usage of the terminology and technique of logical analysis developed by Ockham in his Summa totius logicae; in particular, use of the concept of supposition (suppositio) in the significative analysis of terms. Epistemological, indicating the thesis that universality is attributable only to terms and propositions, and not to things as existing apart from discourse. Theological, indicating the thesis that no tneological doctrines, such as those of God's existence or of the immortality of the soul, are evident or demonstrable philosophically, so that religious doctrine rests solely on faith, without metaphysical or scientific support. It is in this sense that Luther is often called an Ockhamist.   Bibliography:   B. Geyer,   Ueberwegs Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil., Bd. II (11th ed., Berlin 1928), pp. 571-612 and 781-786; N. Abbagnano,   Guglielmo di Ockham (Lanciano, Italy, 1931); E. A. Moody,   The Logic of William of Ockham (N. Y. & London, 1935); F. Ehrle,   Peter von Candia (Muenster, 1925); G. Ritter,   Studien zur Spaetscholastik, I-II (Heidelberg, 1921-1922).     --E.A.M. Om, aum: (Skr.) Mystic, holy syllable as a symbol for the indefinable Absolute. See Aksara, Vac, Sabda. --K.F.L. Omniscience: In philosophy and theology it means the complete and perfect knowledge of God, of Himself and of all other beings, past, present, and future, or merely possible, as well as all their activities, real or possible, including the future free actions of human beings. --J.J.R. One: Philosophically, not a number but equivalent to unit, unity, individuality, in contradistinction from multiplicity and the mani-foldness of sensory experience. In metaphysics, the Supreme Idea (Plato), the absolute first principle (Neo-platonism), the universe (Parmenides), Being as such and divine in nature (Plotinus), God (Nicolaus Cusanus), the soul (Lotze). Religious philosophy and mysticism, beginning with Indian philosophy (s.v.), has favored the designation of the One for the metaphysical world-ground, the ultimate icility, the world-soul, the principle of the world conceived as reason, nous, or more personally. The One may be conceived as an independent whole or as a sum, as analytic or synthetic, as principle or ontologically. Except by mysticism, it is rarely declared a fact of sensory experience, while its transcendent or transcendental, abstract nature is stressed, e.g., in epistemology where the "I" or self is considered the unitary background of personal experience, the identity of self-consciousness, or the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifoldness of ideas (Kant). --K.F.L. One-one: A relation R is one-many if for every y in the converse domain there is a unique x such that xRy. A relation R is many-one if for every x in the domain there is a unique y such that xRy. (See the article relation.) A relation is one-one, or one-to-one, if it is at the same time one-many and many-one. A one-one relation is said to be, or to determine, a one-to-one correspondence between its domain and its converse domain. --A.C. On-handedness: (Ger. Vorhandenheit) Things exist in the mode of thereness, lying- passively in a neutral space. A "deficient" form of a more basic relationship, termed at-handedness (Zuhandenheit). (Heidegger.) --H.H. Ontological argument: Name by which later authors, especially Kant, designate the alleged proof for God's existence devised by Anselm of Canterbury. Under the name of God, so the argument runs, everyone understands that greater than which nothing can be thought. Since anything being the greatest and lacking existence is less then the greatest having also existence, the former is not really the greater. The greatest, therefore, has to exist. Anselm has been reproached, already by his contemporary Gaunilo, for unduly passing from the field of logical to the field of ontological or existential reasoning. This criticism has been repeated by many authors, among them Aquinas. The argument has, however, been used, if in a somewhat modified form, by Duns Scotus, Descartes, and Leibniz. --R.A. Ontological Object: (Gr. onta, existing things + logos, science) The real or existing object of an act of knowledge as distinguished from the epistemological object. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ontologism: (Gr. on, being) In contrast to psychologism, is called any speculative system which starts philosophizing by positing absolute being, or deriving the existence of entities independently of experience merely on the basis of their being thought, or assuming that we have immediate and certain knowledge of the ground of being or God. Generally speaking any rationalistic, a priori metaphysical doctrine, specifically the philosophies of Rosmini-Serbati and Vincenzo Gioberti. As a philosophic method censored by skeptics and criticists alike, as a scholastic doctrine formerly strongly supported, revived in Italy and Belgium in the 19th century, but no longer countenanced. --K.F.L. Ontology: (Gr. on, being + logos, logic) The theory of being qua being. For Aristotle, the First Philosophy, the science of the essence of things. Introduced as a term into philosophy by Wolff. The science of fundamental principles, the doctrine of the categories. Ultimate philosophy; rational cosmology. Syn. with metaphysics. See Cosmology, First Principles, Metaphysics, Theology. --J.K.F. Operation: "(Lit. operari, to work) Any act, mental or physical, constituting a phase of the reflective process, and performed with a view to acquiring1 knowledge or information about a certain subject-nntter. --A.C.B.   In logic, see Operationism.   In philosophy of science, see Pragmatism, Scientific Empiricism. Operationism: The doctrine that the meaning of a concept is given by a set of operations.   1. The operational meaning of a term (word or symbol) is given by a semantical rule relating the term to some concrete process, object or event, or to a class of such processes, objectj or events.   2. Sentences formed by combining operationally defined terms into propositions are operationally meaningful when the assertions are testable by means of performable operations. Thus, under operational rules, terms have semantical significance, propositions have empirical significance.   Operationism makes explicit the distinction between formal (q.v.) and empirical sentences. Formal propositions are signs arranged according to syntactical rules but lacking operational reference. Such propositions, common in mathematics, logic and syntax, derive their sanction from convention, whereas an empirical proposition is acceptable (1) when its structure obeys syntactical rules and (2) when there exists a concrete procedure (a set of operations) for determining its truth or falsity (cf. Verification). Propositions purporting to be empirical are sometimes amenable to no operational test because they contain terms obeying no definite semantical rules. These sentences are sometimes called pseudo-propositions and are said to be operationally meaningless. They may, however, be 'meaningful" in other ways, e.g. emotionally or aesthetically (cf. Meaning).   Unlike a formal statement, the "truth" of an empirical sentence is never absolute and its operational confirmation serves only to increase the degree of its validity. Similarly, the semantical rule comprising the operational definition of a term has never absolute precision. Ordinarily a term denotes a class of operations and the precision of its definition depends upon how definite are the rules governing inclusion in the class.   The difference between Operationism and Logical Positivism (q.v.) is one of emphasis. Operationism's stress of empirical matters derives from the fact that it was first employed to purge physics of such concepts as absolute space and absolute time, when the theory of relativity had forced upon physicists the view that space and time are most profitably defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured. Although different methods of measuring length at first give rise to different concepts of length, wherever the equivalence of certain of these measures can be established by other operations, the concepts may legitimately be combined.   In psychology the operational criterion of meaningfulness is commonly associated with a behavioristic point of view. See Behaviorism. Since only those propositions which are testable by public and repeatable operations are admissible in science, the definition of such concepti as mind and sensation must rest upon observable aspects of the organism or its behavior. Operational psychology deals with experience only as it is indicated by the operation of differential behavior, including verbal report. Discriminations, or the concrete differential reactions of organisms to internal or external environmental states, are by some authors regarded as the most basic of all operations.   For a discussion of the role of operational definition in phvsics. see P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics, (New York, 1928) and The Nature of Physical Theory (Princeton, 1936). "The extension of operationism to psychology is discussed by C. C. Pratt in The Logic of Modem Psychology (New York. 1939.)   For a discussion and annotated bibliography relating to Operationism and Logical Positivism, see S. S. Stevens, Psychology and the Science of Science, Psychol. Bull., 36, 1939, 221-263. --S.S.S. Ophelimity: Noun derived from the Greek, ophelimos useful, employed by Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) in economics as the equivalent of utility, or the capacity to provide satisfaction. --J.J.R. Opinion: (Lat. opinio, from opinor, to think) An hypothesis or proposition entertained on rational grounds but concerning which doubt can reasonably exist. A belief. See Hypothesis, Certainty, Knowledge. --J.K.F- Opposition: (Lat. oppositus, pp. of oppono, to oppose) Positive actual contradiction. One of Aristotle's Post-predicaments. In logic any contrariety or contradiction, illustrated by the "Square of Opposition". Syn. with: conflict. See Logic, formal, § 4. --J.K.F. Optimism: (Lat. optimus, the best) The view inspired by wishful thinking, success, faith, or philosophic reflection, that the world as it exists is not so bad or even the best possible, life is good, and man's destiny is bright. Philosophically most persuasively propounded by Leibniz in his Theodicee, according to which God in his wisdom would have created a better world had he known or willed such a one to exist. Not even he could remove moral wrong and evil unless he destroyed the power of self-determination and hence the basis of morality. All systems of ethics that recognize a supreme good (Plato and many idealists), subscribe to the doctrines of progressivism (Turgot, Herder, Comte, and others), regard evil as a fragmentary view (Josiah Royce et al.) or illusory, or believe in indemnification (Henry David Thoreau) or melioration (Emerson), are inclined optimistically. Practically all theologies advocating a plan of creation and salvation, are optimistic though they make the good or the better dependent on moral effort, right thinking, or belief, promising it in a future existence. Metaphysical speculation is optimistic if it provides for perfection, evolution to something higher, more valuable, or makes room for harmonies or a teleology. See Pessimism. --K.F.L. Order: A class is said to be partially ordered by a dyadic relation R if it coincides with the field of R, and R is transitive and reflexive, and xRy and yRx never both hold when x and y are different. If in addition R is connected, the class is said to be ordered (or simply ordered) by R, and R is called an ordering relation.   Whitehcid and Russell apply the term serial relation to relations which are transitive, irreflexive, and connected (and, in consequence, also asymmetric). However, the use of serial relations in this sense, instead ordering relations as just defined, is awkward in connection with the notion of order for unit classes.   Examples: The relation not greater than among leal numbers is an ordering relation. The relation less than among real numbers is a serial relation. The real numbers are simply ordered by the former relation. In the algebra of classes (logic formal, § 7), the classes are partially ordered by the relation of class inclusion.   For explanation of the terminology used in making the above definitions, see the articles connexity, reflexivity, relation, symmetry, transitivity. --A.C. Order type: See relation-number. Ordinal number: A class b is well-ordered by a dyadic relation R if it is ordered by R (see order) and, for every class a such that a ⊂ b, there is a member x of a, such that xRy holds for every member y of a; and R is then called a well-ordering relation. The ordinal number of a class b well-ordered by a relation R, or of a well-ordering relation R, is defined to be the relation-number (q. v.) of R.   The ordinal numbers of finite classes (well-ordered by appropriate relations) are called finite ordinal numbers. These are 0, 1, 2, ... (to be distinguished, of course, from the finite cardinal numbers 0, 1, 2, . . .).   The first non-finite (transfinite or infinite) ordinal number is the ordinal number of the class of finite ordinal numbers, well-ordered in their natural order, 0, 1, 2, . . .; it is usually denoted by the small Greek letter omega. --A.C.   G. Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers, translated and with an introduction by P. E. B. Jourdain, Chicago and London, 1915. (new ed. 1941); Whitehead and Russell, Princtpia Mathematica. vol. 3. Orexis: (Gr. orexis) Striving; desire; the conative aspect of mind, as distinguished from the cognitive and emotional (Aristotle). --G.R.M.. Organicism: A theory of biology that life consists in the organization or dynamic system of the organism. Opposed to mechanism and vitalism. --J.K.F. Organism: An individual animal or plant, biologically interpreted. A. N. Whitehead uses the term to include also physical bodies and to signify anything material spreading through space and enduring in time. --R.B.W. Organismic Psychology: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, an instrument) A system of theoretical psychology which construes the structure of the mind in organic rather than atomistic terms. See Gestalt Psychology; Psychological Atomism. --L.W. Organization: (Lat. organum, from Gr. organon, work) A structured whole. The systematic unity of parts in a purposive whole. A dynamic system. Order in something actual. --J.K.F. Organon: (Gr. organon) The title traditionally given to the body of Aristotle's logical treatises. The designation appears to have originated among the Peripatetics after Aristotle's time, and expresses their view that logic is not a part of philosophy (as the Stoics maintained) but rather the instrument (organon) of philosophical inquiry. See Aristotelianism. --G.R.M.   In Kant. A system of principles by which pure knowledge may be acquired and established.   Cf. Fr. Bacon's Novum Organum. --O.F.K. Oriental Philosophy: A general designation used loosely to cover philosophic tradition exclusive of that grown on Greek soil and including the beginnings of philosophical speculation in Egypt, Arabia, Iran, India, and China, the elaborate systems of India, Greater India, China, and Japan, and sometimes also the religion-bound thought of all these countries with that of the complex cultures of Asia Minor, extending far into antiquity. Oriental philosophy, though by no means presenting a homogeneous picture, nevertheless shares one characteristic, i.e., the practical outlook on life (ethics linked with metaphysics) and the absence of clear-cut distinctions between pure speculation and religious motivation, and on lower levels between folklore, folk-etymology, practical wisdom, pre-scientiiic speculation, even magic, and flashes of philosophic insight. Bonds with Western, particularly Greek philosophy have no doubt existed even in ancient times. Mutual influences have often been conjectured on the basis of striking similarities, but their scientific establishment is often difficult or even impossible. Comparative philosophy (see especially the work of Masson-Oursel) provides a useful method. Yet a thorough treatment of Oriental Philosophy is possible only when the many languages in which it is deposited have been more thoroughly studied, the psychological and historical elements involved in the various cultures better investigated, and translations of the relevant documents prepared not merely from a philological point of view or out of missionary zeal, but by competent philosophers who also have some linguistic training. Much has been accomplished in this direction in Indian and Chinese Philosophy (q.v.). A great deal remains to be done however before a definitive history of Oriental Philosophy may be written. See also Arabian, and Persian Philosophy. --K.F.L. Origen: (185-254) The principal founder of Christian theology who tried to enrich the ecclesiastic thought of his day by reconciling it with the treasures of Greek philosophy. Cf. Migne PL. --R.B.W. Ormazd: (New Persian) Same as Ahura Mazdah (q.v.), the good principle in Zoroastrianism, and opposed to Ahriman (q.v.). --K.F.L. Orphic Literature: The mystic writings, extant only in fragments, of a Greek religious-philosophical movement of the 6th century B.C., allegedly started by the mythical Orpheus. In their mysteries, in which mythology and rational thinking mingled, the Orphics concerned themselves with cosmogony, theogony, man's original creation and his destiny after death which they sought to influence to the better by pure living and austerity. They taught a symbolism in which, e.g., the relationship of the One to the many was clearly enunciated, and believed in the soul as involved in reincarnation. Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato were influenced by them. --K.F.L. Ortega y Gasset, Jose: Born in Madrid, May 9, 1883. At present in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Son of Ortega y Munillo, the famous Spanish journalist. Studied at the College of Jesuits in Miraflores and at the Central University of Madrid. In the latter he presented his Doctor's dissertation, El Milenario, in 1904, thereby obtaining his Ph.D. degree. After studies in Leipzig, Berlin, Marburg, under the special influence of Hermann Cohen, the great exponent of Kant, who taught him the love for the scientific method and awoke in him the interest in educational philosophy, Ortega came to Spain where, after the death of Nicolas Salmeron, he occupied the professorship of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. The following may be considered the most important works of Ortega y Gasset:     Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914;   El Espectador, I-VIII, 1916-1935;   El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo, 1921;   España Invertebrada, 1922;   Kant, 1924;   La Deshumanizacion del Arte, 1925;   Espiritu de la Letra, 1927;   La Rebelion de las Masas, 1929;   Goethe desde Adentio, 1934;   Estudios sobre el Amor, 1939;   Ensimismamiento y Alteracion, 1939;   El Libro de las Misiones, 1940;   Ideas y Creencias, 1940;     and others.   Although brought up in the Marburg school of thought, Ortega is not exactly a neo-Kantian. At the basis of his Weltanschauung one finds a denial of the fundamental presuppositions which characterized European Rationalism. It is life and not thought which is primary. Things have a sense and a value which must be affirmed independently. Things, however, are to be conceived as the totality of situations which constitute the circumstances of a man's life. Hence, Ortega's first philosophical principle: "I am myself plus my circumstances". Life as a problem, however, is but one of the poles of his formula. Reason is the other. The two together function, not by dialectical opposition, but by necessary coexistence. Life, according to Ortega, does not consist in being, but rather, in coming to be, and as such it is of the nature of direction, program building, purpose to be achieved, value to be realized. In this sense the future as a time dimension acquires new dignity, and even the present and the past become articulate and meaning-full only in relation to the future. Even History demands a new point of departure and becomes militant with new visions. --J.A.F. Orthodoxy: Beliefs which are declared by a group to be true and normative. Heresy is a departure from and relative to a given orthodoxy. --V.S. Orthos Logos: See Right Reason. Ostensible Object: (Lat. ostendere, to show) The object envisaged by cognitive act irrespective of its actual existence. See Epistemological Object. --L.W. Ostensive: (Lat. ostendere, to show) Property of a concept or predicate by virtue of which it refers to and is clarified by reference to its instances. --A.C.B. Ostwald, Wilhelm: (1853-1932) German chemist. Winner of the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1909. In Die Uberwindung des wissenschaftlichen Materialistmus and in Naturphilosophie, his two best known works in the field of philosophy, he advocates a dynamic theory in opposition to materialism and mechanism. All properties of matter, and the psychic as well, are special forms of energy. --L.E.D. Oupnekhat: Anquetil Duperron's Latin translation of the Persian translation of 50 Upanishads (q.v.), a work praised by Schopenhauer as giving him complete consolation. --K.F.L. Outness: A term employed by Berkeley to express the experience of externality, that is the ideas of space and things placed at a distance. Hume used it in the sense of distance Hamilton understood it as the state of being outside of consciousness in a really existing world of material things. --J.J.R. Overindividual: Term used by H. Münsterberg to translate the German überindividuell. The term is applied to any cognitive or value object which transcends the individual subject. --L.W. P

thunk "programming" /thuhnk/ 1. "A piece of coding which provides an address", according to P. Z. Ingerman, who invented thunks in 1961 as a way of binding {actual parameters} to their formal definitions in {ALGOL 60} {procedure} calls. If a procedure is called with an expression in the place of a {formal parameter}, the compiler generates a thunk which computes the expression and leaves the address of the result in some standard location. 2. The term was later generalised to mean an expression, frozen together with its {environment} (variable values), for later evaluation if and when needed (similar to a "{closure}"). The process of unfreezing these thunks is called "forcing". 3. A {stubroutine}, in an {overlay} programming environment, that loads and jumps to the correct overlay. Compare {trampoline}. There are a couple of onomatopoeic myths circulating about the origin of this term. The most common is that it is the sound made by data hitting the {stack}; another holds that the sound is that of the data hitting an {accumulator}. Yet another suggests that it is the sound of the expression being unfrozen at argument-evaluation time. In fact, according to the inventors, it was coined after they realised (in the wee hours after hours of discussion) that the type of an argument in {ALGOL 60} could be figured out in advance with a little {compile-time} thought, simplifying the evaluation machinery. In other words, it had "already been thought of"; thus it was christened a "thunk", which is "the past tense of "think" at two in the morning". 4. ({Microsoft Windows} programming) {universal thunk}, {generic thunk}, {flat thunk}. [{Jargon File}] (1997-10-11)

tn3270 A program, similar to {telnet}, used to connect to remote {IBM} {mainframe} {hosts}, many of which do not understand telnet. The program emulates a {3270}-type terminal. For many tn3270 versions, the "clear screen" function is activated by typing Control-Z. When logged on to an IBM host and "HOLDING" or "MORE..." appears at the lower right corner of the screen, the "clear screen" function must be entered to display the next screen. tn3270 emulations usually include {function key} definitions. (1994-11-03)

To Boethius (475-525) it was given to furnish the philosophy and definition of the person that held for the Middle Ages: "A person is the individual substance of a rational nature."

tree "mathematics, data" A {directed acyclic graph}; i.e. a {graph} wherein there is only one route between any pair of {nodes}, and there is a notion of "toward top of the tree" (i.e. the {root node}), and its opposite direction, toward the {leaves}. A tree with n nodes has n-1 edges. Although maybe not part of the widest definition of a tree, a common constraint is that no node can have more than one parent. Moreover, for some applications, it is necessary to consider a node's {daughter} nodes to be an ordered {list}, instead of merely a {set}. As a data structure in computer programs, trees are used in everything from {B-trees} in {databases} and {file systems}, to {game trees} in {game theory}, to {syntax trees} in a human or computer {languages}. (1998-11-12)

Turing Machine "computability" A hypothetical machine defined in 1935-6 by {Alan Turing} and used for {computability theory} proofs. It consists of an infinitely long "tape" with symbols (chosen from some {finite set}) written at regular intervals. A pointer marks the current position and the machine is in one of a finite set of "internal states". At each step the machine reads the symbol at the current position on the tape. For each combination of current state and symbol read, a program specifies the new state and either a symbol to write to the tape or a direction to move the pointer (left or right) or to halt. In an alternative scheme, the machine writes a symbol to the tape *and* moves at each step. This can be encoded as a write state followed by a move state for the write-or-move machine. If the write-and-move machine is also given a distance to move then it can emulate an write-or-move program by using states with a distance of zero. A further variation is whether halting is an action like writing or moving or whether it is a special state. [What was Turing's original definition?] Without loss of generality, the symbol set can be limited to just "0" and "1" and the machine can be restricted to start on the leftmost 1 of the leftmost string of 1s with strings of 1s being separated by a single 0. The tape may be infinite in one direction only, with the understanding that the machine will halt if it tries to move off the other end. All computer {instruction sets}, {high level languages} and computer architectures, including {parallel processors}, can be shown to be equivalent to a Turing Machine and thus equivalent to each other in the sense that any problem that one can solve, any other can solve given sufficient time and memory. Turing generalised the idea of the Turing Machine to a "Universal Turing Machine" which was programmed to read instructions, as well as data, off the tape, thus giving rise to the idea of a general-purpose programmable computing device. This idea still exists in modern computer design with low level {microcode} which directs the reading and decoding of higher level {machine code} instructions. A {busy beaver} is one kind of Turing Machine program. Dr. Hava Siegelmann of {Technion} reported in Science of 28 Apr 1995 that she has found a mathematically rigorous class of machines, based on ideas from {chaos} theory and {neural networks}, that are more powerful than Turing Machines. Sir Roger Penrose of {Oxford University} has argued that the brain can compute things that a Turing Machine cannot, which would mean that it would be impossible to create {artificial intelligence}. Dr. Siegelmann's work suggests that this is true only for conventional computers and may not cover {neural networks}. See also {Turing tar-pit}, {finite state machine}. (1995-05-10)

twip "unit, graphics" (TWentIeth of a Point) 1/20 of a {Postscript point}, or 1/1440th of an inch. There are thus 1440 twips to an inch or about 567 twips to a centimeter. Twips are used in {Microsoft} formats and products, notably {Rich Text Format}, {Visual BASIC}, {Visual C++}, and {printer drivers}; and in {IBM} {AFP} products. Twips were devised in the olden days to describe the sizes of characters produced by {dot matrix printers} that were constrained to multiples of either 12 or 10 dots per inch. [Is it definitely relative to a __Postscript__ point, as opposed to one of the other definitions of {point}?] (2002-03-11)

undefined "programming" The value of a {variable} that has not been set or a function that does not return anything. In some programming languages, e.g. {Perl}, {JavaScript}, undefined is a named constant that can be used to explicitly set a variable or return undefined or can be passed as an {actual argument}. Other languages, e.g. {Java}, call it "{null}", but note that the null in relational database programming is subtly different. Many languages provide a {built-in function} to test whether an expression is undefined, e.g. Perl's defined() function. Attempting to operate on an undefined value, e.g. add it to a number or append it to a string, may either raise an error or result in the undefined value being converted ({cast}) to some appropriate value, e.g. {false}, zero or {empty string}, according to the {type} of expression. This definition is an example of a {paradox}. (2012-12-02)

undefine ::: v. t. --> To make indefinite; to obliterate or confuse the definition or limitations of.

Unit class: A class having one and only one member. Or, to give a definition which does not employ the word one, a class a is a unit class if there is an x such that x∈a and, for all y, y∈a implies y = x. -- A.C.

Universal Time "time, standard" (UT) The mean solar time along the prime meridian (0 longitude) that runs through the Greenwich Observatory outside of London, UK, where the current system originated. UT is tied to the rotation of the Earth in respect to the fictitious "mean Sun". {Greenwich Mean Time} (GMT) was measured from Greenwich mean midday until 1925 when the reference point was changed from noon to midnight and the name changed to "Universal Time". There are three separate definitions, UT0, UT1, and UT2, depending on which corrections have been applied to the Earth's motion. {Coordinated Universal Time} is kept within 0.9 seconds of UT1, by addition of leap seconds to {International Atomic Time}. (2001-08-02)

vase ::: n. --> A vessel adapted for various domestic purposes, and anciently for sacrificial uses; especially, a vessel of antique or elegant pattern used for ornament; as, a porcelain vase; a gold vase; a Grecian vase. See Illust. of Portland vase, under Portland.
A vessel similar to that described in the first definition above, or the representation of one in a solid block of stone, or the like, used for an ornament, as on a terrace or in a garden. See Illust. of Niche.


VDL {Vienna Definition Language}

VDM 1. Vienna Definition Method 2. {Virtual Device Metafile}.

Vienna Definition Language (VDL) IBM Vienna Labs. A language for formal, algebraic definition via operational semantics. Used to specify the semantics of PL/I. See also {VDM}. ["The Vienna Definition Language", P. Wegner, ACM Comp Surveys 4(1):5-63 (Mar 1972)].

Vienna Definition Method {Vienna Development Method}

Vienna Development Method "programming, specification" (VDM) A program development method based on formal specification using the {Vienna Development Method Specification Language} (VDM-SL). [Details?] [Is there such a thing as "Vienna Definition Method"?] (2000-11-02)

VII. Probability as a Physical Magnitude determined by Axioms.. This theory, which is favoured mainly by the Intuitionist school of mathematics, considers probability as a physical constant of which frequencies are measures. Thus, any frequency is an approximate measure of one physical constant attached to an event and to a set of trials: this constant is the probability of that event over the set of trials. As the observed frequencies differ little for large numbers of trials from their corresponding probabilities, some obvious properties of frequencies may be extended to probabilities. This is done without proceeding to the limit, but through general approximation as in the case of physical magnitudes. These properties are not constructed (as in the axiomatization of Mises), but simply described as such, they form a set of axioms defining probability. The classical postulates involved in the treatises of Laplace, Bertrand or Poincare have been modified in this case, under the joint influence of the discovery of measure by Borei, and of the use of abstract sets. Their new form has been fully stated by Kolmogoroff and interpreted by Frechet who proposes to call this latest theory the 'modernized axiomatic definition' of probability. Its interpretation requires that it should be preceded by an inductive synthesis, and followed by numerical verifications.

Vlisp "language" 1. A {Lisp} dialect developed by Patrick Greussay "pg@litp.ibp.fr" in about 1973 with a fast {interpreter} and a portable {virtual machine}. Vlisp introduced the "{chronology}", a dynamic environment for implementing {interrupts}. It led to {Le_Lisp}. See also {ObjVlisp}. ["Contribution a la Definition Interpretive et a l'Implementation des Lambda-Langages", P. Greussay, These d'Etat, U Paris VI, Nov 1977]. [Relationship to {Vincennes LISP}?] 2. {Vincennes LISP}. (2008-03-16)

Web Service Definition Language "architecture" (WSDL) An {XML} format for describing network {services} as a set of endpoints operating on messages containing either "document oriented" or "procedure oriented" information. The operations and messages are described abstractly, and then bound to a concrete network protocol and message format to define an endpoint. Related concrete endpoints are combined into abstract endpoints (services). WSDL is typically used with {SOAP} over {HTTP} but it is extensible to allow description of endpoints and their messages independent of what message formats or network protocols. [Reference?] (2004-06-21)

Wide SCSI "hardware, standard" A variant on the {SCSI-2} interface. It uses a 16-bit bus - double the width of the original {SCSI}-1 - and therefore cannot be connected to a SCSI-1 bus. It supports transfer rates up to 20 MB/s, like {Fast SCSI}. There is also a SCSI-2 definition of Wide-SCSI with a 32 bit data bus. This allows up to 40 megabytes per second but is very rarely used because it requires a large number of wires (118 wires on two connectors). Thus Wide SCSI usually means 16 bit-wide SCSI. (1995-04-21)

With the aid of Gödel's device of representing sequences of primitive symbols and sequences of formulas by means of numbers, it is possible to give a more exact definition of the notion of effectiveness by making it correspond to that of recursiveness (q. v.) of numerical functions. E.g., a criterion for recognizing primitive formulas is effective if it determines a general recursive monadic function of natural numbers whose value is 0 when the argument is the number of a primitive formula, 1 for any other natural number as argument. The adequacy of this technical definition to represent the intuitive notion of effectiveness as described above is not immediately clear, but is placed beyond any real doubt by developments for details of which the reader is referred to Hilbert-Bernays and Turing (see references below).

WSDL {Web Service Definition Language}

X.409 "standard, messaging" Part of the {X.400} {electronic mail} specification which included the original definition of {Abstract Syntax Notation 1}. [What was it about?] (1998-08-06)

≡x, formal equivalence with respect to x. See definition in logic, formal, § 3.

⊃x, formal implication with respect to x. See definition in the article logic, formal, § 3.

XSD {XML Schema Definition}

∧x. See definition in logic, formal, § 3.

Yale Haskell "language" A fully integrated {Haskell} programming environment. It provides tightly coupled interactive editing, {incremental compilation} and dynamic execution of Haskell programs. Two major modes of compilation, correspond to {Lisp}'s traditional "interpreted" and "compiled" modes. Compiled and interpreted modules may be freely mixed in any combination. Yale Haskell is run using either a command-line interface or as an {inferior process} running under the {Emacs} editor. Using the Emacs interface, simple two-keystroke commands evaluate expressions, run dialogues, compile {modules}, turn specific compiler diagnostics on and off and enable and disable various {optimisers}. Commands may be queued up arbitrarily, thus allowing, for example, a compilation to be running in the background as the editing of a source file continues in Emacs in the foreground. A "scratch pad" may be automatically created for any module. Such a pad is a logical extension of the module, in which additional function and value definitions may be added, but whose evaluation does not result in recompilation of the module. A tutorial on Haskell is also provided in the Emacs environment. A {Macintosh} version of Yale Haskell includes its own integrated programming environment, complete with an Emacs-like editor and {pull-down menus}. Yale Haskell is a complete implementation of the Haskell language, but also contains a number of extensions, including: (1) Instead of stream based I/O, a {monadic I/O} system is used. Although similar to what will be part of the new {Haskell 1.3} report, the I/O system will change yet again when 1.3 becomes official. (2) Haskell programs can call both {Lisp} and {C} functions using a flexible foreign function interface. (3) Yale Haskell includes a {dynamic typing} system. Dynamic typing has been used to implement {derived instances} in a user extensible manner. (4) A number of small Haskell 1.3 changes have been added, including {polymorphic recursion} and the use of @_@ in an expression to denote {bottom}. Although the 1.3 report is not yet complete, these changes will almost certainly be part of the new report. (5) A complete Haskell level {X Window System} interface, based on {CLX}. (6) A number of {annotations} are available for controlling the optimiser, including those for specifying both function and data constructor {strict}ness properties, "{inlining}" functions, and specialising {over-loaded} functions. Many standard {prelude} functions have been specialised for better performance using these annotations. (7) {Separate compilation} (including {mutually recursive} {modules}) is supported using a notion of a UNIT file, which is a kind of localised {makefile} that tells the compiler about compiler options and logical dependencies amongst program files. (8) Yale Haskell supports both standard and "{literate}" Haskell syntax. Performance of Yale Haskell's compiled code has been improved considerably over previous releases. Although still not as good as the Glasgow ({GHC}) and Chalmers ({HBC}) compilers, the flexibility afforded by the features described earlier makes Yale Haskell a good choice for large systems development. For some idea of performance, Hartel's latest "Nuc" benchmark runs at about the same speed under both Yale Haskell and hbc. (Our experiments suggest, however, that Yale Haskell's compiled code is on average about 3 times slower than hbc.) Binaries are provided for {Sun}/{SPARC} and {Macintosh}, but it is possible to build the system on virtually any system that runs one of a number of {Common Lisp} implementations: {CMU Common Lisp}, {Lucid Common Lisp}, {Allegro Common Lisp} or {Harlequin LispWorks}. {akcl}, {gcl} and {CLisp} do not have adaquate performance for our compiler. The current version is 2.1. {Yale (ftp://nebula.cs.yale.edu/pub/haskell/yale)}. (128.36.13.1). {UK (ftp://ftp.dcs.glasgow.ac.uk/pub/haskell/yale/)}. {Sweden (ftp://ftp.cs.chalmers.se/pub/haskell/yale/)}. E-mail: "haskell-request@cs.yale.edu", "haskell-request@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk". (1993-07-14)

yama-niyama ::: see yama (definition 2) and niyama

yottabyte "unit, data" (YB) A unit of {data} equal to 10^24 {bytes} but see {binary prefix} for other definitions. A yottabyte is 1000^8 bytes or 1000 {zettabytes}. It is estimated that the {web} contains about one yottabyte of data (2013). 1000 yottabytes has been called one {brontobyte}. See {prefix}. (2013-11-04)

zettabyte "unit, data" (ZB) A unit of {data} equal to 10^21 {bytes} but see {binary prefix} for other definitions. A zetabyte is 1000^7 bytes or 1000 {exabytes}. 1000 zettabytes are one {yottabyte}. See {prefix}. (2013-11-04)



QUOTES [21 / 21 - 1500 / 3980]


KEYS (10k)

   4 Sri Aurobindo
   3 Jordan Peterson
   1 Sri Ramama Maharshi
   1 Socrates
   1 Russell Kirk
   1 Rosch
   1 Ralph Waldo Emerson
   1 Omar Khayyam
   1 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   1 Jalaluddin Rumi
   1 C S Lewis
   1 Claudio Naranjo
   1 Alfred Korzybski
   1 Albert Einstein
   1 Saint Thomas Aquinas
   1 Aleister Crowley

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   22 Anonymous
   18 Idries Shah
   12 Stephen King
   11 Fyodor Dostoyevsky
   7 G K Chesterton
   7 Frederick Lenz
   6 Seth Godin
   6 Peter Drucker
   6 Jodi Picoult
   6 Harvey Fierstein
   6 David Levithan
   6 Aristotle
   5 Toni Morrison
   5 Terry Pratchett
   5 Richard Dawkins
   5 Noam Chomsky
   5 Neale Donald Walsch
   5 Nassim Nicholas Taleb
   5 Markus Zusak
   5 John Fowles

1:The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. ~ Socrates,
2:What is your definition of Greatness? JP: The capacity to utter and abide by beautiful truths. ~ Jordan Peterson,
3:The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
   ~ Albert Einstein,
4:Do not interrupt life's natural flow by damming its river at every bend with sticks of analysis and definition. ~ Omar Khayyam,
5:Know the true definition of yourself. That is essential. Then, when you know your own definition, flee from it. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi,
6:Find out who you are, but don't cling to any definition. Mutate as many times as necessary to live in the totality of your being. ~ Claudio Naranjo,
7:The Supreme is infinite, therefore He is also finite.
To be finite is one of the infinite aspects of the Infinite.
Creation is the definition of the Infinite. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta,
8:Animal is not properly and per se divided by white and black, which lie completely outside of the definition of animal ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1-2.95.4).,
9:You want to have a meaningful life? Everything you do matters. That's the definition of a meaningful life. But everything you do matters. You're going to have to carry that with you." ~ Jordan Peterson,
10:There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God. ~ Aleister Crowley,
11:If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense. ~ C S Lewis,
12:For the World-Transcendent embraces the universe, is one with it and does not exclude it, even as the universe embraces the individual, is one with him and does not exclude him.
   The individual is a centre of the whole universal consciousness; the universe is a form and definition which is occupied by the entire immanence of the Formless and Indefinable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.5-11,
13:Two general and basic principles are proposed for the formation of categories: The first has to do with the function of category systems and asserts that the task of category systems is to provide maximum information with the least cognitive effort [("cognitive economy")]; the second has to do with the structure of the information so provided and asserts that the perceived world comes as structured information rather than than arbitrary or unpredictable attributes [("perceived world structure")]. Thus maximum information with least cognitive effort is achieved if categories map the perceived world structure as closely as possible. This condition can be achieved either by the mapping of categories to given attribute structures or by the definition or redefinition of attributes to render a given set of categories appropriately structured.
   ~ Rosch, 1978, p. 28,
14:In medieval times, the learned man, the teacher was a servant of God wholly, and of God only. His freedom was sanctioned by an authority more than human...The academy was regarded almost as a part of the natural and unalterable order of things. ... They were Guardians of the Word, fulfilling a sacred function and so secure in their right. Far from repressing free discussion, this "framework of certain key assumptions of Christian doctrine" encouraged disputation of a heat and intensity almost unknown in universities nowadays. ...They were free from external interference and free from a stifling internal conformity because the whole purpose of the universities was the search after an enduring truth, besides which worldly aggrandizement was as nothing. They were free because they agreed on this one thing if, on nothing else, fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. ~ Russell Kirk, Academic Freedom: An Essay in Definition,
15:To see, know, become and fulfil this One in our inner selves and in all our outer nature, was always the secret goal and becomes now the conscious purpose of our embodied existence. To be conscious of him in all parts of our being and equally in all that the dividing mind sees as outside our being, is the consummation of the individual consciousness. To be possessed by him and possess him in ourselves and in all things is the term of all empire and mastery. To enjoy him in all experience of passivity and activity, of peace and of power, of unity and of difference is the happiness which the Jiva, the individual soul manifested in the world, is obscurely seeking. This is the entire definition of the aim of integral Yoga; it is the rendering in personal experience of the truth which universal Nature has hidden in herself and which she travails to discover. It is the conversion of the human soul into the divine soul and of natural life into divine living.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
16:The matter of definition, I have said, is very important. I am not now speaking of nominal definitions, which for convenience merely give names to known objects. I am speaking of such definitions of phenomena as result from correct analysis of the phenomena. Nominal definitions are mere conveniences and are neither true nor false; but analytic definitions are definitive propositions and are true or else false. Let us dwell upon the matter a little more.
   In the illustration of the definitions of lightning, there were three; the first was the most mistaken and its application brought the most harm; the second was less incorrect and the practical results less bad; the third under the present conditions of our knowledge, was the "true one" and it brought the maximum benefit. This lightning illustration suggests the important idea of relative truth and relative falsehood-the idea, that is, of degrees of truth and degrees of falsehood. A definition may be neither absolutely true nor absolutely false; but of two definitions of the same thing' one of them may be truer or falser than the other. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity, 49,
17:Humanity is a peculiar class of life which, in some degree, determines its own destinies; therefore in practical life words and ideas become facts-facts, moreover, which bring about important practical consequences. For instance, many millions of human beings have defined a stroke of lightning as being the "punishment of God" of evil men; other millions have defined it as a "natural, casual, periodical phenomenon"; yet other millions have defined it as an "electric spark." What has been the result of these "non-important" definitions in practical life? In the case of the first definition, when lightning struck a house, the population naturally made no attempt to save the house or anything in it, because to do so would be against the "definition" which proclaims the phenomenon to be a "punishment for evil," any attempt to prevent or check the destruction would be an impious act; the sinner would be guilty of "resisting the supreme law" and would deserve to be punished by death.
   Now in the second instance, a stricken building is treated just as any tree overturned by storm; the people save what they can and try to extinguish the fire. In both instances, the behavior of the populace is the same in one respect; if caught in the open by a storm they take refuge under a tree-a means of safety involving maximum danger but the people do not know it.
   Now in the third instance, in which the population have a scientifically correct definition of lightning, they provide their houses with lightning rods; and if they are caught by a storm in the open they neither run nor hide under a tree; but when the storm is directly over their heads, they put themselves in a position of minimum exposure by lying flat on the ground until the storm has passed. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity,
18:If we analyse the classes of life, we readily find that there are three cardinal classes which are radically distinct in function. A short analysis will disclose to us that, though minerals have various activities, they are not "living." The plants have a very definite and well known function-the transformation of solar energy into organic chemical energy. They are a class of life which appropriates one kind of energy, converts it into another kind and stores it up; in that sense they are a kind of storage battery for the solar energy; and so I define THE PLANTS AS THE CHEMISTRY-BINDING class of life.
   The animals use the highly dynamic products of the chemistry-binding class-the plants-as food, and those products-the results of plant-transformation-undergo in animals a further transformation into yet higher forms; and the animals are correspondingly a more dynamic class of life; their energy is kinetic; they have a remarkable freedom and power which the plants do not possess-I mean the freedom and faculty to move about in space; and so I define ANIMALS AS THE SPACE-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE.
   And now what shall we say of human beings? What is to be our definition of Man? Like the animals, human beings do indeed possess the space-binding capacity but, over and above that, human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them-I mean the capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever increasing light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is at once the heritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity. And because humanity is just this magnificent natural agency by which the past lives in the present and the present for the future, I define HUMANITY, in the universal tongue of mathematics and mechanics, to be the TIME-BINDING CLASS OF LIFE. ~ Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity,
19:
   "Without conscious occult powers, is it possible to help or protect from a distance somebody in difficulty or danger? If so, what is the practical procedure?"

Then a sub-question:

   "What can thought do?"

We are not going to speak of occult processes at all; although, to tell the truth, everything that happens in the invisible world is occult, by definition. But still, practically, there are two processes which do not exclude but complete each other, but which may be used separately according to one's preference.

   It is obvious that thought forms a part of one of the methods, quite an important part. I have already told you several times that if one thinks clearly and powerfully, one makes a mental formation, and that every mental formation is an entity independent of its fashioner, having its own life and tending to realise itself in the mental world - I don't mean that you see your formation with your physical eyes, but it exists in the mental world, it has its own particular independent existence. If you have made a formation with a definite aim, its whole life will tend to the realisation of this aim. Therefore, if you want to help someone at a distance, you have only to formulate very clearly, very precisely and strongly the kind of help you want to give and the result you wish to obtain. That will have its effect. I cannot say that it will be all-powerful, for the mental world is full of innumerable formations of this kind and naturally they clash and contradict one another; hence the strongest and the most persistent will have the best of it.

   Now, what is it that gives strength and persistence to mental formations? - It is emotion and will. If you know how to add to your mental formation an emotion, affection, tenderness, love, and an intensity of will, a dynamism, it will have a much greater chance of success. That is the first method. It is within the scope of all those who know how to think, and even more of those who know how to love. But as I said, the power is limited and there is great competition in that world.

   Therefore, even if one has no knowledge at all but has trust in the divine Grace, if one has the faith that there is something in the world like the divine Grace, and that this something can answer a prayer, an aspiration, an invocation, then, after making one's mental formation, if one offers it to the Grace and puts one's trust in it, asks it to intervene and has the faith that it will intervene, then indeed one has a chance of success.

   Try, and you will surely see the result.

   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, 253,
20:In our world error is continually the handmaid and pathfinder of Truth; for error is really a half-truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal. Well, if it could always be, as it has been in the great period we are leaving, the faithful handmaid, severe, conscientious, clean-handed, luminous within its limits, a half-truth and not a reckless and presumptuous aberration.
   A certain kind of Agnosticism is the final truth of all knowledge. For when we come to the end of whatever path, the universe appears as only a symbol or an appearance of an unknowable Reality which translates itself here into different systems of values, physical values, vital and sensational values, intellectual, ideal and spiritual values. The more That becomes real to us, the more it is seen to be always beyond defining thought and beyond formulating expression. "Mind attains not there, nor speech."3 And yet as it is possible to exaggerate, with the Illusionists, the unreality of the appearance, so it is possible to exaggerate the unknowableness of the Unknowable. When we speak of It as unknowable, we mean, really, that It escapes the grasp of our thought and speech, instruments which proceed always by the sense of difference and express by the way of definition; but if not knowable by thought, It is attainable by a supreme effort of consciousness. There is even a kind of Knowledge which is one with Identity and by which, in a sense, It can be known. Certainly, that Knowledge cannot be reproduced successfully in the terms of thought and speech, but when we have attained to it, the result is a revaluation of That in the symbols of our cosmic consciousness, not only in one but in all the ranges of symbols, which results in a revolution of our internal being and, through the internal, of our external life. Moreover, there is also a kind of Knowledge through which That does reveal itself by all these names and forms of phenomenal existence which to the ordinary intelligence only conceal It. It is this higher but not highest process of Knowledge to which we can attain by passing the limits of the materialistic formula and scrutinising Life, Mind and Supermind in the phenomena that are characteristic of them and not merely in those subordinate movements by which they link themselves to Matter.
   The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. When we have proved Matter and realised its secret capacities, the very knowledge which has found its convenience in that temporary limitation, must cry to us, like the Vedic Restrainers, 'Forth now and push forward also in other fields.'
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,
21:There is a true movement of the intellect and there is a wrong movement: one helps, the other hinders." Questions and Answers 1929 - 1931 (5 May 1929)

   What is the true movement of the intellect?


What exactly do you understand by intellect? Is it a function of the mind or is it a part of the human being? How do you understand it?

   A function of the mind.

A function of the mind? Then it is that part of the mind which deals with ideas; is that what you mean?

Not ideas, Mother.

Not ideas? What else, then?

Ideas, but...

There is a part of the mind which receives ideas, ideas that are formed in a higher mind. Still, I don't know, it is a question of definition and one must know what exactly you mean to say.

It is intellect that puts ideas in the form of thoughts, gathering and organising the thoughts at the same time. There are great ideas which lie beyond the ordinary human mentality, which can put on all possible forms. These great ideas tend to descend, they want to manifest themselves in precise forms. These precise forms are the thoughts; and generally it is this, I believe, that is meant by intellect: it is this that gives thought-form to the ideas.

And then, there is also the organisation of the thoughts among themselves. All that has to be put in a certain order, otherwise one becomes incoherent. And after that, there is the putting of these thoughts to use for action; that is still another movement.

To be able to say what the true movement is, one must know first of all which movement is being spoken about. You have a body, well, you don't expect your body to walk on its head or its hands nor to crawl flat on its belly nor indeed that the head should be down and the legs up in the air. You give to each limb a particular occupation which is its own. This appears to you quite natural because that is the habit; otherwise, the very little ones do not know what to do, neither with their legs nor with their hands nor with their heads; it is only little by little that they learn that. Well, it is the same thing with the mind's functions. You must know which part of the mind you are speaking about, what its own function is, and then only can you say what its true movement is and what is not its true movement. For example, for the part which has to receive the master ideas and change them into thought, its true movement is to be open to the master ideas, receive them and change them into as exact, as precise, as expressive a thought as possible. For the part of the mind which has the charge of organising all these thoughts among themselves so that they might form a coherent and classified whole, not a chaos, the true movement is just to make the classification according to a higher logic and in a thoroughly clear, precise and expressive order which may be serviceable each time a thought is referred to, so that one may know where to look for it and not put quite contradictory things together. There are people whose mind does not work like that; all the ideas that come into it, without their being even aware of what the idea is, are translated into confused thoughts which remain in a kind of inner chaos. I have known people who, from the philosophical point of view - although there is nothing philosophical in it - could put side by side the most contradictory things, like ideas of hierarchic order and at the same time ideas of the absolute independence of the individual and of anarchism, and both were accepted with equal sympathy, knocked against each other in the head in the midst of a wild disorder, and these people were not even aware of it!... You know the saying: "A question well put is three-fourths solved." So now, put your question. What do you want to speak about? I am stretching out a helping hand, you have only to catch it. What is it you are speaking about, what is it that you call intellect? Do you know the difference between an idea and a thought?
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1953, 107,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Home is the definition of God. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove
2:... life, by definition, is never still. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove
3:By definition, remarkable things get remarked upon ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove
4:The definition of eternity is two people and a ham. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove
5:What is the definition of guts? Grace under pressure. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove
6:&
7:Definition of a wanderer: a guy who's always looking beyond. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove
8:Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
9:The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove
10:A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell. ~ george-bernard-shaw, @wisdomtrove
11:What is my definition of jazz? "Safe sex of the highest order." ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove
12:The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters. ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove
13:I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove
14:If faith were rational , it wouldn't be -by definition- faith. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove
15:The definition of hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing. ~ t-s-eliot, @wisdomtrove
16:If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
17:The new definition of a heathen is a man who has never played baseball. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove
18:The definition of an asshole is someone who doesn't believe what he is seeing. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove
19:To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
20:Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity? ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove
21:The Bible is clear - God's definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
22:The definition of a revolution: it destroys the perfect and enables the impossible. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove
23:A disciple having asked for a definition of charity, the Master said LOVE ONE ANOTHER. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove
24:A one sentence definition of mythology? Mythology is what we call someone else's religion. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove
25:It always seems as though the definition of love will remain debatable by an opinionated world. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove
26:My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that have become deeds. ~ robert-frost, @wisdomtrove
27:When your only regret is if anyone thinks you regret anything - that is the definition of conviction. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove
28:Too many individuals are like Shakespeare's definition of "echo,"&
29:Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove
30:The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove
31:The definition of flexibility is being constantly open to the fact that you might be on the wrong track. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove
32:The definition of success is getting many of the things money can buy and all the things money can't buy. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove
33:Allow me to offer a simple definition of wisdom. Wisdom is looking at life from God's point of view. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove
34:Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove
35:No, everything is not going to be okay. It never is. It isn't okay now. Change, by definition, changes things ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove
36:No, everything is not going to be okay. It never is. It isn’t okay now. Change, by definition, changes things ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove
37:The basic definition of the business and of its purpose and mission have to be translated into objectives. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove
38:Some people say Bowie is all surface style and second-hand ideas, but that sounds like a definition of pop to me. ~ brian-eno, @wisdomtrove
39:My favorite definition of an intellectual: &
40:Great genius you already have. The super conscious mind is invariably triggered by definition, and by decisiveness. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove
41:My definition of success? The more you are actively and practically engaged, the more successful you will feel. ~ richard-branson, @wisdomtrove
42:I seemed to be leading a very incongruous life from the point of view of the definition of the community I was in. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
43:Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature. ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove
44:The enterprise, by definition, must be capable of producing more or better than all the resources that comprise it. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove
45:Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
46:I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I'd invented it, because it is very true. ~ audrey-hepburn, @wisdomtrove
47:By my definition, most art has nothing to do with oil paint or marble. Art is what we're doing when we do our best work. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove
48:Definition of Love: A score of zero in tennis. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears of all my life. ~ elizabeth-barrett-browning, @wisdomtrove
49:A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined. ~ edmund-burke, @wisdomtrove
50:Healing is, by definition, taking a process of disintegration of life and transforming into a process of return to life. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove
51:Business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove
52:Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life. ~ albert-schweitzer, @wisdomtrove
53:Healing is, by definition, taking a process of disintegration of life and transforming into a process of return to life. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
54:Simplicity is a key to avoiding complication. Part of the definition of simplicity is &
55:When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove
56:When PLO sniper fire is followed by 14 hours of Israeli bombardment, that's stretching the definition of defensive action too far. ~ ronald-reagan, @wisdomtrove
57:To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove
58:Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove
59:My nephew has HDADHD. High Definition Attention Deficit Disorder. He can barely pay attention, but when he does it's unbelievably clear. ~ steven-wright, @wisdomtrove
60:Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all the acts and events that fill time are the definition, and it must be lived. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
61:If you don't like your definition of &
62:My favorite definition of the mindful path is the one the reveals itself as you walk down it. You cannot find the path until you step on to it. ~ kelly-mcgonigal, @wisdomtrove
63:All economic activity is by definition "high risk." And defending yesterday&
64:I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise. ~ john-keats, @wisdomtrove
65:My definition of financial freedom is simple: it is the ability to live the lifestyle you desire without having to work or rely on anyone else for money. ~ t-harv-eker, @wisdomtrove
66:Literature is by definition opinionated. It is bound to provoke the arguments in many quarters, not excluding the hometown or even the family of the author. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove
67:Any relationships that would reject you for being true to yourself are - by definition - abusive relationships. You'll be much better off when you let them go. ~ steve-pavlina, @wisdomtrove
68:Every activity performed in public can attain an excellence never matched in privacy; for excellence, by definition, the presence of others is always required. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove
69:Devotion is diligence without assurance. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be by definition faith. Faith is walking face-first and full speed into the dark. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove
70:By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later‚ again, for its own mysterious reasons. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove
71:It's not what you do that matters. It's not what you say. There's nothing that is not holy or spiritual. Be beyond definition, beyond categorization, be absorbed. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
72:You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove
73:I love my editor, but that would be the definition of hell to me to live with someone and have them go page by page through my manuscript. That I want to avoid at all costs. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove
74:A nice definition of an awakened person: a person who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within. ~ anthony-de-mello, @wisdomtrove
75:Man, by definition, is born a stranger: coming from nowhere, he is thrust into an alien world which existed before him-a world which didn't need him. And which will survive him. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove
76:Definition of a relationship - an enduring, mutually-agreed upon connection or union, which fulfills certain needs of the individuals involved and the society in which they live. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove
77:Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions-a government of force, and a government of laws; the first is the definition of despotism-the last, of liberty. ~ alexander-hamilton, @wisdomtrove
78:We've been in a recession, by any common sense definition, because if you look at the American public, they've got 20 billion - 20 trillion, I should say, worth of residential homes. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove
79:Everyone is motivated a little or a lot to do something or nothing. Motivation is the internalized drive toward the dominant thought of the moment. By definition, motivation is "motive in action." ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove
80:In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove
81:Finally there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms or postulates, or in a word primary principles, which cannot be proved and have no need of proof. ~ gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz, @wisdomtrove
82:Most of us would be upset if we were accused of being "silly." But the word "silly" comes from the old English word "selig," and its literal definition is "to be blessed, happy, healthy and prosperous." ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove
83:To me, a leader is a visionary that energizes others. This definition of leadership has two key dimensions: a) creating the vision of the future, and b) inspiring others to make the vision a reality. ~ vince-lombardi, @wisdomtrove
84:If "socialism" is defined as "ownership of the means of production"&
85:The food crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in the hopes of adding five years onto the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity. ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove
86:But whatever can be described cannot be yourself, and what you are cannot be described. You can only know your self by being yourself without any attempt at self-definition and self-description. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove
87:He who is greatest among you shall be a servant. That's the new definition of greatness. ... By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
88:When all the false self- identifications are thrown away, what remains is all-embracing love. Get rid of all ideas about yourself, even of the idea that you are God. No self-definition is valid. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove
89:Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day Can tell the definition So clear of victory, As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break agonized and clear. ~ emily-dickinson, @wisdomtrove
90:Some people say: "There is no God; because, if there was a God, God would stop all the suffering." Nonsense! God is oblivious to suffering. God is beyond suffering. That's what makes God, God, by definition. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
91:Action painting has to do with self-creation or self-definition or self-transcendence; but this dissociates it from self-expression, which assumes the acceptance of the ego as it is, with its wound and its magic. ~ hannah-arendt, @wisdomtrove
92:If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all. ~ bertrand-russell, @wisdomtrove
93:And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove
94:Values act as our compass to put us back on course every single day, so that day after day, we're moving in the direction that takes us closer and closer to our definition of the "best" life we could possibly live. ~ steve-pavlina, @wisdomtrove
95:Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity? ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove
96:The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually “grasp” reality. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove
97:Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove
98:To arrive at the definition of the problem he must begin by finding the &
99:If you want to be important-wonderful. If you want to be recognized-wonderful. If you want to be great-wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove
100:What's my philosophy? In a word, integral. And what on earth — or in heaven — do I mean by integral? The dictionary meaning is fairly simple: comprehensive, balanced, inclusive, essential for completeness. Short definition, tall order. ~ ken-wilber, @wisdomtrove
101:Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language - it's from the Latin word "cor," meaning "heart" - and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove
102:A business is not defined by its name, statutes, or articles of incorporation. It is defined by the business mission. Only a clear definition of the mission and purpose of the organization makes possible clear and realistic business objectives. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove
103:As they say on my own Cape Cod, a rising tide lifts all the boats. And a partnership, by definition, serves both partners, without domination or unfair advantage. Together we have been partners in adversitylet us also be partners in prosperity. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove
104:Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove
105:There’s this powerful phrase in the legal world, Difficult cases make bad law. The exception is the difficult case. You can’t generalize them by definition. So although they are fascinating, they don’t solve any problem because they’re so one of a kind. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove
106:I believe psychology has done very well in working out how to understand and treat disease. But I think that is literally half-baked. If all you do is work to fix problems, to alleviate suffering, then by definition you are working to get people to zero, to neutral. ~ martin-seligman, @wisdomtrove
107:As far as the job of President goes, its rewarding and I've given before this group the definition of happiness for the Greeks. I'll define it again: the full use of your powers along lines of excellence. I find, therefore, that the Presidency provides some happiness. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove
108:It is the purpose of your soul to announce and declare, to be and to express, to experience and to fulfil Who You Really Are. And who is that? Whoever you say you are! Your life lived is your declaration. Your choices define you. Every act is an act of self-definition. ~ neale-donald-walsch, @wisdomtrove
109:If there is one thing I learned by reading Epstein's The Sports Gene it is that world-class athletes are, by definition, abnormal: that is, the kind of person capable of competing at that level is necessarily very different from the rest of us physiologically. They are outliers. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove
110:The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a "Christian" (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
111:Now, here is my definition of success: A few simple Disciplines practiced every day. Do you see the distinction? A few disciplines... Here's a little phrase we've all heard, An apple a day keeps the doctor away. And my question to you is, What if that's true? How simple and easy is that plan? ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove
112:I don't need money, or, better, it's not money that I need; it's not even power; I need only what is obtained by power and simply cannot be obtained without power: the solitary and calm awareness of strength! That is the fullest definition of freedom, which the world so struggles over! ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove
113:To define is to limit, to set boundaries, to compare and to contrast, and for this reason, the universe, the all, seems to defy definition... .Just as no one in his senses would look for the morning news in a dictionary, no one should use speaking and thinking to find out what cannot be spoken or thought. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove
114:Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove
115:If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
116:I think the growth industry of the future in this country and the world will soon be the continuing education of adults. ... I think the educated person of the future is somebody who realizes the need to continue to learn. That is the new definition and it is going to change the world we live in and work in. ~ peter-drucker, @wisdomtrove
117:Our easiest approach to a definition of any aspect of fiction is always by considering the sort of demand it makes on the reader. Curiosity for the story, human feelings and a sense of value for the characters, intelligence and memory for the plot. What does fantasy ask of us? It asks us to pay something extra. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove
118:A man must have a stout digestion to feed upon some men's theology; no sap, no sweetness, no life, but all stern accuracy, and fleshless definition. Proclaimed without tenderness, and argued without affection, the gospel from such men rather resembles a missile from a catapult than bread from a Father's hand. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove
119:The action of the child inventing a new game with his playmates; Einstein formulating a theory of relativity; the housewife devising a new sauce for the meat, a young author writing his first novel; all of these are in terms of definition, Creative, and there is no attempt to set them in some order of more or less Creative. ~ carl-rogers, @wisdomtrove
120:A fan is always an outsider. Most sportswriters are not, by this definition, fans. They capitalize on access to athletes. They spoke to Kobe last night, and Kobe says his finger is going to be fine. They spent three days fly-fishing with Brett Favre in March, and Brett says he's definitely coming back for another season. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove
121:Much blood has also been spilled on the carpet in attempts to distinguish between science fiction and fantasy. I have suggested an operational definition: science fiction is something that COULD happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that COULDN'T happen - though often you only wish that it could. ~ arthur-c-carke, @wisdomtrove
122:Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. ~ fyodor-dostoevsky, @wisdomtrove
123:Healing requires far more of us than just the participation of our intellectual and even our emotional resources. And it certainly demands that we do more than look backwards at the dead-end archives of our past. Healing is, by definition, taking a process of disintegration of life and transforming into a process of return to life. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove
124:This perpetual longing for happiness—which can, by definition, never be fulfilled because that very search itself denies the happiness that is present in our own being now—condemns us to an endless search in the future and thus perpetuates unhappiness. It is for this reason that the poet said, Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. ~ rupert-spira, @wisdomtrove
125:God is beyond definition. But according to one's own vision or receptivity, one will define God in one's own way. Some will say that God is all Love. Others will say that God is all Power. Each one will see God according to his own necessity, his own receptivity and, finally, according to the way God wants him to see the ultimate Truth. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove
126:We feel something, and reach out for the nearest phrase or hum with which to communicate, but which fails to do justice to what has induced us to do so... .We stay on the outside of our impressions, as if staring at them through a frosted window, superficially related to them, yet estranged from whatever has eluded casual definition. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove
127:Healing requires far more of us than just the participation of our intellectual and even our emotional resources. And it certainly demands that we do more than look backwards at the dead-end archives of our past. Healing is, by definition, taking a process of disintegration of life and transforming into a process of return to life. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
128:Some guys-a lot of guys-don't believe what they are seeing, especially if it gets in the way of what they want to eat or drink or believe. Me, I don't believe in God. But if i saw him, I would. I wouldn't just go around saying, "Jesus, that was a great special effect." The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove
129:By "essence" I understand a universal, of any degree of complexity and definition, which may be given immediately, whether to sense or to thought... . This object of pure sense or pure thought, with no belief superadded, an object inwardly complete and individual, but without external relations or physical status, is what I call an essence. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove
130:I don't have a definition of God, because I've never really understood that word. People have different understandings of it and it's caused a great deal of conflict. If I had to say what would my definition of God be, if I were going to use that word, I would say that this universe has layers upon layers upon layers of compassion and wisdom beyond ours. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove
131:When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique. He is universal by virtue of the inseparability of his organism from the cosmos. He is unique in that he is just this organism and not any stereotype of role, class, or identity assumed for the convenience of social communication. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove
132:No one can give a definition of the soul. But we know what it feels like. The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty. The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it&
133:And what about ‘happiness’? So far biological research has failed to come up with a clear definition of happiness or a way to measure it objectively. Most biological studies acknowledge only the existence of pleasure, which is more easily defined and measured. So ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ should be translated into ‘life and the pursuit of pleasure’. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove
134:I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar - if he is financially fortunate. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove
135:I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of 'emergency' is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove
136:Richard and I both believe that something transcendental is involved with the mind, consciousness, and the path of awakening—call it God, Spirit, Buddha-nature, the Ground, or by no name at all. Whatever it is, by definition it’s beyond the physical universe. Since it cannot be proven one way or another, it is important—and consistent with the spirit of science—to respect it as a possibility. ~ rick-hanson, @wisdomtrove
137:To the Christian, love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is an unchristian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love. Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove
138:Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another&
139:Intrinsic value can be defined simply: It is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life. The calculation of intrinsic value, though, is not so simple. As our definition suggests, intrinsic value is an estimate rather than a precise figure, and it is additionally an estimate that must be changed if interest rates move or forecasts of future cash flows are revised. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove
140:When all mental activity around who you think you are is stopped, there is a crack in the authority of perception, in the structure of the mind. I invite you to enter through that crack. Come in through that opening. When you do, the mind is no longer filled with its latest self-definition. In that moment, there is only silence. And in that silence, it is possible to recognize absolute fulfilment: the truth of who you are. ~ gangaji, @wisdomtrove
141:This acquisition of a new viewpoint in Zen is called ‘Satori’ (‘Wu’ in Chinese) and its verb form is ‘Satoru’. Without it there is no Zen, for the life of Zen begins with the ‘opening of Satori’; ‘Satori’ may be defined as intuitive looking-in, in contradistinction to intellectual and logical understanding. Whatever the definition, ‘Satori’ means the unfolding of a new world hitherto unperceived in the confusion of the dualistic mind. ~ d-t-suzuki, @wisdomtrove
142:Out in Hollywood, where the streets are paved with Goldwyn, the word "sophisticate" means, very simply, "obscene." A sophisticatedstory is a dirty story. Some of that meaning was wafted eastward and got itself mixed up into the present definition. So that a "sophisticate" means: one who dwells in a tower made of a DuPont substitute for ivory and holds a glass of flat champagne in one hand and an album of dirty post cards in the other. ~ dorothy-parker, @wisdomtrove
143:The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word "Infinite". Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, "wow, that's big", time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove
144:When all mental activity around who you think you are or what you need for happiness is stopped, there is a crack in the authority of perception, in the structure of the mind. I invite you to enter through that crack. Come in through that opening. When you do, the mind is no longer filled with its latest self-definition. In that moment, there is only silence. And in that silence, it is possible to recognize absolute fulfilment: the truth of who you are. ~ gangaji, @wisdomtrove
145:I love moving water, I love ships, I love the sharp definition, the concentrated humanity, the sublime solitude of life at sea. The dangers of it only make present to us the peril inherent in all existence, which the stupid, ignorant, un-travelled land-worm never discovers; and the art of it, so mathematical, so exact, so rewarding to intelligence, appeals to courage and clears the mind of superstition, while filling it with humility and true religion. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove
146:When you are dealing with a serious compulsion or addictive pattern, then by definition self-will, self-discipline, and any other machinations of the conscious mind are not enough by themselves to handle the problem. It is like a breaker switch in your brain is simply flipped. Anybody who has had this kind of a problem knows that it doesn't matter how intelligent you are. Sigmund Freud said, "Intelligence will be used in the service of the neurosis." ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove
147:The third level of wanting is "I commit to being rich." The definition of the word commit is to "devote oneself unreservedly." This means holding absolutely nothing back; giving 100 percent of everything you've got to achieving wealth. It means being willing to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes. This is the warrior's way. No excuses, no ifs, no butts, no maybes-and failure isn't an option. The warrior's way is simple: "I will be rich or I will die trying." ~ t-harv-eker, @wisdomtrove
148:To be happy one must be (a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion, (b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's fellow men, and (c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste. It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country in the world wherein a man constituted as I am - a man of my peculiar weakness, vanities, appetites, and aversions - can be so happy as he can be in the United States. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
149:As many critics of religion have pointed out, the notion of a creator poses an immediate problem of an infinite regress. If God created the universe, what created God? To say that God, by definition, is uncreated simply begs the question. Any being capable of creating a complex world promises to be very complex himself. As the biologist Richard Dawkins has observed repeatedly, the only natural process we know of that could produce a being capable of designing things is evolution. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove
150:How can we appraise a proposal if the terms hurled at our ears can mean anything or nothing, and change their significance with the inflection of the voice? Welfare state, national socialism, radical, liberal, conservative, reactionary and a regiment of others ... these terms in today's usage, are generally compounds of confusion and prejudice. If our attitudes are muddled, our language is often to blame. A good tonic for clearer thinking is a dose of precise, legal definition. ~ dwight-eisenhower, @wisdomtrove
151:We accepted a definition of ourselves which confined the self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention. This definition is miserably insufficient, for in fact we know how to grow brains and eyes, ears and fingers, hearts and bones, in just the same way that we know how to walk and breathe, talk and think - only we can't put it into words. Words are too slow and too clumsy for describing such things, and conscious attention is too narrow for keeping track of all their details. ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove
152:On Nov. 6, the day before my 94th birthday, our nation will hold one of the most critical elections in my lifetime. We are at a crossroads and there are profound moral issues at stake. I strongly urge you to vote for candidates who support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman, protect the sanctity of life and defend our religious freedoms. The Bible speaks clearly on these crucial issues. Please join me in praying for America, that we will turn our hearts back toward God. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove
153:[The Head of Radio Three] had been ensnared by the Music Director of the college and a Professor of Philosophy. These two were busy explaining to the harassed man that the phrase "too much Mozart" was, given any reasonable definition of those three words, an inherently self-contradictory expression, and that any sentence which contained such a phrase would be thereby rendered meaningless and could not, consequently, be advanced as part of an argument in favour of any given programme-scheduling strategy. ~ douglas-adams, @wisdomtrove
154:The term revolution means: a sudden, radical, and complete change from the way things are normally done. I love that definition because I really feel that in order for us to start walking in the kind of love that Christ commanded us to - the "love your neighbor as yourself" kind - it's going to take a radical change in our current behavior. The church has become passive and selfish and it's going to take a revolution to get us back to the place where we are not just talking the talk, but walking in a love that shows the world Christ's love. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove
155:The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive ‚ a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society ‚  a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself... . The purpose of man's life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question. ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove
156:God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
157:I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let's think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow- that's vulnerability. Love is uncertain. It's incredibly risky. And loving someone leaves us emotionally exposed. Yes, it's scary, and yes, we're open to being hurt, but can you imagine your life without loving or being loved? ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove
158:Courage is a heart word. The root of the word courage is cor - the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage meant "To speak one's mind by telling all one's heart." Over time, this definition has changed, and today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds. But in my opinion, this definition fails to recognize the inner strength and level of commitment required for us to actually speak honestly and openly about who we are and about our experiences - good and bad. Speaking from our hearts is what I think of as "ordinary courage. ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove
159:We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove
160:When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Perhaps the adjective &
161:Goodwill has something in common with each of these categories of love, because goodwill is by definition a love for usefulness of all kinds. Goodwill wants to do what is good for our neighbor, and goodness is the same as usefulness. Each of the categories of love just mentioned have usefulness as their goal: love for heaven has the goal of being useful in spiritual ways; love for the world has the goal of being useful in earthly ways, which could also be called forms of civil service; and love for ourselves has the goal of being useful in physical ways, which could also be labeled benefits at home for ourselves and our loved ones.” ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove
162:How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology enables, Culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realize some possibilities while forbidding others. Biology enables women to have children – some cultures oblige women to realize this possibility. Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one another – some cultures forbid them to realize this possibility. Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behavior, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist. ~ yuval-noah-harari, @wisdomtrove

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:The definition of love is giving. ~ Bai Ling,
2:Life is stress by definition. ~ Rebecca McNutt,
3:Truth by definition excludes. ~ Ravi Zacharias,
4:Home is the definition of God. ~ Emily Dickinson,
5:I have a definition of success. ~ Benjamin Zander,
6:Laughter is by definition healthy. ~ Doris Lessing,
7:A horse is wonderful by definition. ~ Piers Anthony,
8:Definition is the death of discovery. ~ Tom Shadyac,
9:A milestone is less date and more definition. ~ Rands,
10:art, n. This word has no definition. ~ Ambrose Bierce,
11:My definition of success is control. ~ Kenneth Branagh,
12:Quietness is my definition of happiness. ~ Hannah More,
13:Dad is our first definition of masculinity. ~ T D Jakes,
14:My definition of evil is unfriendliness. ~ Muhammad Ali,
15:I'm the definition of half man, half drugs. ~ Puff Daddy,
16:I'm the true definition of a workaholic. ~ Kim Kardashian,
17:Sufism, in one definition, "is" human life. ~ Idries Shah,
18:There isn't a formal definition of success. ~ Ernest Sosa,
19:By definition 'winging it' is not a plan. ~ Elizabeth Fama,
20:Love is just a word, but you bring it definition. ~ Eminem,
21:The very definition of 'beauty' is outside. ~ Adam Carolla,
22:Definition of failure - wishful sinking! ~ Stephen Richards,
23:The world has never had a good definition ~ Abraham Lincoln,
24:Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition. ~ C S Lewis,
25:Any definition which limits us is deplorable. ~ Edward Albee,
26:The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms. ~ Socrates,
27:The definition of woman's work is shitwork. ~ Gloria Steinem,
28:the word love has no decent definition! ~ Eric Jerome Dickey,
29:Every act is an act of self definition. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,
30:Every act is an act of self-definition. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,
31:Generosity is, by definition, disinterested. ~ Piero Ferrucci,
32:Quit analyzing me. My crazy needs no definition. ~ K F Breene,
33:A friend is by definition an unpaid therapist. ~ Erin McCarthy,
34:Hip-hop is too young to put a definition on it ~ Saul Williams,
35:Resistance by definition is self-sabotage. ~ Steven Pressfield,
36:The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. ~ Socrates,
37:The definition of terms is the beginning of wisdom. ~ Socrates,
38:By definition, remarkable things get remarked upon ~ Seth Godin,
39:IT'S a pitfall to have a definition of photography. ~ Jeff Wall,
40:My definition of modernism took a while to develop. ~ Peter Gay,
41:That depends on what your definition of 'is' is. ~ Bill Clinton,
42:The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms. ~ Socrates,
43:Empathy cannot by definition oppress anyone. ~ Simon Baron Cohen,
44:If killing is your definition of ‘work,’ then yes. ~ Celia Aaron,
45:The monstrous act by definition demands a monster. ~ Rick Yancey,
46:My definition of wealth has varied across the years ~ Mary Pipher,
47:Perhaps time’s definition of coal is the diamond. ~ Khalil Gibran,
48:"A minority of one"... the definition of insanity. ~ George Orwell,
49:I don't think Stoppardian has a precise definition. ~ Tom Stoppard,
50:By definition, fiction writers lie for a living. ~ Janette Rallison,
51:We need a new cultural definition of masculinity. ~ Jaclyn Friedman,
52:Every human being is, by definition, a theologian. ~ Russell D Moore,
53:Protagonists are always loners, almost by definition. ~ Pauline Kael,
54:The definition of eternity is two people and a ham. ~ Dorothy Parker,
55:There's no Biblical definition of contemplative prayer ~ Mike Bickle,
56:Immortals are, by definition, immortal. End of story. ~ Richelle Mead,
57:Truth is truth. By definition. Anything else is a lie. ~ Harlan Coben,
58:We have next to consider the formal definition of virtue. ~ Aristotle,
59:Well, I think, by definition, all power has limits. ~ Hillary Clinton,
60:Faith is, by its very definition, belief without proof. ~ Stephen King,
61:I am the complete and utter definition of a Luddite. ~ Graham McTavish,
62:My definition of a good hotel is a place I'd stay at. ~ Robert De Niro,
63:There is no universally agreed definition of a gene. ~ Richard Dawkins,
64:Well, fluffy shirts are, by definition, very comfortable. ~ Hugh Dancy,
65:By definition startups usually do not turn a profit. ~ Kevin Harrington,
66:In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint. ~ Chinua Achebe,
67:The definition of wit is a joke that doesn't make you laugh. ~ A A Gill,
68:To be brave, by definition, one has first to be afraid. ~ Robert Harris,
69:You don't have to let his definition of success be yours ~ Jody Hedlund,
70:Her definition of cheating and his was always different. ~ Cecelia Ahern,
71:Love was just a word until someone gave it a definition. ~ Tarryn Fisher,
72:the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
73:The medical definition of miracle is misdiagnosis. ~ Stephen King,
74:The shortest definition of religion: interruption. ~ Johann Baptist Metz,
75:Thing is, foot-washers think women are a sin in definition. ~ Harper Lee,
76:What is the definition of guts? Grace under pressure. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
77:AB de Villiers is the definition of a Cricketing Genius ~ Michael Vaughan,
78:Definition of a victim: a person to whom life happens. ~ Peter McWilliams,
79:The definition of adulthood is that you want to sleep. ~ Paula Poundstone,
80:By definition, as a Prime Minister I cannot be a liar. ~ Silvio Berlusconi,
81:Definition destroys ... there’s nothing definite in this world ~ Bob Dylan,
82:Definition Of A Wanderer: A guy who's always looking beyond ~ Stephen King,
83:Hang up the phone on a vampire, the definition of carefree. ~ Steve Aylett,
84:Isn't indiscretion the very definition of weakness? ~ Emily St John Mandel,
85:I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act. ~ Michael Cunningham,
86:My definition of success is not having things thrown at me! ~ Orson Welles,
87:Arms control is by definition a rejection of disarmament. ~ David Dellinger,
88:DEFINITION OF A SPORTS CAR: A HEDGE AGAINST THE MALE MENOPAUSE. ~ Tom Wolfe,
89:Definition of a wanderer: a guy who's always looking beyond. ~ Stephen King,
90:Great leadership is by definition relentlessly developmental. ~ Bill Hybels,
91:I understand the very definition of "hate" when I think of you. ~ Anne Rice,
92:I’ve got everything I need. That’s the definition of affluence. ~ Lee Child,
93:Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government. ~ G K Chesterton,
94:The standard definition of AI is that which we don't understand. ~ Bill Joy,
95:Accept no one's definition of your life, define yourself. ~ Harvey Fierstein,
96:Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself. ~ Harvey Fierstein,
97:A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble ~ Remy de Gourmont,
98:A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble ~ R my de Gourmont,
99:A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one. ~ Neil Postman,
100:My definition of beauty is strength and personality. ~ Diane Von Furstenberg,
101:Self-deception is a pessimistic definition of optimism. ~ William T Vollmann,
102:Chaos within destiny. It was the definition of our love. ~ Shannon A Thompson,
103:for the definition of a law is: something that can be broken ~ G K Chesterton,
104:I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them. ~ Ezra Pound,
105:The best definition of an immortal is someone who hasn't died yet. ~ Tom Holt,
106:The definition of “success” for me is: “Is today successful? ~ James Altucher,
107:The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers. ~ Peter Drucker,
108:...human intelligence is by definition what humans naturally do... ~ Will Self,
109:It took me twenty years to hone my current definition of Gone. ~ Shinzen Young,
110:My definition of innovative is providing value to the customer. ~ Mary T Barra,
111:My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand. ~ Thom Gunn,
112:My shorter definition of SF (is) Hubris clobbered by nemesis. ~ Brian W Aldiss,
113:One definition of hope is “happy anticipation of something good. ~ Joel Osteen,
114:Scientific revolutions, almost by definition, defy common sense. ~ Michio Kaku,
115:What is my definition of jazz? 'Safe sex of the highest order. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
116:A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell. ~ George Bernard Shaw,
117:Being with you is the only definition of happiness I have. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan,
118:Every sound is by definition a stop, which is how we can hear it. ~ Anne Lamott,
119:My definition of God is the ever-present essence of love. ~ Gabrielle Bernstein,
120:One definition of hell is having your own way all the time. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
121:Research performed on animals is, by definition, scientifically unsound. ~ Moby,
122:The definition of being good is being able to make it look easy. ~ Hugh Jackman,
123:The two-word definition of sustainability is 'one planet.' ~ Mathis Wackernagel,
124:True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world. ~ Simone Weil,
125:truest definition of a man, so stubborn but needy at the same time ~ Jamie Ford,
126:War?' The word held too much definition for three letters. ~ Shannon A Thompson,
127:Art is why I get up in the morning, but my definition ends there. ~ Ani DiFranco,
128:By definition pop is extremely catchy, whether you like it or not. ~ Kurt Cobain,
129:Definition of tragedy: A hero destroyed by the excess of his virtues ~ Aristotle,
130:My definition of a father is someone who empowers their children. ~ Nicolas Cage,
131:One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
132:The majority of a society is the true definition of the public. ~ Samuel Johnson,
133:The power to define the other seals one's definition of oneself. ~ James Baldwin,
134:The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters. ~ Lewis Carroll,
135:I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky,
136:Logical but not reasonable. Wasn't that the definition of a robot? ~ Isaac Asimov,
137:My definition of a character actor is - they never get the girl. ~ James Cromwell,
138:My definition of a redundancy is an air-bag in a politician's car. ~ Larry Hagman,
139:My definition of LUNATIC ASYLUM: A place where lunatics are created. ~ Jim Fergus,
140:My definition of palatable might be slightly different from yours. ~ Alan Rickman,
141:Proper words in proper places make the true definition of style. ~ Jonathan Swift,
142:Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
143:The definition of a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. ~ Michael Kinsley,
144:The definition of art has to shift whenever an innovator appears. ~ Thomas Hoving,
145:I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. ~ Anton Chekhov,
146:I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
147:If faith were rational , it wouldn't be -by definition- faith. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
148:The definition of adventure depends upon how boring your life is. ~ Demetri Martin,
149:The definition of hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing. ~ T S Eliot,
150:The definition of the word 'finished' is: 'This word means finished. ~ Idries Shah,
151:Being at sea is like watching the whole world in high-definition. ~ Abby Sunderland,
152:Strangling is the very definition of dominance. Slow-motion murder. ~ Gillian Flynn,
153:There is not one standard definition of beauty or one perfect size. ~ Ashley Graham,
154:Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition. ~ Noam Chomsky,
155:If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. ~ C S Lewis,
156:It is the definition of the word 'object' which destroys all religions. ~ Bill Gaede,
157:My definition of sexy is someone who is expressing themselves honestly. ~ Alex Meraz,
158:One right and honest definition of business is mutual helpfulness. ~ William Feather,
159:The definition of promiscuity? One more partner than you've ever had. ~ Gloria Feldt,
160:Up against another human being one's own procedures take on definition ~ Anne Carson,
161:Any definition of a successful life must include service to others. ~ George H W Bush,
162:Buddha’s simple definition of enlightenment as “the end of suffering. ~ Eckhart Tolle,
163:My definition of success is "the fulfillment of your soul's purpose." ~ Jack Canfield,
164:The composition of a common world would be the definition of politics. ~ Bruno Latour,
165:The definition of fascism is The marriage of corporation and state ~ Benito Mussolini,
166:The only way to sustain this world economy is by changing its definition. ~ Toba Beta,
167:You guys not closed?' she asked. 'We are the definition of not close. ~ Gillian Flynn,
168:Buying is the foundation of most women’s definition of romantic. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana,
169:If a situation requires swearing to God it is — by definition — extreme. ~ Pam Houston,
170:My definition of ‘crazy’ might be a little broader than most people. ~ John G Hartness,
171:The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple. ~ Albert Einstein,
172:The most general definition of beauty ... Multeity in Unity. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
173:There is only one definition of happiness for hungry people: Eat! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
174:There’s no other way to look at you. You’re the definition of beauty. ~ Cristin Harber,
175:The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government. ~ Sarah Vowell,
176:Adaptation for film is, by definition, a process of editorializing. ~ Anthony Minghella,
177:However one defines man, the same definition applies to us all. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero,
178:I'm a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence. ~ Lee Child,
179:Picking the best solution really depended on your definition of best. ~ Victoria Schwab,
180:The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn’t believe what he’s seeing. ~ Anonymous,
181:...the exceptionally profound is always, by definition, basic and mundane. ~ K J Parker,
182:By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average. ~ James C Collins,
183:definición (High Definition) de la información no deja nada indefinido. ~ Byung Chul Han,
184:Definition is the companion of clarity; clarity is the guide to your goals. ~ Tony Buzan,
185:My favorite definition of fear is: False Expectations Appearing Real ~ Jill Bolte Taylor,
186:One person's definition of evil is another person's different definition. ~ Eric Schmidt,
187:Redundancy—inefficient by definition—serves as the antidote to confusion. ~ James Gleick,
188:souls should, by definition, also teach about “the metaphysical dimensions ~ John Medina,
189:Taking responsibility for oneself is by definition an act of kindness. ~ Sharon Salzberg,
190:The definition of a Racist is anybody winning an argument with a liberal. ~ Bill Whittle,
191:The infinite variety of the human condition precludes arbitrary definition. ~ Ian McEwan,
192:The new definition of a heathen is a man who has never played baseball. ~ Elbert Hubbard,
193:The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style. ~ Jonathan Swift,
194:The simplest definition of a budget is "telling your money where to go. ~ Tsh Oxenreider,
195:To define a thing is to substitute the definition for the thing itself. ~ Georges Braque,
196:By nature of definition only the coward is capable of the highest heroism ~ David Gemmell,
197:Freedom, by definition, is people realizing that they are their own leaders. ~ Diane Nash,
198:The definition of black irony is Pro-lifers killing Doctors who do abortions ~ Bill Hicks,
199:There should essentially be no limits to the voluntary definition of marriage. ~ Ron Paul,
200:A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words. ~ Samuel Butler,
201:Definition of an independent film is torture with less money and time. ~ Joey Lauren Adams,
202:Definition of a wanderer, Eddie thought, a guy who’s always looking beyond. ~ Stephen King,
203:I don’t think success is a place or a definition, I think it’s a direction. ~ Charles Wang,
204:I should know by now that Tremaine’s definition of eccentric is… eccentric. ~ Martha Wells,
205:I've always been clear, I support the traditional definition of marriage. ~ Stephen Harper,
206:Samuel Butler’s definition: “A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg. ~ Anonymous,
207:"The ultimate definition of bravery is not being afraid of who you are." ~ Chögyam Trungpa,
208:But the truth is that critics are by definition critical. That's their job. ~ Black Francis,
209:By nature of definition only the coward is capable of the highest heroism”. ~ David Gemmell,
210:There can be no true definition of normal because life is ever-changing. ~ Jayne Ann Krentz,
211:To me, the definition of sexy - at any age - is strength and confidence. ~ Mariska Hargitay,
212:By nature of definition only the coward is capable of the highest
heroism ~ David Gemmell,
213:Definition of 'Free': You pay for it whether or not you elect to receive it. ~ Aaron Allston,
214:My definition of literature would be just this: words that have become deeds. ~ Robert Frost,
215:When one person can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists. ~ Ron Paul,
216:A recursive definition does not necessarily lead to a recursive process. ~ Gerald Jay Sussman,
217:Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. ~ Vladimir Nabokov,
218:Definition of an alcoholic is an egomaniac with an inferiority complex ~ Alcoholics Anonymous,
219:God... a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive. ~ Ayn Rand,
220:Let him tell us he's never been hurt, but that's the definition of getting hurt. ~ Andre Ward,
221:Recall Sergio Zyman’s definition of marketing (more stuff to more people for ~ Alistair Croll,
222:The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
223:The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing. ~ Richard Bachman,
224:The definition of an asshole is someone who doesn't believe what he is seeing. ~ Stephen King,
225:The definition of courage is going from defeat to defeat with enthusiasm. ~ Winston Churchill,
226:You have to be doing something you enjoy. That is a definition of happiness! ~ Jackie Kennedy,
227:The Bible is clear - God's definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. ~ Billy Graham,
228:The definition of intelligence is the ability to defy your own programming. ~ C Robert Cargill,
229:The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the ~ Richard P Feynman,
230:The simple definition of evangelism: Those who know, telling those who don't. ~ Leith Anderson,
231:Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself. ~ Chogyam Trungpa,
232:Failure will never overtake me if my definition to succeed is strong enough ~ A P J Abdul Kalam,
233:For me, creativity includes problem-solving. That's the broad definition of it. ~ Edwin Catmull,
234:Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity? ~ Arthur C Clarke,
235:I understood the meaning of the word swoon — I had become the very definition. ~ Lauren Blakely,
236:Love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love. ~ Milan Kundera,
237:My briefest ever definition of science fiction is 'Hubris clobbered by Nemesis.' ~ Brian Aldiss,
238:There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. ~ Peter F Drucker,
239:The very definition of tyranny is when all powers are gathered under one place. ~ James Madison,
240:What yuh may or may not’ve done is not di definition of who yuh really are. ~ Tiffany D Jackson,
241:A creationist can embarrass an evolutionist by asking for a definition of species. ~ Walter Lang,
242:Any person who wants to govern the world is by definition the wrong person to do it. ~ Greg Iles,
243:Breakthroughs, by definition, are unanticipated surprises that lead to great things. ~ Anonymous,
244:Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy life ~ William Ellery Channing,
245:If love was Jesus’ definition of “biblical,” then perhaps it should be mine. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
246:I'm sorry, could you please tell me what the definition of the word "is" is? ~ William J Clinton,
247:In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
248:My definition of what makes a journey wholly or partially horrible is boredom. ~ Martha Gellhorn,
249:Power without the wisdom to use it properly was a very good definition of evil, ~ Jack L Chalker,
250:The definition of a revolution: it destroys the perfect and enables the impossible. ~ Seth Godin,
251:the definition of humanness is the opportunity to marvel at the majesty of creation ~ John Green,
252:The next level, by definition, is something you can't see and you can't understand. ~ Eben Pagan,
253:Wise men don't need concrete answers. By definition, they need wisdom." ~ Geraki ~ Richelle Mead,
254:Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back. ~ Ned Rorem,
255:Die Definition eines Arschlochs ist ein Mensch, der nicht glaubt, was er sieht. ~ Richard Bachman,
256:It's amazing what a bit of soot and shaving can do for muscle definition, honestly. ~ Joe Dempsie,
257:It's hard to redefine something that never had a clear definition in the first place. ~ Jenny Han,
258:My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
259:the definition of humanness is the opportunity to marvel at the majesty of creation. ~ John Green,
260:A disciple having asked for a definition of charity, the Master said LOVE ONE ANOTHER. ~ Confucius,
261:If you dont love, youve lost your distinction, definition, uniqueness, and identity. ~ Judah Smith,
262:My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
263:The definition of a miracle is that which should not be possible but has come to pass. ~ Anonymous,
264:The religious definition of truth is not that it is universal but that it is absolute. ~ W H Auden,
265:you can pick what you want from the definition, like picking flowers from a garden ~ Blue Balliett,
266:...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
267:A guy that throws what he intends to throw, that's the definition of a good pitcher. ~ Sandy Koufax,
268:SUCCESS DEFINITION-- WHEN OUR SIGNATURE CHANGES TO AUTOGRAPH ,this marks the success. ~ Abdul Kalam,
269:That’s the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. ~ Charlie Jane Anders,
270:The definition of a Dark Age is that we no longer remember what we once could do. ~ Jerry Pournelle,
271:To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
272:Your definition of who you are is your prison. You can set yourself free at any time. ~ Cheri Huber,
273:Apathy is just lack of energy, which to me, is just the literal definition of decadence. ~ Anonymous,
274:A ‘world’ has dimensions. By definition they are not the sole possible ones. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty,
275:Doubtless, by definition, God was Reason itself. But would he also be "reasonable" [...] ~ C S Lewis,
276:[...] extremes—whether good or bad—don't fit into society's definition of normality ~ Marilyn Manson,
277:Golden ages, almost by definition, are past: gleeful naivety never lasts for ever. ~ Jonathan Wilson,
278:If you look up the definition of news in the dictionary, it isn't what you watch on TV. ~ Val Kilmer,
279:I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss. ~ Amor Towles,
280:Not a boy or a girl, not any binary, rigid definition of a person. Just my everything. ~ Leah Raeder,
281:Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action. ~ Ralph Ellison,
282:Serge’s definition of total happiness: Florida, a full tank of gas and no appointments. ~ Tim Dorsey,
283:The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
284:The more we narrow the definition of beauty, the more beauty we shut out of our lives. ~ Jim C Hines,
285:Families hold each other in an iron grip of definition. One must break the grip, somehow. ~ Paula Fox,
286:Gordian pays you to sleep with unicorn hunters. That's the definition of a whore. ~ Diana Peterfreund,
287:High definition ruined a lot of things that I used to hold sacrosanct in pornography. ~ Doug Stanhope,
288:How come all the harmless people were so lame? Maybe that was the definition of safe. ~ Richelle Mead,
289:My definition of an artist is anyone who's ahead of his time and behind on his rent. ~ Kinky Friedman,
290:My definition of beauty is something between extremely ugly and extremely fantastic. ~ Riccardo Tisci,
291:that the definition of humanness is the oppor-tunity to marvel at the majesty of creation ~ Anonymous,
292:The definition of salesmanship is the gentle art of letting the customer have it your way. ~ Ray Kroc,
293:'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth ~ William James,
294:A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel,
295:Definition of Good and Evil: Good is what you like. Evil is what you don't like. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey,
296:I don't have a definition of Jazz. You're just supposed to know it when you hear it. ~ Thelonious Monk,
297:materialist and a spiritualist accept the same definition of a crystal of sodium chloride. ~ Anonymous,
298:Never believe that the fiction writing life makes sense.... It's insanity by definition. ~ Jo Beverley,
299:The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost. ~ Maya Lin,
300:The denial of suffering is, in fact a better definition of illness than its acceptance. ~ M Scott Peck,
301:Truth by definition is exclusive. If truth were all-inclusive, nothing would be false. ~ Walter Martin,
302:A geek by definition is somebody who eats live animals. I?ve never eaten live animals. ~ Crispin Glover,
303:A good manager is now by definition a leader. Equally, a good leader will also be a manger ~ John Adair,
304:A guy’s definition of baseball: you don’t have to buy the other team dinner to get game. ~ Jill Shalvis,
305:Definition of Success: It is being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace. ~ Paulo Coelho,
306:If something does not exist, then it makes it very difficult to give it a definition. ~ Albert Einstein,
307:I'm a textbook definition of that perfectionist girl who has huge expectations of herself. ~ Rachel Zoe,
308:one person’s idea of live-and-let-live is another person’s definition of betrayal, ~ Mary Higgins Clark,
309:stop heaping your own definition of love on men and recognize that men love differently. ~ Steve Harvey,
310:Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted ~ Abraham Verghese,
311:We are all in flight from the real reality. That is the basic definition of Homo Sapiens. ~ John Fowles,
312:Well, you know, the definition of second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. ~ George Will,
313:and Pixar would by definition be getting less of them than it once had. From the moment the ~ Ed Catmull,
314:But if we've honestly done everything we can, by definition we can't do anything more. ~ Craig Groeschel,
315:Henry James’s definition of the purpose of a novel: “To help the human heart to know itself. ~ P D James,
316:Maybe your definition of hardship is different than mine, but it makes mine no less real. ~ Mysti Parker,
317:Reflection on the infinite seems to call, almost by definition, for infinite reflection. ~ Daniel Taylor,
318:There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. ~ John Fowles,
319:Transhumanists have a unique definition: Death is a malfunction of the human experience. ~ Zoltan Istvan,
320:Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted? ~ Abraham Verghese,
321:What is your definition of skank?' I ask.
'A skank fucks skeezas she barely knows. ~ Megan McCafferty,
322:When people get married young, you don't really understand the true definition of marriage. ~ Kevin Hart,
323:a new definition of the nerd: a person who knows his own mind well enough to mistrust it. ~ Michael Lewis,
324:A pretty woman, not a bother? As far as he knew, that was the very definition of the word. ~ Joanna Shupe,
325:Goodness is no part of the definition of the God Hypothesis, merely a desirable add-on. ~ Richard Dawkins,
326:If there's a better definition of love than mutual benevolent insanity, I haven't heard it. ~ Leah Raeder,
327:If there’s a better definition of love than mutual benevolent insanity, I haven’t heard it. ~ Leah Raeder,
328:The definition of insanity is doing what you've always done and expecting different results. ~ Jane Green,
329:The definition of insanity is doing what you’ve always done and expecting different results. ~ Jane Green,
330:The definition of S & M is letting someone hurt you that you know would never hurt you. ~ Madonna Ciccone,
331:The only definition by which Americas best days are behind it is on a purely relative basis. ~ Bill Gates,
332:to paraphrase Thomas à Kempis, "I had rather exercise faith than know the definition thereof. ~ A W Tozer,
333:As suggested by this definition, not all nations are states and not all states are nations. ~ Rodney Stark,
334:By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. ~ Albert Camus,
335:I even think that the best definition of a man is an ungrateful creature on two legs. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
336:Our definition of a weakness is anything that gets in the way of excellent performance. ~ Donald O Clifton,
337:the definition of a machine is simple. It is anything that reduces human effort. Anything. ~ Chetan Bhagat,
338:The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million. ~ Arthur Koestler,
339:There is no final stage in nirvana. Nirvana is beyond definition. It is not quantifiable. ~ Frederick Lenz,
340:von Moltke’s definition of victory: “the highest goal attainable with available means. ~ Lawrence Freedman,
341:Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted? A ~ Abraham Verghese,
342:What is autumn? Here is a very simple definition: Autumn is a Queen, Queen of Beauty! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
343:Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have. ~ Alan Bennett,
344:It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain. ~ John Henry Newman,
345:My definition of a liberal is a man who has his ass firmly stuck in clouds of cotton wool. ~ Sidney Sheldon,
346:The definition of obscenity on the newsstands should be extended to many hunting magazines. ~ Wayne Pacelle,
347:The only thing high-definition television will do is provide sharper images of the garbage. ~ George Carlin,
348:The psychologist Philip Zimbardo gave a TED talk last year on this subject. His definition ~ William Wright,
349:What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms? ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein,
350:You will find, as I did, that the definition of marketing is in desperate need of expansion. ~ Ryan Holiday,
351:A one sentence definition of mythology? Mythology is what we call someone else's religion. ~ Joseph Campbell,
352:Archie asked me if I knew Dante's definition of hell..."Proximity without intimacy," he said. ~ Melissa Bank,
353:He did not tolerate fools and had an ever-expanding definition of those who fit that category. ~ James Comey,
354:It always seems as though the definition of love will remain debatable by an opinionated world. ~ Criss Jami,
355:It seems possible to give a preliminary definition of walking as a space of enunciation. ~ Michel de Certeau,
356:My definition of marketing is: “getting someone who has a need, to know, like, and trust you. ~ John Jantsch,
357:The definition of a hero changes depending on the needs of the person with the dictionary. ~ Lindsay Buroker,
358:...the definition of swiftboating is: producing irrefutable evidence that a Democrat is lying. ~ Ann Coulter,
359:By definition, I believe I am unapologetically optimistic and I am unapologetically earnest. ~ Emilio Estevez,
360:Don’t ever say stuff just because you think you should. That’s the definition of an asshole. ~ Justin Halpern,
361:If anyone wants to know what the definition of 'dope' means, it's: 'Definition of Public Enemy. ~ Flavor Flav,
362:if social is supposed to be opposed to individual, then social justice is by definition unjust. ~ Ben Shapiro,
363:Locke’s definition of a madman: someone “reasoning correctly from erroneous premises. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
364:The definition of rich is when your passive income exceeds your nut (what you need to live). ~ Scott Galloway,
365:There is no definition of a mental disorder. It's bullshit. I mean, you just can't define it. ~ Jon Rappoport,
366:Truth is not a sum of statements, not a definition, not a system of concepts, but a life. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
367:A totally blind process can by definition lead to anything; it can even lead to vision itself. ~ Jacques Monod,
368:A white person was by definition somebody. Other people needed, across their hearts, one steel rib. ~ Gish Jen,
369:I know you're scared, but doing something even though it scares you is the definition of brave. ~ Sarah Morgan,
370:It is a trite but true definition that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts. ~ Henry Fielding,
371:[Marianne Moore's definition of genuine poetry] -- Imaginary gardens with real toads in them. ~ Marianne Moore,
372:My definition of love is: Being willing to die for someone, that you yourself want to kill. ~ Whitney Cummings,
373:That's the definition of popularity. Something that literally resonates with many, many people. ~ Tod Machover,
374:The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class. ~ Louis Dudek,
375:When you'r no longer identified with roles and labels and conventional definition of person ~ U G Krishnamurti,
376:Wise men don't need concrete answers. By definition, they need wisdom." ~ Richelle Mead Geraki ~ Richelle Mead,
377:You cannot, by definition, offend someone who’s not here. Offence has to be taken, not just given. ~ Ruth Ware,
378:And that is my definition of democracy, the right to be in a minority and not be suppressed ~ Lee Harvey Oswald,
379:A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one that has no history and wants no historians. ~ Henry Adams,
380:Diversity is, by definition, discrimination. It leads to things like quotas and racial profiling. ~ Mary Kissel,
381:(My husband’s tongue-in-cheek definition of positive is “being wrong at the top of your voice.”) If ~ Kathy Ide,
382:Name anything - high-definition TV, computer obsolescence - and I'm pretty much annoyed by it. ~ Martin Freeman,
383:Somebody who is unique - and this will get me into trouble - by definition cannot be replaced. ~ Martin Sorrell,
384:The definition of a good story is one that remains with you long after you've turned that last page. ~ T A Uner,
385:The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce,
386:The definition of insanity in Texas is so insane that it's impossible to be insane in Texas. ~ Malcolm McDowell,
387:"The ego is, by definition, subordinate to the self and is related to it like a part to the whole." ~ Carl Jung,
388:The presence of a group of African sell-outs is part of the definition of underdevelopment. Any ~ Walter Rodney,
389:Being able to make a living doing something one truly loves to do - is my definition of success. ~ Cindy Sherman,
390:By definition, the big difference between mercy and justice is that mercy is never ever obligatory. ~ R C Sproul,
391:God's definition of what matters is pretty straightforward. He measures our lives by how we love. ~ Francis Chan,
392:I have my own definition of minimalism, which is that which is created with a minimum of means. ~ La Monte Young,
393:It doesn’t take long in Hell before your definition of “good company” reduces to “not dead.” For ~ Mark Lawrence,
394:My definition of patriotism is to defend your country with the truth, no matter the consequences. ~ John F Kerry,
395:Perhaps love could never be captured in a definition; it could only ever be captured in a story. ~ Julian Barnes,
396:The definition of indecent – when it’s in long, and it’s in hard, and it’s in deep – it’s in decent. ~ Redd Foxx,
397:The keys to brand success are self-definition, transparency, authenticity and accountability. ~ Simon Mainwaring,
398:The reality is, saying yes to any opportunity by definition requires saying no to several others. ~ Greg McKeown,
399:Until some gang succeeds in putting the world in a strait jacket, its definition is possibility. ~ Ralph Ellison,
400:Want to know the true definition of the triumph of hope over experience? Plan a fun family day out. ~ Jojo Moyes,
401:An economist's definition of hatred is the willingness to pay a price to inflict harm on others. ~ Edward Glaeser,
402:I can't give any absolute definition of what love is, or even whether it ought to exist. ~ Michelangelo Antonioni,
403:I even think the best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
404:In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word "frustration". ~ Alan Perlis,
405:It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain. ~ Saint John Henry Newman,
406:It seems thus possible to give a preliminary definition of walking as a space of enunciation. ~ Michel de Certeau,
407:Nancy Clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that's one definition of a lady. ~ Truman Capote,
408:Sometimes things work just because you think they work. It's as good a definition of faith as any. ~ Stephen King,
409:Surround yourself with people whose definition of you is not based on your history, but your destiny. ~ T D Jakes,
410:We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination. ~ Ben Okri,
411:what is ubiquitous but not constrained by the brittleness of form, is by definition imperishable. ~ Pavan K Varma,
412:Dante's definition of hell: proximity without intimacy. From the Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing ~ Melissa Bank,
413:Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition. ~ Bell Hooks,
414:Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition. ~ bell hooks,
415:My definition of a "respected" man was one who had succeeded almost completely in hoodwinking people ~ Osamu Dazai,
416:My definition of poetry (if I were forced to give one) would be this: words that have become deeds. ~ Robert Frost,
417:The definition of the problem, rather than its solution, will be the scarce resource in the future. ~ Esther Dyson,
418:The line between courageous faith and foolish idealism is, almost by definition, one angstrom wide. ~ Eric Metaxas,
419:When your only regret is if anyone thinks you regret anything - that is the definition of conviction. ~ Criss Jami,
420:You don't get to Define me, only I can Define me, all I wish from you is to recognize my Definition. ~ Kellan Lutz,
421:After everything I'd lived through, I was not going to be reduced to a one-sentence definition. ~ Maggie Stiefvater,
422:Grace, by definition, is something that God is not required to grant. He owes a fallen world no mercy. ~ R C Sproul,
423:If you carefully consider [how you want to be remembered], you will find your definition of success. ~ Ivanka Trump,
424:I like being very busy. I think that's the definition of stardom, really. It's energy. It really is. ~ Faye Dunaway,
425:I think by definition you need to have lived a little bit to write anything that's humanly true. ~ Richard K Morgan,
426:I think the very definition of a good deed is putting someone else's feelings in front of your own. ~ Jessica Brody,
427:Maybe we don't have the same definition of about what's beautiful. So define it. Define true beauty. ~ Justina Chen,
428:The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing. And you can quote me. ~ Richard Bachman,
429:The definition of a security state is one that prioritizes security over all other considerations. ~ Edward Snowden,
430:The definition of 'Employment' by an employer, and, that by an employee, are seldom the same. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana,
431:Anarcho-capitalism is not by definition libertarian. It is rather a prediction, not a definition. ~ David D Friedman,
432:Pain does not define us, neither does joy; our deepest definition is independent of our experiences. ~ Bryant McGill,
433:The true definition of a perennial: Any plant which, had it lived, would have bloomed year after year. ~ Henry Beard,
434:According to one definition, doctrine is teaching from God about God that directs us to the glory of God. ~ Anonymous,
435:By definition, a right is something that is not only self-evident, but impossible to remove.  ~ Christopher G Nuttall,
436:definition. How can she not see that when you are defined, you lose the ability to define yourself? ~ Neal Shusterman,
437:digging for the truth, by definition, unearths things—and some things were safer left buried. ~ Christine M Whitehead,
438:Faith is belief without evidence and reason; coincidentally that's also the definition of delusion. ~ Richard Dawkins,
439:For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. ~ Jonathan Swift,
440:Got my shit together” Definition: I’ve learned how to play it cool. I’ve got some ideas worked out. ~ Beatrice Sparks,
441:He was having, under trying circumstances, the best time he could, which is one definition of heroism; ~ Peter Straub,
442:I worry that we don't have a very good definition of consciousness yet which makes it hard to tackle. ~ Edward Boyden,
443:Kitsch and tourism are inseparable partners. Perhaps it is because, by definition, both are inauthentic. ~ Don Watson,
444:Man is a creature who gets used to everything, and that, I think, is the best definition of him. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
445:Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. ~ Peter Drucker,
446:My definition of poor are those who need too much. Because those who need too much are never satisfied. ~ Jose Mujica,
447:The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence. ~ John F Kennedy,
448:Having your existence completely erased has to qualify as a life-changing event, by anyone’s definition. ~ Rysa Walker,
449:He suggested a new definition of the nerd: a person who knows his own mind well enough to mistrust it. ~ Michael Lewis,
450:Indeed, today, reliance on broadcasting is the very definition of a technologically backward society. ~ William Gibson,
451:Know the true definition of yourself. That is essential. Then, when you know your own definition, flee from it. ~ Rumi,
452:Life, by definition, is never still. Where is it going? From birth to death, with no stops on the way. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,
453:My definition of divination is to see and know yourself with clarity, not see or know the future. Tarot ~ Benebell Wen,
454:My favorite definition of love is giving someone the power to destroy us and trusting they won’t use it. ~ Simon Sinek,
455:The definition of terrorism is killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation. ~ Caleb Carr,
456:The final definition of perspective is the ability to view things in relation to their true importance. ~ Amy E Herman,
457:The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them. ~ John Buchan,
458:When alone I am not aware of my race or my sex, both in need of social contexts for definition. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston,
459:Oh God, Oh God we’re all gonna die doesn’t really fit the definition of banter, now does it? ~ Lilith Saintcrow,
460:That’s the definition of bisexual, Casey—pretty girls and pretty boys, it’s like an all-you-can-fuck buffet! ~ Amy Lane,
461:the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. ~ David Estes,
462:The fatal temptation is to describe your market extremely narrowly so that you dominate it by definition. ~ Peter Thiel,
463:The problem with living in the now is it means, by definition, you’re not making plans for the future. ~ Jill Santopolo,
464:There is an old saying, The harder you try the luckier you get. I kind of like that definition of luck. ~ Gerald R Ford,
465:Wanting someone you knew with absolute certainty you could never have was the very definition of agony. ~ Penelope Ward,
466:We changed it back in 2005. The definition is an offender who kills two or more victims in separate events. ~ Mike Omer,
467:Guilty as charged. We are very much supportive of the family - the biblical definition of the family unit. ~ Dan T Cathy,
468:However, angel investors by definition are not philanthropists or do-gooders in this area of their lives. ~ David S Rose,
469:if everyone were extraordinary, then by definition no one would be extraordinary—is missed by most people. ~ Mark Manson,
470:I suppose, I said, it is one definition of love, the belief in something that only the two of you can see. ~ Rachel Cusk,
471:The author says one character's definition of a classic is any book he'd heard of before he was thirty. ~ Sinclair Lewis,
472:The definition of a gentleman is a man who enters a revolving door in front of you and exits behind you. ~ Chloe Thurlow,
473:But if life has any definition at all, it is the things that happen to us while we are making plans. ~ Breece D J Pancake,
474:But war is no respecter of limits, it is by definition harsh and inhuman, and there is no preparing for it. ~ Herman Wouk,
475:By my definition, prayer is consciously hanging out with God. Being with God in a deliberate way. ~ Reverend Malcolm Boyd,
476:DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children ~ Markus Zusak,
477:Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is that which we perceive as a value. ~ Konrad Lorenz,
478:Have you ever WRITTEN DOWN your definition of success? Prepare to be surprised.” @DarrenHardy #JoinTheRide ~ Darren Hardy,
479:I learned that I must redefine what I believe is valuable and make sure I’m included within that definition. ~ Bren Brown,
480:Know the true definition of yourself. That is essential.
Then, when you know your own definition, flee from it. ~ Rumi,
481:My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'. ~ Arthur C Clarke,
482:That is the definition of faith - acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. ~ Dan Brown,
483:The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (1933),
484:...the definition of crazy is doing something close to the same thing twice and expecting a different end. ~ Cath Crowley,
485:[T]he most difficult part of the fight is not taking aim at the enemy, but rejecting his definition of you. ~ Azar Nafisi,
486:To condescend effectively it is clearly necessary to adhere to a narrow definition of relevant data. ~ Marilynne Robinson,
487:all theology knowingly or not is by definition always engaged for or against the oppressed. ~ Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza,
488:I suppose the word "unbearable" is a lie by definition. Unless you kill yourself immediately after using it. ~ Glen Duncan,
489:just need defining.—Defining, then, by means of other words! And what about the last definition in this chain? ~ Anonymous,
490:Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky,
491:No, everything is not going to be okay. It never is. It isn't okay now. Change, by definition, changes things ~ Seth Godin,
492:Realize that ultimate success comes from opportunistic,bold moves which by definition, cannot be planned. ~ F Ross Johnson,
493:Roger was a skinny kid. His arms were reeds with absolutely no definition. He did not look up as she spoke. ~ Harlan Coben,
494:That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief. ~ George Saunders,
495:That was the definition of management—getting others to do your work for you. And we were the others. ~ John Elder Robison,
496:The basic definition of the business and of its purpose and mission have to be translated into objectives. ~ Peter Drucker,
497:The presidency does not yield to definition. Like the glory of a morning sunrise, it can be experienced. ~ Calvin Coolidge,
498:We can keep whatever we like about manhood but adjust the parts of the definition that are keeping men back. ~ Hanna Rosin,
499:Well you can't believe everything you read. After all, by definition, fiction writers lie for a living. ~ Janette Rallison,
500:A centre of excellence is, by definition, a place where second class people may perform first class work. ~ Michael Faraday,
501:A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children ~ Markus Zusak,
502:Another person's life, observed from the outside, always has a shape and definition that one's own life lacks. ~ Pat Barker,
503:Humanly speaking, let us define truth, while waiting for a better definition as a statement of facts as they are ~ Voltaire,
504:It is the definition of an egoist that whatever occupies his attention is, for that reason, important. ~ William Manchester,
505:Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
506:My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak. ~ John le Carre,
507:One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition. ~ Alvin Toffler,
508:The Day women were the definition of mob mentality. And here they were on a farm with plenty of pitchforks. ~ Gillian Flynn,
509:TO ME, THE definition of hell is simple: it is a place where there is no understanding and no compassion. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,
510:With high definition TV, everything looks bigger and wider. Kind of like going to your 25th high school reunion. ~ Jay Leno,
511:A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not-leaving: An act of trust and love, often deciphered by children. ~ Markus Zusak,
512:[Daryl Morey] suggested a new definition of the nerd: a person who knows his mind well enough to mistrust it ~ Michael Lewis,
513:If you plan your whole life, by definition you can’t get lucky. So you have to leave that little slot open. ~ Keith Ferrazzi,
514:Is there anything worse than being called the 'It Girl?' By definition, there will be a new one in two weeks. ~ Brit Marling,
515:My definition of a friend is somebody who adores you even though they know the things you're most ashamed of. ~ Jodie Foster,
516:The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself. ~ Andrew Wiles,
517:The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
   ~ Albert Einstein,
518:The intellectual’s definition of a hack seems to be “an artist whose work is appreciated by too many people”. ~ Stephen King,
519:The true definition of madness is repeating the same action, over and over, hoping for a different result. ~ Albert Einstein,
520:They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac. ~ David Mamet,
521:You know what the true definition of hell is? It's when you die, you get to meet the person you could have been. ~ Frank Mir,
522:A utopia cannot, by definition, include boredom, but the ‘utopia’ we are living in is boring. ~ Lars Fredrik H ndler Svendsen,
523:By definition, saving - for anything - requires us to not get things now so that we can get bigger ones later. ~ Jean Chatzky,
524:Corruption is power that overflows its bounds. By definition, it rarely stays contained in a single location. ~ Nick Harkaway,
525:*Effective help can only start with mutual agreement on a clear definition of the problem.* Interestingly ~ Gerald M Weinberg,
526:It’s okay, man,” I said, though I realized my definition of okay had become flexible over the last few months. ~ Rick Riordan,
527:My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared. ~ P J Plauger,
528:Some people say Bowie is all surface style and second-hand ideas, but that sounds like a definition of pop to me. ~ Brian Eno,
529:The high-definition picture is still a perspective picture. That's the real problem, the perspective picture. ~ David Hockney,
530:The present time of believers is no longer determined by the past. It takes its definition from the future. ~ Jurgen Moltmann,
531:Adopting this definition means you can be successful right now, whether or not you’ve achieved your major goals. ~ Russ Harris,
532:And this of course, was the simplest definition of depression that he knew of: strongly disliking yourself. ~ Jonathan Franzen,
533:Fear wearing black.' Definition of cool. Maybe it's also the definition of courage. Would she be courageous?”. ~ Martha Grimes,
534:His definition of friendship had been grounded on the lowest common denominator, an absence of animosity. He ~ Henning Mankell,
535:I would add that I consider myself and how I do things as a kind of system which, by definition, I always follow. ~ Ed Seykota,
536:Recognize that ultimate success comes from opportunistic, bold moves which, by definition, cannot be planned. ~ Bryan Burrough,
537:The dreamer—if you want an exact definition—is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
538:The rules of parenting have changed. By the modern definition, we were a generation of neglected children. ~ Richard Linklater,
539:The world in my head has been far more real than the one outside—maybe that’s the exact definition of madness, ~ Akwaeke Emezi,
540:What is the definition of a friend? Friends are people who make it easier to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. ~ Robert D Hales,
541:What’s the definition of stupid? Doing the same thing over and over and hoping for different results. That’s me. ~ Marie Force,
542:Armed attack has a definition in international law. It means sudden, overwhelming, instantaneous ongoing attack. ~ Noam Chomsky,
543:At the end of the day, we each have a different definition for beauty, but being yourself is the most important. ~ Maria Borges,
544:Definition: CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else. ~ Ambrose Bierce,
545:He who meanly admires a mean thing is a snob--perhaps that is a safe definition of the character. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray,
546:The Day women were the definition of mob mentality. And here they were on a farm with plenty of pitchforks. She ~ Gillian Flynn,
547:The definition of genius, really, should be that that person can do what the rest of us have to learn how to do. ~ James Lipton,
548:You are One with everything. When you are clear about this, your definition of self-interest will change. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,
549:You know the definition of a dysfunctional family, don't you? It's any family with more than one member in it. ~ Sarah Pekkanen,
550:Alexander received more bravery of mind by the pattern of Achilles, than by hearing the definition of fortitude. ~ Philip Sidney,
551:By definition, acting is improvisation, even if you follow the lines. You invent what you do, when you do it. ~ Isabelle Huppert,
552:God's definition of success is really one of the significant differences our lives can make in the lives of others. ~ Tony Dungy,
553:In Soviet eyes the definition of ‘fascist’ included anyone who did not follow the orders of the Communist Party. ~ Antony Beevor,
554:Irony, perfect definition: that for which I want to possess it, I would no longer want once I possessed it. ~ Karen Marie Moning,
555:is clear that human knowledge must always be content to accept some terms as intelligible without definition, ~ Bertrand Russell,
556:Once again I come upon his famous definition of love: two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other. ~ Sigrid Nunez,
557:To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness. ~ Emile Durkheim,
558:Want to know the true definition of the triumph of hope over experience?” he would say. “Plan a fun family day out. ~ Jojo Moyes,
559:What's your definition of dating?
Lengthy social time spent with a woman during which we're not actively fucking ~ Sylvia Day,
560:Ah, well, old girl, remember the definition of an Anglo-Saxon: A German who's forgotten his grandmother was Welsh. ~ S M Stirling,
561:A modern definition of equanimity: cool. This refers to one whose mind remains stable & calm in all situations. ~ Allan Lokos,
562:Any trade that is voluntarily made is mutually beneficial, by definition, and, indeed, is balanced, by definition. ~ P J O Rourke,
563:Coming even fifty miles to force a probe up my butt without my permission is a pretty good definition of a pervert. ~ Dean Koontz,
564:If 'bounded by a surface' is the definition of body there cannot be an infinite body either intelligible or sensible. ~ Aristotle,
565:My definition of success? The more you are actively and practically engaged, the more successful you will feel. ~ Richard Branson,
566:The common moral framework: Do anything as long as it does no harm to others. Problem: Whose definition of harm? ~ Timothy Keller,
567:The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions. ~ W H Auden,
568:A definition is death. A definition is the answer to which you must look up the question in the back of your book. ~ Peter Hammill,
569:A DEFINITION NOT FOUND
IN THE DICTIONARY
Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children ~ Markus Zusak,
570:I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner. ~ Pope Francis,
571:I have a very specific definition of censorship. Censorship must be done by the government or it's not censorship. ~ Penn Jillette,
572:It turns out that you don't end up with the people you love; by definition, you end up with the ones who stay. ~ Andrew Sean Greer,
573:My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure. ~ Gene Wolfe,
574:Of course, if 40% of women need oxytocin to progress normally, then something is wrong with the definition of normal. ~ Henci Goer,
575:The definition of hell is two people in a relationship that is starved for love and unable to fulfill that need. ~ Shannon L Alder,
576:The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government. ~ James Madison,
577:There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man. ~ Che Guevara,
578:this question depends upon the definition of the word, Nature, than which there is none more ambiguous and equivocal. ~ David Hume,
579:Those who do not believe do not pray. This is a good functional definition of faith. Faith prays, unbelief does not. ~ John Hardon,
580:To do something you're afraid of, especially for the sake of somebody else, is the very definition of courage. ~ Michelle Harrison,
581:You can always cram the wrong piece into the puzzle hole if you push hard enough and limit your definition of ‘fitting. ~ Amy Reed,
582:A broad definition of crime in England is that it is any lower-class activity that is displeasing to the upper class. ~ David Frost,
583:An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home. ~ Francois Hollande,
584:By definition, a mentor shows you the ropes, offers feedback, and provides strategies for success—all very good stuff. ~ Kate White,
585:Camping, as someone I trust implicitly once told me, is at its best definition an agreement to be uncomfortable. ~ Domingo Martinez,
586:I seemed to be leading a very incongruous life from the point of view of the definition of the community I was in. ~ Frederick Lenz,
587:Is it ignorance if you don’t care to know it?” “Yes. That is almost the definition of ignorance, actually. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett,
588:No good government but what is republican... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.' ~ John Adams,
589:Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature. ~ Albert Camus,
590:So I offer my definition of theology: theology is the application of Scripture, by persons, to every area of life.11 ~ John M Frame,
591:That is one definition of the setting-sun mentality: trying to conquer the earth so that you can ward off reality ~ Ch gyam Trungpa,
592:The enterprise, by definition, must be capable of producing more or better than all the resources that comprise it. ~ Peter Drucker,
593:This is the definition of the infinite: it is something that can stay the same size even when you subtract from it. ~ Charles Seife,
594:A DEFINITION NOT FOUND
IN THE DICTIONARY
Not leaving: an act of trust and love,
often deciphered by children ~ Markus Zusak,
595:A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult. ~ Melinda Gates,
596:Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them. ~ H L Mencken,
597:Horror by definition is the emotion of pure revulsion. Terror of the same standard, is that of fearful anticipation. ~ Dario Argento,
598:I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I'd invented it, because it is very true. ~ Audrey Hepburn,
599:In my definition of consciousness, consciousness is the same thing as life. What wisdom traditions also call spirit. ~ Deepak Chopra,
600:I've never used High Definition video, never, ever, ever, ever, ever. And I never will. I can't stand that crap. ~ Quentin Tarantino,
601:Maybe that was the definition of life everlasting: the belief that the next generation would carry your work forward. ~ Ann Patchett,
602:Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. ~ James Baldwin,
603:No one is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart: for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. ~ James Baldwin,
604:Since the photographic medium has been digitized, a fixed definition of the term photography has become impossible. ~ Andreas Gursky,
605:to get hold of the human condition, we need next a much broader definition of history than is conventionally used. ~ Edward O Wilson,
606:By my definition, most art has nothing to do with oil paint or marble. Art is what we're doing when we do our best work. ~ Seth Godin,
607:For this was a kiss of definition. A kiss of understanding. For a marriage absent pretense. And a love without design. ~ Ren e Ahdieh,
608:Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There’s no other definition of it. —F. SCOTT FITZGERALD ~ Ryan Holiday,
609:H.L. Mencken’s definition of a wealthy man: one whose income is $100 a year higher than his wife’s sister’s husband. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,
610:That is almost the definition of any friendship that is worthwhile - that we don't care a damn how you behave yourself. ~ E C Bentley,
611:that’s more or less the textbook definition of an alcoholic. Someone who knows it’s time to cut down but can’t. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde,
612:There's nothing sad about loving someone so much that nothing makes sense without him. It's the definition of joy. ~ Adriana Trigiani,
613:This should have been a red flag, I realize in retrospect. Working really hard on anything is, by definition, not cool. ~ Leila Sales,
614:Definition of Love: A score of zero in tennis. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears of all my life. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
615:For many readers, writers, editors and agents ... pretty much the working (in)definition: SF is short for So Fuck? ~ Hal Duncan,
616:God’s definition of success is contrary to the world’s. The world looks at what you have, while God sees who you have. ~ Joseph Prince,
617:I think that the definition of autism is too broad. You got to remember, autism definition is a behavioral profiling. ~ Temple Grandin,
618:Maybe it’s about opening up your definition of family to include friends, too. Because friends are the family you choose. ~ Kim Holden,
619:Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable. ~ James A Baldwin,
620:Sticking her tongue out at a piece of paper was the definition of useless, but it made Miranda feel better anyway. ~ Kristi Ann Hunter,
621:Whatever our definition of truth may be, we can never renounce Descartes' clare et distincte (clarity and distinctness). ~ Lev Shestov,
622:Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. ~ Gore Vidal,
623:Having what you need as well as what you want, and knowing that you have it, must be the definition of contentment. ~ Billy O Callaghan,
624:It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that. ~ G H Hardy,
625:John F. Kennedy once said: ‘The definition of happiness is the full use of your powers, along the lines of excellence. ~ Robin S Sharma,
626:NASA ‘working definition’ of life, for example: life is ‘a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution’. ~ Nick Lane,
627:of a sane man there is only one safe definition. He is a man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head. ~ G K Chesterton,
628:Over time his images of the baby, like photographs handled too often, had worn down and creased, lost their definition. ~ Anthony Doerr,
629:People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities. ~ Linda Ellerbee,
630:Sturgeon’s definition of science fiction—“[a story] which would not have happened at all without its scientific content. ~ Damon Knight,
631:...the best definition that I heard of that is that a bureaucrat is a Democrat who has a job that a Republican wants. ~ Alben W Barkley,
632:The hallmark of an authoritarian idiot is yelling TERRORIST-LOVER! at anyone questioning the definition of Terrorist. ~ Glenn Greenwald,
633:To me the definition of true masculinity - and femininity, too - is being able to lay in your own skin comfortably. ~ Vincent D Onofrio,
634:A company has a monopoly on its own brand by definition, so creating a strong brand is a powerful way to claim a monopoly. ~ Peter Thiel,
635:A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined. ~ Edmund Burke,
636:Definition of responsibility: a commitment of the head, heart, and hands to fix the problem and never again affix blame. ~ John G Miller,
637:Healing is, by definition, taking a process of disintegration of life and transforming into a process of return to life. ~ Caroline Myss,
638:I'd like to expand the definition of the word 'success' to include 'failure' as the one seems inseparable from the other. ~ Dov Davidoff,
639:I know of no better definition of love than the one given by Proust - Love is space and time measured by the heart. ~ Gian Carlo Menotti,
640:Intentions must mature into commitments if we are to become persons with definition, with character, with substance. ~ Eugene H Peterson,
641:It is my opinion that enjoying yourself in the present and loosening your definition of time slows the aging process. ~ Frederick Dodson,
642:Most of us find it difficult to accept a definition of love that says we are never loved in a context where there is abuse. ~ Bell Hooks,
643:Most of us find it difficult to accept a definition of love that says we are never loved in a context where there is abuse. ~ bell hooks,
644:Perhaps the best definition for the inhabitants of an early city is that they are a permanently captive farm population. ~ Lewis Mumford,
645:The definition of marriage? When a woman adopts an overgrown man-child who cannot be handled by his parents any longer. ~ Gena Showalter,
646:The idea that any president represents the world, by definition the United States must be diminished for that to happen. ~ Rush Limbaugh,
647:The twenty first century will require a re-affirmation and re-definition of our alliances and international organisations. ~ Chuck Hagel,
648:The will to grow is, in essence, the same phenomenon as love. Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people. ~ M Scott Peck,
649:This is the definition of happiness: a whole day stretching out ahead of me, beautiful in its emptiness and simplicity. ~ Tabitha Suzuma,
650:To test whether you have learned an idea or a definition, rephrase what you just learned without using the new word. ~ Richard P Feynman,
651:Two things mania did were to keep you up all night and to enable nonstop sex: pretty much the definition of college. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides,
652:Business enterprise is an organ of society. There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. ~ Peter Drucker,
653:Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing. ~ A R Ammons,
654:God is by definition the holder of all possible knowledge, it would be impossible for him to have faith in anything. Faith, ~ Steve Allen,
655:Hathos,” I offered finally and then thoughtfully provided the definition. “The pleasure you get from hating something. ~ Karen Joy Fowler,
656:If faith were rational, it wouldn’t be—by definition—faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
657:Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life. ~ Albert Schweitzer,
658:Never waste any time disliking the ones you have. The right person will think they are the very definition of beautiful. ~ Rachel Fordham,
659:Of a sane man there is only one safe definition. He is the man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head. ~ G K Chesterton,
660:Quietly affirm that you will define your own reality from now on and that your definition will be based on your inner wisdom ~ Wayne Dyer,
661:Quite the opposite; my definition is too broad. I think we're all quite mad. Some of us are just more discreet about it. ~ Mindy McGinnis,
662:There was a time when a willingness to criticize one's own government when it was wrong was the very definition of patriotism. ~ Ron Paul,
663:By any sane definition of success, if you wake up in a pool of blood and nobody has shot you, you are not successful. ~ Arianna Huffington,
664:I always go with the dictionary definition of feminism, which is just social, political and economic equality for women. ~ Jessica Valenti,
665:I do not criticize religion as such, but I criticize the concept and the definition of "religion" - as I said in Genealogies. ~ Talal Asad,
666:In a way, this is a definition of shamanism. A shaman is a person who by some means has gotten out of their own culture. ~ Terence McKenna,
667:Maybe this was, in fact, the very definition of intimacy: acting with another person the way you did when you were alone. ~ Kemper Donovan,
668:She’d read somewhere that the definition of crazy was doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. ~ Laurelin Paige,
669:That, Claire thought, was a pretty good definition of love: needing someone even after you got what you thought you wanted. ~ Rachel Caine,
670:The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition. ~ Christopher Hitchens,
671:There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara,
672:»Weißt du, was Ferd Janklows Definition eines anständigen Burschen ist, Jack?«
»Nein.«
»Einer, der sich kaufen lässt« ~ Stephen King,
673:—Did Eve know? About you and Anne, I mean.
He shook his head wanly. The very definition of wanly. The apotheosis of wanly. ~ Amor Towles,
674:Heard someone say children are god's gift to the world. What world are you referring to? And what's your definition of gift? ~ Dov Davidoff,
675:If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women. ~ Christopher Hampton,
676:I'm a thug. And my thug comes from... my definition of thug comes from half of the street element. Straight street hustling. ~ Tupac Shakur,
677:I take the definition and title of my job - Representative - seriously. Thats what I will be above and beyond everything else. ~ Grace Meng,
678:Maybe no great man is virtuous. Or good. Perhaps a man rich in those qualities by definition is barred from greatness. ~ Colleen McCullough,
679:My definition of happiness is having something to do what you love to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. ~ Mary Kay Ash,
680:my definition of the ideal man is 'that particular man with whom a woman happens to be in love at that particular time. ~ Clare Boothe Luce,
681:Over time, I have come to this simple definition of leadership: Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust. ~ Stephen Covey,
682:They said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. ~ Jayne Ann Krentz,
683:What's wrong with hip-hop is the system that controls the definition of it. There needs to be more balance on the airwaves. ~ Saul Williams,
684:You know what FINE means, right?
Dr. Head's definition of FINE scribbles across my brain. "Feelings Inside Not Expresses? ~ S R Johannes,
685:And as for social justice, if social is supposed to be opposed to individual, then social justice is by definition unjust. The ~ Ben Shapiro,
686:if our definition of happiness is “experiencing that which is pleasurable,” we are going to be disappointed a lot of the time. ~ Noah Levine,
687:I guess I'm attracted to more archaic words because they can be imbued with more meaning, because their definition is elusive. ~ Andrew Bird,
688:I minded how they thought I expected too much from them where the definition of “too much” was to have any expectations at all. ~ Roxane Gay,
689:Luis comes along and decides that his definition of a man is someone who is not afraid to be kind. That takes courage. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde,
690:My definition of an adventure game is an interactive story set with puzzles and obstacles to solve and worlds to explore. ~ Roberta Williams,
691:People of dua are optimistic by definition. They know that dua and thoughts like 'unlikely' or 'impossible' don't coexist. ~ Nouman Ali Khan,
692:#Suffering is at the heart of the human experience. The definition of suffering is whenever you are not perfectly in control. ~ Richard Rohr,
693:whence the insistence that racism have the structural-oppression definition rather than the original and more commonly used one? ~ Anonymous,
694:Look up the definition of rejection in the dictionary, get really comfortable with it, and then maybe you can go into acting. ~ Loni Anderson,
695:My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. ~ Billy Connolly,
696:Myths, by their definition, involve transformations, struggles through various worlds or layers of reality and of obscuration. ~ Anne Waldman,
697:Scientific answers are not definitive: they are, almost by definition, the best ones that we have at any given time. Consider ~ Carlo Rovelli,
698:...the definition of agape is loving a person for exactly who they are - not who we hope they'll become with enough fixing. ~ Hannah Brencher,
699:This, then, is the Anarchistic definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will. ~ Benjamin Tucker,
700:But we all know the wag’s definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance. ~ George Eliot,
701:constraints.” I wrote this definition in my notes, but I didn’t understand it. The lecturer tried to clarify. He said positive ~ Tara Westover,
702:Dictionary Definition of Delicacy 1. The quality or condition of being delicate, fragile, or sensitive. 2. Discretion, tact. ~ David Foenkinos,
703:Everything about the enterprise, and then by definition the software the enterprise uses has changed - just in the last 5 years. ~ Aaron Levie,
704:If it is the definition of insanity to repeat the same process and expect a different outcome, most of humanity must be insane. ~ Amie Kaufman,
705:If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success. ~ Stephen Covey,
706:One doesn't bother to believe the credible: the credible is believed already, by definition. There's no adventure of the mind. ~ Northrop Frye,
707:The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, "is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life. ~ Sarah Dessen,
708:... we all know the wag's definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance. ~ George Eliot,
709:Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so. ~ Douglas E Richards,
710:By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. ~ Jodi Picoult,
711:Caesar gave the ultimate definition of ambition when he said: ‘Better to be the chief of a village than a subaltern in Rome’. ~ Fernando Pessoa,
712:Every election is about the future, which by definition means it's more about the future of young people than it is about me. ~ Hillary Clinton,
713:In Buddhism, since the definition of “living” refers to sentient beings, consciousness is the primary characteristic of “life. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,
714:No word has one specific definition.Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life"
-Ms.Conyers of Sarah Dessen's Lock and Key ~ Sarah Dessen,
715:Our lifestyle, our wildlife, our land and our water remain critical to our definition of Wyoming and to our economic future. ~ Dave Freudenthal,
716:The exact ratio of irony to matter in the universe is known as Nove’s Constant, and by definition it’s more than you’d expect. ~ J Zachary Pike,
717:The harmony of the part with the whole may be the best definition of health, beauty, truth, wisdom, morality, and happiness. This ~ Will Durant,
718:The term ‘Hindu’ was coined in opposition to other religions, but this self-definition through otherness began centuries before ~ Wendy Doniger,
719:With each change of definition in art, something considered non-art or bad art by a previous generation is suddenly acceptable. ~ Thomas Hoving,
720:I don't have a mentor in the strict definition. I take as much advice and inspiration as I can from the people I am close to. ~ Natalie Massenet,
721:If I had to give a definition of happiness, it would be this: happiness needs nothing but itself, it doesn’t have to be validated. ~ Herman Koch,
722:If I had to give a definition of happiness, it would be this: happiness needs nothing but itself; it doesn’t have to be validated. ~ Herman Koch,
723:I love the Buddha’s simple definition of enlightenment as “the end of suffering.” There is nothing superhuman in that, is there? ~ Eckhart Tolle,
724:In the theater, everything is ephemeral. Everything is almost weightless and without a very clear definition of how you made it. ~ Rafael Vinoly,
725:It was a dramatization of total chaos, a functional definition of confusion, an unchoreographed dance of sad violence. It was war. ~ Dan Simmons,
726:Life is life! The real meaning and definition of life is not wealth, though wealth can define and give meaning to life. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah,
727:Meeting your obligations is the definition of adulthood, kid. If you're going to make mistakes and break promises, now's the time. ~ Nicola Yoon,
728:My definition of elegance is the achievement of a given functionality with a minimum of mechanism and a maximum of clarity. ~ Fernando J Corbato,
729:please tell me your definition of ahimsa.” “The avoidance of harm to any living creature in thought or deed.” “Beautiful ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
730:Style, like taste, is resistant to lucid definition; however, both, as living things should be, are subject to constant change. ~ Harlan Ellison,
731:They had truly sacrificed for each other, laid it all on the line when the stakes were highest. That was the definition of love. At ~ A G Riddle,
732:We all know how stupid the average person is. Now realize that, by definition, fifty percent of the population is dumber than that. ~ Ivan Stang,
733:although myth may be romanticized and woefully short of fact, it must, by definition, have some foundation in lost happenings. ~ Clifford D Simak,
734:Everyone I meet is in my sangha. I don't know if that's the proper definition, but that's the way I'm going to hold it in my mind. ~ Jeff Bridges,
735:If I had to embrace a definition of success, it would be that success is making the best choices we can ... and accepting them. ~ Sheryl Sandberg,
736:If you're a Republican who's a threat to the Democrats, of course you are a racist. That's the definition of a racist, nowadays. ~ Glenn Reynolds,
737:If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the painful process of finding it. ~ David Levithan,
738:I guess everyone has their own definition of what folk is or pop or whatever. I find it incredibly hard to describe music these days. ~ Ed Droste,
739:My definition of a great manager is someone with whom you can make a connection no matter where you sit in the organization chart. ~ Michael Lopp,
740:Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself. ~ Robert Frost,
741:She imagined kisses on her neck and shoulder. Soft, light kisses; sharp, playful nips. Damn. Her imagination came in high-definition. ~ Mina Khan,
742:Something is born, comes into being, something that did not exist before - which is as good a definition of creativity as we can get. ~ Rollo May,
743:The beauty of Goodreads is that you know you’re sowing in a field where everyone, by definition and self-selection, loves to read. ~ Guy Kawasaki,
744:There is no need to waste words showing that not everything is useless which cannot be brought under the definition of the useful. ~ Josef Pieper,
745:This one, like the last, is a definition of haunt as a noun, and it’s the one that really scares me: “A feeding place for animals. ~ Stephen King,
746:When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique. ~ Alan Watts,
747:A real definition of life lies in our daily thoughts and the steps we take to or away from what is distinctive and noble. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah,
748:Google is not a media company by any traditional definition of the word, but it makes its billions from the media business model. ~ Chris Anderson,
749:I don't know how one actually would define obscenity. I'm sure the definition is different according to the age one is living in. ~ Jane Alexander,
750:If you carefully consider what you wanted to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success. ~ Stephen R Covey,
751:I needed someone to talk to, but there was no one in particular I wanted to talk to. That's the best definition of loneliness I know. ~ Nick Dybek,
752:Liberals subscribe to the new flexible, pluralistic definition of the family; their defense of families carries no conviction. ~ Christopher Lasch,
753:My definition of love is being full. Complete. It makes everything lighter. Beauty is something you see. Love is something you feel. ~ Sharon Tate,
754:My definition of secularism is very clear. The sole religion of the Government is Nation First, the holy book is the Constitution. ~ Narendra Modi,
755:The classic definition of slapstick runs along the line of, "Funny is someone else ramming his face repeatedly into a brick wall. ~ Katherine Dunn,
756:The definition of cool: popularity without achievement. It’s how President Obama got the youth vote. Ask any kid who voted for him, ~ Greg Gutfeld,
757:The way towards 'wisdom' or towards 'freedom' is the way towards your inner being. This is the simplest definition of metaphysics. ~ Mircea Eliade,
758:The world out there is not waiting for a new definition of Christianity; it's waiting for a new demonstration of Christianity. ~ Leonard Ravenhill,
759:When PLO sniper fire is followed by 14 hours of Israeli bombardment, that's stretching the definition of defensive action too far. ~ Ronald Reagan,
760:By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All ~ Jodi Picoult,
761:Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love. ~ Richard Yates,
762:I can't remember ever having a conversation about the definition of consent when I was a kid. I knew that no meant no, but that's it. ~ Nate Parker,
763:If being crazy means having a hard time adapting to the world as it is (a definition that I agree with), then society is crazy.”1 ~ Alexander Lowen,
764:I'm not sure I'll ever be famous by anyone's definition. I can only hope to be allowed by the audience to continue my life's work. ~ Brandi Carlile,
765:Success is about creating benefit for all and enjoying the process. If you focus on this & adopt this definition, success is yours. ~ Anonymous,
766:The definition of art has changed almost every day since the first artist created the first work at least fifty thousand years ago. ~ Thomas Hoving,
767:The world in my head has been far more real than the one outside—maybe that’s the exact definition of madness, come to think of it. ~ Akwaeke Emezi,
768:To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,
769:When you shoot on high-definition, everything is very sharp and clear, sometimes at the cost of losing dimension and depth of field. ~ Gina Bellman,
770:Find out who you are, but don't cling to any definition. Mutate as many times as necessary to live in the totality of your being. ~ Claudio Naranjo,
771:... I suddenly woke up to the fact that if I accepted anybody's definition of what there was in the world, I would be limited. ~ Shirley Brice Heath,
772:Restricting our definition of culture to information does not mean to say that culturally acquired information does not affect behavior. ~ Anonymous,
773:That is, by the way, an introductory definition of a parable: a story that never happened but always does—or at least should. ~ John Dominic Crossan,
774:The conscious mind is easily overwhelmed. The unconscious mind is vast and far more powerful, but by definition we're not aware of it. ~ Nick Morgan,
775:There is no definition of beauty, but when you can see someone's spirit coming through, something unexplainable, that's beautiful to me. ~ Liv Tyler,
776:To have to fight the instincts - that is the definition of decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness equals instinct. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
777:What you think about expands. If your thoughts are centered on what's missing, then what's missing, by definition, will have to expand. ~ Wayne Dyer,
778:Art isn't life, you know. It if were, the world would go up in flames. It's artifice. By definition.

("Talking In The Dark") ~ Dennis Etchison,
779:If you carefully consider what you wanted to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success. It ~ Stephen R Covey,
780:If you want a definition of what a coward is, it’s needing to push a whole class of people down so that you can walk on top of them. ~ Andrea Dworkin,
781:It is said that life begins when the fetus can exist apart from its mother. By this definition, many people in Hollywood are legally dead. ~ Jay Leno,
782:Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself. ~ Harvey Fierstein,
783:Someone once told me the definition of hell; on your last day on earth, the person you could have become will meet the person you became. ~ Anonymous,
784:There are, almost by definition, an unlimited number of Hells - potentially at least a personal one for every living sapient being. ~ Terry Pratchett,
785:Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being. ~ Hannah Arendt,
786:You know the critical thing with the Communist countries is Communism, which by definition consists of control by the government. ~ Margaret Thatcher,
787:Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). I like this definition of stillness: silence on the outside and surrender on the inside. ~ Kyle Idleman,
788:By definition, though, we are family. And in difficult times-- times like these-- despite our differences, we stand together as family. ~ Stephen King,
789:Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield. Of ~ Peter F Drucker,
790:[My poetry is] a way of coming to grips with reality . . . a way of discovery and definition. It is a way of solving for the unknowns. ~ Robert Hayden,
791:One must be careful with words. Words turn probabilities into facts and by sheer force of
definition translate tendencies into habits. ~ Fay Weldon,
792:That's the definition of 'success' for the modern Democrat Party. As many people dependent on government as possible is the objective. ~ Rush Limbaugh,
793:The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers. ~ Joan Didion,
794:There is only one definition of science fiction that seems to make sense: 'Science fiction is anything published as science fiction.' ~ Norman Spinrad,
795:The working definition of mindfulness that my colleagues and I find most helpful is awareness of present experience with acceptance. ~ Ronald D Siegel,
796:and then she asks me how many sexual partners I've had and I say one or two depending on your definition of what I did to Custer . . . ~ Sherman Alexie,
797:I'm very competitive. I just go with what engages or fascinates me in my work and that's it. I have no definition; I just love to do it. ~ Ridley Scott,
798:My definition of bad-ass is that I'm a force of nature and true spirit. I'm self-admitting that, and it sounds vain to say that, but I am. ~ Idris Elba,
799:The definition of a great picture is one that stays with you, one that you can't forget. It doesn't have to be technically good at all. ~ Steve McCurry,
800:The definition of freedom is the infinite value of the human being. Everything that is evil teaches people that they have limited value. ~ Jeremy Locke,
801:The definition of the word nerd has changed. It's now any attractive person with a hobby. The loneliness component is no longer included. ~ Gary Gulman,
802:The prototypical definition of fascism is: It is not enough that I do (or not do) a certain thing; everyone must do (or not do) that thing. ~ S T Joshi,
803:A definition of loneliness surfaced in his mind: when you suddenly understand that the story of your life isn’t what you thought it was. ~ Rachel Kadish,
804:All exceptional people are, by definition, exceptions to the norm. If we insist on being ordinary, we can never be truly extraordinary. ~ William Ritter,
805:he had an ego so large that only by contemplating the mathematical definition of infinity could anything so limitless be imagined. ~ Robert Anton Wilson,
806:...I often wondered about the definition of home. Is it the place where you live, or is it the place where the people you love reside?... ~ Becky Aikman,
807:Looks like a sand pile my kids have been playing in for a long time - it's all beat up - no definition - just a lot of bumps and holes. ~ William Anders,
808:My definition of genius is not being that person the actual human is a genius, but it's a person that just allows God to work through them. ~ Kanye West,
809:My nephew has HDADHD. High Definition Attention Deficit Disorder. He can barely pay attention, but when he does it's unbelievably clear. ~ Steven Wright,
810:Never be bullied into silence, never be allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself. ~ Harvey Fierstein,
811:No limit, no definition, may restrict the range or depth of the human spirit's passage into its own secrets or the world's. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
812:One woman's definition of success may not be another's. Is success, as the world defines it, an accomplishment in a society this sick? ~ Donna Lynn Hope,
813:(The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.) ~ Joan Didion,
814:The power of verse is derived from an indefinable harmony between what it says and what it is. Indefinable is essential to the definition. ~ Paul Val ry,
815:What happens when you narrow your definition to what is convenient, or what is fashionable, or what is expected, is dishonesty by silence. ~ Audre Lorde,
816:Your bosses simply hate you. You created more and more value. They paid you less and less. That's the definition of disdain in my book. ~ James Altucher,
817:Your whole life is a message. Every act is an act of self-definition . Everything you think, say and do sends a message about you. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,
818:Can you remember when you didn't want to sleep? Isn't it inconceivable? I guess the definition of adulthood is that you want to sleep. ~ Paula Poundstone,
819:Everything that I do has a certain mechanical logic to it, and follows my definition of design--which is function with cultural content. ~ Carl Magnusson,
820:How can someone say I love you if they never defined the first word in the sentence—their definition of self, their values, their ethos? ~ Shayne Silvers,
821:If you don't like your definition of 'good enough', then feel free to change that, but the goal before shipping is merely that. Not perfect. ~ Seth Godin,
822:If you hug someone goodbye and their response is what the hell are you doing? - you may want to examine you're definition of close friend. ~ Dov Davidoff,
823:My definition of ‘love’ is being willing to die for someone who you yourself want to kill. That, in my experience, is kind of the deal. ~ Timothy Ferriss,
824:Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself. ~ Harvey Fierstein,
825:Plainly elites in America don't want democracy. And why should they? Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition. ~ Noam Chomsky,
826:Some things cannot be explained. This is part of the magic of life. There cannot be a word or an idea or a definition attached to everything. ~ Jim James,
827:This is the diagnostic feature of modern life, the very definition of a high standard of living: diverse consumption, simplified production ~ Matt Ridley,
828:FDI is a responsibility for Indians & an opportunity for the World. My definition of FDI for the people of India is 'First Develop India'. ~ Narendra Modi,
829:If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, then liberalism is a form of insanity. ~ James Cook,
830:No man has come so near our definition of a constitutional statesman - the powers of a first-rate man and the creed of a second-rate man. ~ Walter Bagehot,
831:Obedience is the basic definition of worship. Like obedience, worship is to be a way of life rather than just an exercise on Sunday. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,
832:Schooling, by definition, must be conservative. It is naturally dependent on an older generation’s level of knowledge and sense of values. ~ Leon Botstein,
833:she’d looked it up and read the definition (“deprived of the possession or use of something; lacking something needed, wanted, or expected”) ~ Luanne Rice,
834:That is the true definition of sin; when knowing right you do the lower, ah, then you sin. Where there is no knowledge, sin is not present. ~ Annie Besant,
835:The definition of a stupid thing is something that if you do everything right, you still get hurt. Fire-eating and love are stupid things. ~ Penn Jillette,
836:This is the diagnostic feature of modern life, the very definition of a high standard of living: diverse consumption, simplified production. ~ Matt Ridley,
837:When people access the use of force for the threat of violence they have, by definition, a new political power. An unwanted political power. ~ Cody Wilson,
838:While an artist can choose whether or not to be responsive and responsible towards other human beings, by definition a designer must be. ~ Paola Antonelli,
839:Aggressive activities against crayfish might be, by definition, excluded from an afternoon's programme devoted to Harmony. Who could tell? ~ Anthony Powell,
840:Any system described by a power law [...] has several curious effects. The first is that, by definition, most participants are below average. ~ Clay Shirky,
841:A skeptic is one who is willing to question any truth claim, asking for clarity in definition, consistency in logic, and adequacy of evidence. ~ Paul Kurtz,
842:By definition he [the writer] cannot put himself today in the service of those who make history; he is at the service of those who suffer it ~ Albert Camus,
843:I am told that the clinical definition of insanity is the tendency to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. ~ Stephen F Lynch,
844:I'm not too embarrassed to say I'm the definition of the target audience. This is my generation, the one of exalting music in album form. ~ Jonathan Lethem,
845:is not to be expected that there should be agreement about the definition of any thing, until there is agreement about the thing itself. ~ John Stuart Mill,
846:Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time. ~ Peter F Drucker,
847:My definition of self-published:
A printed work distributed by someone who believes more in sharing their story than making a fortune. ~ Giuseppe Bianco,
848:The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . is the definition of tyranny. —James Madison ~ Cintra Wilson,
849:The earliest and most basic definition of community—of tribe—would be the group of people that you would both help feed and help defend. ~ Sebastian Junger,
850:The most important definition of an actor, the job of the actor, is to serve the writer, not yourself. Way too many actors serve themselves. ~ Kevin Spacey,
851:What's the best way to get a good spouse? The best single way is to deserve a good spouse because a good spouse is by definition not nuts. ~ Charlie Munger,
852:A good piece of technology dreams of the day when it will be replaced by a newer piece of technology. This is one definition of progress. ~ Douglas Coupland,
853:...all concepts in which an entire process is semiotically concentrated elude definition; only that which has no history is definable. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
854:All life is a series of seemingly insignificant tasks and decisions, culminating in the definition of an individual and her purpose in life. ~ Brian Herbert,
855:Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That's not a statement, it's a definition. ~ Milton Friedman,
856:I don't need the definition of society, I'll just do my little thing in my corner and I'll be satisfied. I think that's important nowadays. ~ Jean Marc Barr,
857:All economic activity is by definition "high risk." And defending yesterday--that is, not innovating--is far more risky than making tomorrow. ~ Peter Drucker,
858:British rule meant not democracy -colonialism is almost by definition underdemocratic - but limited constitutional liberalism and capitalism ~ Fareed Zakaria,
859:Either well succeed, or we wont succeed. And the definition of success as I described is sectarian violence down. Success is not no violence. ~ George W Bush,
860:In neither his definition nor the examples illustrating what memes are does Dawkins mention anything that would distinguish memes from concepts. ~ Ernst Mayr,
861:Love can't be pinned down by a definition, and it certainly can't be proved, any more than anything else important in life can be proved. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
862:My working definition of a successful novel is this: the emotionally satisfying account of how a character deals with imminent death. Once ~ James Scott Bell,
863:The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously, and those who have produced immortal works have done so without knowing how or why. ~ William Hazlitt,
864:The formal definition of impact is a forcible contact between two things, and God has designed our lives for a collision course with the world. ~ David Platt,
865:The very idea of "managing" a forest in the first place is oxymoronic, because a forest is an ecosystem that is by definition self-managing. ~ Bernd Heinrich,
866:Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all the acts and events that fill time are the definition, and it must be lived. ~ C S Lewis,
867:Are you experiencing success right now? If you are not, take some time to re-examine your concept of success. Where does your definition come ~ Tommy Newberry,
868:As long as imperialism exists it will, by definition, exert its domination over other countries. Today that domination is called neocolonialism. ~ Che Guevara,
869:Every attempt through history to limit the definition of humanity has been a prelude to the subjugation, degradation, and slaughter of innocents. ~ Ramez Naam,
870:I don't expect to seem cool to everyone; nor do I want to be. I think that's the opposite of the definition of cool. So I don't care at all. ~ Kristen Stewart,
871:My definition of likeable may be different from other people's. That's not traditional likeable. Sympathy is a different thing [to define it]. ~ Paul Giamatti,
872:The definition of marriage cannot be disputed. It's right there in black and white and it's been the same since the start of Wikipedia. ~ Jesse Tyler Ferguson,
873:The definition of swagger, in my opinion, is you have to have that arrogance, that confidence that you are the best out there at all times. ~ Keyshawn Johnson,
874:You always say oh, that’s so unprofessional as though there’s some definition of professional that’s also a moral imperative for how to behave. ~ Miriam Toews,
875:You want to know my definition of gun control? Being able to stand there at 25 meters and put two rounds in the same hole. That's gun control. ~ Jesse Ventura,
876:All life is a series of seemingly insignificant tasks and decisions, culminating in the definition of an individual and her purpose in life. ~ Kevin J Anderson,
877:And then come September, they fell back in step as if they'd never missed a beat. That, Peter figured, was the very definition of a best friend. ~ Jodi Picoult,
878:I still feel at home in Baltimore in a way I will never feel anywhere else—part of the definition of home being a place you don’t belong anymore. ~ Tim Kreider,
879:I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry. ~ Randall Jarrell,
880:I wish people wouldn't think of me as a saint - unless they agree with the definition of a saint that a saint's a sinner who goes on trying. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi,
881:Political decisions are by definition monopolistic, disenfranchising and despotically majoritarian; markets are good at supplying minority needs. ~ Matt Ridley,
882:When confronted with a clear definition of what it is to be Mexican, we encounter ourselves in a never ending allegory of mixes and chaos. ~ Gael Garcia Bernal,
883:When we identify something our customer wants and communicate it simply, the story we are inviting them into is given definition and direction. ~ Donald Miller,
884:Whereas sympathy is by definition positive, empathy doesn’t need to be, especially if the capacity to understand others is turned against them. ~ Frans de Waal,
885:Among other things Jonestown was an example of a definition well known to sociologists of religion: a cult is a religion with no political power. ~ Thomas Wolfe,
886:Art is the reason I get up in the morning, but the definition ends there. It doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define. ~ Ani DiFranco,
887:Do not ask the definition of a friend. He/She is that one without whose company death and dying set in earlier and living is made more pleasurable. ~ Rod McKuen,
888:I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational. ~ Oscar Wilde,
889:learning, by definition, starts with unnatural and often superficial behaviors that can make us feel calculating instead of genuine and spontaneous. ~ Anonymous,
890:Meetings were, almost by definition, the product of the indecisive mind, and so they were usually run, and often populated, by indecisive people. ~ Stephen Moss,
891:Suicide bombers are easy to spot. They give out all kinds of telltale signs. Mostly because they’re nervous. By definition they’re all first-timers. ~ Lee Child,
892:The world would be a paradise of peace and justice if global citizens shared a common definition of love which would guide our thoughts and action. ~ Bell Hooks,
893:Your current knowledge has neither made you perfect nor kept you safe. So, it is insufficient, by definition--radically, fatally insufficient. ~ Jordan Peterson,
894:Apathy is just a lack of energy, which to me, is just the literal definition of decadence. So the energy gives out in a society - that is decadence. ~ Gore Vidal,
895:At twenty-two, I had the callowest possible definition of interesting and, by the measure of my own calipers, was far from interesting myself. ~ Karen Joy Fowler,
896:definition of remorse: a mourning that is out of control and never ends, that can strike out of the bluest of skies, across the softest of snows. ~ Frank Delaney,
897:I am bound by my own definition of criticism : a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world. ~ Matthew Arnold,
898:I'm unclear on the definition of person the courts have been using. Something that sieves out dolphins but lets corporations slide on through. ~ Karen Joy Fowler,
899:In the classical spiritual definition, a soul mate is someone that you have reincarnated with many times. You find each other in many lifetimes. ~ Frederick Lenz,
900:I still feel at home in Baltimore in a way I will never feel anywhere else – part of the definition of home being a place you don’t belong anymore. ~ Tim Kreider,
901:Let her know that there are many individuals and many cultures that do not find the narrow mainstream definition of beauty attractive. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
902:My favorite definition of the mindful path is the one the reveals itself as you walk down it. You cannot find the path until you step on to it. ~ Kelly McGonigal,
903:So here is the greatest irony of all: that the self that almost by definition is entirely private is to significant extent a social construct. ~ V S Ramachandran,
904:Someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic, now commonly applied to economists Imagine ~ Tim Harford,
905:Vilification, by its definition, creates an antagonistic struggle, an us-versus-them mentality, that throws us all into a senseless battle-royale ~ Miguel Syjuco,
906:What is the definition of procrastination? It means: I can feel within my Energy sensor that this action is not in perfect alignment at this time. ~ Esther Hicks,
907:A rapist, by definition, is only interested in gratifying his own desires. A rapist doesn’t care what a woman wants. If he did, he wouldn’t rape. — ~ Jon Krakauer,
908:Art is why I get up in the morning but my definition ends there. You know I don't think its fair that I'm living for something I can't even define. ~ Ani DiFranco,
909:But if you seek forgiveness, doesn't that automatically mean you cannot be a monster? By definition, doesn't that desperation make you human again? ~ Jodi Picoult,
910:I don't think that minor children are required to get gifts for their parents. I'm a dependent. That's the definition of dependent, is it not? ~ Maggie Stiefvater,
911:Mediocrist (n.) A person of mediocre talents. Nobody wants to be mediocre, but someone has to be. In fact, by definition, most people are. Microphily ~ Ammon Shea,
912:PiYo gives you hardcore definition, intense calorie burn, and allover strength—without weights, without jumps, and without destroying your body. ~ Chalene Johnson,
913:Supperational thinkers, by recursive definition, include in their calculations the fact that they are in a group of superrational thinkers. ~ Douglas R Hofstadter,
914:The corporeal vampire, if he existed, would be by definition the greatest of all predators, living as he would off the top of the food chain. ~ Suzy McKee Charnas,
915:The ego we see most commonly goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. Arrogance. Self-centered ambition. That’s ~ Ryan Holiday,
916:The true definition of mental illness is when the majority of your time is spent in the past or future, but rarely living in the realism of NOW. ~ Shannon L Alder,
917:Victims?"
"Whatever you call people who are made to suffer without being given the choice."
"That sounds like an excellent definition of man. ~ John Fowles,
918:When the desire for definition, self or otherwise, comes out of a desire for limitation rather than a desire for expansion, no true face can emerge. ~ Audre Lorde,
919:You cannot be who and what you are unless you have a lifestyle, both internally and externally, that is designed to support that definition of self. ~ Phil McGraw,
920:Your current knowledge has neither made you perfect nor kept you safe. So, it is insufficient, by definition--radically, fatally insufficient. ~ Jordan B Peterson,
921:Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is that which must be personal and may be perverse. ~ G K Chesterton,
922:For me the definition of a patriot is someone who is willing to constantly question the government; that’s what separates us from other countries. ~ George Clooney,
923:I’m unclear on the definition of person the courts have been using. Something that sieves out dolphins but lets corporations slide on through. A ~ Karen Joy Fowler,
924:Profound theology doesn’t make anyone righteous; what pleases me is an exemplary life. Regret for wrongdoing is better than knowing its definition. ~ Thomas Kempis,
925:That Hegel is a metaphysician, and that he thinks metaphysics is fundamental to philosophy, is plain enough from his definition of philosophy. ~ Frederick C Beiser,
926:The Christmas season reminds us that a demonstration of religion is always much better than a definition of it...especially in front of the kids. ~ Charles Dickens,
927:The technical definition of heuristic is a simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions. The ~ Daniel Kahneman,
928:We don't consider black, urban films as 'indies,' though many of them are shot for under $10 million which is kind of the definition of an indie. ~ Gabrielle Union,
929:When a leader has deployed a private army, that is one definition of a police state. Another is when the president, or a leader, has his own treasury. ~ Naomi Wolf,
930:Asking my father to ask the waitress the definition of “sloppy Joe” or “Tater Tots” was no problem. His translations, however, were highly suspect. ~ Firoozeh Dumas,
931:But who could teach daughters how to fly? Parents were by definition earthbound, grub eaters, feet in their own coffins, by dint of being parents. ~ Gregory Maguire,
932:I have a suspicion that the definition of "crazy" in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to f*** [sleep with her] anymore. ~ Tina Fey,
933:Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life. Define yourself. —Harvey Fierstein ~ Aleatha Romig,
934:Tate remembered his dad’s definition of a man: one who can cry freely, feel poetry and opera in his heart, and do whatever it takes to defend a woman. ~ Delia Owens,
935:The definition of insanity, Fox, Wesley used to remind me, paraphrasing Einstein, is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different result. ~ A J Finn,
936:The definition of what it means to be dying has changed radically. We are able to extend people's lives considerably, including sometimes, good days. ~ Atul Gawande,
937:The smell of subjectivity clings to the mechanical definition of complexity as stubbornly as it sticks to the definition of information. ~ Hans Christian von Baeyer,
938:What’s the fundamental physics breakthrough you’d most like to see? Breakthroughs, by definition, are unanticipated surprises that lead to great things. ~ Anonymous,
939:You cannot define electricity. The same can be said of art. It is a kind of inner current in a human being, or something which needs no definition. ~ Marcel Duchamp,
940:Evil has no meaning. That is the very definition of evil. But just because something hurts doesn’t mean that the reason for the pain is evil. ~ Malin Persson Giolito,
941:Experts are by definition the servants of those in power: they don't really THINK, they just apply their knowledge to problems defined by the powerful. ~ Slavoj i ek,
942:I turned to the Times crossword puzzle and asked Kate, “What’s the definition of a moderate Arab?” “I don’t know.” “A guy who ran out of ammunition. ~ Nelson DeMille,
943:The poet reminds men of their uniqueness and it is not necessary to possess the ultimate definition of this uniqueness. Even to speculate is a gain. ~ Norman Cousins,
944:The things that I've seen where people are trying to change the definition of what a band has to be, those are the things that end up being inspiring. ~ Emily Haines,
945:This tendency seems to support H. L. Mencken’s definition of a wealthy man: one whose income is $100 a year higher than his wife’s sister’s husband. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,
946:In him, she saw the definition of strength. It didn't mean never showing a crack, it didn't mean not feeling fear or despair. It meant going on anyway. ~ Maisey Yates,
947:I should have listened to my father. "Want to know the true definition of the triumph of hope over experience?" he would say. "Plan a fun family day out. ~ Jojo Moyes,
948:Poets, most of whom live with their parents, like to think that mysterious people elude description, defying definition. They don't. Poets are just lazy. ~ Sam Hooker,
949:Raising a child is the very definition of ambivalence. I am overwhelmed at times by how something can simultaneously be so awful and so rewarding. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
950:There are problems that just end up being really hard and by definition the only problems that come to my desk are the ones that nobody else can solve. ~ Barack Obama,
951:Do you know what Albert Einstein's definition of insanity was?"
"No."
"Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. ~ Christian Cantrell,
952:For me, there has never been one definition of beauty. I think we all have something to offer and when beauty shines from within, there can be no denying it ~ Alek Wek,
953:I have a definition of success. For me it's very simple. It's not about wealth and fame and power. It's about how many shining eyes I have around me. ~ Benjamin Zander,
954:I leave it to the philosophers to discuss these faculties in their subtle way. For the upbuilding of godliness a simple definition will be enough for us. ~ John Calvin,
955:I think all good writing is a struggle. To write as well as you feel you can has to be a struggle, almost by definition, because you could always improve. ~ Jane Asher,
956:I will give you a definition of a proud man: he is a man who has neither vanity nor wisdom one filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise. ~ John Keats,
957:My definition of financial freedom is simple: it is the ability to live the lifestyle you desire without having to work or rely on anyone else for money. ~ T Harv Eker,
958:My definition of love is being robbed in an alley eight times in a row and hoping that there’s something about today that makes all of this different. ~ Rudy Francisco,
959:Somebody once told me the definition of hell:
“On your last day on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.” — Anonymous ~ Anonymous,
960:That is the definition of a true murderer. One that considers his actions, has the mental capacity to understand the consequences, and chooses to kill. ~ Destiny Booze,
961:Throw in “never read books” and you have the dictionary definition of a liberal. Being completely uninformed is precisely how most liberals stay liberal. ~ Ann Coulter,
962:To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles. ~ Jean Francois Revel,
963:You say that, but a giant purple dildo just fell out of my closet and hit you on the head. That is the definition of a reason to be embarrassed. ~ Aurora Rose Reynolds,
964:Although I cannot prove this scenario, I know it—and isn’t that the ultimate definition of faith? Knowing what we can’t know. Seeing what isn’t there. ~ David Ebershoff,
965:De Tocqueville says it comes from taking some “incomplete joy of this world” and building your entire life on it. That is the definition of idolatry. ~ Timothy J Keller,
966:From last night's All Together Now, a Celebration of Service: There can be no definition of a successful life that does not include service to others. ~ George H W Bush,
967:I'll give you an exact definition. When the happiness of another person becomes as essential to yourself as your own, then the state of love exists. ~ Robert A Heinlein,
968:Lucky fools do not bear the slightest suspicion that they may be lucky fools—by definition, they do not know that they belong to such a category ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
969:My definition of love is still forming, but I am certain it includes transparency and honesty, and I can’t give either without shedding all my secrets. ~ Laurelin Paige,
970:On Facebook, the definition of great content is not the content that makes the most sales, but the content that people most want to share with others. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk,
971:People don't want the truth,' he says, waving a hand at the streets around us. 'They want better-quality lies. High definition lies on fifty-inch screens. ~ Paul Murray,
972:Start living today with that picture of your own 80th birthday clearly in mind. In that picture, you will find your definition of true success.” This ~ Benjamin P Hardy,
973:An Anarchist is anyone who denies the necessity and legitimacy of government; the question of his methods of attacking it is foreign to the definition. ~ Benjamin Tucker,
974:By definition, gay is smart. I see plenty of macho heterosexual idiots, but nine times out of 10 you can have a great conversation if you find a gay guy. ~ Jason Bateman,
975:definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman. ~ Delia Owens,
976:I am free when I am functioning here in time and space as the creative will. ... freedom by our definition is obedience to the law of one's nature. ~ Mary Parker Follett,
977:I don't believe there is any such definition, there is no such thing as evil, only moral judgments based on what society believes to be wrong behavior. ~ Nikolas Schreck,
978:If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. ~ Henry David Thoreau,
979:If you're brilliant and undiscovered and underappreciated (in whatever field you choose), then you're being too generous about your definition of brilliant. ~ Seth Godin,
980:Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF. ~ Dan Simmons,
981:My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid. ~ Charles Kettering,
982:Religion is, by definition, interpretation; and by definition, all interpretations are valid. However, some interpretations are more reasonable than others. ~ Reza Aslan,
983:Sustainable Development is more than meeting the needs of today and the future generations; to my understanding this definition better fits sex industry. ~ M F Moonzajer,
984:When people talk about “a principle without which life wouldn’t be worth living” (which is our definition of a core value), they become excited and vibrant. ~ Dave Logan,
985:AIDS is a plague - numerically, statistically and by any definition known to modern public health - though no one in authority has the guts to call it one. ~ Larry Kramer,
986:Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read. ~ Frank Zappa,
987:How can something that doesn't have a form, doesn'r have a definition, doesn't have words-how can it have such weight? And yet, there's the need to swim. ~ David Levithan,
988:If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. ~ Vladimir Lenin,
989:I'm very proud of my pro-life record, and I've always adopted the idea that, the position that the method of conception doesn't change the definition of life. ~ Paul Ryan,
990:It’s almost like that’s the definition of being American: You love becoming Irish for a day, or becoming Italian… Or becoming a Negro for four years. ~ Josh Alan Friedman,
991:My definition of a green-collar job is this: a family-supporting, career-track job that directly contributes to preserving or enhancing environmental quality. ~ Van Jones,
992:Obscenity’ is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means ‘anything that shocks the magistrate’. BERTRAND RUSSELL ~ A C Grayling,
993:Susannah erkannte mit aufkommender Verbitterung, dass sie jetzt die perfekte Definition einer Ka-Mai kannte: jemand mit Hoffnungen, aber ohne Alternativen. ~ Stephen King,
994:The world of fundamental religion does not recognize even the slightest variation in meaning should this meaning fall outside its own definition of truth. ~ Susan Griffin,
995:We have a definition in our heads of what an advantage is—and the definition isn’t right. And what happens as a result? It means that we make mistakes. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
996:Artistic imagination must remain free. It is by definition free from any fidelity to circumstances, especially to the intoxicating circumstances of history. ~ Andre Breton,
997:But you can’t go around changing your definition of right and wrong (or smart and stupid) just because doing the wrong thing happens to be really convenient. ~ Jim Butcher,
998:My definition of success is doing what you love. I feel many people do things because they feel they have to, and are hesitant to risk following their passion. ~ Tony Hawk,
999:Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life. Define yourself. —Harvey Fierstein   THEY ~ Aleatha Romig,
1000:No one can guarantee any sentient being will only work for good. A sentient being is by definition autonomous, and therefore free to behave as it wishes. ~ Michelle Diener,
1001:That which is original creates a new origin. That which is original, by definition, must stray off the previously worn paths. It must wander; it must err. ~ Blake Charlton,
1002:The psychologist Philip Zimbardo gave a TED talk last year on this subject. His definition of evil is the exercise of power to intentionally harm another. ~ William Wright,
1003:There's the great line: the definition of a liberal is someone who's afraid to take their own side in a fight. And that's my problem with my fellow liberals. ~ Paul Begala,
1004:The second reason rewards pose a danger for habits is that they require a decision. A habit, by my definition, is something we do without decision making. ~ Gretchen Rubin,
1005:We live in a world where there is such a clear definition of what a girl should be that it takes almost no effort at all to completely hate ourselves. ~ Jennifer Elisabeth,
1006:But the best definition of it is to say that heaven is that state where we will always be with Jesus, and where nothing will separate us from Him any more ~ William Barclay,
1007:Compassion comes from a choice and not the liberal definition of a choice - the choice to say I can do with a little less so my brother can have a little more. ~ Allen West,
1008:My students sometimes ask: what is a fundamentalist? I give them a very simple definition. A fundamentalist is no fun, too much damn, and not enough mental. ~ Bart D Ehrman,
1009:The definition of morality: Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life - and being successful. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
1010:There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. ~ John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman (London: Jonathan Cape, 1969), p. 99,
1011:This was the definition of eternity; it was the space of time devised by the Great God Om to ensure that everyone got the punishment that was due to them. ~ Terry Pratchett,
1012:Time does not define the act. Time is impartial; it neither condemns nor absolves. The action contains intent, and intent is where the definition lies. ~ Karen Marie Moning,
1013:We must refuse to submit to those institutions which are by definition sexist - marriage, the nuclear family, religions built on the myth of feminine evil. ~ Andrea Dworkin,
1014:By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings. ~ Emile Durkheim,
1015:Definition of good neighbor: someone to be trusted; a courteous, friendly source of help when help is needed; someone you can count on; someone who cares. ~ Edward B Rust Jr,
1016:Every good historian is almost by definition a revisionist. He looks at the accepted view of a particular historic episode or period with a very critical eye. ~ Paul Johnson,
1017:If we change the definition of marriage to be more inclusive, then it is logical to argue that we should broaden the definition so that won't exclude anyone. ~ Jack Kingston,
1018:Love meant being brave, otherwise you had already lost your own argument: the man who couldn't tell a woman he loved her was, by definition, not worthy of her. ~ Nick Hornby,
1019:Love meant being brave, otherwise you had already lost your own argument: the man who couldn’t tell a woman he loved her was, by definition, not worthy of her. ~ Nick Hornby,
1020:My definition of a leader in a free country is a man who can persuade people to do what they don’t want to do, or do what they’re too lazy to do, and like it. ~ Harry Truman,
1021:Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a great guy.He endorsed me because I'm the best in immigration. And I think by his definition of the best, it's the best and the toughest. ~ Donald Trump,
1022:Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression. I liked this definition because it does not imply that men were the enemy. ~ bell hooks,
1023:That’s what Catholics were good at, right? Say the same prayer over and over and expect different results. Yeah. Wasn’t that the very definition of madness? ~ Chris Patchell,
1024:the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman. ~ Delia Owens,
1025:There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood. ~ Rollo May,
1026:The seeds of destruction lie in the definition of "chosen-ness" and can easily blossom into bigotry. It's not inevitable but it needs constant care to avoid. ~ Toni Morrison,
1027:1 is not prime, by definition. 2 is an unnatural prime, 4 is an unnatural prime, and 6 is an unnatural prime. All other natural primes cannot be unnatural primes. ~ Aristotle,
1028:Birth and death frame a life, give it shape. Without that border it just becomes a kind of sprawling mess, a thing with no edge, no definition, no centre. ~ Alastair Reynolds,
1029:By definition, intelligence deals with the unclear, the unknown, the deliberately hidden. What the enemies of the United States hope to deny we work to reveal. ~ George Tenet,
1030:God is not a person. God does not have a history. God does not have a future. God is beyond definition. We can say that your perception of this world is God. ~ Frederick Lenz,
1031:Going back is a nice way to give definition to each of the characters because they are so vastly different. I would never want them to get blended together. ~ Tatiana Maslany,
1032:Her personal philosophy was to try not to hurt people, unless they deserved it, which brought her back to that definition problem and a whole lot of gray area. ~ Ingrid Thoft,
1033:If I don't go to the gym and work out, I look like a bag of bones. I go three times a week usually and it's nearly all weights work to help with definition. ~ Jonas Armstrong,
1034:I'm a sociopath, Mom, I don't love anybody. By definition.'

'Is that an implicit threat?'

'Oh, for the-! No, it was not a threat, Okay, I'm leaving. ~ Dan Wells,
1035:In March of 1933 we witnessed a revolution in manner, in mores, in the definition of government. What before had been black or white sprang alive with color. ~ Emanuel Celler,
1036:My life has gotten a little more complicated than my ability to describe it. That used to be the definition of madness, now it's just continuous overload. ~ Bharati Mukherjee,
1037:To acknowledge that which we cannot see, to give definition to that which we don't know, to create divine order out of chaos, is the religious dance. ~ Terry Tempest Williams,
1038:Tragedy has been described as 'the conflict between desire and possibility.' Following this definition, is The Forgotten Garden a tragedy? If so, in what way/s? ~ Kate Morton,
1039:Was it alright?"
"It was fine."
"What aspect of the definition of fine was it?"
"We had a decent time."
I've been to Walgreens and had a decent time. ~ Joan Bauer,
1040:Doing new things invariably means obstacles. A new path is, by definition, uncleared. Only with persistence and time can we cut away debris and remove impediments. ~ Anonymous,
1041:Every activity performed in public can attain an excellence never matched in privacy; for excellence, by definition, the presence of others is always required. ~ Hannah Arendt,
1042:For all my life,” he said, “when someone has said the word ‘beautiful’, it is your face I have seen. You are my own very definition of beautiful, Tessa Gray. ~ Cassandra Clare,
1043:Since the core of the populist appeal is the claim to a “moral monopoly of representation,”16 all opponents of populist leaders are, by definition, unpatriotic. ~ Yascha Mounk,
1044:The natural condition of the modern conservative movement is to always be in a state of revolution. Conservatives are, by definition, uncomfortable with power. ~ Craig Shirley,
1045:The objective of US authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples - not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide. ~ Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz,
1046:The present moment is the definition of eternity. It has never not been the present moment. This isn't scriptural or unscriptural - it is merely a logical fact. ~ John Kuypers,
1047:We are not all. We are defined within a greater definition, and this greater definition eludes comprehension, because we are lacking. Incapable. Insufficient. ~ Steven Erikson,
1048:All religious belief is a function of nonrational faith. And faith, by its very definition, tends to be impervious to intellectual argument or academic criticism ~ Jon Krakauer,
1049:A story-book hero had by definition no place in life; he battered his way through twenty victorious chapters, faded out on a lustful kiss, and was gone for good. ~ Mary Stewart,
1050:I do know without fear of contradiction what the definition of life is and it is 12 words long. 'Life is defined by how much you improve the lives of others.' ~ Keith Olbermann,
1051:I think that of most leaders in religion as power brokers. They give orders, in a sense, to an audience every week, and that's where the definition of God starts. ~ Norman Lear,
1052:The political process is rough and tumble by definition, and being grounded in faith in a Higher Power has proven helpful in navigating the difficult terrain. ~ Hakeem Jeffries,
1053:The word 'definition' has come to have a dangerously reassuring sound, owing no doubt to its frequent occurrence in logical and mathematical writings. ~ Willard Van Orman Quine,
1054:They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains," he remarked with a smile. "It's a very bad definition, but it does apply to detective work. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
1055:You will never understand the real definition of insanity until the day you are told it is unreasonable for you to feel hurt by the very people that hurt you. ~ Shannon L Alder,
1056:A better working definition of the unconscious is mental processes that are inaccessible to consciousness but that influence judgments, feelings, or behavior. ~ Timothy D Wilson,
1057:All religious belief is a function of nonrational faith. And faith, by its very definition, tends to be impervious to intellectual argument or academic criticism. ~ Jon Krakauer,
1058:Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. It is by definition a c h a o t i c a d v e n t u r e... In other words, the utopian enterprise. ~ Rem Koolhaas,
1059:A single sentence will suffice for modern man. He fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted. ~ Albert Camus,
1060:Every fucking year I would do it, thinking that this year it would be different. Pretty sure that’s the definition of insanity; good thing I barely know how to read. ~ Mark Tufo,
1061:Feminist, whatever the definition, whatever you call yourself - I am, I'm not - none of us want little girls being forced into early marriage before they're 12. ~ Natalie Dormer,
1062:History was by definition one long chaotic, violent mess sometimes interrupted by magnificent eras of peace that remind everybody life occasionally wasn't awful. ~ Gene Doucette,
1063:In no way be bullied into silence. Hardly ever permit on your own to become made a sufferer. Acknowledge no one's definition of one's lifetime; define oneself ~ Harvey Fierstein,
1064:It's very difficult to be different from the rest of the crowd the majority of the time, which by definition is what you're doing if you're a successful trader. ~ Bill Lipschutz,
1065:Looks are a funny thing, very peculiar. Never waste any time disliking the ones you have. The right person will think they are the very definition of beautiful. ~ Rachel Fordham,
1066:Some women have become far too proscriptive of other women's pleasures and private arrangements, and the definition of feminism has become ideologically overloaded. ~ Naomi Wolf,
1067:The first phase of the domination of the economy over social life brought into the definition of all human realization the obvious degradation of being into having. ~ Guy Debord,
1068:Throw in “never read books” and you have the dictionary definition of a liberal. Being completely uninformed is precisely how most liberals stay liberal. According ~ Ann Coulter,
1069:By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later—again, for its own mysterious reasons. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
1070:[Cities] are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers. ~ Jane Jacobs,
1071:Devotion is diligence without assurance. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be by definition faith. Faith is walking face-first and full speed into the dark. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
1072:Do you want to know what one definition of bizarre might be? Driving to your closeted boyfriend's pretend-girlfriend's house to watch them prepare for a faux date. ~ Sean Kennedy,
1073:For a truly effective social campaign, a brand needs to embrace the first principles of marketing, which involves brand definition and consistent storytelling. ~ Simon Mainwaring,
1074:I’m arguing that our external physical reality is a mathematical structure, which is by definition an abstract, immutable entity existing outside of space and time. ~ Max Tegmark,
1075:In the class that I teach at one University, I stress that my one-word definition of politics is money. You can't name a subject matter that money doesn't touch. ~ Douglas Wilder,
1076:I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace. ~ Alfred North Whitehead,
1077:My definition of God: God is not only the alpha, the omega, he is friend, he's a confidant, he is a buddy. He is a lover of my soul. That's my definition of God. ~ DeVon Franklin,
1078:My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence.

[Sources and Acknowledgements: Chapter 19] ~ Arthur C Clarke,
1079:The definition of success to me is not necessarily a price tag, not fame, but having a good life, and being able to say I did the right thing at the end of the day. ~ Jeremy Luke,
1080:We kept each other's stare a long time, for we had each done a startling thing, dodged time for an instant - which is the only definition of happiness I know. ~ Andrew Sean Greer,
1081:Your definition of human is not the same as mine. To you, it means something... negative. To me, it's a compliment - and by my definition - you are and he isn't ~ Stephenie Meyer,
1082:Because it doesn’t stop, it’s impossible for us to ever be passive observers on the sidelines of life … if we’re conscious, by definition, we’re creating. Sometimes ~ Gregg Braden,
1083:I define power as control over ones life. A balanced life is far superior to the male definition of power: earning money someone else spends while he dies sooner. ~ Warren Farrell,
1084:If you're analytical, you have to be blunt. That's by definition. You can't analyze something and not be blunt about it. What would you rather hear if not the truth? ~ Jim Boeheim,
1085:I'm so passionately hopelessly in love with my job! I think the definition of workaholic is that you can't wait till the weekend is over so you can start working again. ~ Ann Shin,
1086:I think the diva is kind of a cliche. My definition of a diva is somebody whose talent does not match what they're trying to play, so all this temperament comes out. ~ Glenn Close,
1087:It's not what you do that matters. It's not what you say. There's nothing that is not holy or spiritual. Be beyond definition, beyond categorization, be absorbed. ~ Frederick Lenz,
1088:It was not puny little David against this awesome giant. No, it was this puny little giant against the God who is the sum and definition of all that is awesome. ~ Paul David Tripp,
1089:Syria is a terrorist state by any definition and is so classified by the State Department. I happen to think Iran is too. Iraq, Iran, Syria, they're all involved. ~ Alexander Haig,
1090:The biggest thing for women to keep in mind is you can't ever let someone define beauty for you. Look in the mirror and say that this is my definition of perfection. ~ Jennie Runk,
1091:The definition of hell in the legal system is: endless due process and no justice; (in the corporate world) it would be: endless due diligence and no horse sense. ~ Charlie Munger,
1092:The fundamental problem with arguing that things are true “by definition” is that you can’t make reality go a different way by choosing a different definition. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky,
1093:The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it or to escape what is bad in it but we will escape it only by adding something better to it. ~ Wendell Berry,
1094:There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ~ Henry A Wallace,
1095:The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants. ~ Poul Anderson,
1096:You are so much smarter than me, aren’t you?” “No. I just think things through quicker, that’s all.” “If that’s not a definition of smart, I don’t know what is. ~ Peter F Hamilton,
1097:Being a vanguardist has always meant, and will always mean, to not accept that the good is good and the bad is bad, and invent a new definition of what’s good and bad. ~ C sar Aira,
1098:Do you know what the definition of hell is? Because I do. It’s getting the life you wanted only to fuck it up because you didn’t know how to embrace it and be happy. ~ Kate Stewart,
1099:I've learned, having been on a lot of sets, the good news is that by definition you are surrounded by experts. They get fired if they're not - unlike in the theatre! ~ Alan Rickman,
1100:She belonged to herself only. She had edges, boundaries, tastes, definition down to her eyelashes. And when she walked it was clear she knew where she was going. ~ Stephanie Danler,
1101:This is the diagnostic feature of modern life, the very definition of a high standard of living: diverse consumption, simplified production. Make one thing, use lots. ~ Matt Ridley,
1102:We are what we repeatedly do... excellence, therefore, isn't just an act, but a habit and life isn't just a series of events, but an ongoing process of self-definition. ~ Aristotle,
1103:What is Friendship, Definition of Friend, True Friendship - All about the meaning of true friends, what friendship means, meaning of friendship bracelets, poems, ring ~ Mark Vernon,
1104:All true cultural creativity happens at the edges of the horizons of the possible, so by definition our most culturally creative endeavors have a high risk of failure. ~ Andy Crouch,
1105:Ambrose Bierce’s witty definition of the verb ‘to pray’: ‘to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy’. ~ Richard Dawkins,
1106:A plan is only a scenario, and almost by definition, it is optimistic... As a result, scenario planning can lead to a serious underestimate of the risk of failure. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1107:Change can only exist in time. Without time there is no change. Change can only exist with a background of that which is changeless, otherwise it has no definition. ~ Frederick Lenz,
1108:Content and technology are strange bed fellows. We are joined together. Sometimes we misunderstand each other. But isn't that after all the definition of marriage? ~ Howard Stringer,
1109:Do you know the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

"Wrong. That's the definition of determination. ~ Gena Showalter,
1110:Hysteria derives from the Greek word for “uterus,” and the extreme emotional state it denotes was once thought to be due to a wandering womb; men were by definition ~ Rebecca Solnit,
1111:If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it. ~ David Levithan,
1112:If you want to live withinthe definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it". ~ David Levithan,
1113:Maybe the best definition of what a great partnership or great love is when people make each other grow in a better direction than they would have grown on their own. ~ Brit Marling,
1114:My definition of a sin is for humans to allow a species to die out. Animals cannot speak for themselves – it is up to all of us to protect them and their habitats. ~ Richard Branson,
1115:My definition of man is a cooking animal. The beasts have memory, judgement, and the faculties and passions of our minds in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook. ~ James Boswell,
1116:no practical definition of freedom would be completely without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based. ~ Terry Pratchett,
1117:The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it. ~ Wendell Berry,
1118:The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about. ~ Christopher Lasch,
1119:We hate guys who date more than one woman at a time. I've always believed that what's unacceptable in one sex should, by definition, be unacceptable in the other. ~ Candace Bushnell,
1120:We hate guys who date more than one woman at a time. I’ve always believed that what’s unacceptable in one sex should, by definition, be unacceptable in the other. ~ Candace Bushnell,
1121:Whether or not Saddam is implicated directly in the anthrax attacks or the horrors of September 11, he is, by any common definition, a terrorist who must be removed. ~ Joe Lieberman,
1122:Would you like to hear a nice definition of jealousy? It's the feeling that you get when someone you absolutely detest is having a wonderful time without you. ~ William Peter Blatty,
1123:Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis. ~ Martha N Beck,
1124:Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it. ~ Gregory Maguire,
1125:Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven, so you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it. ~ Gregory Maguire,
1126:My dad used to say the definition of stupidity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Or maybe that was the definition of crazy. ~ David Estes,
1127:On Facebook, the definition of great content is not the content that makes the most sales, but the content that people most want to share with others. Unfortunately ~ Gary Vaynerchuk,
1128:opinion. Love meant being brave, otherwise you had already lost your own argument: the man who couldn’t tell a woman he loved her was, by definition, not worthy of her. ~ Nick Hornby,
1129:Socialism and federalism are necessarily political opposites, because the former demands that centralized concentration of power which the latter by definition denies. ~ Felix Morley,
1130:The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what's bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it. ~ Wendell Berry,
1131:To me, my grandfather’s urgency to preach the Gospel one more time to a lost and dying world is the definition of 'finishing well,' and it’s such a blessing and lesson. ~ Will Graham,
1132:Under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. ~ Noam Chomsky,
1133:Analytic It is clear that the definition of "logic" or "mathematics" must be sought by trying to give a new definition of the old notion of "analytic" propositions. ~ Bertrand Russell,
1134:And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based. ~ Terry Pratchett,
1135:beautiful definition of leadership: he taught that leadership is communicating others’ worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves. ~ Stephen R Covey,
1136:He fitted the Vedic definition of a man of God: “Softer than the flower, where kindness is concerned; stronger than the thunder, where principles are at stake. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
1137:He makes it his task to be wholly sincere with himself, and he notes this definition of wisdom which he finds in Pindar: “True being is the beginning of a great virtue. ~ Stefan Zweig,
1138:If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions. ~ Richard P Feynman,
1139:If you wan to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it" -A ~ David Levithan,
1140:My definition (of a philosopher) is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down. ~ Louisa May Alcott,
1141:On a shrunken planet where nearly every mountain bears bootprints and every mile of river has been run, being 'first' tends to require creative task definition" (111). ~ Jo Deurbrouck,
1142:Remember our definition of management? A manager’s job is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together through influencing purpose, people, and process. ~ Julie Zhuo,
1143:She belonged to herself only. She had edges, boundaries, tastes, definition down to her eyelashes. And when she walked it was clear she knew where she was going. As ~ Stephanie Danler,
1144:The death penalty is used in such a blatantly racist way in the United States. There is no way that can be defended under any kind of definition of justice by anybody. ~ Assata Shakur,
1145:your bosses simply hate you. That’s right, they hate you. You created more and more value. They paid you less and less. That’s the definition of “disdain” in my book. ~ James Altucher,
1146:A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace. ~ Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (1933),
1147:Is photography art?... The pure definition of the word 'art' alone is too vague today to break one's brain and soul about it. Let us take a little vacation from this word. ~ Ernst Haas,
1148:Tell me, Tengo, as a novelist, what is your definition of reality?” “When you prick a person with a needle, red blood comes out—that’s the real world,” Tengo replied. ~ Haruki Murakami,
1149:Well, in that case, no. I’m not your father. But if you go with another definition, meaning ‘a man who wants to be in your life and help raise you,’ then yes. I am. ~ Jenna Evans Welch,
1150:You know Chad’s definition of the New Poor? People who are too far behind with time-payments on next year’s model to make the down-payment on the one for the year after? ~ John Brunner,
1151:zygotes by definition are rather limited in number and most scientists working in very early development use cells from a bit later, the famous embryonic stem (ES) cells. ~ Nessa Carey,
1152:A good man, almost by definition, would seriously question any decisions he made that led to such terrible consequences for others. Especially if those others trusted him. ~ Jim Butcher,
1153:Courage originally meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” Over time, this definition has changed, and, today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic. ~ Bren Brown,
1154:[Identity liberalism] is about recognition and self-definition. It's narcissistic. It's isolating. It looks within. And it also makes two contradictory claims on people. ~ Steve Inskeep,
1155:I prefer to quit while I’m ahead,” Heraldin explained. “Ye’ve a funny definition of ‘ahead,’” said Gorm. “I prefer to define words in ways that suit me,” said Heraldin. ~ J Zachary Pike,
1156:It was leap and die or live and be haunted by the ability to choose. Which when I think about it, might be one definition of consciousness. I pitied just about everybody. ~ Peter Heller,
1157:Laughter in the face of certain death? It is the very definition of the Hero," said the White Queen. "The Jabberwock knew it and therefore could no longer move against you. ~ Jane Yolen,
1158:Self-esteem is the basis for feminism because self-esteem is based on defining yourself and believing in that definition. Self-esteem is regarding yourself as a grown-up. ~ Susan Faludi,
1159:The much vaunted male logic isn't logical, because they display prejudices against half the human race that are considered prejudices according to any dictionary definition. ~ Eva Figes,
1160:The psychologist Philip Zimbardo gave a TED talk last year on this subject. His definition of evil is the exercise of power to intentionally harm another. Works for me. ~ William Wright,
1161:Third, this unitary definition of love includes self-love with love for the other. Since I am human and you are human, to love humans means to love myself as well as you. ~ M Scott Peck,
1162:You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up. ~ Alan Watts,
1163:But all organic matter must have cell structure,” Sara said. “Cell structure is virtually a definition of organic matter, a requisite of all living tissue, plant or animal. ~ Dean Koontz,
1164:But in the words of Joichi Ito, director of MIT’s media lab, “If you plan your whole life, by definition you can’t get lucky. So you have to leave that little slot open. ~ Keith Ferrazzi,
1165:By definition, a laser always moves at the speed of light. If you can see the beam, it’s already too late. The only way to dodge is to get out of the way before it’s fired. ~ Elliott Kay,
1166:Furthermore, I preferred to only have cravings I could satisfy without the requirement or assistance of another person. This was, after all, the definition of self-reliance. ~ Penny Reid,
1167:I’d often thought being a Christian meant by definition being a bad one, since nothing is more difficult than Christianity, so I was more or less used to that feeling. ~ Charlaine Harris,
1168:I suppose, I said, it is one definition of love, the belief in something that only the two of you can see, and in this case it proved to be an impermanent basis for living. ~ Rachel Cusk,
1169:I want to hug you. And I want to tear your gods-damned head off. Both at once."

"Ah," said Locke. "Near as I can tell, that’s the definition of 'family' right there. ~ Scott Lynch,
1170:Like me, the great majority of Americans wish both to preserve the traditional definition of marriage and to oppose bias and intolerance directed towards gays and lesbians. ~ Mitt Romney,
1171:My definition of beauty is simplicity, elegance, and sensuality. I think that when a woman is in harmony with herself and remains true to her values, she will glow naturally. ~ Megan Fox,
1172:One definition of eternity is that we are not alone on this planet, that there are those who've gone before and those who will come, and that there is a community of spirits. ~ Rita Dove,
1173:Suicides, almost by definition, are all ghosts - stuck earthbound because they are desperate to apologize to their loved ones or because they are so ashamed of themselves. ~ Jodi Picoult,
1174:The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act. ~ George Bernard Shaw,
1175:The Supreme is infinite, therefore He is also finite.
To be finite is one of the infinite aspects of the Infinite.
Creation is the definition of the Infinite. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta,
1176:I have no difficulty with the recognition of civil unions for non-traditional relationships but I believe in law we should protect the traditional definition of marriage. ~ Stephen Harper,
1177:I love my editor, but that would be the definition of hell to me to live with someone and have them go page by page through my manuscript. That I want to avoid at all costs. ~ Dean Koontz,
1178:It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything or at least they are not science. ~ George Gaylord Simpson,
1179:My definition of a sport is that it's a physical activity that involves competition. Since bodybuilders certainly train and then compete, we are certainly a sport. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger,
1180:That’s the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. Because all of us crazy fuckers can’t stand it when someone else lets their crazy show. ~ Charlie Jane Anders,
1181:The Supreme Court’s working definition of religion, “A sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by God, ~ Charles W Colson,
1182:What is a positive attitude? The simple definition is the way you dedicate yourself to the way you think. Interestingly, it's also the definition of a negative attitude. ~ Jeffrey Gitomer,
1183:You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up. ~ Alan W Watts,
1184:If I look at the definition of Hinduism, the Supreme Court of India has given a beautiful definition; it says that Hinduism is not a religion, it is actually a way of life. ~ Narendra Modi,
1185:Innovation is applied creativity. By definition, innovation is always about introducing something new, or improved, or both and it is usually assumed to be a positive thing. ~ Ken Robinson,
1186:Is he a psychopath? I don’t know. I don’t know what the definition is. Don’t know how far down the path of eating people you have to go before you officially become a psycho. ~ Sally Green,
1187:I was always interested in language. I thought, why not? If a painting, by the normal definition of the term, is paint on canvas, why can't it be painted words on canvas? ~ John Baldessari,
1188:My definition of success is: 1.) The progressive realization of worthy goals 2.) The ability to love and have compassion 3.) To be in touch with the creative source within. ~ Deepak Chopra,
1189:Sooner or later every writer evolves his own definition of a story.

Mine is: A reflection of life plus beginning and end (life seems not to have either) and a meaning. ~ Mary O Hara,
1190:The definition of mantra is "that which protects the mind." That which protects the mind from negativity, or that which protects you from your own mind, is called mantra. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche,
1191:The fact that this statement is inherently contradictory—after all, if everyone were extraordinary, then by definition no one would be extraordinary—is missed by most people. ~ Mark Manson,
1192:The Lexus LS 460 was designed to expand on the definition of the full-size luxury sedan as well as the level of innovative technology, especially as it relates to safety. ~ Robert M Carter,
1193:There are other, civilised ways of dealing with the matter," Dllenahkh insisted.
Darithiven looked at him with pity. "Then, by your definition, this cannot be civilisation. ~ Karen Lord,
1194:A nice definition of an awakened person: a person who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within. ~ Anthony de Mello,
1195:...everything defiled and degraded. What cannot man live through! Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
1196:If we only have great companies, we will merely have a prosperous society, not a great one. Economic growth and power are the means, not the definition, of a great nation. ~ James C Collins,
1197:It is the business of thought to define things, to find the boundaries; thought, indeed, is a ceaseless process of definition. It is the business of Art to give things shape. ~ Vance Palmer,
1198:The Definition Of Beauty Is
988
The Definition of Beauty is
That Definition is none—
Of Heaven, easing Analysis,
Since Heaven and He are one.
~ Emily Dickinson,
1199:we need to remember that our definition of what is right is, as often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
1200:If you think that you are an extraordinary person you are definitely right because every existence represents a miracle and every miracle is extraordinary by definition! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,
1201:Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence." (Harvard Business School definition of leadership) ~ Sheryl Sandberg,
1202:My definition of beauty is without rules. It can be the face of a beautiful 90-year-old woman that is full of stories and emotion. Beauty is what somebody's eyes communicate. ~ Penelope Cruz,
1203:So I arrive at this definition of gratitude. Gratitude is a species of joy which arises in your heart in response to the goodwill of someone who does or tries to do you a favor. ~ John Piper,
1204:That is the definition of faith, hermano," says Figueroa. "Something that we believe in even though it doesn't work."
Eres un cinicio."
If it worked, it would be science. ~ John Sayles,
1205:When Nietszche says, "A new commandment I give to you,
be hard" he is really saying, "A new commandment I give to you, be dead." Sensibility is the definition of
life. ~ G K Chesterton,
1206:You cannot keep your plan and have Obamacare at the same time. Obamacare, by definition, gets rid of your plan and replaces it with health care run by the federal government. ~ Rush Limbaugh,
1207:You’ve been fucked before, huh?” he asked, angling her so that his piercing slid over her G-spot when he entered. “By the time I’m done, you’ll have reassessed your definition ~ Cherrie Lynn,
1208:But in a startup, who the customer is and what the customer might find valuable are unknown, part of the very uncertainty that is an essential part of the definition of a startup. ~ Eric Ries,
1209:By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. ~ Irvine Welsh,
1210:If there is a single definition of healing it is to enter with mercy and awareness those pains, mental and physical, from which we have withdrawn in judgment and dismay. (48) ~ Stephen Levine,
1211:I had been looking for outside approval by seeking a relationship, and I had been looking for outside approval by living according to a definition of success created by others. ~ David Kadavy,
1212:I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part. ~ Jean M Auel,
1213:Like navigation markings in unknown waters, definitions of poverty need to be distinctive and unambiguous. A definition that is not precise is as bad as no definition at all. ~ Muhammad Yunus,
1214:Love is large; love defies limits. People talk about the sanctity of love -- love is by definition sacred. Not some love between some people, but all love between all people. ~ Jennifer Beals,
1215:Man, by definition, is born a stranger: coming from nowhere, he is thrust into an alien world which existed before him-a world which didn't need him. And which will survive him. ~ Elie Wiesel,
1216:There is no such thing as real happiness in life. The justest definition that was ever given of it was "a tranquil acquiescence under an agreeable delusion"--I forget where. ~ Laurence Sterne,
1217:The will to grow is in essence the same phenomenon as love. Love is the will to extend oneself for spiritual growth. Genuinely loving people are, by definition, growing people. ~ M Scott Peck,
1218:What the modern man most suffers from, then, is the wounding without the transformation. He suffers the Saturnian burden of role definition that confines rather than liberates. ~ James Hollis,
1219:A HUMAN BEING survives only with hope, and hope by definition implies the thought of something better. As I see it, our very survival depends on some idea of future happiness. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,
1220:A life free of lies! Ah, but that, too, was, by definition, a lie. Surely a lie already dwelled in the heart of anyone who sought to make such distinctions and stand in judgment. ~ Osamu Dazai,
1221:A son or daughter in any human family is either born to or adopted by the parents. By definition, a child can't be both. But with God we're both born of Him and adopted by Him. ~ Jerry Bridges,
1222:Each generation must assume the responsibility of securing their manhood, their womanhood, the definition of their being on earth that in the final analysis is nationhood. ~ John Henrik Clarke,
1223:I’m so sick of political correctness. I’m suffocated by it. We’re so goddamn politically correct that we lose our individualism, our definition as human beings. Don’t you agree? ~ Ronald Malfi,
1224:In a way, my definition of home has shifted. My soul no longer feels anchored to a piece of land or a body of water. It's now tied to all the people I love, across the Zodiac. ~ Romina Russell,
1225:In the new definition of success, building and looking after our financial capital is not enough. We need to do everything we can to protect and nurture our human capital. ~ Arianna Huffington,
1226:Mental illnesses are so strange. A physical problem we can understand. But when the mind works irrationally, well, by its very definition, the rational mind cannot truly relate. ~ Harlan Coben,
1227:My experience politically has always been that one-word definition of politics: money. Keep your eye on the buck. And that tells you where the American people are going to be. ~ Douglas Wilder,
1228:Once established, a successful style looks like an inevitability - maybe that's the definition of a successful style - but there's often the time when it looks like anything but. ~ David Salle,
1229:Provisional Definition 2: a bullshit job is a form of employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence ~ David Graeber,
1230:The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of 'important', of course, depends on one's values. ~ Howard Zinn,
1231:Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue. ~ Benjamin Haydon,
1232:But we need to remember that our definition of what is right is, as often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
1233:I have changed my definition of tragedy. I now think tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person (usually noble in some manner) but rather that tragedy is irresolvable conflict. ~ Rita Mae Brown,
1234:Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence."
(Harvard Business School definition of leadership) ~ Sheryl Sandberg,
1235:The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work. Agha Hasan Abedi, Banker and Philanthropist ~ Carol Sanford,
1236:The definition of a philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black hat, which isn’t really there. And the definition of a theologian is he’s somebody who finds it. ~ Michael Ruse,
1237:The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and a rejection of unstable ones. There is no mystery about this. It had to happen by definition. ~ Richard Dawkins,
1238:We must go out to Pure Life, Pure Truth, Pure Love, and that is the definition of God. He is the ultimate goal of life; from Him we came, and in Him alone do we find our peace. ~ Fulton J Sheen,
1239:You can never have 'equality' between two things that are not equal by definition. And so, for example, you can have equality among 'people', but not between 'men' and 'women'. ~ Anthony Browne,
1240:By definition, an actor's life is a recipe for regret. There are always roads you could have taken. But I've lived long enough to realise that each road has its own rewards. ~ Elizabeth McGovern,
1241:Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty. ~ Ron Paul,
1242:In this century, we are about to enter interplanetary civilization.
In order to survive, we need to go beyond neoclassical economics definition.
We define it as interplanomics. ~ Toba Beta,
1243:Libby, you and Paul are happy, functioning people who have lived, and loved, and made the world a little bit better by being in it. That was your mama’s exact definition of okay. ~ Camille Pag n,
1244:Like the word hope, we often think of power as negative. It's not. The best definition of power comes from Martin Luther King Jr. He described power as the ability to effect change. ~ Bren Brown,
1245:My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall. ~ Ai Weiwei,
1246:오픈소스라는 말이 주목을 받게 되면서, OSI는 ‘자유로운 재배포의 허가’, ‘파생 소프트웨어 배포의 허가’, ‘개인이나 집단의 차별금지’, ‘적용분야 제한의 금지’ 등 10개의 항목으로 구성된 OSD(Open Source Definition), 즉 오픈소스에 대한 정의를 발표하고 이에 준거한 소프트웨어 라이선스를 발급했다. ~ Anonymous,
1247:Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down. ~ Orson Scott Card,
1248:What is a bore? Maxwell definition: a vacuum cleaner of society, sucking up everything and giving nothing. How do you spot one? Bores are always anxious to be seen talking to you. ~ Elsa Maxwell,
1249:But then, I said, speaking the truth and paying your debts is not a correct definition of justice. Quite correct, Socrates, if Simonides is to be believed, said Polemarchus interposing. I ~ Plato,
1250:For Builders, the real definition of success is a life and work that brings personal fulfillment and lasting relationships and makes a difference in the world in which they live. ~ Jerry I Porras,
1251:Speech that compliments is, by definition, free from derision, which clouds the mind with enemies and makes it tense. Kind speech makes the mind feel safe and also glad. [p.74] ~ Sylvia Boorstein,
1252:Think different in order to change the rules. By definition, if you don't change the rules you aren't a revolutionary, and if you don't think different, you won't change the rules. ~ Guy Kawasaki,
1253:Ahimsa is the very definition of woman and there is no place for untruth in her heart. If she is true to herself she is no longer Abala--the weak, but she is Sabala--the strong... ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1254:But admiration and sadness, admiration and worry, is not that almost a definition of love?"
"There are people with whom it is not easy to live, but whom it is impossible to leave. ~ Thomas Mann,
1255:Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. ~ Brian Kernighan,
1256:Definition of a relationship - an enduring, mutually-agreed upon connection or union, which fulfills certain needs of the individuals involved and the society in which they live. ~ Leo F Buscaglia,
1257:Good luck trying to force Evie to do anything else once she has made up her mind. She is the definition of a stubborn, headstrong teenager.”
“And you love me for it.”
“I do. ~ Kiersten White,
1258:Imagine! It is the real power of a book--not what is on the page, but what happens when a reader takes the pages in, makes it part of himself. That is the definition of literature. ~ Matthew Pearl,
1259:Soon after I left university, I came up with another definition of a literary critic or would be critic: someoone who uses churlish towards the end of an article or review. ~ Gerald Murnane,
1260:Another definition of modernity: conversations can be more and more completely reconstructed with clips from other conversations taking place at the same time on the planet. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
1261:civilization able to produce a Mahavira, a Mirabai, a Malik Ambar, a Periyar, a Muhammad Iqbal and a Mohandas Gandhi is a place open to radical experiments with self-definition. It ~ Sunil Khilnani,
1262:However, because our definition understands prayer as a response to the knowledge of God, it means that prayer is profoundly altered by the amount and accuracy of that knowledge. ~ Timothy J Keller,
1263:I'm losing the definition now of politics. I sort of don't know what that is anymore. People say politically correct, I don't know what that means. I know what they think they mean. ~ Toni Morrison,
1264:I take a very simple view that a violent extremist at some point previously been an extremist, and by definition is an extremist, so you do need to look at that non-violent extremism. ~ Theresa May,
1265:Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter. ~ Nadine Gordimer,
1266:The idea of equality is still how I define feminism. I think it's a broad definition that encompasses the variety of experiences women and men have with the word and the movement. ~ Julie Zeilinger,
1267:The key to warriorship and the first principle of Shambhala vision is not being afraid of who you are. Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa,
1268:We find no sense in talking about something unless we specify how we measure it; a definition by the method of measuring a quantity is the one sure way of avoiding talking nonsense. ~ Hermann Bondi,
1269:Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions-a government of force, and a government of laws; the first is the definition of despotism-the last, of liberty. ~ Alexander Hamilton,
1270:I'm still spending my working life trying to mine people's souls and now they're complimenting me in reviews on the amount of time I spend in the gym. On the definition of my triceps. ~ Jason Isaacs,
1271:The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions - none more so than the most capable. ~ Theodore Dreiser,
1272:This world is better than Utopia because - and follow this point carefully - you can never live in Utopia. Utopia is always somewhere else. That's the very definition of Utopia. ~ Brad Warner,
1273:To take a single step beyond the boundaries specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to definition. ~ Thomas Jefferson,
1274:I don't think feminism, as I understand the definition, implies the rejection of maternal values, nurturing children, caring about the men in your life. That is just nonsense to me. ~ Hillary Clinton,
1275:that a child is not an event, alleged or otherwise, a mistake or accident or crime. . . he is by definition more than this, sum rather than division, a living promissory note. ~ John Burnham Schwartz,
1276:We do need to rethink privacy. I think we need to fall back on (former Supreme Court Justice) Felix Frankfurter's definition of privacy which is, "Privacy is the right to be left alone." ~ Paul Saffo,
1277:We've been in a recession, by any common sense definition, because if you look at the American public, they've got 20 billion - 20 trillion, I should say, worth of residential homes. ~ Warren Buffett,
1278:Young people refuse the notion that financialization defines the only acceptable definition of exchange, one that is based exclusively on the reductionist notion of buying and selling. ~ Henry Giroux,
1279:Happiness isn't a one-size-fits-all proposition. You must define what it looks like for you and then make a conscious effort to access whatever gets you to your unique definition of joy. ~ Phil McGraw,
1280:In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. But that is not all, that is not his worst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
1281:I submit that the traditional definition of psychiatry, which is still vogue, places it alongside such things as alchemy and astrology, and commits it to the category of pseudo-science. ~ Thomas Szasz,
1282:It is Scripture alone, not “conservative evangelical tradition” or any other human authority, that must function as the normative authority for the definition of what we should believe. ~ Wayne Grudem,
1283:"Superhero" is a term that's been borrowed in order to say "big and larger than life and loud and active and dumb." And I don't think that's a useful definition. That's more a dismissal. ~ Kurt Busiek,
1284:That's the definition of a mini-series. A mini-series is a show that has no continuing story or narrative elements between one group of episodes and another, so no, I wasn't surprised. ~ John Landgraf,
1285:The Bible says in Psalms to “Be still.” God says, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). I like this definition of stillness: silence on the outside and surrender on the inside. ~ Kyle Idleman,
1286:The definition of Ar-Rahman: The fact that we only take from Allah and He only gives; we never thank but He still gives; we rarely remember Him but He still increases in love for us. ~ Nouman Ali Khan,
1287:The only way to make real wealth is to get rid of your salary. In a salary, by definition, you are creating wealth for others, and you are creating a chain and handcuffs for yourself. ~ James Altucher,
1288:Faye laughed as her naive belief that the world ever made sense, but what better definition of a scientist could there be than 'a person looking for a way to make sense of the world'? ~ Mary Anna Evans,
1289:If you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership. ~ Barack Obama,
1290:Imagine that it's sugar," Korbyn said. 'You're riding across candy.'

"Salt can never be sugar," Fennik said.

"We should talk about the definition of the word 'imagine'. ~ Sarah Beth Durst,
1291:Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour. ~ David Levithan,
1292:You’ll come with us,” she said. “Sure,” Gavin said. “It wasn’t a request.” “Yes it was,” Gavin said. “When you don’t have power to compel obedience, by definition you’re making a request. ~ Brent Weeks,
1293:An especially damaging form of contradiction is self-referential absurdity—which means a theory sets up a definition of truth that it itself fails to meet. Therefore it refutes itself. ~ Nancy R Pearcey,
1294:Maleness in America is not absolutely defined; it has to be kept and re-earned every day, and one essential element in the definition is beating women in every game that both sexes play. ~ Margaret Mead,
1295:Many men think they're playboys but they invariably land wide of the mark. Surrounding yourself with champagne, fast friends and paid escorts is the very definition of the word 'loser'. ~ Graydon Carter,
1296:Morally judging cultures (except Christian, Israeli and American cultures) is forbidden by the left. Indeed not judging non-Western cultures is the very definition of ‘multiculturalism’. ~ Dennis Prager,
1297:The simplest definition of spirituality is self-awareness. Inside yourself is the peace, love, and truth that are attributes of God. When you contact this place, you meet your true self. ~ Deepak Chopra,
1298:"You want to have a meaningful life? Everything you do matters. That's the definition of a meaningful life. But everything you do matters. You're going to have to carry that with you." ~ Jordan Peterson,
1299:But you could also argue that there is something tragically heroic about fighting this battle he is doomed to lose.Is Ahab's hope a kind of insanity,or is it the very definition of humaness? ~ John Green,
1300:Every decision you make - every decision that you make every second - is not a decision about what to do, it is a decision about who you are. Every act is an act of self-definition. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,
1301:Happy to me is not what I thought happy was. Happy is actually better, because it includes room for sadness. A definition of success must leave room for failure, because it's part of it. ~ Sara Benincasa,
1302:Historical definition of a country's borders... "...here's where my murder geography ends and your murder geography begins, at least until I get more murderers to expand my murder-fest. ~ Stefan Molyneux,
1303:I can stand.”
“It looks to me like you‘re using a wall to prop you up. that’s not my definition of ‘standing.’”
“Its leaning,” Jace told him. “Leaning comes right before standing. ~ Cassandra Clare,
1304:Not according to your definition. It appears Andromeda has taken a vow of celibacy.”

Naasir groaned. “I think I should jump off into traffic. It’d be less painful than such torture. ~ Nalini Singh,
1305:Some pleasures are intrinsically ethical—feelings like love, gratitude, devotion, and compassion. To inhabit these states of mind is, by definition, to be brought into alignment with others. ~ Sam Harris,
1306:The insult, the real reflection on our culture's definition of the role of women, is that as a nation we only noticed something was wrong with women when we saw its effects on their sons. ~ Betty Friedan,
1307:"You want to have a meaningful life? Everything you do matters. That's the definition of a meaningful life. But everything you do matters. You're going to have to carry that with you." ~ Jordan Peterson,
1308:Hence while in respect of its substance and the definition that states what it really is in essence virtue is the observance of the mean, in point of excellence and rightness it is an extreme. ~ Aristotle,
1309:I don't think women are, by definition, toxic to one another. I think women are simultaneously competitive toward and idolatrous of each other. I thrive on that challenge and that desire. ~ Heidi Julavits,
1310:On a related note, you can also code multiple init methods within the same class, but only the last definition will be used; see Chapter 31 for more details on multiple method definitions. ~ Mark Lutz,
1311:On a related note, you can also code multiple __init__ methods within the same class, but only the last definition will be used; see Chapter 31 for more details on multiple method definitions. ~ Mark Lutz,
1312:[Suggesting an additional definition for 'politics':] The art of organizing and handling men in large numbers, manipulating votes, and, in especial, appropriating public wealth. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
1313:The definition of all right changes with the passing winters, I find. I'm about all right by the standards of the last few days. Twenty years ago I'd have considered this close to death. ~ Joe Abercrombie,
1314:There is nothing worse then being surrounded by a bunch of people telling you to do what is right, when they can't define that definition, without a lot of hatred and judgment behind it. ~ Shannon L Alder,
1315:The technical definition of heuristic is a simple procedure that helps find adequate, though often imperfect, answers to difficult questions. The word comes from the same root as eureka. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1316:We're gonna keep on doin' what we're doin', and we're gonna get it by all means. That's just what "ruthless" means to me. Everybody's got their own definition, but I'm ruthless with this music. ~ Ace Hood,
1317:"You want to have a meaningful life? Everything you do matters. That's the definition of a meaningful life. But everything you do matters. You're going to have to carry that with you." ~ Jordan B Peterson,
1318:But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why? ~ Walter E Williams,
1319:If you want a definition of poetry, say: Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing and let it go at that. ~ Dylan Thomas,
1320:Much of how a person defined himself was through his interactions with the world. When that world was very small, it probably felt as if the opportunities for definition were very limited. ~ Alissa Johnson,
1321:Once you call something a story, it's set in stone. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end that can't be transformed, because by definition, if you do that, it's not the same story anymore ~ Jodi Picoult,
1322:Spare time is like spare change. It's hard to quantify, the definition of that phrase. What do I do when I'm not onstage singing, or sleeping, with or without someone else? I watch movies. ~ Marilyn Manson,
1323:Telling our stories is what saves us. The story is enough... The very act of storytelling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of narrative is, by definition, holy. ~ James Carroll,
1324:The definition of a page-turner really aught to be that this page is so good, you can't bear to leave it behind, but then the next page is there and it might be just as amazing as this one. ~ John Burnside,
1325:All education is religious in nature and is never value free. If God is left out of the subject, it is by definition, humanism that governs the education since man alone is the measure of truth. ~ Anonymous,
1326:A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression ~ Henry James,
1327:A snob has been defined carelessly as a man who loves a lord; and, more carefully, as a mean lover of mean things—which would be a little unkind to the peerage if the first definition were true. ~ A A Milne,
1328:Claiming a person can't do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment. I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It's absolutely unacceptable. ~ Paul Ryan,
1329:couldn’t call to mind. She belonged to herself only. She had edges, boundaries, tastes, definition down to her eyelashes. And when she walked it was clear she knew where she was going. As ~ Stephanie Danler,
1330:However a man who was honest and clever was always, ALWAYS more difficult to scam than someone who was both dishonest and clever. Sincerity. It was so difficult , by definition, to fake. ~ Brandon Sanderson,
1331:In mathematics and science definition are simple, but bare-bones. Until you get to a problem which you understand it takes hundreds and hundreds of pages and years and years of learning. ~ Benoit Mandelbrot,
1332:My parents wanted to light my artistic candle. But over time, the definition of 'the arts' began to stretch. And as I got older, they suddenly realized, Oh, my God, we're the parents of Iggy Pop. ~ Iggy Pop,
1333:Sometimes, if we can't find another person to dump our anger on, we turn it on ourselves. The textbook definition of depression is anger turned inward instead of being discharged outward. ~ Harold S Kushner,
1334:combines a broad definition of wisdom as excellence in mind and virtue with a specific characterization of wisdom as an expert knowledge system dealing with the conduct and understanding of life. ~ Anonymous,
1335:Definition: Alpinism is the art of going through the mountains confronting the greatest dangers with the biggest of cares. What we call art here, is the application of a knowledge to an action. ~ Rene Daumal,
1336:Im 48 years old, not a kid anymore by any definition, but here is a universal truth that every adult at some point will realize: We are all always 17 years old, waiting for our lives to begin. ~ Harlan Coben,
1337:Innovating economies expand and develop. Economies that do not add new kinds of goods and services, but continue only to repeat old work, do not expand much nor do they, by definition, develop. ~ Jane Jacobs,
1338:I think people who struggle to define themselves might never be satisfied because there is no definition. Living with responsibility is important, but I don't really think you have to grow up. ~ Kristen Bell,
1339:I was involved in the color correction and the digital color correction. In an odd way, you end up making a film many times-the DVD, the archival record of a high-definition master, and so on. ~ John Dykstra,
1340:The incoming messages make up the public interface of the receiving object. The outgoing messages, by definition, are incoming into other objects and so are part of some other object’s interface, ~ Anonymous,
1341:The world does not need a better definition of issues, or better planning or project management. It needs the issues and the plans to have more of an impact, which is the promise of engagement. ~ Peter Block,
1342:Willy, one of the guys at the distillery, comes up with what Oliver and I agree is the best definition of what a 'dram' actually is: 'A measure of whisky that is pleasing to both guest and host. ~ Iain Banks,
1343:But such is the way of family: we are what they tell us we are, and part of life’s great struggle, it’s always seemed to me, is to know oneself despite that imposing collective definition. ~ Elizabeth Poliner,
1344:Documentary is, therefore, an approach, which makes use of the artistic faculties to give vivification to fact - to use Walt Whitman's definition of the place of poetry in the modern world. ~ Beaumont Newhall,
1345:Failing to warn the citizens of a looming weapon of mass destruction- and that's what global warming is- in order to protect oil company profits, well, that fits for me the definition of treason. ~ Bill Maher,
1346:I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory. ~ John Adams,
1347:My definition of marketing is simple—it’s all about educating the marketplace that your business can solve problems, fill voids, or achieve opportunities and goals the way no other business can. ~ Jay Abraham,
1348:Proving he's a crazy son of a bitch, Pigpen flashes me that guilty-by-definition-of-insanity grin. "See, was talking so bad? A few weeks with me and you'll be ready for full-on family therapy. ~ Katie McGarry,
1349:There may well be a few extremists out there somewhere calling for a militant, women-only utopia, but why should this be the definition of 'feminist' when it's already the definition of 'silly'? ~ Meghan Daum,
1350:Your fear is the sharpest definition of your self. You should know it. You should feel it virtually constantly. Fear needs to become your friend, so that you are no longer uncomfortable with it. ~ David Deida,
1351:Getting back to the difference between a saver and an investorpi there is one word hat separates them and that word is leveragene definition of leverage is the ability to do more with less. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki,
1352:I don't need to be a radical to think that who a dragon is counts more than birth or wealth," Selendra said, with what dignity she could."Why, that's the very definition of a radical," he retorted. ~ Jo Walton,
1353:I don't think feminism can just be imitative or integrationist. By definition, it must transform. But in the short run, there are goals we agree on. And it's in the short run that we must act. ~ Gloria Steinem,
1354:If "socialism" is defined as "ownership of the means of production"--and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition--then the United States is the first truly Socialist country. ~ Peter Drucker,
1355:My people believe bathing weakens you,” Gerrard said. “But my people are well known to be uncivilized.” “Your people don’t believe in drinking coffee. That’s a fair definition of uncivilized. ~ Melissa McShane,
1356:No practical definition of freedom would be completely without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.
-Lord Havelock Vetinari- ~ Terry Pratchett,
1357:One thing's for sure. If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting. One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. ~ Stephen Covey,
1358:such is the way of family: we are what they tell us we are, and part of life’s great struggle, it’s always seemed to me, is to know oneself despite that imposing collective definition. That ~ Elizabeth Poliner,
1359:The ultimate definition of success in life is that your spouse likes and respects you ever more as the years go by. By that measure, more than any other, I hope to be as successful as she is. ~ James C Collins,
1360:When states are absent, rights—by any definition—are impossible to sustain. States are not structures to be taken for granted, exploited, or discarded, but are fruits of long and quiet effort. ~ Timothy Snyder,
1361:A semantic definition of a particular set of command types, then, is a rule for constructing, for any command of one of these types, a verification condition on the antecedents and consequents. ~ Robert W Floyd,
1362:Early withdrawal from Iraq would result in unarguably, defeat and humiliation for the United States. There's no question. We would be defeated by definition. We would be humiliated in that defeat. ~ Howard Dean,
1363:For the record, feminism by definition is: 'The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.' ~ Emma Watson,
1364:His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what's necessary to defend a woman. ~ Delia Owens,
1365:His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman. ~ Delia Owens,
1366:If you live through defeat, you are not defeated. If you are beaten but acquire wisdom, you have won. Lose yourself to improve yourself. Only when we shed all self-definition do we find who we really are. ~ RZA,
1367:Look, it's her faith, all right? There's no need to be offensive."

"I'm not being offensive. You cannot, by definition, offend someone who's not here. Offense has to be taken, not just given. ~ Ruth Ware,
1368:The concept of entrepreneurship includes anyone who works within my definition of a startup: a human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty. ~ Anonymous,
1369:There is no objective and universally acceptable definition of good and evil. And until we have one, we will go on justifying our own actions, while condemning the actions of the others. ~ Gregory David Roberts,
1370:The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty... We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. --April 18, 1864 Address at Baltimore ~ Abraham Lincoln,
1371:To see with the eyes of another, to hear with the ears of another, to feel with the heart of another. For the time being, this seems to me an admissible definition of what we call social feeling. ~ Alfred Adler,
1372:To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were. ~ Peter Watts,
1373:Art is why I get up in the morning, but my definition ends there. You know, it doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define, but there you are, right there, in the meantime. ~ Ani DiFranco,
1374:I'm not body-shy -- it's hard to grow up in the Summerlands, where clothes are solidly optional, and stay body-shy -- but that doesn't mean I enjoy nudity. Naked people are, by definition, unarmed.​ ~ Mira Grant,
1375:I'm not body-shy--it's hard to grow up in the Summerlands, where clothes are solidly optional, and stay body-shy--but that doesn't mean I enjoy nudity. Naked people are, by definition, unarmed.​ ~ Seanan McGuire,
1376:Schooling is certainly not a great proxy for knowhow and knowledge, since it is by definition a measure of the time spent in an establishment, not of the knowledge embodied in a person’s brain. ~ C sar A Hidalgo,
1377:There are, it is often said by the more ecumenical prophets, many paths up the mountain. So long as it helps a person navigate the world and seek out what is good, a path, by definition, has value. ~ Robert Moor,
1378:The trouble with institutional investors is that their performance is usually measured relative to their peer group and not by an absolute yardstick. This makes them trend followers by definition. ~ George Soros,
1379:This thing with Graeson wasn’t love or simple lust. It was undefinable, and a thing without definition that technically couldn’t exist without such parameters shouldn’t hurt so much. But it did. ~ Hailey Edwards,
1380:What you’re explaining to me is something that some people never find in their lives. You have a connection to him way beyond the definition of time. It transcends that and has a power of its own. ~ Harper Sloan,
1381:I think the first important thing is that usually most textbooks are not written by their authors. And so by author I mean the people who did not write them; so it's a new definition of "author." ~ James W Loewen,
1382:Every act of courage is the work of an unbalanced man. Animals, normal by definition, are always cowardly except when they know themselves know themselves to be stronger, which is cowardice itself. ~ Emil M Cioran,
1383:In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty. ~ Leo Tolstoy,
1384:Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are - they don’t get to change the definition. ~ Benjamin Carson,
1385:No! Wait! I've got a better idea..."

"Your ideas tend to result in unnecessary violence, Sergeant Schlock."

"And your point is..."

"Let's broaden the definition of 'necessary'. ~ Howard Tayler,
1386:One or two steps alone do not guarantee the evidence of your success unless you have your own peculiar definition for success. And I assure you; that definition is wrong! Do it again and again! ~ Israelmore Ayivor,
1387:The clinical definition of "fascism" is when private concentrated economic power takes government away from the people, turns government into a guarantor, a subsidizer, a covering of corporate power. ~ Ralph Nader,
1388:The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations. ~ Glenn Greenwald,
1389:...the mathematician uses an indirect definition of congruence, making use of the fact that the axiom of parallels together with an additional condition can replace the definition of congruence. ~ Hans Reichenbach,
1390:When it is proclaimed that one must become more “sensitive” to various ethnic, linguistic, sexual, or lifestyle groups, neither a reason nor a definition usually accompanies this opaque imperative. ~ Thomas Sowell,
1391:Yes, Em, your freckles are perfect. Looks are a funny thing, very peculiar. Never waste any time disliking the ones you have. The right person will think they are the very definition of beautiful. ~ Rachel Fordham,
1392:You’ll come with us,” she said.
“Sure,” Gavin said.
“It wasn’t a request.”
“Yes it was,” Gavin said. “When you don’t have power to compel obedience, by definition you’re making a request. ~ Brent Weeks,
1393:and one of our vocabulary words was nonconformist. I just dug that word. I heard the explanation, the definition, and I felt like I had just learned about a new hero in a kick-ass Marvel comic book. ~ Nick Offerman,
1394:Charity is the pure love of Christ. Let's bring it down for us lay folk to understand. Selflessness, patience. . . . a great definition. . . Charity: The ability to love the sinner and hate the sin. ~ Hyrum W Smith,
1395:It would be easy to define terrorism as attacks against human rights and international humanitarian law forbids attacks against innocent non-combatants which is often the definition used for terrorism. ~ Joichi Ito,
1396:Oh, Lord - responsibility. That word worked on me until I worked on it, until I looked at it carefully and broke it down into the two words that make its true definition: the ability to respond. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
1397:she realized that some people would do more for others than they would do for themselves. That was perhaps as good a definition of friendship as one could find; and a definition of patriotism as well. ~ David Drake,
1398:When you lower the definition of success to such a level that any person can reach it, you don’t teach people to have big dreams; instead you inspirit mediocrity and nurture people’s inadequacies. ~ Shannon L Alder,
1399:Wikipedia is so dangerous. You go online to look up the definition of eclampsia, and three hours later you find yourself reading this earnest explanation of tentacle porn in [Japanese] anime. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,
1400:You can see a zoomable sixteen-billion-pixel version on your home computer, an online visualization that its creators, Haltadefinizione, claim to be “the highest definition photograph ever in the world. ~ Ross King,
1401:You know, with me, you never have to be embarrassed, right?” “You say that, but a giant purple dildo just fell out of my closet and hit you on the head. That is the definition of a reason to be embarrassed. ~ Tijan,
1402:A "breakdown" is when you've exhausted every option and have no choice but to accept the fact that you are powerless to create the outcome you want.

A "breakthrough" has the same definition. ~ Paul Colaianni,
1403:Speculative fiction by definition is geared toward an audience that wants strangeness, an audience that wants to spend time in worlds that absolutely are not like the observable world around them. ~ Orson Scott Card,
1404:The more we resist change, the more we are allied against the nature of nature and the developmental agenda of our own psyches. Being aligned against our own nature is the very definition of neurosis. ~ James Hollis,
1405:The social custom of calling on people when they are unwell has always mystified me. By definition, you’re not feeling or looking your best. Why on earth do people assume you might want visitors? ~ Mary Louise Kelly,
1406:Though it is fairly easy to describe what constitutes a bad home, there is no simple definition of a good one. Conformity with the traditional pattern certainly is no guarantee of the happiest results. ~ Alva Myrdal,
1407:To be a prisoner means to be defined as a member of a group for whom the rules of what can be done to you, of what is seen as abuse of you, are reduced as part of the definition of your status. ~ Catharine MacKinnon,
1408:We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN. ~ B W Powe,
1409:About the only valid definition (of science fiction) that I’m willing to accept is this: all of modern, mainstream, and realistic fiction is simply a branch, a category, or a subset of science fiction. ~ Mike Resnick,
1410:Any man in the company of two woman is outnumbered four to one however amiable they may be. By definition."
'So when its just you and me I outnumber you two to one, is that right?'
"Affirmative. ~ Kingsley Amis,
1411:Being an author means, almost by definition, that you make up characters and then complicate their lives. That's it, really. You make up characters and give them problem after problem after problem. ~ Maureen Johnson,
1412:I’m tired of being afraid,” she said, her breath hitching. Shane shook his head. “The definition of courage is action in the face of fear. By that definition, sweetness, you’re the bravest person I know. ~ Laura Kaye,
1413:In contrast, it feels logical to care less about other universes, because my decisions here in our Universe by definition can’t have any effect on them—they’re therefore unaffected by what I care about. ~ Max Tegmark,
1414:I think is sad, how easily we throw around the word without actually understanding the sacrifice behind its meaning. Love in its definition isn't about a strong feeling towards someone, but action. ~ Rachel Van Dyken,
1415:I tried to come up with a definition of this new paradigm in six articles entitled "Russia after Putin." I would consider Russia's integration into Europe the most important element of this strategy. ~ Garry Kasparov,
1416:Just do a Google search on it. The Bible’s definition of marriage. New Testament. When you read it, you’ll see what I mean. God’s the Master of D/s. So how’s married life?” He moved on, oh so confident. ~ Lucian Bane,
1417:No one had ever looked at me before Suzanne, not really, so she became my definition. Her gaze softening my centre so easily that even photographs of her seemed aimed at me, ignited with private meaning. ~ Emma Cline,
1418:Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution. ~ Barbara Deming,
1419:Peace is not the product of a victory or a command. It has no finishing line, no final deadline, no fixed definition of achievement. Peace is a never-ending process, the work of many decisions. ~ Oscar Hammerstein II,
1420:The closed language does not demonstrate and explain it communicates decision, dictum, command. Where it defines, the definition becomes "separation of good from evil;" it establishes unquestionable ~ Herbert Marcuse,
1421:The heart of our karate is real fighting.There can be no proof without real fighting. Without proof there is no trust. Without trust there is no respect. This is a definition in the world of martial arts. ~ Mas Oyama,
1422:To me, a leader is a visionary that energizes others. This definition of leadership has two key dimensions: a) creating the vision of the future, and b) inspiring others to make the vision a reality. ~ Vince Lombardi,
1423:Be pragmatic, then. If you’re not happy with the way your writing has gone, you might give my method a try. If you do, I think you might easily find a new definition for Work. And the word is LOVE. 1973 ~ Ray Bradbury,
1424:Beware of your definition of success: If it has more to do with what other people think of you than it does with what you know of your own abilities, you may be confusing applause with achievement. ~ Joan D Chittister,
1425:People often say to me, "How come you don't want to be CEO of a company?" And I tell them, "I don't want to." I know I can do it, but I don't enjoy it. Why does that have to be the definition of success? ~ Charlene Li,
1426:-That ain't right, Miss Maudie. You're the best lady I know.-
Miss Maudie grinned. "thank you ma'am. Thing is, foot-washers think women are a sin by definition. They take the bible literally, you know. ~ Harper Lee,
1427:We all know the definition of shattered: to break into pieces; to weaken, destroy; to damage, as by breaking or crushing.
But my story isn't about being shattered.
It's about surviving the pieces. ~ Nashoda Rose,
1428:As soon as I saw him again I could forget all this existed; I would be calm. Was that a definition of love: a force that can drug you with calm and help you forget all the sandpaper realities of the world? ~ Alix Ohlin,
1429:His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman. Scupper ~ Delia Owens,
1430:I feel like the only reason we’re able to find some of these unique ideas, characters, and story twists is through discovery. And, by definition, ‘discovery’ means you don’t know the answer when you start. ~ Ed Catmull,
1431:It reminded him of that definition of his father's. A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind. The mind was the first and final battleground; the stuff in between was just noise. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold,
1432:My definition of art is whatever an artist calls art. Us speaking could be an artwork, us sitting in the near-dark in your kitchen beside the dirty dishes and smoking, me thinking of what to say next. ~ Matthew Brannon,
1433:Oh, Lord—responsibility. That word
worked on me until I worked on it, until I looked at it carefully and broke it down into the two
words that make its true definition: the ability to respond. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
1434:Ray Bradbury’s definition of a book is at the end, when he points out that we should not judge our books by their covers, and that some books exist between covers that are perfectly people-shaped.) —Neil ~ Ray Bradbury,
1435:Thwart," I said. "To prevent someone from accomplishing something by means of visiting gratuitous violence upon his smarmy person." "I'm pretty sure that isn't the definition." Sarissa said. "It is today. ~ Jim Butcher,
1436:You know the definition of the perfectly designed machine.... The perfectly designed machine is one in which all its working parts wear out simultaneously. I am that machine. ~ Frederick Lindemann 1st Viscount Cherwell,
1437:99 per cent of your life recognises things without definition, a baby recognises its mother's face without having it defined. It's just an arbitrary rule this rule of definition that Socrates set down. ~ Robert M Pirsig,
1438:Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity, if only because banalities are by definition accurate. ~ Perry Anderson,
1439:My definition of survivor encompasses people going through difficult times and also the friends and family who stand beside them. In the cancer community, they’re called cosurvivors or secondary patients. ~ Ben Sherwood,
1440:My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
1441:One definition of the wicked is that they will resort to whatever means are necessary to achieve their ends. Therefore, if those who oppose wickedness don't learn the art of war, they will be helpless. ~ George Friedman,
1442:The food crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in the hopes of adding five years onto the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity. ~ George Orwell,
1443:We simply weren’t constructed to live only for ourselves. We were placed on earth to be part of something bigger than the narrow borders of our own survival and our own little definition of happiness. ~ Paul David Tripp,
1444:For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. ~ Audre Lorde,
1445:I mean, the first “Back to the Future” is kind of a perfect script, I think. In terms of handling time travel the best, it depends on your definition. To me, that means it effectively uses it in the story. ~ Rian Johnson,
1446:Many now veer away from the time-honored use of the term Father as applied to the Christian God ... This difficulty rests mainly, I believe, on failure to distinguish between a symbol and a definition. ~ Georgia Harkness,
1447:My definition of a 'friend' is, coming from Chicago, someone who says, 'Yeah, sure. You know what? Let's talk about what we can talk about. Let's help each other out. Your politics are none of my business.' ~ David Mamet,
1448:No-one had ever looked at me before Suzanne, not really, so she had become my definition. Her gaze softening my centre so easily that even photographs of her seemed aimed at me, ignited with private meaning. ~ Emma Cline,
1449:So if I asked you for your definition of success, what would it be? Would it only be worldly things, carnal things, and things that will one day pass away? Maybe that’s why so many people quit along the way. ~ Paul Tsika,
1450:Some of these persistent people suffer from delusions, the very definition of which explains why they don’t let go: a false belief that cannot be shaken even in the face of compelling contrary evidence. ~ Gavin de Becker,
1451:Somewhere along the line people reduce themselves to numbers in a ledger, and at that point you’re truly damned. It’s a rather concise definition of power – when you no longer need to look at the names. ~ Daniel Polansky,
1452:I don’t hoard, exactly, but I get it. It’s a response to our need and desire for purpose, order, definition, and a fortress. It’s a calling that requires constant management, control, and obsessive attention. ~ Marc Maron,
1453:I'm sometimes called a 'documentary photographer' but... a man operating under that definition could take a sly pleasure in the disguise. Very often I'm doing one thing when I'm thought to be doing another. ~ Walker Evans,
1454:My definition of art has always been the same. It is about freedom of expression. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate [the two] is itself a very political intention. ~ Ai Weiwei,
1455:My own definition of a feminist is a man or a woman who says, ‘Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better.’ All of us, women and men, must do better. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
1456:Now, a corpse, poor thing, is an untouchable and the process of decay is, of all pieces of bad manners, the vulgarest imaginable. For a corpse is, by definition, a person absolutely devoid of savoir vivre. ~ Aldous Huxley,
1457:Senator John McCain called Charlottesville “a confrontation between our better angels and our worst demons. White supremacists and neo-Nazis are, by definition, opposed to American patriotism and the ideals ~ Bob Woodward,
1458:The question is not whether two people who love each other should be given state sanction – even the left recognizes that such a definition is too broad, given that it would include incestuous relationships. ~ Ben Shapiro,
1459:For thousands of years, most marriages were in Stage I--survival-focused. After World War II, marriages increasingly flirted with Stage II--a self-fulfillment focus... Love's definition is in a transition. ~ Warren Farrell,
1460:It is not the government's purpose to make a profit the way a company does, because a company doesn't have to give a damn about the unemployed poor or provide services that are non-commercial by definition. ~ Jean Chretien,
1461:It seems to us that in its most basic definition, existential despair is the painful discrepancy between what is and what should be, between one's perceptions ans one's third-order premises. ~ Paul Watzlawick,
1462:Not one of all the purple host Who took the flag to-day Can tell the definition So clear of victory, As he, defeated, dying, On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Break agonized and clear. ~ Emily Dickinson,
1463:Now let us agree on a simple and down-to-earth definition of “debt”: a debt is a claim on future wealth. Now, all wealth is the fruit of human labor. A debt, therefore, is a claim on future human labor. ~ Piero San Giorgio,
1464:The chair wasn’t helping. You were supposed to stay awake, yet they put you in a nice recliner for the duration. Sam couldn’t decide if it fit the definition of irony, but he doubted it was far off. Thinking ~ Randall Wood,
1465:The essence of man is imperfection. Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. If we learn to embrace that new definition of failure, then we are free to start moving ahead - and failing forward. ~ Norman Cousins,
1466:When you dance, you measure distance as if it’s a solid thing; you make precise judgments every time two bodies exist in relation to each other. So I knew right away the definition of the space between us. ~ David Levithan,
1467:Every sane person has to find every day some manner of accommodating the impossible, some way of covering up for the failures of the rational world. This might actually be a reasonable definition of sanity. ~ Robert Boswell,
1468:He who is greatest among you shall be a servant. That's the new definition of greatness. ... By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. ~ Martin Luther King Jr,
1469:If the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then passion is a form of mental retardation- deliberately blunting our most critical cognitive functions. ~ Ryan Holiday,
1470:If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened. ~ George S Patton,
1471:I love Val. I love my job and my New York. I have no doubts that they were the right choices for me. And at the same time, I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss. ~ Amor Towles,
1472:I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write. ~ Chinua Achebe,
1473:My characters have nothing. I'm working with impotence, ignorance... that whole zone of being that has always been set aside by artists as something unusable - something by definition incompatible with art. ~ Samuel Beckett,
1474:My definition of fake news is a content-like object that is a story, an article, a video, a tweet that has been fabricated, completely invented out of thin air, intentionally for the purpose of misleading. ~ Vivian Schiller,
1475:Susannah realized, with dawning bitterness, that she could now give the perfect definition of a ka-mai: one who has been given hope but no choices. Like giving a motorcycle to a blindman, she thought. Richard ~ Stephen King,
1476:The whole way to Tijuana, I’d wanted to fuck her, to see what was different, to touch this definition at the center and unearth its meaning. To dig through our separateness and feel what it meant to own someone. ~ C D Reiss,
1477:We simply weren’t constructed to live only for ourselves. We were placed on earth to be part of something bigger than the narrow borders of our own survival and our own little definition of happiness. The ~ Paul David Tripp,
1478:A loose definition of the Tea Party might be fifteen million pissed-off white people sent chasing after Mexicans on Medicaid by the small handful of banks and investment companies who advertise on Fox and CNBC. ~ Matt Taibbi,
1479:In terms of an identity, an identity reflects an individuality, by definition. And, if there is a quality present, it is recognizable and it can be named. If you can't name it, it means you don't recognize it. ~ Robert Fripp,
1480:it’s okay to go slow. That everybody else’s pace and definition of success isn’t mine. What is easy for other people isn’t necessarily so for me. Though some things are easy for me and hard for other people. ~ Heidi Cullinan,
1481:Marco lives in a fantasy world, one that’s more interesting and more fun than reality. That’s the definition of being insane, surely?” said my son, Raul

“I suppose so,” I said. “It’s like Don Quixote. ~ Javier Cercas,
1482:Some people say: "There is no God; because, if there was a God, God would stop all the suffering." Nonsense! God is oblivious to suffering. God is beyond suffering. That's what makes God, God, by definition. ~ Frederick Lenz,
1483:The moral tragedy that has befallen Americans is our belief that it is okay for government to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another—that in my book is a working definition of slavery. ~ Walter E Williams,
1484:The opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression.”6 When we’re depressed, according to the clinical definition, we suffer from two things: a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity. ~ Jane McGonigal,
1485:We’re doing all of these things because we live in a world that has dropped a metric ton of pressure on us to be beautiful and made the definition of that beauty incredibly narrow and impressively unreachable. ~ Luvvie Ajayi,
1486:We’ve scaled Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, reaching self-actualization. We build behaviors and personality into products, testing prototypes on users, while broadening our definition of validated design solutions. ~ Anonymous,
1487:But when you have to deal with notes, and to be able to make a full definition of what a sound is - if you are not around that environment, then you'll find you lose that feel, that momentum, you lose all that. ~ Dennis Brown,
1488:I don't think there's any one definition, but to do effective political work you have to have vision and practicality, and learn how to persuade people that what you feel needs to be done does need to be done. ~ Alan Cranston,
1489:I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker - yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday. ~ Jane Goodall,
1490:The Liberals may blather about protecting cultural minorities, but the fact is that undermining the traditional definition of marriage is an assault on multiculturalism and the practices in those communities. ~ Stephen Harper,
1491:Vigorous enforcement of copyrights themselves is an important part of the picture. But I don't think that expanding the legal definition of copyright outside of actual copyright infringement is the right move. ~ Edward Felten,
1492:I can't recall any difficulty in making the C language definition completely open - any discussion on the matter tended to mention languages whose inventors tried to keep tight control, and consequent ill fate ~ Dennis Ritchie,
1493:If The Beatles represent the most successful version you can be of a thing, then by that definition The Rolling Stones are The Beatles of music, not counting The Beatles. John Lennon is The Beatles of The Beatles. ~ Dana Gould,
1494:I have finally accepted that there are consequences to every action. I earned them and they are rightfully mine. There is no time to make bad decisions. Every step is precious. The definition of living is mine. ~ Tarryn Fisher,
1495:the following criteria are pertinent to a definition of insight: 1. Experience. A problem situation in which the crucial ex- perience must be acquired with the solution probably provides most favorable controls for ~ Anonymous,
1496:These numbers gave Virginia’s population about six times as large a proportion of gentlemen as England had. Gentlemen, by definition, had no manual skill, nor could they be expected to work at ordinary labor. ~ Edmund S Morgan,
1497:Values act as our compass to put us back on course every single day, so that day after day, we’re moving in the direction that takes us closer and closer to our definition of the “best” life we could possibly live. ~ S J Scott,
1498:What the pragmatist has his pragmatism for is to be able to say, Here is a definition and it does not differ at all from your confusedly apprehended conception because there is no practical difference. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce,
1499:Anything that grows is, by definition, alive. Washington, D.C. was no exception. As a living organism, the Federal Government’s number one job was self-preservation. Any threat to its existence had to be dealt with. ~ Brad Thor,
1500:Definition of bestie: person who loves nothing more than to watch you make a complete fool of yourself and then remind you of it at every opportunity for the rest of your life what a fool you made of yourself. ~ Kay Springsteen,

IN CHAPTERS [300/353]



   89 Integral Yoga
   52 Christianity
   48 Occultism
   39 Philosophy
   27 Psychology
   18 Yoga
   14 Science
   7 Poetry
   5 Integral Theory
   4 Fiction
   2 Hinduism
   2 Cybernetics
   2 Buddhism
   1 Theosophy
   1 Thelema
   1 Mysticism
   1 Education
   1 Baha i Faith
   1 Alchemy


   62 Sri Aurobindo
   38 The Mother
   29 Carl Jung
   23 Aleister Crowley
   21 Satprem
   21 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   20 Plotinus
   19 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   11 Saint Augustine of Hippo
   10 Swami Krishnananda
   8 Swami Vivekananda
   6 Aristotle
   6 A B Purani
   5 Plato
   5 Jorge Luis Borges
   4 Jordan Peterson
   4 George Van Vrekhem
   3 Patanjali
   3 H P Lovecraft
   3 Friedrich Nietzsche
   2 Saint John of Climacus
   2 R Buckminster Fuller
   2 Paul Richard
   2 Norbert Wiener
   2 Jean Gebser
   2 James George Frazer
   2 Baha u llah
   2 Aldous Huxley


   13 The Life Divine
   13 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   12 Liber ABA
   11 Magick Without Tears
   11 City of God
   10 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   10 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   8 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
   8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   7 The Future of Man
   7 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   7 Let Me Explain
   7 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   6 Poetics
   6 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   6 Aion
   6 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
   5 The Secret Doctrine
   5 The Phenomenon of Man
   5 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   5 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
   5 Letters On Yoga I
   5 Essays On The Gita
   4 The Problems of Philosophy
   4 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   4 Record of Yoga
   4 Questions And Answers 1953
   4 Preparing for the Miraculous
   4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
   4 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
   4 Maps of Meaning
   4 Essays Divine And Human
   4 Agenda Vol 08
   3 Twilight of the Idols
   3 The Practice of Psycho therapy
   3 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
   3 Questions And Answers 1956
   3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
   3 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
   3 Lovecraft - Poems
   3 Letters On Yoga IV
   3 Labyrinths
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   3 Bhakti-Yoga
   3 Agenda Vol 04
   2 The Perennial Philosophy
   2 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
   2 The Human Cycle
   2 The Golden Bough
   2 The Ever-Present Origin
   2 Talks
   2 Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking
   2 Raja-Yoga
   2 Questions And Answers 1954
   2 Prayers And Meditations
   2 On the Way to Supermanhood
   2 Notes On The Way
   2 Isha Upanishad
   2 Hymn of the Universe
   2 Cybernetics
   2 Agenda Vol 12
   2 Agenda Vol 09
   2 Agenda Vol 07


0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Those who, armed with the tools provided by the Qabalah, have made the journey within and crossed beyond the barriers of illusion, have returned with an impressive quantity of knowledge which conforms strictly to the definition of "science" in Winston's College Dictionary: "Science: a body of knowledge, general truths of particular facts, obtained and shown to be correct by accurate observation and thinking; knowledge condensed, arranged and systematized with reference to general truths and laws."
  Over and over their findings have been confirmed, proving the Qabalah contains within it not only the elements of the science itself but the method with which to pursue it.
  --
  All sorts of books have been written on the Qabalah, some poor, some few others extremely good. But I came to feel the need for what might be called a sort of Berlitz handbook, a concise but comprehensive introduction, studded with diagrams and tables of easily understood definitions and correspondences to simplify the student's grasp of so complicated and abstruse a subject.
  During a short retirement in North Devon in 1931, I began to amalgamate my notes. It was out of these that A Garden of Pomegranates gradually emerged. I unashamedly admit that my book contains many direct plagiarisms from Crowley, Waite, Eliphas Levi, and D. H. Lawrence. I had incorporated numerous fragments from their works into my notebooks without citing individual references to the various sources from which I condensed my notes.

0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
     A clear definition of the Heikle might have been
    obtained from Mr Oscar Eckenstein, 34 Greencroft

0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
  Holding within their definition, we define Universe as the aggregate of allhumanity's consciously apprehended and communicated, nonsimultaneous, and only partially overlapping experiences. An aggregate of finites is finite. Universe is a finite but nonsimultaneously conceptual scenario.
  The human brain is a physical mechanism for storing, retrieving, and re-storing again, each special-case experience. The experience is often a packaged concept.

0.01 - I - Sri Aurobindos personality, his outer retirement - outside contacts after 1910 - spiritual personalities- Vibhutis and Avatars - transformtion of human personality, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo has explained the mystery of personality in some of his writings. Ordinarily by personality we mean something which can be described as "a pattern of being marked out by a settled combination of fixed qualities, a determined character.... In one view personality is regarded as a fixed structure of recognisable qualities expressing a power of being"; another idea regards "personality as a flux of self-expressive or sensitive and responsive being.... But flux of nature and fixity of nature" which some call character "are two aspects of being neither of which, nor indeed both together, can be a definition of personality.... But besides this flux and this fixity there is also a third and occult element, the Person behind of whom the personality is a self-expression; the Person puts forward the personality as his role, character, persona, in the present act of his long drama of manifested existence. But the Person is larger than his personality, and it may happen that this inner largeness overflows into the surface formation; the result is a self-expression of being which can no longer be described by fixed qualities, normalities of mood, exact lineaments, or marked out by structural limits."[4]
   The gospel of the Supermind which Sri Aurobindo brought to man envisages a new level of consciousness beyond Mind. When this level is attained it imposes a complete and radical reintegration of the human personality. Sri Aurobindo was not merely the exponent but the embodiment of the new, dynamic truth of the Supermind. While exploring and sounding the tremendous possibilities of human personality in his intense spiritual Sadhana, he has shown us that practically there are no limits to its expansion and ascent. It can reach in its growth what appears to man at present as a 'divine' status. It goes without saying that this attainment is not an easy task; there are conditions to be fulfilled for the transformation from the human to the divine.

01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We have been speaking of philosophy and the philosophic manner. But what are the exact implications of the words, let us ask again. They mean nothing more and nothing lessthan the force of thought and the mass of thought content. After all, that seems to be almost the whole difference between the past and the present human consciousness in so far at least as it has found expression in poetry. That element, we wish to point out, is precisely what the old-world poets lacked or did not care to possess or express or stress. A poet meant above all, if not all in all, emotion, passion, sensuousness, sensibility, nervous enthusiasm and imagination and fancy: remember the classic definition given by Shakespeare of the poet
   Of imagination all compact.. . .

01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   This is what I was trying to make out as the distinguishing trait of the real spiritual consciousness that seems to be developing in the poetic creation of tomorrow, e.g., it has the same rationality, clarity, concreteness of perception as the scientific spirit has in its own domain and still it is rounded off with a halo of magic and miracle. That is the nature of the logic of the infinite proper to the spiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a Science of Matter. This is the Thought element or what corresponds to it, of which I was speaking, the philosophical factor, that which gives form to the formless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity to that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness means such a thing, the presentation of a divine name and form. And this distinguishes it from the mystic consciousness which is not the supreme solar consciousness but the nearest approach to it. Or, perhaps, the mystic dwells in the domain of the Divine, he may even be suffused with a sense of unity but would not like to acquire the Divine's nature and function. Normally and generally he embodies all the aspiration and yearning moved by intimations and suggestions belonging to the human mentality, the divine urge retaining still the human flavour. We can say also, using a Vedantic terminology, that the mystic consciousness gives us the tatastha lakshana, the nearest approximative attribute of the attri buteless; or otherwise, it is the hiranyagarbha consciousness which englobes the multiple play, the coruscated possibilities of the Reality: while the spiritual proper may be considered as prajghana, the solid mass, the essential lineaments of revelatory knowledge, the typal "wave-particles" of the Reality. In the former there is a play of imagination, even of fancy, a decorative aesthesis, while in the latter it is vision pure and simple. If the spiritual poetry is solar in its nature, we can say, by extending the analogy, that mystic poetry is characteristically lunarMoon representing the delight and the magic that Mind and mental imagination, suffused, no doubt, with a light or a reflection of some light from beyond, is capable of (the Upanishad speaks of the Moon being born of the Mind).
   To sum up and recapitulate. The evolution of the poetic expression in man has ever been an attempt at a return and a progressive approach to the spiritual source of poetic inspiration, which was also the original, though somewhat veiled, source from the very beginning. The movement has followed devious waysstrongly negative at timeseven like man's life and consciousness in general of which it is an organic member; but the ultimate end and drift seems to have been always that ideal and principle even when fallen on evil days and evil tongues. The poet's ideal in the dawn of the world was, as the Vedic Rishi sang, to raise things of beauty in heaven by his poetic power,kavi kavitv divi rpam sajat. Even a Satanic poet, the inaugurator, in a way, of modernism and modernistic consciousness, Charles Baudelaire, thus admonishes his spirit:

01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   So instead of the rational principle, the new age wants the principle of Nature or Life. Even as regards knowledge Reason is not the only, nor the best instrument. For animals have properly no reason; the nature-principle of knowledge in the animal is Instinct the faculty that acts so faultlessly, so marvellously where Reason can only pause and be perplexed. This is not to say that man is to or can go back to this primitive and animal function; but certainly he can replace it by something akin which is as natural and yet purified and self-consciousillumined instinct, we may say or Intuition, as Bergson terms it. And Nietzsche's definition of the Superman has also a similar orientation and significance; for, according to him, the Superman is man who has outgrown his Reason, who is not bound by the standards and the conventions determined by Reason for a special purpose. The Superman is one who has gone beyond "good and evil," who has shaken off from his nature and character elements that are "human, all too human"who is the embodiment of life-force in its absolute purity and strength and freedom.
   This then is the mantra of the new ageLife with Intuition as its guide and not Reason and mechanical efficiency, not Man but Superman. The right mantra has been found, the principle itself is irreproachable. But the interpretation, the application, does not seem to have been always happy. For, Nietzsche's conception of the Superman is full of obvious lacunae. If we have so long been adoring the intellectual man, Nietzsche asks us, on the other hand, to deify the vital man. According to him the superman is he who has (1) the supreme sense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who lives dangerously. All this means an Asura, that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over his animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify them but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily mean, annihilation but it does mean sublimation and transformation. So if you have to transcend man, you have to transcend egoism also. For a conscious egoism is the very characteristic of man and by increasing your sense of egoism you do not supersede man but simply aggrandise your humanity, fashion it on a larger, a titanic scale. And then the will to power is not the only will that requires fulfilment, there is also the will to knowledge and the will to love. In man these three fundamental constitutive elements coexist, although they do it, more often than not, at the expense of each other and in a state of continual disharmony. The superman, if he is to be the man "who has surmounted himself", must embody a poise of being in which all the three find a fusion and harmonya perfect synthesis. Again, to live dangerously may be heroic, but it is not divine. To live dangerously means to have eternal opponents, that is to say, to live ever on the same level with the forces you want to dominate. To have the sense that one has to fight and control means that one is not as yet the sovereign lord, for one has to strive and strain and attain. The supreme lord is he who is perfectly equanimous with himself and with the world. He has not to batter things into a shape in order to create. He creates means, he manifests. He wills and he achieves"God said 'let there be light' and there was light."
  --
   And the faculty of Intuition said to be the characteristic of the New Man does not mean all that it should, if we confine ourselves to Bergson's definition of it. Bergson says that Intuition is a sort of sympathy, a community of feeling or sensibility with the urge of the life-reality. The difference between the sympathy of Instinct and the sympathy of Intuition being that while the former is an unconscious or semi-conscious power, the latter is illumined and self-conscious. Now this view emphasises only the feeling-tone of Intuition, the vital sensibility that attends the direct communion with the life movement. But Intuition is not only purified feeling and sensibility, it is also purified vision and knowledge. It unites us not only with the movement of life, but also opens out to our sight the Truths, the fundamental realities behind that movement. Bergson does not, of course, point to any existence behind the continuous flux of life-power the elan vital. He seems to deny any static truth or truths to be seen and seized in any scheme of knowledge. To him the dynamic flow the Heraclitian panta reei is the ultimate reality. It is precisely to this view of things that Bergson owes his conception of Intuition. Since existence is a continuum of Mind-Energy, the only way to know it is to be in harmony or unison with it, to move along its current. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting of things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the question is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth?
   Matter forms the lowest level of reality. Above it is the elan vital. Above the elan vital there is yet the domain of the Spirit. And the Spirit is a static substance and at the same a dynamic creative power. It is Being (Sat) that realises or expresses itself through certain typal nuclei or nodi of consciousness (chit) in a continuous becoming, in a flow of creative activity (ananda). The dynamism of the vital energy is only a refraction or precipitation of the dynamism of the spirit; and so also static matter is only the substance of the spirit concretised and solidified. It is in an uplift both of matter and vital force to their prototypesswarupa and swabhavain the Spirit that lies the real transformation and transfiguration of the humanity of man.

01.07 - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In his inquiry into truth and certitude Pascal takes his stand upon what he calls the geometrical method, the only valid method, according to him, in the sphere of reason. The characteristic of this method is that it takes for granted certain fundamental principles and realitiescalled axioms and postulates or definitionsand proceeds to other truths that are infallibly and inevitably deduced from them, that are inherent and implied in them. There is no use or necessity in trying to demonstrate these fundamentals also; that will only land us into confusion and muddle. They have to be simply accepted, they do not require demonstration, it is they that demonstrate others. Such, for instance, are space, time, number, the reality of which it is foolishness and pedantry to I seek to prove. There is then an order of truths that do not i require to be proved. We are referring only to the order of I physical truths. But there is another order, Pascal says, equally I valid and veritable, the order of the Spirit. Here we have another set of fundamentals that have to be accepted and taken for granted, matrix of other truths and realities. It can also be called the order of the Heart. Reason posits physical fundamentals; it does not know of the fundamentals of the Heart which are beyond its reach; such are God, Soul, Immortality which are evident only to Faith.
   But Faith and Reason, according to Pascal, are not contraries nor irreconcilables. Because the things of faith are beyond reason, it is not that they are irrational. Here is what Pascal says about the function and limitation of reason:

0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  This is one way of putting it. Mental definitions are never more
  than approximations, ways of speaking.

0 1963-06-08, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It had nothing to do with either Knowledge or Light or understanding (the whole angle of light and intellectual knowledge); nothing to do with Love (which I had felt last time and which has its own particular vibration). The best definition we could give is Power. It was Power in its most formidable aspectcrushing. With REAL All-Powerfulness; Power in its all-powerfulness, with that something unshakable, immutable, untouchable.2 Yes, really Power, thats right.
   But Power, you understand For example, a hurricanes power is nothing in comparison. All the powers a human being can withstand, even probably imagine, are nothingnothing its (Mother blows in the air) like soap bubbles.

0 1963-07-27, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   What the supramental will do the mind cannot foresee or lay down. The mind is ignorance seeking for the Truth, the supramental by its very definition is the Truth-Consciousness, Truth in possession of itself and fulfilling itself by its own power. In a supramental world imperfection and disharmony are bound to disappear. But what we propose just now is not to make the earth a supramental world but to bring down the supramental as a power and established consciousness in the midst of the restto let it work there and fulfill itself as Mind descended into Life and Matter and has worked as a Power there to fulfill itself in the midst of the rest. This will be enough to change the world and to change Nature by breaking down her present limits. But what, how, by what degrees it will do it, is a thing that ought not to be said nowwhen the Light is there, the Light will itself do its workwhen the supramental Will stands on earth, that Will will decide. It will establish a perfection, a harmony, a Truth-creation for the rest, well, it will be the rest that is all.
   (XXII.13)

0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The Help is ever present, in the sense that you unquestionably feel that the Force acts (the Force, that is, the supreme Consciousness and supreme Knowledge), the Force acts with a sort of pressure on all people and all circumstances, in a favorable direction so that what happens may truly be the bestand the best hierarchically; in other words, the highest and purest (you know my definition of pure) is a sort of center in relation to which things get organized; they get organized hierarchically, each with its right to progress, but as if to favor whats closest to and most expressive of the Divine that is going on constantly, I see hundreds of examples of it all the time. Yet, from the point of view of outer circumstances, there is such a tension that you feel you are close to catastrophe.
   Sri Aurobindo told me that there are three difficulties, and they are the three things that have to be conquered for the earth to be ready (this is from the purely outward point of view, I am not speaking of psychological factors): government, money, health.

0 1965-07-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I called it, A few definitions.
   The first one was about someone going away who wanted to take something [blessed by Mother] for his family. I told him, Oh, they arent receptive. So he asked, What does being receptive mean? (He didnt ask me, but when he left the room he was scratching his head and he asked his friend, What does Mother mean? What does being receptive mean?) I answered in English and it took many, many forms, and today, its one of the things that came in that vein. And whats peculiar in this sort of experience is that when it comes, the words take on a very precise meaning; I am not at all sure if its their usual meaning, but they have the vibration of their meaning, a sort of crystalline little vibration. And it comes without alteration. I put:
  --
   Then a third definition came:
   To be sincere is to unify ones entire being around the supreme inner Will.

0 1966-06-29, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   So, lets note down your definition for the child.
   No, your definition first, thats the first stage! Then the second stage, the human.
   (Mother laughs and writes:)

0 1966-12-24, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   They want a mental definition of the Truth.
   Truth cannot be expressed in the minds terms. Thats the point. And all the questions they ask are mental ones.

0 1967-06-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I am intentionally not giving any definition. Because my lifelong feeling has been that its a mere word, and a word behind which people put a lot of very undesirable things. Its that idea of a god who claims to be the one and only, as they say: God is the one and only. But they feel it and say it in the way Anatole France put it (I think it was in The Revolt of Angels): this God who wants to be the one and only and ALL ALONE. That was what had made me a complete atheist, if I may say so, in my childhood; I refused to accept a being, WHOEVER HE WAS, who proclaimed himself to be the one and only and almighty. Even if he were indeed the one and only and almighty (laughing), he should have no right to proclaim it! Thats how it was in my mind. I could make an hour-long speech on this, to show how in every religion they tackled the problem.
   In any case, I have given what I find is the most objective definition. And as in the other days What is the Divine?, I have tried to give a feeling of the Thing; here I wanted to fight against the use of the word which, to me, is hollow, but dangerously so.
   I remember a very powerful line in Savitri which says it all wonderfully in one sentence. He says, The bodiless Namelessness that saw God BORN.2

0 1967-06-14, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Oh, for those who like definitions, heres another answer to What is the Divine?a smiling and luminous Immensity.
   And THERE, you know, its there. THERE.

0 1967-07-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   In fact, the best definition would be pale orange, or salmon pink.
   Mother had said several times that she "was" Sri Aurobindo's feet (see in particular Agenda VI, March 10, 1965).

0 1967-08-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Do you know, I sat down, when it was nearly time, maybe half a minute before, and instantly, without warning like that, like a staggering blow: such a powerful descent (I was completely immobilised) of something. At the same time, it was as if Sri Aurobindo was telling me (because the definition came along with the thingit was a vision which wasnt a vision, which was absolutely concrete), and the word was: golden peace. But so strong! And it didnt budge at all. For the entire half-hour it didnt budge. Never before Its something new, I had never felt that before. I cant say. It was perceived, but not like an objective vision. And other people spontaneously told me that as soon as they sat down for the meditation (gesture of a massive descent), something came with a tremendous power and immobilised everything, with a sense of peace as they had never felt before in their life.
   Golden peace

0 1968-03-13, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Yes, they will find the same thing that mystics and monks and everyone have found thats the power. The power is what you find. And to That, essentially, you cannot give any name or definition.
   Its the big quarrel now about Auroville: in the Charter I put Divine Consciousness [To live in Auroville one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness], but they say, It brings God to mind. I said (laughing), Not to my mind! So then, some change it to the highest consciousness, others put something else. With the Russians I agreed to put perfect Consciousness, but thats an approximation. And Thatwhich we cant name or defineis what is the supreme Power. What you find is the supreme Power. And the supreme Power is only one aspect: the aspect concerned with the creation.

0 1968-05-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Sri Aurobindos definition of purity is being exclusively under the influence of the Divine. So naturally, the Divine is exclusively under his own influence (!), and thats purity!
   Any news regarding P.L.?

0 1969-12-17, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Then (Mother takes other notes) I am continuing the answers to the Aphorisms, and yesterday (those Aphorisms of Sri Aurobindo are extremely interesting, I had forgotten), yesterday T. asked me a question (because in those Aphorisms, Sri Aurobindo speaks of courage and love, meanness and selfishness, nobleness and generosity1), so she asked me, Could you give me the definition of these words? At first, I thought it wouldnt come, but all of a sudden it came. So I noted it down, its interesting.
   (Mother reads)
  --
   I repeat, its not at all on this plane (gesture below), because it was the exact definition of divine Love as it acts.
   Then the two dark things:

0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Now, you have completely confused the psychic and the spiritual. The psychic, the soul, the Fire within, Agni, does not belong to the mental bubble or to any bubble: it is the Divine in matter. It is that little Fire which opens the door to the great solar Fire of the New Consciousness. It is the instrument of the yoga of the superman (when I speak of turning on the psychic switch, I am there taking the word in the vulgar and ridiculous sense of people seeking visionary and occult experiencesnot in the true sense). Others in every age have had the experience of the psychic, of the inner Fire, but aside from the Rishis, no one used it to transform matter; the religions have made a purely devotional and mystical thing out of it. As for the spiritual, that includes all the planes of consciousness above the ordinary mind. It is the path of ascent. And that is where I repeatedly and emphatically, and from experience, say that those great Experiences, which have to be turned into spiritual summits, are part of the mental bubble (including the overmind): they are the rarefied summits on which the being thins out into a marvelous whiteness, immense, royal, without a ripple of trouble, in an eternal peacewhich can last for millenniums without its changing the world one iota, by definition. But the spiritual is not the supramental, and when one touches the supramental, it seems to be almost a whole other Spirit, it is so compact, warm, powerful, present, embodied and radiantly solid in broad daylight. That is the Radiance which Sri Aurobindo and Mother came to bring down on earththey said over and over that their yoga was new, new, newand it is through the simple little fire inside us that we can enter into direct contact with That, without sitting in the lotus position or leaving life. When one touches That, the spiritual heights seem pale. That is all I have to say. So we do not at all need to be superyogis to have this contact, and those who have found Nirvana, or what have you, have not advanced one inch toward That, because the clue to That is not up there at all or outside, but in your own small capacity of flame.
   So if instead of splitting hairs, you set out boldly on the road, afire, you would perhaps discover that we are indeed at the Hour of God and that a single spark of sincere effort, at ones own level, opens doors which have been closed for millenniums.

0 1971-07-14, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Nothing seems able to disturb the immobility of things and all that is active outside our own selves is a sort of welter of dark and sombre confusion from which nothing formed or luminous can emerge. It is a singular condition of the world, the very definition of chaos with the superficial form of the old world resting apparently intact on the surface. But a chaos of long disintegration or of some early new birth? It is the thing that is being fought out from day to day, but as yet without any approach to a decision.
   Sri Aurobindo

04.03 - The Eternal East and West, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   This view finds its justification because of a particular outlook on spirituality and non-spirituality. If the Spirit and things spiritual are taken to mean something transcending and rejecting the world and the things of the world, something exclusive of life and its fulfilment here on earth, if on the other hand, the world and its life are given only their face value emptying them of their deeper and transcendent contentsin the manner of the great Laplace who could find no place for God in his map of the world which seemed to be quite complete in itself, if this trenchant division is made in the very definition of the terms, in our primary axioms and postulates, then, of course, we cannot avoid a scission and an eternal struggle. If you consider the Spirit as only pure spirit, an absolute without any relation, as, an ever-fixed and static entity and if we view Matter as purely material and the law of mechanics as supreme and inviolable, then there cannot be a reconciliation or even a meeting between the two. There are some who have a great goodwill, who wish to avoid clash and quarrel and are for concord and harmony. They have tried the reconciliation, but failed. The two positions being fundamentally exclusive of each other can, at best, be juxtaposed, but not unified or fused together.
   And yet mankind has always sought for an integral, an all comprehending fulfilment, a truth and a realisation that would go round his entire existence. Man has always aspired, in the midst of the transience and imperfection that the world is, for something stable and perfect, in the heart of disharmony for some core of perfect harmony. He termed it God, Atman, Summum Bonum and he sought it sometimes, as he thought necessary, even at the cost of the world and the life, if it is to be found elsewhere. Man aspired also always to find this habitation of his made somewhat better. Dissatisfied with his present state, he sought to mould it, remake it, put into it something which his aspiration and inspiration called the True, the Beautiful, the Good. There was always this double aspiration in man, one of ascent and the other of descent, one vertical and the other horizontal, one leading up and beyondtotally beyond, in its extreme urge the other probing into the mystery locked up there below, releasing the power to reform or recreate the world, although he was not always sure whether it was a power of mind or of matter.

05.03 - Bypaths of Souls Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   There is also the other question asked very often whether men and women always follow different lines of growth or whether there may be intermixture of the lines. Although the soul is sexless, still it may be said that on the whole there are these two lines, masculine and feminine; and generally a soul follows the same line in its incarnations. The soul difference is not in the sex as we know it; but there is a disposition and character that mark the difference and each type, masculine or feminine, is that because of some special role to fulfil, a particular kind of work to be done in a particular way. The difference is difficult to define exactly; but one may say, in the language of the mystics, that it "is the difference between the left hand and the right hand. The mystics refer to the two sides of consciousness, that of light and that of force (chit-tapas), that is to say, knowledge and power. It is not that the two are quite separate entities, they are together and grow together; but in actuality one aspect is more in front than the other. The masculine aspect is often termed as the right hand and the feminine as the left hand of the conscious being. And in a general way man represents the knowledge aspect the conceptual dynamism and woman represents the executive dynamism. This definition however should not be taken absolutely or rigidly. So it can be said that a woman generally remains a woman in all her births and man like-wise remains a man. Here too, although there may not be a central metamorphosis, there may be a partial change: that is to say a part of a mantoo womanish, so to saymay enter a woman and live and fulfil itself or exhaust there; and the masculine part of a woman also can identify itself with its type and pattern in a man. The difference, however, between Purusha and Prakriti, philosophically, seems to be very definite and clear; but in actuality, when they take form and embodiment, it is not easy to define the principles or qualities that mark out the two. At the source when the difference starts, it is a matter of stress and temper and not any so-called division of labour as human mind ordinarily understands it.
   The soul in its inner consciousness knows all its evolutionary formations, remembers those of the past and foresees those of the future, when needed, and even determines them essentially. The mind ruling one incarnation cannot recall other incarnations, for it is a product of that incarnation and is meant to guide and control it; physical memory is a function of the brain in the particular body that the soul inhabits for the time. The soul carries a deeper reminiscence which is part and parcel of the self-consciousness inherent in its nature. The physical memory too can partake of this inner reminiscence if it is purified, illumined and organised around the soul as its instrument of expression. Indeed, although the journey of the soul essentially and originally is the flight of the spirit to the Spirit, yet the final consummation is towards an increasing integration of all the external instruments from the highest to the lowest, from the subtlest to the grossest into a harmonised organised whole, reflecting and embodying the Spirit in its purity and totality. The mind, the life and the body too attain a perfectly unified individuality that is the expression of the soul's truth-consciousness and escaping disruption and dissolution partake ultimately of the inherent immortality of the spiritual being.

05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In any case, at the end of all our peregrinations we seem to circle back to our original Cartesian-cum-Berkeleyean position; we discover that it is not easy to extricate the observed from the observer: the observer is so deep set in the observed, part and parcel of it that there are scientists who consider their whole scientific scheme of the world as only a mental set-up, we may replace it very soon by another scheme equally cogent, subjective all the same. The subject has entered into all objects and any definition of the object must necessarily depend upon the particular poise of the subject. That is the cosmic immanence of the Purusha spoken of in the Upanishads the one Purusha become many and installed in the heart of each and, every object. There is indeed a status of the Subject in which the subject and the object are gathered into or form one reality. The observer and the observed are the two ends, the polarisation of a single entity: and all are reals at that level. But the scientific observer is only the mental purusha and in his observation the absolute objectivisation is not possible. The Einsteinian equations that purport to rule out all local view-points can hardly be said to have transcended the co-ordinates of the subject. That is possible only to the consciousness of the cosmic Purusha.
   II

05.09 - The Changed Scientific Outlook, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   There is a scientific obscurantism, which is not less obscure because it is scientific, and one must guard against it with double care and watchfulness. It is the mentality of the no-changer whose motto seems to be: plus a change, plus a reste le mme.. Let me explain. The scientist who prefers still to be called a materialist must remember that the (material) ground under his feet has shifted considerably since the time he first propounded his materialistic position: he does not stand in the same place (or plane?) as he did even twenty years ago. The change has been basic and fundamentalfundamental, because the very definitions and postulates with which we once started have been called in question, thrown overboard or into the melting-pot.
   Shall we elucidate a little? We were once upon a time materialists, that is to say, we had very definite and fixed notions about Matter: to Matter we gave certain invariable characteristics, inalienable properties. How many of them stand today unscathed on their legs? Take the very first, the crucial property ascribed to Matter: "Matter is that which has extension." Well, an electric charge, a unit energy of it, the ultimate constituent of Matter as discovered by Science today, can it be said to occupy space? In the early days of Science, one Boscovich advanced a theory according to which the ultimate material particle (a molecule, in his time) does not occupy space, it is a mere mathematical point toward or from which certain forces act. The theory, naturally, was laughed out of consideration; but today we have come perilously near it. Again, another postulate describing Matter's dharma was: "two material particles cannot occupy the same place at the same time". Now what do you say of the neutron and proton that coalesce and form the unit of a modern atomic nucleus? Once more, the notion of the indestructibility of Matter has been considerably modified in view of the phenomenon of an electric particle (electron) being wholly transmuted ("dematerialised" as the scientists themselves say) into a light particle (photon). Lastly, the idea of the constancy of massa bed-rock of old-world physicsis considered today to be a superstition, an illusion. If after all these changes in the idea of Matter, a man still maintains that he is a materialist, as of old, well, I can only exclaim in the Shakespearean phrase: "Bottom, thou art translated"! What I want to say is that the changes that modern physics proposes to execute in its body are not mere amendments and emendations, but they mean a radical transfiguration, a subversion and a mutation. And more than the actual changes effected, the possibilities, the tendencies that have opened out, the lines along which further developments are proceeding do point not merely to a reformation, but a revolution.

05.15 - Sartrian Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   "Freedom is not abeing: it is thebeing of man, that is to say, his not-being". A very cryptic mantra. Let us try to unveil the Shekinah. "Being" means "being" i.e. existing, something persisting, continuing in the same condition, something fixed, a status. Freedom is not a thingof that kind, it is movement: even so, it is not a continuous movement. According to Bergson, the true, the ultimate reality is a continuity of urge (lan vital); according to Sartre, however, in line with the trend of modern scientific knowledge, the reality is an assemblage of discrete units of energy, packets or quanta. So freedom is an urge, a spurt (jaillissement):it acts in a disconnected fashion and it is absolute and unconditional. It is veritably the wind that bloweth where it listeth. It has no purpose, no direction, no relation: for all those attributes or definitions would annul its absoluteness. It does not stop or halt or dwell upon, it bursts forth and passes. It does not exist, that is stay: therefore it is non-being. Man's being then consist of a conglomeration (ensemble)of such freedoms. And that is the whole reality ofman, his very essence. We have said that a heavy sense of responsibility hangs upon the .free Purusha: but it appears the Sartrian Purusha is a divided personality. In spite of the sense of responsibility (or because of it?) he acts irresponsibly; for, acting otherwise would not be freedom. So then this essence, the self-consciousness, self-existence, presence in oneself is not a status, a fixed standing entity: it is not a point, even if geometrical; it is, Sartre describes, the jet from one point to another, for, real point there is none: so it is the emptiness behind all concrete realities that is the true reality, asat brahman, unyamto Sartre that is freedom, freedom absolute and ultimate.
   Practically this conception of freedom brings into high relief, makes almost all in all, only one aspect, one character or attri bute of freedom: the abolition of all ties and obligations and relations beyond oneself involving a hollow self-sufficiency. Naturally such an outlook requires against it a complementary one, even if it is not to correct and complete, at least to support and implement it. Sartre too cannot ignore the fact that the free being is not an isolated phenomenon in the world; it exists along with and in the company of others of the same nature and quality. Indeed human society is that in essence, an association of freedoms, although these movements of freedom are camouflaged in appearance and are not recognised by the free persons themselves. The interaction between the free persons, the reflection of oneself in others and the mutual dependence of egos is a constant theme in the novels and plays of Sartre.

05.23 - The Base of Sincerity, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   That is the definition of sincerity: to be transparent and single-pointed to your soul-consciousness, to your deity. And that also is the only way by which there can be realised in you, the highest and largest, the most intimate and absolute harmony you are capable of and that is demanded of you. The perfect organisation of the individual life can be obtained in and through the harmony inherent in the central reality, in the natural order of its activities. In the scheme or pattern laid out in the inmost consciousness, each element has its own orbit and its own quantum of energy, each force its allotted function: the will in each is exactly commensurable with what should be the expression in it of the total reality, each is the whole and rounded articulation of an aspect or figure put forth by the central truth in its self-display. As in a musical theme, each note has a definite pitch, amplitude, tone which give it its perfect form in order to constitute a common pattern the highest pitch, the largest amplitude or the most vibrant tone is not needed, not only not needed, would be a bar on the contraryeven so, the individual man when he attains perfection realises in himself a harmony which gives the true expression of all his limbs, the fullest and fairest expression of each and every one as demanded by the divine role destined for him.
   ***

05.32 - Yoga as Pragmatic Power, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   People ask about the practical value of Yoga, but do not always wait for an answer. For, according to some, Yoga means "introversion", escapismillusion, delusion, hallucination. And yet the truth of the matter is that Yoga is nothing but a downright practical affair, that its proof is in the very eating of it. To judge a Yogin you are to ask, as did Arjuna, a very prince of pragmatic men, how he sits, how he walks aboutkim sta vrajeta kim. Indeed the very definition of Yoga is that it is skill in works. To do works and not to run away from them has always been the true and natural ideal even (and particularly, as we shall see), for the spiritual man: the ideal is as old as the Upanishadic injunction, "Doing verily works in this world one should wish to live a hundred years." The Yogi as a world-shunner was not always the only ideal or the highest ideal. To do works, yes; but, with skill, it is pointed out, that is to say, in the way in which they can be most effectively done. Sri Krishna teaches Arjuna the skill and shows how to apply it in the crudest and the most terrible action, viz ., a bloody battle. But the skill that he demands, that is demanded of a Yogi, is not mere cleverness, craftiness or business policy including deceit, duplicity, sharpness; it means quite another spirit and faculty.
   The ordinary man does works, achieves the object he aims at, through processes and means which, however powerful and effective, can be only moderately and approximately so. The amount of time and energy wasted is not proportionate to the result obtained. Man knows to utilise only a fraction of the energy collected in a system: the best of dispositions and organisation can harness just a modicum of the total stock, the rest is frittered away or locked up, whether it is vital energy or mental energy or even physical energy. That is because the central power that drives, the consciousness that controls the whole mechanism is of an inferior quality, of a lower potential. The Yogi views all energy as various forms and gradations of consciousness. So what he proposes, as a good scientist, is to lift up the consciousness and thus raise its potential and effectivity and minimise the waste. The higher the consciousness, the greater the effectivity, that is to say, the pragmatic value. As we rise in the scale there is less and less waste and greater and greater utilisation until we reach a climax, a critical degree, where there is absolutely no waste and where there is the utmost, the total utilisation of the whole energy. This supreme peak of consciousness that is absolute energy Sri Aurobindo names the Supermind. But on lesser levels too the spiritual consciousness is dynamic and effectivepragmatic in a way that the ordinary, limited, externally pragmatic consciousness cannot hope to be.
  --
   The fundamental truth to be noted is that the Spirit is power, not merely consciousness: indeed the very definition of the spirit is that it is consciousness-energy. And it is this consciousness-energy that is at the source of all cosmic activities. Man's action too springs from this original source, although apparently it seems to be caused by other secondary and derivative energies. As a matter of fact what these energies that seem to be actually in play do is not the origination but rather the deviation and diversion, a diminution and adulteration of the supreme energy, a lowering of the quality, the tone and temper of the dynamism. In other words, as we have already said, a thought force, a vital force, a nervous or physical force, all these are only lower, even minima values, more or less distant and deformed echoes of a true and absolute Power behind and above them all. These forces become powerful in proportion as they are instruments and functions of that one mother energy. The truth is most beautifully illustrated in the story of Brahma a and the gods in the Kena Upanishad. The gods conquered and were proud of their conquest; each thought that it was due to his own personal prowess that he conquered. But they were utterly discomfited and shamed when the Divine Power appeared and proved to them that but for this Power they would not be able even to tackle a blade of grassFire would not burn it, Water would not drench it, Wind would not move it.
   The Life Divine, by Sri Aurobindo

07.08 - The Divine Truth Its Name and Form, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   What is the value of a word, after all? Have you not noticed that there are people who do not understand you, however clearly you speak to them. There are others again who understand you if you utter only two words. The external form the sound of a wordhas a meaning, if there is a force of thought behind; the greater the force of thought, the more powerful and precise and clear it is, and greater the chance of people receiving the force and understanding the word that carries the force. But if someone speaks without thinking, usually it is impossible to understand him; he would seem to you to make only a noise. You must have noticed also that people who have lived together and are habituated to each other's thought and talk, do not require any definition of the words they use or even a large use to understand each other. There has been a mental adjustment and the words are only an excuse for the inner contact, the contact between brain and brain which underlies or even precedes the words. But when you meet a new person, it takes you time to adapt and adjust yourself to understand the words he uses.
   It is the meaning, the thought behind the word that is important. When the thought is powerfully thought, it produces a vibration of which the word is only a carrier, an intermediary. Indeed, you can develop the thought-power to such an extent that you are able to establish a direct material contact with the minimum or even no words at all. Naturally this requires a strong power of concentration. But you will find that the bodily mechanism is only a mechanical means; it is an instrument, but not always important or indispensable.
  --
   You expect to see a divine form in each and all things? It may happen so. But I am not sure; I have the impression that there is a large part of imagination in such experiences. You may, for example, see the form of Krishna or Christ or Buddha in every being or thing. But I say that much of human conception enters into this perception. Otherwise what I was telling you just now would not be true. I said all who have the consciousness of the Divine, all who get the contact with the Divine, wherever one may be, to whatever age or country he may belong, all have the same essential experience. If it were not so, the Hindus would always see one of their gods, the Europeans one of theirs, the Japanese a third variety and so on. This may be an addition of each one's own mental formation, but it would not be the Reality in its essence or purity which is beyond all form. One can have a perception of the Divine Presence, a very concrete perception, one can have even a personal contact with the Divine, but it need not happen in and through the kind of form you imagine; it is something inexpressible, beyond all explanation or definition, it is evident only to one who has the experience. It may be as you are suddenly lifted up into a peculiar condition, you find yourself in the presence of the Divine which takes a form familiar to you, a form you have been accustomed to associate with the Divine, because of your education, your up-bringing and tradition. But, as I say, it is not the supreme essence of the experience: the form gives after all a limitation to the experience, takes away from it its universality and a large measure of its power.
   ***

08.14 - Poetry and Poetic Inspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   I do not mean, in other words, that such a view, the poetic view, necessarily prevents you from seeing the truth of things. It only describes the way of the poet's approach as poet. Indeed, if it were a choice between reading a book of good poetry and reading a book of metaphysics, personally I would prefer poetry, for that is less arid! My definition of poetry, I assure you, is not a condemnation, it is only a description, a statement of fact, namely, that poetry is the sensual or sensuous approach to truth. It is perhaps a somewhat paradoxical way of putting the thing: it is meant to strike the thought, to awaken it to the perception of a reality which is usually obscured by the habitual, traditional or "classical" way of thinking.
   If you mean by inspiration that the poet does not think when he writes a poem, that is to say, he has gone beyond all thought, has made his mind silent, silent and immobile, has opened himself to inner or higher regions and writes almost automatically, well, such a thing happens perhaps once a thousand years. It is not a common phenomenon. A Yogi has the power to do that. What you normally mean, however, by an inspired poet is something quite different. People who have some kind of genius, who have an opening into other and higher regions are called "inspired" ; persons who have made some discovery are also included in that category. Each time you are in relation with a thing belonging to a domain superior to the normal human consciousness, you are inspired. And when you are not totally bound to the very ordinary level you do receive "inspirations" from above. It is the same in the case of a poet. The source of his creation is elsewhere up above the ordinary mind; for that he need not possess an empty vacant mind.

100.00 - Synergy, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
  101.00 definition: Synergy
  120.00 Mass Interattraction●
  --
  shape. (Thus we arrive at the triangular definition of a structure.)
  100.302 A triangle is a microaltitude tetrahedron with its apex almost congruent
  --
  

101.00 definition: Synergy


  101.01 Synergy means behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior

1.001 - The Aim of Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  Knowing has been generally regarded as a process of understanding and accumulation of information, gathering intellectual or scientific definitive descriptions in respect of things. These days, this is what we call education. We gather definitions of things and try to understand the modes of their apparent functions in temporal life. This is what we call knowing, ordinarily speaking. I know that the sun is rising. This is a kind of knowledge. What do I mean by this knowledge? I have only a functional perception of a phenomenon that is taking place which I regard as the rise of the sun. This is not real knowledge. When I say, "I know that the sun is rising", I cannot say that I have a real knowledge of the sun, because, first of all, the sun is not rising it is a mistake of my senses. Secondly, the very idea of rising itself is a misconception in the mind. Unless I am static and immovable, I cannot know that something is moving. So when I say, "The sun is moving", I mean that I am not moving; it is understood there. But it is not true that I am not moving. I am also in a state of motion for other reasons which are not easily understandable. So it is not possible for a moving body to say that something else is moving. Nothing that is in a state of motion can say that something else is in motion. There is a relative motion of things, and so perception of the condition of any object ultimately would be impossible. This is a reason why scientific knowledge fails.
  All knowledge gathered through observations, whether through a microscope or telescope, in laboratories, etc., is ultimately invalid because it presupposes the static existence of the observer himself, the scientist's capacity to impartially observe and to unconditionally understand the conditions of what he observes very strange indeed, really. How does the scientist take for granted or imagine that he is an unconditioned observer and everything that he observes is conditioned? It is not true, because the observing scientist is as much conditioned by factors as the object that he observes. So, who is to observe the conditions of his own observing apparatus: his body, his senses the eyes, for example, and even the mind, which is connected to the body? Inasmuch as the observing scientist the observing individual, the knowing person is as much conditioned and limited as the object that is observed or seen, it is not possible to have ultimately valid knowledge in this world.
  --
  We are gradually led by this proclamation of the Veda into a tremendous vision of life which requires of us to have a superhuman power of will to grasp the interrelationship of things. This difficulty of grasping the meaning of the interrelationship of things is obviated systematically, stage by stage, gradually, by methods of practice. These methods are called yoga the practice of yoga. I have placed before you, perhaps, a very terrible picture of yoga; it is not as simple as one imagines. It is not a simple circus-master's feat, either of the body or the mind, but a superhuman demand of our total being. Mark this definition of mine: a superhuman demand which is made of our total being not an ordinary human demand of a part of our being, but of our total being. From that, a demand is made by the entire structure of life. The total structure of life requires of our total being to be united with it in a practical demonstration of thought, speech and action this is yoga. If this could be missed, and of course it can easily be missed as it is being done every day, then every effort, from the smallest to the biggest, becomes a failure. All our effort ends in no success, because it would be like decorating a corpse without a soul in it. The whole of life would look like a beautiful corpse with nicely dressed features, but it has no vitality, essence or living principle within it. Likewise, all our activities would look wonderful, beautiful, magnificent, but lifeless; and lifeless beauty is no beauty. There must be life in it only then has it a meaning. Life is not something dead; it is quite opposite of what is dead. We can bring vitality and life into our activity only by the introduction of the principle of yoga.
  Yoga is not a technique of sannyasins or monks, of mystics or monastic disciples it is a technique of every living being who wishes to succeed in life. Without the employment of the technique of yoga, no effort can be successful. Even if it is a small, insignificant act like cooking food, sweeping the floor, washing vessels, whatever it is even these would be meaningless and a boredom, a drudgery and a stupid effort if the principle of yoga is not applied.

1.009 - Perception and Reality, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  Now, perceptions are of two kinds: real perceptions and unreal perceptions. When we perceive an object in the world, like a tree, it appears to be real; we cannot say it is unreal. Why is it real? What is the definition of reality? This is another very interesting philosophical subject. How do we know that any object is real? If we are asked how we define reality, what we mean by 'real', what is our idea? If we are asked to define reality, define the character of anything being real, we will find that it is difficult to define it. If I project my fingers and attempt to touch it, I must have a sensation of touch then it is real, isn't it? The sensation of touch should say there is a hard object, and then I say it is real. Is this the definition of reality? So we want only a sensation of hardness. The moment that sensation comes, it is real. And it has to be corroborated by the eyes; they must also say, "Yes, we are seeing a shape." The eyes can see only a shape. But how do we know that the shape is real? The fingers will tell us, "We are feeling solidity a hardness and concreteness." If it has a smell and a taste, etc., then it becomes real. We have passed judgement it is real. So, the nose should smell, the fingers should feel the concreteness and solidity, the eyes should see a shape, etc.; then, the thing is real. Is this a definition? This is a dangerous definition, but we cannot have any other definition.
  The reason behind our feeling a solidity, concreteness, hardness, etc. of an object and a shape perceived by the eyes, is because the condition of the senses which perceive and that of the mind behind the senses are on the same level as the constitution of the object. That is why we can see this world and not the heavens, for example. We cannot say that heavens do not exist; but why do we not see them? Because the constitution of the objects of the heaven is subtler than, less dense than, the constitution of our present individuality the two are not commensurate with each other. Or, to give a more concrete example, why don't we hear the music when the radio is not switched on? Somebody must be singing at the radio station now, but our ears are unable to hear; they can't hear anything because the constitution, the structure, the frequency, the wavelength of the electrical message that is sent by the broadcasting station is subtler than the constitution and the structure of the eardrum. It is not possible for the eardrum to catch it because it is gross. But if you talk, I can hear, because the sound that you make by talking is of the same level or degree of density as the capacity of the eardrum. I can hear your sound, but not the sounds of radio waves, music, or the message, because of the dissimilarity of the structure of frequency, wavelength or density of structure.

1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  1) It is of the first importance that you should understand my personal position. It is not actually wrong to regard me as a teacher, but it is certainly liable to mislead; fellow-student, or, if you like, fellow-sufferer, seems a more appropriate definition.
  The climax of my life was what is known as the Cairo Working, described in the minutest detail in The Equinox of the Gods. At that time most of The Book of the Law was completely unintelligible to me, and a good deal of it especially the third chapter extremely antipa thetic. I fought against this book for years; but it proved irresistible.
  --
  It seems to me that you should confine yourself very closely to the actual work in front of you. At the present moment, of course, this includes a good deal of general study; but my point is that the terms employed in that study should always be capable of precise definition. I am not sure whether you have my Little Essays Toward Truth. The first essay in the book entitled "Man" gives a full account of the five principles which go to make up Man according to the Qabalistic system. I have tried to define these terms as accurately as possible, and I think you will find them, in any case, clearer than those to which you have become accustomed with the Eastern systems. In India, by the way, no attempt is ever made to use these vague terms. They always have a very clear idea of what is meant by words like "Buddhi," "Manas" and the like. Attempts at translation are very unsatisfactory. I find that even with such a simple matter as the "Eight limbs of Yoga," as you will see when you come to read my Eight Lectures.
  I am very pleased with your illustrations; that is excellent practice for you. Presently you have to make talismans, and a Lamen for yourself, and even to devise a seal to serve as what you might call a magical coat-of-arms, and all this sort of thing is very helpful.

1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  In all these definitions it is necessary to bear in mind that the whole object of the senses is to reveal the not-self, and to enable the Self therefore to differentiate between the real and the unreal. [lxxxiv]82
  [195]

1.01 - An Accomplished Westerner, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  When he sailed back to India, Sri Aurobindo was twenty. He had no position, no titles. His father had just died. What remained of his fourteen years in the West? We are tempted to recall Edouard Herriot's perfect definition, for if it is true that education is what remains when everything is forgotten, then what remains of the West after one has left it is not its books, its museums, and theaters, but an urge to translate into living acts what has been theorized. There,
  perhaps, lies the true strength of the West. Unfortunately, we in the West have too much "intelligence" to have anything truly substantial to translate outwardly, while India, too inwardly replete, does not possess the necessary urge to match what she lives with what she sees.

1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  alchemical definition of the meditatio: "an inner colloquy with
  40

1.01 - Fundamental Considerations, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
  It is our belief that the essential traits of a new age and a new reality are discernible in nearly all forms of contemporary expression, whether in the creations of modern art, or in the recent findings of the natural sciences, or in the results of the humanities and sciences of the mind. Moreover we are in a position to define this new reality in such a way as to emphasize one of its most significant elements. Our definition is a natural corollary of the recognition that mans coming to awareness is inseparably bound to his consciousness of space and time.
  Scarcely five hundred years ago, during the Renaissance, an unmistakable reorganization of our consciousness occurred: the discovery of perspective which opened up the three-dimensionality of space. This discovery is so closely linked with the entire intellectual attitude of the modern epoch that we have felt obliged to call this age the age of perspectivity and characterize the age immediately preceding it as the unperspectival age. These definitions, by recognizing a fundamental characteristic of these eras, lead to the further appropriate definition of the age of the dawning new consciousness as the aperspectival age, a definition supported not only by the results of modern physics, but also by developments in the visual arts and literature, where the incorporation of time as a fourth dimension into previously spatial conceptions has formed the initial basis for manifesting the new.Aperspectival is not to be thought of as merely the opposite or negation of perspectival; the antithesis of perspectival is unperspectival. The distinction in meaning suggested by the three terms unperspectival, perspectival, and aperspectival is analogous to that of the terms illogical, logical, and alogical or immoral, moral, and amoral. We have employed here the designation aperspectival to clearly emphasize the need of overcoming the mere antithesis of affirmation and negation. The so-called primal words (Urworte), for example, evidence two antithetic connotations: Latin altus meant high as well as low; sacer meant sacred as well as cursed. Such primal words as these formed an undifferentiated psychically-stressed unity whose bivalent nature was definitely familiar to the early Egyptians and Greeks. This is no longer the case with our present sense of language; consequently, we have required a term that transcends equally the ambivalence of the primal connotations and the dualism of antonyms or conceptual opposites.
  Hence we have used the Greek prefix a- in conjunction with our Latin-derived word perspectival in the sense of an alpha privativum and not as an alpha negativum, since the prefix has a liberating character (privativum, derived from Latin privare, i.e., to liberate). The designation aperspectival, in consequence, expresses a process of liberation from the exclusive validity of perspectival and unperspectival, as well as pre-perspectival limitations. Our designation, then, does not attempt to unite the inherently coexistent unperspectival and perspectival structures, nor does it attempt to reconcile or synthesize structures which, in their deficient modes, have become irreconcilable. If aperspectival were to represent only a synthesis it would imply no more than perspectival-rational and it would be limited and only momentarilyvalid, inasmuch as every union is threatened by further separation. Our concern is with integrality and ultimately with the whole; the word aperspectival conveys our attempt to deal with wholeness. It is a definition which differentiates a perception of reality that is neither perspectivally restricted to only one sector nor merely unperspectivally evocative of a vague sense of reality.
  Finally, we would emphasize the general validity of the term aperspectival; it is definitely not intended to be understood as an extension of concepts used in art history and should not be so construed. When we introduced the concept in 1936/1939, it was within the context of scientific as well as artistic traditions. The perspectival structure as fully realized by Leonardo da Vinci is of fundamental importance not only to our scientific-technological but also artistic understanding of the world. Without perspective neither technical drafting nor three-dimensional painting would have been possible. Leonardo - scientist, engineer, and artist in one - was the first to fully develop drafting techniques and perspectival painting. In this same sense, that is from a scientific as well as artistic standpoint, the term aperspectival is valid, and the basis for this significance must not be overlooked, for it legitimizes the validity and applicability of the term to the sciences, the humanities, and the arts.

1.01 - MAPS OF EXPERIENCE - OBJECT AND MEANING, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  subjective) must be at least eliminated from definition as a real aspect of the object.
  The painstaking empirical process of identification, communication and comparison has proved to be a
  --
  appearance of something unexpected is proof that we do not know how to act by definition, as it is the
  production of what we want that we use as evidence for the integrity of our knowledge. If we are

1.01 - Newtonian and Bergsonian Time, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
  solid or liquid state exceeds a certain amount, but this definition
  would not be of the slightest value to anyone, and would at most

1.01 - Prayer, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  In commenting on the Sutra of Patanjali, Ishvara pranidhndv, i.e. "Or by the worship of the Supreme Lord" Bhoja says, "Pranidhna is that sort of Bhakti in which, without seeking results, such as sense-enjoyments etc., all works are dedicated to that Teacher of teachers." Bhagavan Vysa also, when commenting on the same, defines Pranidhana as "the form of Bhakti by which the mercy of the Supreme Lord comes to the Yogi, and blesses him by granting him his desires". According to Shndilya, "Bhakti is intense love to God." The best definition is, however, that given by the king of Bhaktas, Prahlda:
  "That deathless love which the ignorant have for the fleeting objects of the senses as I keep meditating on Thee may not that love slip away from my heart!" Love! For whom? For the Supreme Lord Ishvara. Love for any other being, however great cannot be Bhakti; for, as Ramanuja says in his Shri Bhshya, quoting an ancient chrya, i.e. a great teacher:

1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  frequently neglected. We must remember the definition of
  this world of ours; it is only the Infinite Existence projected
  --
  Soul) alone is excepted from this definition.
  46. cTT T4 T(4fTl: TFTTN: II II

1.01 - Tara the Divine, #Tara - The Feminine Divine, #unset, #Zen
  also by definition to protect. What is the difference between
  them?

1.01 - The Ego, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  With this definition we have described and delimited the
  scope of the subject. Theoretically, no limits can be set to the
  --
  I have discussed this definition of the "psychic" at somewhat
  greater length.

1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  23:To be conscious of him in all parts of our being and equally in all that the dividing mind sees as outside our being, is the consummation of the individual consciousness. To be possessed by him and possess him in ourselves and in all things is the term of all empire and mastery. To enjoy him in all experience of passivity and activity, of peace and of power, of unity and of difference is the happiness which the jiva, the individual soul manifested in the world, is obscurely seeking. This is the entire definition of the aim of integral Yoga; it is the rendering in personal experience of the truth which universal Nature has hidden in herself and which she travails to discover. It is the conversion of the human soul into the divine soul and of natural life into divine living.
  24:The surest way towards this integral fulfilment is to find the Master of the secret who dwells within us, open ourselves constantly to the divine Power which is also the divine Wisdom and Love and trust to it to effect the conversion. But it is difficult for the egoistic consciousness to do this at all at the beginning. And, if done at all, it is still difficult to do it perfectly and in every strand of our nature. It is difficult at first because our egoistic habits of thought, of sensation, of feeling block up the avenues by which we can arrive at the perception that is needed. It is difficult afterwards because the faith, the surrender, the courage requisite in this path are not easy to the ego-clouded soul. The divine working is not the working which the egoistic mind desires or approves; for it uses error in order to arrive at truth, suffering in order to arrive at bliss, imperfection in order to arrive at perfection. The ego cannot see where it is being led; it revolts against the leading, loses confidence, loses courage. These failings would not matter; for the divine Guide within is not offended by our revolt, not discouraged by our want of faith or repelled by our weakness; he has the entire love of the mother and the entire patience of the teacher. But by withdrawing our assent from the guidance we lose the consciousness, though not all the actuality-not, in any case, the eventuality -- of its benefit. And we withdraw our assent because we fail to distinguish our higher Self from the lower through which he is preparing his self-revelation. As in the world, so in ourselves, we cannot see God because of his workings and, especially, because he works in us through our nature and not by a succession of arbitrary miracles. Man demands miracles that he may have faith; he wishes to be dazzled in order that he may see. And this impatience, this ignorance may turn into a great danger and disaster if, in our revolt against the divine leading, we call in another distorting Force more satisfying to our impulses and desires and ask it to guide us and give it the Divine Name.

1.01 - What is Magick?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  First let me go all Euclidean, and rub your nose in the definition, Postulate and Theorems given in my comprehensive (but, alas! too advanced and too technical) Treatise on the subject.[1] Here we are!
    I. definition:
    MAGICK

1.02.3.1 - The Lord, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  all term and definition. We may equally call it "He", provided
  we speak with the same intention of rigorous exclusion. "Tat"
  and "Sa" are always the same, One that escapes definition.
  In the universe there is a constant relation of Oneness and

1.02.3.2 - Knowledge and Ignorance, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  But by the very definition of the ego its capacity is limited. It
  accepts as itself a form made of the movement of Nature which

1.02 - In the Beginning, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  One can conceive such a unity, it is true, as an existence without cause, but it is only by totally ignoring the conditions of thought and the fundamental demands of Reason that one can see in it the cause of existences. Mere unity is by its very definition entire sterility; it is multiplicity alone that can produce multiplicity. The notion of cause is exclusive of the notion of unity; for the essence of unity is an indivisible, indiscernable, immobile identity.
  If then we give the name of God to the primordial existence which produces the universe, we postulate the whole of universal multiplicity in this essential cause and all the possibilities of the world are totalised in the first Being, creator of the world.

1.02 - Karmayoga, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Vedanta and Yoga to life. To many who take their knowledge of Hinduism secondh and this may seem a doubtful definition. It is ordinarily supposed by "practical" minds that Vedanta as a guide to life and Yoga as a method of spiritual communion are dangerous things which lead men away from action to abstraction. We leave aside those who regard all such beliefs as mysticism, self-delusion or imposture; but even those who reverence and believe in the high things of Hinduism have the impression that one must remove oneself from a full human activity in order to live the spiritual life. Yet the spiritual life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of the Yoga and under the law of the Vedanta. It is by such a union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and become mighty and divine. It is a delusion to suppose that Vedanta contains no inspiration to life, no rule of conduct, and is purely metaphysical and quietistic. On the contrary, the highest morality of which humanity is capable finds its one perfect basis and justification in the teachings of the Upanishads and the Gita. The characteristic doctrines of the Gita are nothing if they are not a law of life, a dharma, and even the most transcendental aspirations of the
  Vedanta presuppose a preparation in life, for it is only through life that one can reach to immortality. The opposite opinion is due to certain tendencies which have bulked large in the history and temperament of our race. The ultimate goal of our religion is emancipation from the bondage of material Nature and freedom from individual rebirth, and certain souls, among the highest we have known, have been drawn by the attraction of the final hush and purity to dissociate themselves from life and bodily action in order more swiftly and easily to reach the goal. Standing like

1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  desired. It was, by your own definition, a bad plan. You need another one and quickly. Luckily you have
  an alternate strategy, at your disposal. The stairs! You dash to the rear of the building. You try the door to
  --
  After all, the unknown has not yet been explored by definition. Nothing can be said, by the dictates of
  standard logic, about something that has not yet been encountered. We are not concerned with sensory
  --
  exists a mismatch between the two, the unexpected or novel occurs (by definition), grips our attention, and
  activates the intrapsychic systems that govern fear and hope.39 We strive to bring novel occurrences back
  --
  valid solutions, but so that even the definition of solution may vary. The particular most appropriate or
  likely choices of people, including ourselves, cannot therefore be accurately determined beforeh and (not
  --
  significance by definition: we only know how to act in the presence of the familiar. The appearance of the
  unexpected pops us out of unconscious, axiomatic complacency, and forces us (painfully) to think.
  The implications of novel or unpredictable occurrences are unknown, by definition. This observation
  carries within it the seeds of a difficult and useful question: what, is the significance of the unknown? It
  --
  that what we have adapted to is, by definition, reality. For it is the case that the human brain and higher
  nervous systems, in general have specialized for operation in the domain of order, and in the domain
  --
  emerges. But how can situation-relevant emotion attach itself to what has by definition not yet been
  encountered? Traditionally, significance is attached to previously irrelevant things or situations as a
  --
  must be our behavioral adaptation is, by definition, insufficient (and the unexpected has not been
  vanquished). We have been unable to modify our actions to elicit from the environment really, from the
  --
  understood, in part, in the following manner: positive affect rules in known territory, by definition: a thing
  or situation has been explored most optimally (and is therefore most well known) if it has been transformed
  --
  nonmembers. A triangle is a closed three-sided figure. From the fact that a clear definition exists, it
  follows that membership in the set is not a matter of degree; one triangle is no more essentially
  --
  all of the others. This capacity makes sense, since all of the objects in a given category are by definition
  regarded as equivalent, in some non-trivial sense (most generally, in terms of implication for action). The
  --
  We are in addition habituated to what is familiar and known by definition and are therefore often
  unable to apprehend its structure (often even unable to perceive that it is there). Finally, we remain ignorant
  --
  means, can bend to our own ends) have been likewise rendered predictable by definition. The territory
  of explored territory is therefore defined, at least in general, by security. Secure territory is that place
  --
  upper hand, it is by definition because of a current paucity of heroism. It can be said, therefore, that the reappearance of the Great Mother, in her terrible guise, the death of the Great Father (who serves as
  protection from his creative and destructive wife), and the absence of the hero (who turns chaos into order)
  --
  territory). Everything that is not order that is, not predictable, not usable is, by default (by definition)
  chaos. The foreigner whose behaviors cannot be predicted, who is not kin, either by blood or by custom,

1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  very queer things sometimes, but the definition is just the
  same; wherever we find pleasure, there we are attached.

1.02 - SOCIAL HEREDITY AND PROGRESS, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  By definition and in essence Christianity is the religion of the
  Incarnation: God uniting Himself with the world which He cre-

1.02 - The 7 Habits An Overview, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
  The P/PC Balance is the very essence of effectiveness. It's validated in every arena of life. We can work with it or against it, but it's there. It's a lighthouse. It's the definition and paradigm of effectiveness upon which the Seven Habits in this book are based.
  How to Use This Book

1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
  Two extremes must be avoided. One is a result of intellectual- izing tendencies, where we approach children in an academic way, expecting them to assimilate sharply outlined ideas and defini- tions. It is, after all, very comfortable to instruct and teach by definitions. And the more gifted children learn to parrot them, allowing the teacher to be certain that they retain what theyve been taught in the previous lesson, whereas those who dont learn can be left behind.
  Such methods are very convenient. But its like a cobbler who thinks that the shoes he made for a three-year-old should still fit the ten-year-old; the shoes are well formed, but they no longer fit the child. And thats how it is with the teaching that the child is meant to assimilate. What the child takes in during the seventh or eighth year is no longer suited to the soul of the twelve-year-old; its as useless as shoes that have become too small. We just dont realize it when the problem unfolds within the soul. The teacher who demands of her students at age twelve the same definitions that were used earlier is like the cobbler who tries to put a three- year-olds shoes onto the feet of a ten-year-old: she might fit her toes into the shoes, but not her heels. Much of a childs spiritual and psychic nature doesnt fit into the education we give children. Whats needed is that, through the medium of flexible and artistic forms, we give children perceptions, ideas, and feelings in picto- rial form that can metamorphose and grow with the soul, because the soul itself is growing. But before this can happen, there has to be a living relationship between child and teacher, not the dead relationship that arises from lifeless educational concepts. Thus, all instruction given to children between approximately seven and fifteen needs to be permeated with pictures.
  In many ways, this runs counter to the ordinary tendencies of modern culture, and of course we belong to this modern culture. We read books that impart meaningful content through little squiggles we call a, b, c, and so on. We fail to realize that weve been damaged by being forced to learn these symbols, since they have absolutely no relationship to our inner life. Why should a or b look the way they do today? Theres no inner necessity, no experience that justifies writing an h after an a to express a feeling of astonishment or wonder.

1.02 - The Concept of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  scious. In what follows I shall try to give (1) a definition of the
  concept, (2) a description of what it means for psychology, (3) an
  --
  1. definition
  88 The collective unconscious is a part of the psyche which can

1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  So far, then, as a fully adequate expression of the Perennial Philosophy is concerned, there exists a problem in semantics that is finally insoluble. The fact is one which must be steadily borne in mind by all who read its formulations. Only in this way shall we be able to understand even remotely what is being talked about. Consider, for example, those negative definitions of the transcendent and immanent Ground of being. In statements such as Eckharts, God is equated with nothing. And in a certain sense the equation is exact; for God is certainly no thing. In the phrase used by Scotus Erigena God is not a what; He is a That. In other words, the Ground can be denoted as being there, but not defined as having qualities. This means that discursive knowledge about the Ground is not merely, like all inferential knowledge, a thing at one remove, or even at several removes, from the reality of immediate acquaintance; it is and, because of the very nature of our language and our standard patterns of thought, it must be, paradoxical knowledge. Direct knowledge of the Ground cannot be had except by union, and union can be achieved only by the annihilation of the self-regarding ego, which is the barrier separating the thou from the That.

1.02 - The Philosophy of Ishvara, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  Who is Ishvara? Janmdyasya yatah "From whom is the birth, continuation, and dissolution of the universe," He is Ishvara "the Eternal, the Pure, the Ever-Free, the Almighty, the AllKnowing, the All-Merciful, the Teacher of all teachers"; and above all, Sa Ishvarah anirvachaniyapremasvarupah "He the Lord is, of His own nature, inexpressible Love." These certainly are the definitions of a Personal God. Are there then two Gods the "Not this, not this," the Sat-chit-nanda, the Existence-Knowledge-Bliss of the philosopher, and this God of Love of the Bhakta? No, it is the same Sat-chit-ananda who is also the God of Love, the impersonal and personal in one. It has always to be understood that the Personal God worshipped by the Bhakta is not separate or different from the Brahman. All is Brahman, the One without a second; only the Brahman, as unity or absolute, is too much of an abstraction to be loved and worshipped; so the Bhakta chooses the relative aspect of Brahman, that is, Ishvara, the Supreme Ruler. To use a simile: Brahman is as the clay or substance out of which an infinite variety of articles are fashioned. As clay, they are all one; but form or manifestation differentiates them. Before every one of them was made, they all existed potentially in the clay, and, of course, they are identical substantially; but when formed, and so long as the form remains, they are separate and different; the clay-mouse can never become a clay-elephant, because, as manifestations, form alone makes them what they are, though as unformed clay they are all one.
  Ishvara is the highest manifestation of the Absolute Reality, or in other words, the highest possible reading of the Absolute by the human mind. Creation is eternal, and so also is Ishvara.
  --
  This is proved from the scriptural text, "From whom all these things are born, by which all that are born live, unto whom they, departing, return ask about it. That is Brahman.' If this quality of ruling the universe be a quality common even to the liberated then this text would not apply as a definition of Brahman defining Him through His rulership of the universe. The uncommon attributes alone define a thing; therefore in texts like 'My beloved boy, alone, in the beginning there existed the One without a second. That saw and felt, "I will give birth to the many." That projected heat.' 'Brahman indeed alone existed in the beginning. That One evolved. That projected a blessed form, the Kshatra. All these gods are Kshatras: Varuna, Soma, Rudra, Parjanya, Yama, Mrityu, Ishna.' 'Atman indeed existed alone in the beginning; nothing else vibrated; He thought of projecting the world; He projected the world after.' 'Alone Nryana existed; neither Brahm, nor Ishana, nor the Dyv-Prithivi, nor the stars, nor water, nor fire, nor Soma, nor the sun. He did not take pleasure alone. He after His meditation had one daughter, the ten organs, etc.' and in others as, 'Who living in the earth is separate from the earth, who living in the Atman, etc.' the Shrutis speak of the Supreme One as the subject of the work of ruling the universe. . . . Nor in these descriptions of the ruling of the universe is there any position for the liberated soul, by which such a soul may have the ruling of the universe ascribed to it."
  In explaining the next Sutra, Ramanuja says, "If you say it is not so, because there are direct texts in the Vedas in evidence to the contrary, these texts refer to the glory of the liberated in the spheres of the subordinate deities." This also is an easy solution of the difficulty. Although the system of Ramanuja admits the unity of the total, within that totality of existence there are, according to him, eternal differences. Therefore, for all practical purposes, this system also being dualistic, it was easy for Ramanuja to keep the distinction between the personal soul and the Personal God very clear.

1.02 - The Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  It is obvious, however, that a definition of this unknown a can only be achieved by saying either a equals b or a equals cd. In the first case the idea of b is really implicit in a; thus we have learned nothing, and if not so, the statement is false. One simply defines one unknown in terms of
   another-and nothing is gained. In the second case, c and d themselves require definition as e1 and gh respectively.
  The process becomes extended; but it is bound to end by the eventual exhaustion of the alphabet, y equals za. In short, one gets no further than a equals a. The relation of the whole series of equations then becomes apparent, and the conclusion to which one is forced is that each and every term is a thing-in-itself, unknown, though to some extent apprehensible by Intuition.
  --
  Athena. This necessity was emphasized in the most surprising way by the result of the Michelson-Morley experiments, when Physics itself calmly and frankly offered a contradiction in terms. It was not the metaphysicians this time who were picking holes in a vacuum. It was the mathematicians and the physicists who found the ground completely cut away from under their feet. It was not enough to replace the geometry of Euclid by those of Riemann and Lobatchevsky and the mechanics of Newton by those of Einstein, so long as any of the axioms of the old thought and the definitions of its terms survived. They deliberately abandoned positivism and materialism for an indeterminate mysticism, creating a new mathematical philosophy and a new logic, wherein infinite-or rather transfinite-ideas might be made commensurable with those of ordinary thought in the forlorn hope that all might live happily ever after. In short, to use a Qabalistic nomenclature, they found it incumbent upon themselves to adopt for inclusion of terms of Ruach (intellect) concepts which are proper only to Neschamah (the organ and faculty of direct spiritual apperception and intuition). This same process took place in Philosophy years earlier. Had the dialectic of Hegel been only. half understood, the major portion of philosophical speculation from the Schoolmen to
  Kant's perception of the Antinomies of Reason would have been thrown overboard.

1.02 - The Principle of Fire, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
  As mentioned before, the fiery principle owns the expansion, which I shall call electrical fluid for the sake of better comprehension. This definition does not just point to the roughly material electricity in spite of its having a certain analogy to it.
  Every one will realize at once, of course, that the quality of expansion is identical with extension. This elementary principle of fire is latent and active in all things created, as a matter of fact, in the whole Universe beginning from the tiniest grain of sand to the most sublime substance visible or invisible.

1.02 - The Recovery, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  His hair also caused some trouble, for it was in a terribly tangled "intrinsicate" mess due to its prolonged fixed position a network as complicated as its definition by Dr. Johnson. How to untangle it? I do not know what made us bold enough to tackle that feminine problem instead of placing it in the Mother's proper care. We had no idea then that she would be only too glad to do the job; neither did she offer to do it. And Sri Aurobindo, of course, kept quiet. It is we who must ask, must "open"! It took us about an hour's desperate and delicate handling to disentangle that conglomerate skein like Lord Shiva's matted locks and bring all into a decent order. Sri Aurobindo accepted this torture with his usual submission. At the end of the perpetration, he simply asked, "Have you left some hair?" We laughed. True, this was meant as a joke, but he was not indifferent to physical grace and beauty. Later on when the Mother took up his toilet and attended to his hair, after each combing, tufts of the precious glossy hair, were loosened off, and enriched Champaklal's treasury. Sri Aurobindo on being informed of this loss, did something to stop the falling, and till the end the hair retained its glistening abundance.
  When Dr. Manilal arrived, I breathed a sigh of relief! He was not very happy to see the new development, but hoped that everything would be all right. He was confronted with three problems: the swelling, educating the patient to walk and the bending of the knee, all of which he dealt with in his characteristic efficient manner. The swelling according to him would subside in due course. Gentle massage and hot and cold compress continued, followed later by hot douche. We used to note its diminution week by week. But it took some months to disappear completely. The bending of the knee would also take some time in view of the adhesion of the patella to the underlying tissues, in spite of passive movements. The re-education in walking seemed to be rather a straightforward job, though it was the most awkward and difficult one, for Sri Aurobindo had to walk with crutches! All that was needed was a patient and persistent effort. For Sri Aurobindo's nature, unaccustomed to physical or mechanical contrivances, and the narrow space in the room made the venture somewhat risky. The first day he got up to use the crutches was a memorable one for us. In the presence of the Mother we made him stand up, handed him the crutches and showed him how to use them. He fumbled and remarked, "Yes, it is easy to say." Two or three different pairs were tried out, but as he could not handle them properly, the Mother proposed that he had better walk leaning on two persons one on either side; It was certainly a bright suggestion, for Sri Aurobindo walking on crutches would have reminded us of his own phrase about Hephaestus' "lame omnipotent motion", an insult to his shining majestic figure. Purani and Satyendra were selected by Dr. Manilal as his human supports, much less incongruous than the ungainly wooden instruments! That was how the re-education started. The paradox of the Divine seeking frail human aid gave food to my sense of humour. However, both men proved unequal in stature; the Mother made Champaklal replace Satyendra on the left side. Now the arrangement was just and perfect and Champaklal had his aspiration fulfilled. His was the last support Sri Aurobindo was to give up. For, as his steps gained in strength and firmness, he used a stick in the right hand, and Champaklal on the left. Finally he too was dropped. As soon as it came to be known that the Master was using a walking stick, several were presented to him and there was one even of tea-wood from Assam! Thus everyday after the noon and night meals the Mother would come to his room and present the stick, and he would walk about for half an hour in her presence.

1.02 - The Three European Worlds, #The Ever-Present Origin, #Jean Gebser, #Integral
  Of these, we shall select two, one earlier and one later. The first (from Manuscript A of the Institut de France) contains one of Leonardos earliest general definitions of perspective:
  "Perspective is a proof or test confirmed by our experience, that all things project their images toward the eye in pyramidal lines." In addition to the fact that we again meet up with Alberti's important idea of the pyramid, now given its valid restatement by Leonardo, the remark expresses the very essence of Leonardo's rather dramatic situation: it expresses his Platonic, even pre-Platonic animistic attitude that "all things project their image toward the eye," which the eye does not perceive, but rather suffers or endures. This creates an unusual and even disquieting tension between the two parts of the sentence, since the purely Aristotelian notion of the first part not only speaks of proof but indeed proceeds from the "experience" of early science. This struggle in Leonardo himself between the scientist demonstrating things and the artist enduring them reflects the transitional situation between the unperspectival and the perspectival worlds.

1.02 - The Two Negations 1 - The Materialist Denial, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  5:But when that rhythm has once been disturbed, it is necessary and helpful that man should test separately, in their extreme assertion, each of the two great opposites. It is the mind's natural way of returning more perfectly to the affirmation it has lost. On the road it may attempt to rest in the intervening degrees, reducing all things into the terms of an original Life-Energy or of sensation or of Ideas; but these exclusive solutions have always an air of unreality. They may satisfy for a time the logical reason which deals only with pure ideas, but they cannot satisfy the mind's sense of actuality. For the mind knows that there is something behind itself which is not the Idea; it knows, on the other hand, that there is something within itself which is more than the vital Breath. Either Spirit or Matter can give it for a time some sense of ultimate reality; not so any of the principles that intervene. It must, therefore, go to the two extremes before it can return fruitfully upon the whole. For by its very nature, served by a sense that can perceive with distinctness only the parts of existence and by a speech that, also, can achieve distinctness only when it carefully divides and limits, the intellect is driven, having before it this multiplicity of elemental principles, to seek unity by reducing all ruthlessly to the terms of one. It attempts practically, in order to assert this one, to get rid of the others. To perceive the real source of their identity without this exclusive process, it must either have overleaped itself or must have completed the circuit only to find that all equally reduce themselves to That which escapes definition or description and is yet not only real but attainable. By whatever road we may travel, That is always the end at which we arrive and we can only escape it by refusing to complete the journey.
  6:It is therefore of good augury that after many experiments and verbal solutions we should now find ourselves standing today in the presence of the two that have alone borne for long the most rigorous tests of experience, the two extremes, and that at the end of the experience both should have come to a result which the universal instinct in mankind, that veiled judge, sentinel and representative of the universal Spirit of Truth, refuses to accept as right or as satisfying. In Europe and in India, respectively, the negation of the materialist and the refusal of the ascetic have sought to assert themselves as the sole truth and to dominate the conception of Life. In India, if the result has been a great heaping up of the treasures of the Spirit, - or of some of them, - it has also been a great bankruptcy of Life; in Europe, the fullness of riches and the triumphant mastery of this world's powers and possessions have progressed towards an equal bankruptcy in the things of the Spirit. Nor has the intellect, which sought the solution of all problems in the one term of Matter, found satisfaction in the answer that it has received.
  --
  14:A certain kind of Agnosticism is the final truth of all knowledge. For when we come to the end of whatever path, the universe appears as only a symbol or an appearance of an unknowable Reality which translates itself here into different systems of values, physical values, vital and sensational values, intellectual, ideal and spiritual values. The more That becomes real to us, the more it is seen to be always beyond defining thought and beyond formulating expression. "Mind attains not there, nor speech."3 And yet as it is possible to exaggerate, with the Illusionists, the unreality of the appearance, so it is possible to exaggerate the unknowableness of the Unknowable. When we speak of It as unknowable, we mean, really, that It escapes the grasp of our thought and speech, instruments which proceed always by the sense of difference and express by the way of definition; but if not knowable by thought, It is attainable by a supreme effort of consciousness. There is even a kind of Knowledge which is one with Identity and by which, in a sense, It can be known. Certainly, that Knowledge cannot be reproduced successfully in the terms of thought and speech, but when we have attained to it, the result is a revaluation of That in the symbols of our cosmic consciousness, not only in one but in all the ranges of symbols, which results in a revolution of our internal being and, through the internal, of our external life. Moreover, there is also a kind of Knowledge through which That does reveal itself by all these names and forms of phenomenal existence which to the ordinary intelligence only conceal It. It is this higher but not highest process of Knowledge to which we can attain by passing the limits of the materialistic formula and scrutinising Life, Mind and Supermind in the phenomena that are characteristic of them and not merely in those subordinate movements by which they link themselves to Matter.
  15:The Unknown is not the Unknowable;4 it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognisance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development. We may choose not to develop them; where they are partially developed, we may discourage and impose on them a kind of atrophy. But, fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity. And since in man there is the inalienable impulse of Nature towards self-realisation, no struggle of the intellect to limit the action of our capacities within a determined area can for ever prevail. When we have proved Matter and realised its secret capacities, the very knowledge which has found its convenience in that temporary limitation, must cry to us, like the Vedic Restrainers, "Forth now and push forward also in other fields."5

1.02 - The Vision of the Past, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  of life, his principal definition must be made by his property
  of 'taking the lead' at this moment in the movement drawing

1.02 - THE WITHIN OF THINGS, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  sole condition that ' mechanical interaction ' in the definition
  of the partial centres of the universe given above is replaced by

1.02 - What is Psycho therapy?, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  tendencies in the patient. But since by definition they are unconscious, their
  existence could only be proved by a thorough examination of the patients

1.032 - Our Concept of God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  Here I have to take a few moments to give some sort of an idea as to what love is, so that we may have an idea as to its relationship to the object of love. Most people have no idea of what it is and, therefore, it has been given many definitions. The most common definition of love is that it is a psychological emotion, a welling up of certain feelings in respect of an object. Love is the manner in which the mind arranges itself in respect of an object which it needs. Just as when one is on a battleground and there is a necessity to gird up one's loins for an immediate attack, one prepares oneself thoroughly, from head to foot, for the purpose of the task on hand or, a wrestler in the field prepares himself for the purpose for which he is there, and in this preparation he is worked up into a feeling of total concentration of his personality for the achievement of that purpose in a similar manner, the mind works itself up into a concentrated feeling in respect of the object which it needs for a particular purpose, at a particular time. This working up of the mind in sympathy with the object which it needs at a particular time is the love that the mind has for the object. Therefore, love may be regarded as a condition of the mind. It is a state of mind not a perpetual state, but a temporary state of the mind in respect of that particular object which is necessary at that particular moment.
  Ordinarily speaking, there is nothing in this world which we require always. Therefore, it is not possible for the mind to be in a condition of love for all times. If a particular thing can be needed for all time, then the love also can be there for all time; but such a thing is not present in this world. According to the conditions of body, atmosphere, age, etc., needs go on changing, and the mind arranges itself accordingly, under different conditions, in respect of the outer atmosphere in which it wants to place itself. So the condition of the mind called 'love' is subject to the necessities of the time, and there is no such thing as an eternal love for anything in this world. It is a movement of the mind towards the object. Sometime back we were discussing the nature of the movement of the mind in regard to the object, where it pervades the object that pervasion being called vrittivyapti, etc. So the mind, when it loves an object, is in the form of a vritti. Love is a vritti, and Patanjali says all vrittis must be controlled, which means that even love must be controlled.

1.03 - Bloodstream Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
  mind without bothering about definitions.10
  But if they don't define it, what do they mean by mind?

1.03 - Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  tative definitions may be, it is impossible to do without quali-
  tatively descriptive methods. Medical psychology has recognized

1.03 - Hieroglypics Life and Language Necessarily Symbolic, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  And then folk wonder how it is that there should be error and misunderstanding in the transmission of thought from one person to another! Rather regard it as a miraculous intervention of Providence when even one of even the simplest ideas "gets across." Now then, this being so, it is evidently good sense to construct one's own alphabet, with one's own very precise definitions, in order to handle an abstruse and technical subject like Magick. The "ordinary" words such as God, self, soul, spirit and the rest have been used so many thousand times in so many thousand ways, usually by writers who knew not, or cared not for the necessity of definition that to use them to-day in any scientific essay is almost ludicrous.
  That is all, just now, sister; no more of your cavilling, please; sit down quietly with your 777, and get it by heart!

1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Some answers are meaningless. The definition of 'genius' does not make any sense.
   This man must first of all ascertain whether it is his brother who is communicating with him. And secondly, how does he know that what the spirit writes or says, is under my inspiration?

1.03 - Questions and Answers, #Book of Certitude, #unset, #Zen
  22. QUESTION: Concerning the definition of a journey.+F1
  ANSWER: The definition of a journey is nine hours by the clock. Should the traveller stop in a place, anticipating that he will stay there for no less than one month by the Bayan reckoning, it is incumbent on him to keep the Fast; but if for less than one month, he is exempt from fasting. If he arriveth during the Fast at a place where he is to stay one month according to the Bayan, he should not observe the Fast till three days have elapsed, thereafter keeping it throughout the remainder of its course; but if he come to his home, where he hath heretofore been permanently resident, he must commence his fast upon the first day after his arrival.
  23. QUESTION: Concerning the punishment of the adulterer and adulteress.
  --
  74. QUESTION: Concerning the definition of old age.
  ANSWER: To the Arabs it denoteth the furthest extremity of old age, but for the people of Baha it is from the age of seventy.
  --
  83. QUESTION: Concerning the definition of "morning", "noon" and "evening".
  ANSWER: These are sunrise, noon and sunset. The allowable times for Obligatory Prayers are from morning till noon, from noon till sunset, and from sunset till two hours thereafter. Authority is in the hand of God, the Bearer of the Two Names.

1.03 - Self-Surrender in Works - The Way of The Gita, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Our purpose in Yoga is to exile the limited outward-looking ego and to enthrone God in its place as the ruling Inhabitant of the nature. And this means, first, to disinherit desire and no longer accept the enjoyment of desire as the ruling human motive. The spiritual life will draw its sustenance not from desire but from a pure and selfless spiritual delight of essential existence. And not only the vital nature in us whose stamp is desire, but the mental being too must undergo a new birth and a transfiguring change. Our divided, egoistic, limited and ignorant thought and intelligence must disappear; in its place there must stream in the catholic and faultless play of a shadowless divine illumination which shall culminate in the end in a natural self-existent Truth-consciousness free from groping half-truth and stumbling error. Our confused and embarrassed ego-centred small-motived will and action must cease and make room for the total working of a swiftly powerful, lucidly automatic, divinely moved and guided unfallen Force. There must be implanted and activised in all our doings a supreme, impersonal, unfaltering and unstumbling will in spontaneous and untroubled unison with the will of the Divine. The unsatisfying surface play of our feeble egoistic emotions must be ousted and there must be revealed instead a secret deep and vast psychic heart within that waits behind them for its hour; all our feelings, impelled by this inner heart in which dwells the Divine, will be transmuted into calm and intense movements of a twin passion of divine Love and manifold Ananda. This is the definition of a divine humanity or a supramental race. This, not an exaggerated or even a sublimated energy of human intellect and action, is the type of the superman whom we are called to evolve by our Yoga.
  In the ordinary human existence an outgoing action is obviously three-fourths or even more of our life. It is only the exceptions, the saint and the seer, the rare thinker, poet and artist who can live more within themselves; these indeed, at least in the most intimate parts of their nature, shape themselves more in inner thought and feeling than in the surface act. But it is not either of these sides separated from the other, but rather a harmony of the inner and the outer life made one in fullness and transfigured into a play of something that is beyond them which will create the form of a perfect living. A Yoga of works, a union with the Divine in our will and acts - and not only in knowledge and feeling - is then an indispensable, an inexpressibly important element of an integral Yoga. The conversion of our thought and feeling without a corresponding conversion of the spirit and body of our works would be a maimed achievement.

1.03 - The Sephiros, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  It would be fallacious for the student to expect a concrete definition of everything which the cabinet contains. That is a sheer impossibility for quite obvious reasons. Each student must work for himself, once given the method of putting the whole of his mental and moral constitution into these thirty-two filing jackets. The necessity for personal work becomes apparent when one realizes that in normal business procedure, for instance, one would not purchase a filing cabinet with the names of all past, present, and future correspondents already indexed. It becomes quite evident that the Qabalistic cabinet (our thirty-two Paths) has a system of letters and numbers meaningless in them- selves, but as the files are completed, ready to take on a meaning, different for each student. As experience increased, each letter and number would receive fresh accessions of meaning and significance, and by adopting this orderly arrangement we would be enabled to grasp our inner life much more comprehensively than might otherwise be the case. The object of the theoretical (as separate from the Practical) Qabalah, insofar as this thesis is concerned, is to enable the student to do three main things :
  First, to analyse every idea in terms of the Tree of Life.
  --
  Zero would be allocated Baruch Spinoza's definition of God or Substance : " That which requires for its conception, the conception of no other thing ".
  Another of the many symbols used by the Hindus to represent this Zero was that of the serpent Ananta, which enclosed the universe ; its tail being swallowed in its mouth represented the re-entrant nature of Infinity.
  --
  " By reflection of itself. For although 0 be incapable of definition, 1 is definable. And the effect of a definition is to form an Eidolon, duplicate or image, of the thing defined.
  Thus, then, we obtain a duad composed of 1 and its reflec- tion. Now, also, we have the commencement of a vibration established, for the number 1 vibrates alternately from changelessness to definition and back to changelessness."
  Isaac Ibn Latif (1220-1290 a.d.) also furnishes us with a mathematical definition of the processes of evolution :
  " As the point extends, and thickens into a line, the line into the plane, the plane into the expanded body, so God's manifestation unfolds itself."

1.03 - The Syzygy - Anima and Animus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  5 Naturally this is not meant as a psychological definition, let alone a metaphysi-
  cal one. As I pointed out in "The Relations between the Ego and the Uncon-

1.03 - Time Series, Information, and Communication, #Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, #Norbert Wiener, #Cybernetics
  amount of information and its definition.
  We may conceive this in the following way: we know a priori
  --
  situations. The definition here given is not the one given by R. A.
  Fisher for statistical problems, although it is a statistical defini-
  tion; and can be used to replace Fisher's definition in the tech-
  nique of statistics.
  --
  The definition which we have given for the amount of infor-
  mation is applicable when the variable x is replaced by a variable
  --
  So much for the definition and technique of measuring
  information. We shall now discuss the way in which informa-
  --
  a definition possible. If, however, K runs sufficiently rapidly to
  0 at ± ∞ and is a sufficiently smooth function, it is reasonable
  --
  the definitions necessary to interpret these. There are a number
  of variants of this theory. First: the theory gives us the best pos-
  --
  where all the terms receive the same definitions as in the con-
  tinuous case, except that all integrals on ω or u are from −π to

1.03 - YIBHOOTI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  come and stand in the one present. So the definition is given,
  when the past and present come and stand in one, the more
  --
  We must not lose sight of the first definition of Samyama.
  When the mind has attained to that state when it identifies

1.04 - Magic and Religion, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  nature of religion, and to frame a definition of it which would
  satisfy every one must obviously be impossible. All that a writer

1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  axioms (or definitions of what constitutes reality, for the purposes of argument and action), whose
  interactions produce an internally consistent explanatory and predictive structure. Paradigmatic thinking
  --
  unbearably novel for additional alternative reasons). Once such definition occurs, application of
  aggression, designed to obliterate the source of threat, appears morally justified, even required by duty. The
  --
  the unknown. The inevitable result of such failure is restriction of meaning by definition, as meaning
  exists on the border between the known and the unknown. Repression of personal experience which is

1.04 - The Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Vav is its pronunciation, and means a " Nail ". It is used as a symbol of the phallus. This usage is confirmed by the Zodiacal sign of The Bull, which, as already pointed out, is a glyph of the universal reproductive force. The phallus, in the mysticism of the Qabalah, is a creative symbol of a creative reality, the magical will. As an aid to the comprehension of this idea I quote from Jung's Psych- ology of the Unconscious for a definition :
  " The phallus is a being which moves without limbs, which sees without eyes, which knows the future ; and as symbolic representative of the universal creative power existent everywhere immortality is vindicated in it. . . .
  --
  This definition is particularly appropriate to the Chiah, of which the lingam is the terrestrial symbol as well as vehicle.
  The attri butions follow the astrological one very closely, for we find here the Egyptian Asar Ameshet Apis, the fighting bull of Memphis, who trampled on his enemies.

1.04 - The Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  one harness- they conflict with one another by definition. Who-
  ever identifies with an intellectual standpoint will occasionally
  --
  simply an abbreviated description or definition of these facts.
  Such criticism has as little effect on the object as zoological criti-

1.052 - Yoga Practice - A Series of Positive Steps, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  This externalised self is a peculiar self, known in Vedanta and Yogaas gaunatman an atman which is gauna, which is not primary, but secondary. The son is a gaunatman for the father; the daughter is a gaunatman, etc. Anything that is outside us which we like, love and get attached to, which we cannot live without, with which we identify ourselves, whose welfare or woe becomes the welfare and woe of ones own self that is the gaunatman or the externalised self. It has to be subjugated, which is a part of our austerity. How do we subjugate this self? We do so by understanding the structure the pattern of the creation of this self, because the definition of Selfhood does not really apply to this peculiar condition called the externalised form of selfhood.
  The Self, or the atman as we call it, is a principle of identity, indivisibility and non-externality or objectivity. It is that state of consciousness or awareness which is incapable of becoming other than what it is, and incapable of being lost under any circumstance. It cannot be loved and it cannot be hated, because it is what we are. This is what is called the Self. There is no such thing as loving the Self or hating the Self. No one loves ones Self or hates ones Self, because love and hatred are psychological functions, and every psychological function is a movement of the mind in space and time. Such a thing is impossible in respect of the Self, which is Self-identity. Thus the definition of the Self as Self-identity will not apply to this false self which is the circumstantial self, the family self, the nation self, the world self, etc., as we are accustomed to.
  Also, there is another self which is known as the mithyatman the false self which is the body. The body is not the Self. Everyone knows it very well, for various reasons, because the character of Self-identity indestructibility, indivisibility, etc. does not apply to the body. And yet, these characters are superimposed upon the body and we shift or transfer the qualities of the perishable body to what we really are in our consciousness, and vice versa. On the other hand, conversely, we transfer the indivisible character of consciousness to the body and regard the body itself as indivisible Selfhood.

1.056 - Lack of Knowledge is the Cause of Suffering, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  The attunement of the inward conduct and character of the individual with the conditions prevailing outside in human society is supposed to be the normal behaviour of the mind, according to psychoanalysis. The word used for this prevailing condition outside is reality, because that is what persists always, whereas individual instincts may go on changing. But the definition of reality as applied to the social laws would not hold water for long, because anything that is subject to change cannot be called real. The constitution of human society is subject to transformation on account of the mutations of history the changes that we see in the world through the process of evolution. Therefore, laws will change, and our concept of normalcy also will change.
  The root cause of unhappiness, therefore, is an irreconcilability between the individual and its environment. This environment is a very peculiar word which has deep connotations. It means anything and everything. The circumstances in which we find ourselves are of the environment the geographical conditions, the social conditions, the psychological conditions, the astronomical conditions. All these have to be taken into consideration when we speak of the environment of an individual. These are vast things, insurmountable by ordinary human thinking. It is not usually practicable for the mind to tune itself to all these things that are outside. If it succeeds in one line, it will fail in another, so that there is always some kind of difficulty, one coming after the other. And so, there is a perpetual restlessness within.

1.057 - The Four Manifestations of Ignorance, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  The cause of all the problems that have to be encountered in yoga was mentioned as ignorance avidya. This ignorance functions in many ways, and it can be detected only by its ways of working. Patanjali mentions its principle projectiles, by which it binds the individual to phenomenal experience. There are principally four ways in which it works, though in detail it can work in many other ways also. The first action of ignorance is to create a consciousness of the not-Self. The Self appears as the not-Self this is the first blow it gives. Then, the impermanent looks permanent another blow is given over that. Next, pain looks like pleasure a third blow. Lastly, the impure looks pure. Four hits are given, and then down we go. This is the definition of avidya given by the sutra of Patanjali: anitya auci dukha antmasu nitya uci sukha tma khyti avidy (II.5).
  It is not true that things are really outside us, but we are made to believe that it is so. This is a basic trait of avidya, and this is the most difficult thing to understand. It is the strongest of weapons and, therefore, it is the last thing that we can get rid of. Because of the very difficulty of the nature of the case, we have naturally to take up the easier ones first, and the stronger ones have to be dealt with subsequently. But, when we actually touch a difficulty, we will find that each one has its own peculiarity, and none can be regarded as inferior or superior to the other. Every problem is unique in its nature; it has a speciality of its own. Every day we see people being born and people passing away. Any day, anything can happen. There is impermanence reigning supreme as a law of the transition of the world process.

1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  Our present economic, social and international arrangements are based, in large measure, upon organized lovelessness. We begin by lacking charity towards Nature, so that instead of trying to co-operate with Tao or the Logos on the inanimate and subhuman levels, we try to dominate and exploit, we waste the earths mineral resources, ruin its soil, ravage its forests, pour filth into its rivers and poisonous fumes into its air. From lovelessness in relation to Nature we advance to lovelessness in relation to arta lovelessness so extreme that we have effectively killed all the fundamental or useful arts and set up various kinds of mass production by machines in their place. And of course this lovelessness in regard to art is at the same time a lovelessness in regard to the human beings who have to perform the fool-proof and grace-proof tasks imposed by our mechanical art-surrogates and by the interminable paper work connected with mass production and mass distribution. With mass-production and mass-distribution go mass-financing, and the three have conspired to expropriate ever-increasing numbers of small owners of land and productive equipment, thus reducing the sum of freedom among the majority and increasing the power of a minority to exercise a coercive control over the lives of their fellows. This coercively controlling minority is composed of private capitalists or governmental bureaucrats or of both classes of bosses acting in collaborationand, of course, the coercive and therefore essentially loveless nature of the control remains the same, whether the bosses call themselves company directors or civil servants. The only difference between these two kinds of oligarchical rulers is that the first derive more of their power from wealth than from position within a conventionally respected hierarchy, while the second derive more power from position than from wealth. Upon this fairly uniform groundwork of loveless relationships are imposed others, which vary widely from one society to another, according to local conditions and local habits of thought and feeling. Here are a few examples: contempt and exploitation of coloured minorities living among white majorities, or of coloured majorities governed by minorities of white imperialists; hatred of Jews, Catholics, Free Masons or of any other minority whose language, habits, appearance or religion happens to differ from those of the local majority. And the crowning superstructure of uncharity is the organized lovelessness of the relations between state and sovereign statea lovelessness that expresses itself in the axiomatic assumption that it is right and natural for national organizations to behave like thieves and murderers, armed to the teeth and ready, at the first favourable opportunity, to steal and kill. (Just how axiomatic is this assumption about the nature of nationhood is shown by the history of Central America. So long as the arbitrarily delimited territories of Central America were called provinces of the Spanish colonial empire, there was peace between their inhabitants. But early in the nineteenth century the various administrative districts of the Spanish empire broke from their allegiance to the mother country and decided to become nations on the European model. Result: they immediately went to war with one another. Why? Because, by definition, a sovereign national state is an organization that has the right and duty to coerce its members to steal and kill on the largest possible scale.)
  Lead us not into temptation must be the guiding principle of all social organization, and the temptations to be guarded against and, so far as possible, eliminated by means of appropriate economic and political arrangements are temptations against charity, that is to say, against the disinterested love of God, Nature and man. First, the dissemination and general acceptance of any form of the Perennial Philosophy will do something to preserve men and women from the temptation to idolatrous worship of things in timechurch-worship, state-worship, revolutionary future-worship, humanistic self-worship, all of them essentially and necessarily opposed to charity. Next come decentralization, widespread private ownership of land and the means of production on a small scale, discouragement of monopoly by state or corporation, division of economic and political power (the only guarantee, as Lord Acton was never tired of insisting, of civil liberty under law). These social rearrangements would do much to prevent ambitious individuals, organizations and governments from being led into the temptation of behaving tyrannously; while co-operatives, democratically controlled professional organizations and town meetings would deliver the masses of the people from the temptation of making their decentralized individualism too rugged. But of course none of these intrinsically desirable reforms can possibly be carried out, so long as it is thought right and natural that sovereign states should prepare to make war on one another. For modern war cannot be waged except by countries with an over-developed capital goods industry; countries in which economic power is wielded either by the state or by a few monopolistic corporations which it is easy to tax and, if necessary, temporarily to nationalize; countries where the labouring masses, being without property, are rootless, easily transferable from one place to another, highly regimented by factory discipline. Any decentralized society of free, uncoerced small owners, with a properly balanced economy must, in a war-making world such as ours, be at the mercy of one whose production is highly mechanized and centralized, whose people are without property and therefore easily coercible, and whose economy is lop-sided. This is why the one desire of industrially undeveloped countries like Mexico and China is to become like Germany, or England, or the United States. So long as the organized lovelessness of war and preparation for war remains, there can be no mitigation, on any large, nation-wide or world-wide scale, of the organized lovelessness of our economic and political relationships. War and preparation for war are standing temptations to make the present bad, God-eclipsing arrangements of society progressively worse as technology becomes progressively more efficient.

1.05 - Christ, A Symbol of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  ancients to propound a philosophical definition of God that
  more or less obliged him to be the Summum Bonum. A Protes-
  --
  to do this, we would have to give a clear definition of the extent
  of his free will. The psychiatrist knows what a desperately diffi-
  --
  insist on the reality of evil and must reject any definition that
  regards it as insignificant or actually non-existent. Psychology is
  --
  totality, it must by definition include the light and dark aspects,
  in the same way that the self embraces both masculine and

1.05 - Definition of the Ludicrous, and a brief sketch of the rise of Comedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  object:1.05 - definition of the Ludicrous, and a brief sketch of the rise of Comedy.
  Comedy is, as we have said, an imitation of characters of a lower type, not, however, in the full sense of the word bad, the Ludicrous being merely a subdivision of the ugly. It consists in some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive. To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain.

1.05 - Knowledge by Aquaintance and Knowledge by Description, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
  Bismarck to those who only know of him through history; the man with the iron mask; the longest-lived of men. These are progressively further removed from acquaintance with particulars; the first comes as near to acquaintance as is possible in regard to another person; in the second, we shall still be said to know 'who Bismarck was'; in the third, we do not know who was the man with the iron mask, though we can know many propositions about him which are not logically deducible from the fact that he wore an iron mask; in the fourth, finally, we know nothing beyond what is logically deducible from the definition of the man. There is a similar hierarchy in the region of universals. Many universals, like many particulars, are only known to us by description. But here, as in the case of particulars, knowledge concerning what is known by description is ultimately reducible to knowledge concerning what is known by acquaintance.
  The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: _Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted_.

1.05 - The Activation of Human Energy, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  Love is by definition the word we use for attractions of a
  personal nature. Since once the Universe has become a think-

1.05 - The Destiny of the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2:But this unity is in its nature indefinable. When we seek to envisage it by the mind we are compelled to proceed through an infinite series of conceptions and experiences. And yet in the end we are obliged to negate our largest conceptions, our most comprehensive experiences in order to affirm that the Reality exceeds all definitions. We arrive at the formula of the Indian sages, neti neti, "It is not this, It is not that", there is no experience by which we can limit It, there is no conception by which It can be defined.
  3:An Unknowable which appears to us in many states and attributes of being, in many forms of consciousness, in many activities of energy, this is what Mind can ultimately say about the existence which we ourselves are and which we see in all that is presented to our thought and senses. It is in and through those states, those forms, those activities that we have to approach and know the Unknowable. But if in our haste to arrive at a Unity that our mind can seize and hold, if in our insistence to confine the Infinite in our embrace we identify the Reality with any one definable state of being however pure and eternal, with any particular attri bute however general and comprehensive, with any fixed formulation of consciousness however vast in its scope, with any energy or activity however boundless its application, and if we exclude all the rest, then our thoughts sin against Its unknowableness and arrive not at a true unity but at a division of the Indivisible.
  --
  11:The integral view of the unity of Brahman avoids these consequences. Just as we need not give up the bodily life to attain to the mental and spiritual, so we can arrive at a point of view where the preservation of the individual activities is no longer inconsistent with our comprehension of the cosmic consciousness or our attainment to the transcendent and supracosmic. For the World-Transcendent embraces the universe, is one with it and does not exclude it, even as the universe embraces the individual, is one with him and does not exclude him. The individual is a centre of the whole universal consciousness; the universe is a form and definition which is occupied by the entire immanence of the Formless and Indefinable.
  12:This is always the true relation, veiled from us by our ignorance or our wrong consciousness of things. When we attain to knowledge or right consciousness, nothing essential in the eternal relation is changed, but only the inview and the outview from the individual centre is profoundly modified and consequently also the spirit and effect of its activity. The individual is still necessary to the action of the Transcendent in the universe and that action in him does not cease to be possible by his illumination. On the contrary, since the conscious manifestation of the Transcendent in the individual is the means by which the collective, the universal is also to become conscious of itself, the continuation of the illumined individual in the action of the world is an imperative need of the world-play. If his inexorable removal through the very act of illumination is the law, then the world is condemned to remain eternally the scene of unredeemed darkness, death and suffering. And such a world can only be a ruthless ordeal or a mechanical illusion.

1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  exploration has therefore been rendered superfluous has been rendered unnecessary, by definition (even
  treacherous). This means that absolute identification with the known necessarily comes to replace all
  --
  oneself against life successfully. I attach value to this definition.482
  This description of initial motivated decision and consequent dissolution seems to me to characterize the
  --
  be true. Nobody knows what is finally true, by definition, but honest people make the best possible use of
  their experience. The moral theories of honest people however incomplete from some hypothetical
  --
  transformed into the acceptable and beneficial means, by definition, the end of all hope:
  Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the
  --
  it clear definition of the nature of subjective experience, when allowed to surface, and fosters attempts to
  adapt to that experience. It is for this reason that only the unredeemed the outcast, the sick, the blind, and
  --
  problem of adaptation to the unknown by joining a group. A group, by definition, is composed of those
  who have adopted a central structure of value, and who therefore behave, in the presence of other group
  --
  do a proper job of it. You fit the definition of a religious man as someone who gives careful
  consideration to the demonic and irrational in humanity, so I think you will find my confession
  --
  meant that they had identified with the structure and successes of that society, with its definitions of present
  278
  --
  The definition of moral and immoral accepted by the members of a given society remains dependent
  upon the conceptualization of the way accepted by that society remains dependent upon the current rankordering and hierarchical organization of meanings, within that society. From within the confines of a
  --
  simultaneously, the definition of oneself as the agent able to tolerate. Adoption of such a stance means the
  possibility of further growth, since it is in contact with anomaly that new information is generated. This
  --
  Heroic behavior compels imitation a hero, by definition, serves as a model for emulation. The
  behavior of the culture-bearer, the archetypal hero, constitutes embodiment of an elaborate procedural
  --
  state (in the absence of current security, happiness), exploration is or has been, by definition, incomplete.
  The residual mysteries that still accompany current being, which manifest themselves in the intrinsic
  --
  granted the prima materia a half chemical, half mythological definition: For one alchemist, it was
  quicksilver, for others it was ore, iron, gold, lead, salt, sulphur, vinegar, water, air, fire, earth, blood, water

1.060 - Tracing the Ultimate Cause of Any Experience, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  When the ultimate cause of a particular experience is discovered, it will be found that the cause lies in the recognition of the Self in the not-Self. This was the definition of avidya given by Patanjali. The atman is seen in the anatman, and then asmita arises. Then there is love for things, and wild impulses arise. So, the rise of an impulse in respect of a pleasurable experience in the world is rooted in an urge towards it, which is raga which again is rooted in the self-sense or asmita, which again is rooted in the recognition or the vision of the Self in the not-Self. Now, is this a great virtue to see the Self in the not-Self? Is this wisdom? Is this a course of rightful action that has been taken by the mind? Can anyone say that to see the Self in the not-Self is a correct course, a proper course? But unless the Self is seen in the not-Self, we cannot have pleasurable impulses.
  The satisfaction of the senses is possible only if the not-Self is outside the Self. If the not-Self is not there, the pleasure also cannot be there because every contactual pleasure, sensory or egoistic, is conditioned by the presence of an external object. The perception of the reality of an external object is what is known as the recognition of the Self in the not-Self. So, the extent to which we read reality into the location of an object outside is also the magnitude of the satisfaction that we gain by coming in contact with it. The more is the reality of an object, the greater is the satisfaction that we get by coming in contact with it. The more we read the Selfhood in a not-Self, the more is the intensity of the recognition of the Self in the not-Self, the greater is the pleasure that we derive by contact with it. Hence, all the pleasures of the world are ultimately rooted in this peculiar phenomenon namely, the vision of the Self in the not-Self.

1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  directly implicated the definition and interpretation of Real
  ity, and therefore of God. It was one of the main causes in the

1.06 - Definition of Tragedy., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  object:1.06 - definition of Tragedy.
  Of the poetry which imitates in hexameter verse, and of Comedy, we will speak hereafter. Let us now discuss Tragedy, resuming its formal definition, as resulting from what has been already said.
  Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions. By 'language embellished,' I mean language into which rhythm, 'harmony,' and song enter. By 'the several kinds in separate parts,' I mean, that some parts are rendered through the medium of verse alone, others again with the aid of song.

1.06 - THE FOUR GREAT ERRORS, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  to disintegration of the will. This is almost the definition of evil,
  Everything valuable is instinct--and consequently easy, necessary,

1.06 - Wealth and Government, #Words Of The Mother III, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Here is my definition which can serve also as a motto and a programme.
  A world union based on the fact of human unity realising the truth of the Spirit.

1.078 - Kumbhaka and Concentration of Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  This definition that is mentioned is only a kind of theory for beginners who are not accustomed to the type of breathing that is prescribed here, as one will not know what this elongation is, what this shortening is, and what the space is, etc. For us it is only a kind of story, like the Mahabharata or the Ramayana. It has no sense, because when we actually sit for practice of this kind, we will know what changes take place in the system. And, nothing but practice is what is intended here. Yoga is nothing but practice, a hundred-percent practice only that and nothing but that. We are not going to tell a story or listen to any kind of narration. It is a very serious matter that we are discussing, which is life and death for us namely, how we can become better inwardly as well as outwardly so that we take one step, at least, towards the superhuman condition which is waiting for us.
  When this is acquired, this mastery is gained, some sort of a control is maintained over the pranic movements. Great consequences unexpected and unforeseen will follow. We will see strange phenomena appear within us as well as outside us if we gain mastery over the prana, because this kumbhaka that we are speaking of is nothing but another form of concentration of mind, as the mind is associated with the prana always. The object, or the ideal before oneself, is united with the meditating consciousness in a fast embrace, as it were, when the prana is withheld, and it is made to stick to ones consciousness inseparably. It becomes one with ones own self, and there is a sudden impact felt upon the object on account of the kumbhaka that we practise. The kumbhaka, the retention of the breath that we practise, coupled with concentration of mind on the object that is before us, will tell upon the nature of that object which we are thinking of, whatever be the distance of that object. It may be millions of miles away it makes no difference. This is because prana is omnipresent. It is like ether, and so it will produce an impact upon the object that we are thinking of in our meditation. It will stir it up into an activity of a desired manner, according to what we are contemplating in the mind. This effect cannot be produced if the prana is allowed to move hither and thither, distractedly. If we want quick success in meditation, the retention of the breath is absolutely necessary because it is this that impresses upon the object of meditation the necessity to commingle itself with the subject. Therefore, a combination of pranayama and dharana, concentration, is the most effective method of bringing about a union of oneself with the ideal of meditation.

1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  As this definition indicates, the near-death experience
  varies with each individual.

1.07 - Medicine and Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  boundlessly to overestimate the latter. But with the unconscious it is quitedifferent. This, by definition and in fact, cannot be circumscribed. It must
  therefore be counted as something boundless: infinite or infinitesimal.

1.07 - Samadhi, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  9:Let us try a final definition. Dhyana resembles Samadhi in many respects. There is a union of the ego and the non-ego, and a loss of the senses of time and space and causality. Duality in any form is abolished. The idea of time involves that of two consecutive things, that of space two non-coincident things, that of causality two connected things.
  10:These Dhyanic conditions contradict those of normal thought; but in Samadhi they are very much more marked than in Dhyana. And while in the latter it seems like a simple union of two things, in the former it appears as if all things rushed together and united. One might say that in Dhyana there was still this quality latent, that the One existing was opposed to the Many non-existing; in Samadhi the Many and the One are united in a union of Existence with non-Existence. This definition is not made from reflection, but from memory.
  11:Further, it is easy to master the "trick" or "knack" of Dhyana. After a while one can get into that state without preliminary practice; and, looking at it from this point, one seems able to reconcile the two meanings of the word which we debated in the last section. From below Dhyana seems like a trance, an experience so tremendous that one cannot think of anything bigger, while from above it seems merely a state of mind as natural as any other. Frater P., before he had Samadhi, wrote of Dhyana: "Perhaps as a result of the intense control a nervous storm breaks: this we call Dhyana. Samadhi is but an expansion of this, so far as I can see."

1.07 - The Fire of the New World, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  If we are to believe materialistic mechanics, nothing can come out of a system except what is already contained in it; we can only perfect what is there, in the little bubble. In a sense, they are right, but one may wonder if a perfected ass will ever yield anything other than an ass. It would seem that the closed system of the materialists is doomed to ultimate poverty, and that, by reducing everything to the degree of development of chromosomes and the perfection of gray matter, they have dedicated themselves to a supermechanization of the machine from which they started (machinery can only lead to machinery). But the ape, the mole and the chameleon do just that; they add and subtract; and our machinery is not fundamentally more advanced than theirs, even though it sends firecrackers to the moon. In short, we are some perfected protoplasm with greater swallowing capacity and smarter (?) tropisms, and soon we shall be able to calculate all that is required to produce biological Napoleons and test-tube Einsteins. All the same, our earth would hardly be a happier place with legions of blackboards and supergenerals, who would not know which way to turn they would set out to colonize other earths... and fill them with blackboards. There is no way out of it, by definition, since the system is closed, closed, closed.
  We suggest that there is a better materialism, less impoverishing, and that matter is less stupid than is usually said. Our materialism is a relic of the age of religions, one could almost say its inevitable companion, like good and evil, black and white, and all the dualities stemming from a linear vision of the world which sees one tuft of grass after another, a bump after a hole, and sets the mountains against the plains, without realizing that everything together is equally and totally true and makes a perfect geography in which there is not a single hole to fill, a single bump to take away, without impoverishing all the rest. There is nothing to suppress; there is everything to view in the global truth. There are no contradictions; there are only limited visions. We thus claim that matter our matter is capable of greater wonders than all the mechanical miracles we try to wrest from it. Matter is not coerced with impunity. It is more conscious than we believe, less closed than our mental fortress it goes along for a while, because it is slow, then takes its revenge, mercilessly. But one has to know the right lever. We have tried to find that lever by dissecting it scientifically or religiously; we have invented microscopes and scalpels, and still more microscopes that probed deeper, saw bigger, and discovered smaller and smaller and still smaller reality, which always seemed to be the coveted key but merely opened the door onto another, smaller existence, endlessly pushing back the limits enclosed in other limits that enclosed other limits and the key kept escaping us, even as it let loose a few monsters on us in the process. We peered at an ant that was growing bigger and bigger but kept perpetually having six legs despite the superacids and superparticles we discovered in its ant belly. Perhaps we will be able to manufacture another one, even a three-legged ant. Some breakthrough! We do not need another ant, even an improved one. We need something else. Religiously, too, we have tried to dissect matter, to reduce it to a fiction of God, a vale of transit, a kingdom of the devil and the flesh, the thousand and one particles of our theological telescopes. We peered higher and higher into heaven, more and more divinely, but the ant kept painfully having six legs or three between one birth and another, eternally the same. We do not need an ant's salvation; we need something other than an ant. Ultimately, we may not need to see bigger or higher or farther, but simply here, under our nose, in this small living aggregate which contains its own key, like the lotus seed in the mud, and to pursue a third path, which is neither that of science nor that of religion although it may one day combine both within its rounded truth, with all our whites and blacks, goods and evils, heavens and hells, bumps and holes, in a new human or superhuman geography that all these goods and evils, holes and bumps were meticulously and accurately preparing.

1.07 - The Literal Qabalah (continued), #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Sephirah Binah is not to be construed as being identical in nature or definition with the Holy Ghost. He observes in addition, although somewhat unnecessarily in my estima- tion, that the philosophy attaching to the union of the
  Zoharic Yod and Heh primal in the Olam Atsilus would be repugnant to the devout Trinitarian. I need not labour the point here that the Christian Trinity would be even more reprehensible and worthy of all contempt to the venerable Rabbis of the Holy Assemblies.
  --
  Astral Plane is attri buted, and the astral substance is by definition magnetic, subtile, and electric in its nature.
  Although the term " radio-activity " was not used in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, nevertheless the reader will be able to ascertain without difficulty that the description of the qualities of astral matter are: almost identical with those given by present-day scientific investi- gators to those elements which are said to be radio-active.

1.07 - The Plot must be a Whole., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  Now, according to our definition, Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude; for there may be a whole that is wanting in magnitude. A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it. A well constructed plot, therefore, must neither begin nor end at haphazard, but conform to these principles.
  Again, a beautiful object, whether it be a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but must also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order. Hence a very small animal organism cannot be beautiful; for the view of it is confused, the object being seen in an almost imperceptible moment of time. Nor, again, can one of vast size be beautiful; for as the eye cannot take it all in at once, the unity and sense of the whole is lost for the spectator; as for instance if there were one a thousand miles long. As, therefore, in the case of animate bodies and organisms a certain magnitude is necessary, and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view; so in the plot, a certain length is necessary, and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory. The limit of length in relation to dramatic competition and sensuous presentment, is no part of artistic theory. For had it been the rule for a hundred tragedies to compete together, the performance would have been regulated by the water-clock,--as indeed we are told was formerly done. But the limit as fixed by the nature of the drama itself is this: the greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous. And to define the matter roughly, we may say that the proper magnitude is comprised within such limits, that the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.

1.081 - The Application of Pratyahara, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  Hence, there should be a very clear notion before we set about doing things; and this is a principle to be followed in every walk of life. Without knowing what is to be done, why do we start doing anything? Even if it is cooking, we must know the theory first. What is it about? We cannot run about higgledy-piggledy without understanding it. The purpose of the withdrawal of the mind or the senses from the objects is simple; and that simple answer to this question is that the nature of things does not permit the notion that the mind entertains when it contacts an object. The idea that we have in our mind at the time of cognising an object is not in consonance with the nature of Truth. This is why the mind is to be withdrawn from the object. There is a peculiar definition which the mind imposes upon the object of sense at the time of cognising it, for the purpose of contacting it, etc. This definition is contrary to the true nature of that object. If we call an ass a dog, that would not be a proper definition; it would be a misunderstanding of its real essence. The object of sense is not related to the subject of perception in the manner in which the subject is defining it or conceiving it.
  Hence, the very activity of the mind in respect of this cognising or contacting is misdirected from the very beginning itself. Yoga asks us to set right this notion first; and this setting right of the notion cannot be done unless the mind is first withdrawn from the object. If there is a very serious illness from which someone is suffering, and the illness has come to a crisis, to an advanced stage, we first of all put the patient on a kind of semi-fast and isolate the patient completely from all contact of every kind social and personal, even psychological so that there is a proper atmosphere for the investigation and diagnosis. This is the pratyahara the complete quarantining of the patient, and not allowing any kind of intrusion from outside. Physically and in every sense of the term there should be isolation so that we can have a clear observation of the situation and also a study of the various techniques that have to be adopted for rectifying the mistaken notion that is in the mind. Pratyahara is not yoga proper. Just as the isolation of the patient in a ward is not the main treatment but is a necessary aspect of the treatment, likewise, pratyahara is an essential part of yoga though it is not yet yoga. Yoga is yet to start. For a few days the doctor may not do anything at all and will simply keep on observing what is happening. After days and days of observation, the physician may come to a conclusion as to what is the condition of the patient, and then the treatment will be started. Likewise, the mind is first of all segregated from its involvements. This segregation is pratyahara.

1.089 - The Levels of Concentration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  To refresh our memory, we can go back to one or two definitions of Patanjali given in the Samadhi Pada, which we studied long ago. The gross form of the object is a compound of several factors, says Patanjali: tatra abda artha jna vikalpai sa
  kr savitark sampatti (I.42). This was told to us in the Samadhi Pada. When we look at an object, we have three ideas jumbled together the object as such, the name that we have given to it, and the idea that we have about it. These three go together. Our idea about the object is reinforced by the name that we have given to it. The idea and the name jointly prevent our proper evaluation of the nature of the object as it is. It is my daughter. This idea, my daughter, my son, prevents us from knowing the nature of that person independently. We know very well what is the difference between our son and somebody elses son. There is a tremendous difference, though the substances behind these two persons are identical in every respect. The object that is the base of this concept called son is of the same nature in either case, but a tremendous gulf is created by the mind in its definitions. The definitions have so much meaning.
  What is a definition? It is nothing but a characterisation of an object in terms of our notion about that object. The moment we say, It is my son, there is so much meaning implied in that statement. If it is somebody elses son, that is another thing altogether. Why has such a meaning been foisted upon the object? It is because the idea is connected with the object, and the name is also there, together with it. We distinguish one of our sons from another of our sons by a name that we give. He is Rama. That is Gopal. They are only two words empty sounds that we have uttered. They themselves have no meaning, but they assume a meaning on account of their getting identified with the object, so that the word Rama, or Krishna, or Gopala etc., which are the names of our children, evoke in our minds certain feelings. The name generates or stirs certain ideas in the mind, and this name which stirs ideas in the mind will not allow us to have a correct concept of the object as it is. Our son is the most beautiful of all people. He is beautiful because he is our son.
  There is an old story of a barber. He had a son who he thought was the most beautiful. The king of the country ordered the people to bring the most handsome of people. The barber brought his own son. He said, I think this is the most charming boy. The barber thought he was charming because he was his son that is all. Otherwise what is the charm? He was an unattractive fellow! Anyhow, the idea is so predominant in the mind that it will not allow us to have an impersonal, dispassionate idea of the object. And samyama on the object is not possible as long as we do not have a dispassionate definition of the object in our mind. There should not be an emotional content in that definition. We should not say, It is mine. This is no good. It may be anybodys even then, it has a value.
  The sutra, tatra abda artha jna vikalpai sa

1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  One's only answer in such an instance can be to demand a definition of what is meant by so gross an absurdity. It is true, for example, that the Creative Will is symbolized by the wand, and that the wand itself may be represented by the phallus. But such an allocation of symbols raises to a lofty spiritual plane the significance of the terrestrial sign.
  As the student of the Zohar may discover for himself, sex is definitely sacramental and its utilization borders on the

1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  The Self is known to everyone but not clearly. The Being is the Self. "I am" is the name of God. Of all the definitions of God, none is indeed so well put as the Biblical statement I AM THAT I AM. The Absolute Being is what is-It is the Self. It is God. Knowing the Self, God is known. In fact, God is none other than the Self.50
  And here Ramana clearly means "Godhead," as he himself often pointed out: "Creation is by the entire Godhead breaking into God and Nature."51

1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
  We must remember the definition of this world of ours; it is only the Infinite Existence projected into the plane of consciousness. A little of the Infinite is projected into consciousness, and that we call our world. So there is an Infinite beyond; and religion has to deal with both with the little lump we call our world, and with the Infinite beyond. Any religion which deals with one only of these two will be defective. It must deal with both. The part of religion which deals with the part of the Infinite which has come into the plane of consciousness, got itself caught, as it were, in the plane of consciousness, in the cage of time, space, and causation, is quite familiar to us, because we are in that already, and ideas about this world have been with us almost from time immemorial. The part of religion which deals with the Infinite beyond comes entirely new to us, and getting ideas about it produces new channels in the brain, disturbing the whole system, and that is why you find in the practice of Yoga ordinary people are at first turned out of their grooves. In order to lessen these disturbances as much as possible, all these methods are devised by Patanjali, that we may practice any one of them best suited to us.
    

1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  decadence (--this is my definition of modern "progress"). We can hinder
  this development, and by so doing dam up and accumulate degeneration

1.09 - The Absolute Manifestation, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  These two states are equally unthinkable in the terms of our mentality, but from two different points of view. If the second seems at first sight less rebellious to all rational definition, it is because we introduce into it the primary notions of relativity which constitute manifestation in Time and Space.
  But it is outside Time that we must place the movement, at once eternal and instantaneous, of the absolute activity, and it is outside Space that we must place its deployment, its expansion of the infinite, its objectivisation of the numberless in the One.
  All the terms that we can muster for our use, are impotent to express this manifestation of the All in the One otherwise than by a sort of transposition of the state of the Absolute, to us unthinkable, into that of the relativities with which we are familiar. The one use of our efforts at definition is to trace roads for the mind by which it can travel through its own categories towards the inaccessible reality; inaccessible not for the very essence of our spirit,for that is identical with the essence of the Absolute,but for its forms of expressible knowledge which belong to the domain of the relative.
  This is the reason of that truth, so often repeated, that he who by a conscious self-identification knows the Absolute cannot speak of what he knows. He who knows It, says the Tao does not speak of it; he who speaks of I, does not know it.
  --
  However great may be the synthetic value of such a view of things, it amounts nevertheless to nothing more than a new effort of the mind to understand the origins of things by placing them in the Absolute itself. A vain tentative, for with this idea of an origin is necessarily associated the notion of Time which by its very definition the concept of the Absolute excludes.
  To speak of phases of repose and activity, consciousness and unconsciousness in the Impersonal is to subject to the category of Time That of which the very essence is to be not temporal.

1.09 - The Pure Existent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  9:Necessarily, when we say it is without them, we mean that it exceeds them, that it is something into which they pass in such a way as to cease to be what we call form, quality, quantity and out of which they emerge as form, quality and quantity in the movement. They do not pass away into one form, one quality, one quantity which is the basis of all the rest, - for there is none such, - but into something which cannot be defined by any of these terms. So all things that are conditions and appearances of the movement pass into That from which they have come and there, so far as they exist, become something that can no longer be described by the terms that are appropriate to them in the movement. Therefore we say that the pure existence is an Absolute and in itself unknowable by our thought although we can go back to it in a supreme identity that transcends the terms of knowledge. The movement, on the contrary, is the field of the relative and yet by the very definition of the relative all things in the movement contain, are contained in and are the Absolute. The relation of the phenomena of Nature to the fundamental ether which is contained in them, constitutes them, contains them and yet is so different from them that entering into it they cease to be what they now are, is the illustration given by the Vedanta as most nearly representing this identity in difference between the Absolute and the relative. Necessarily, when we speak of things passing into that from which they have come, we are using the language of our temporal consciousness and must guard ourselves against its illusions. The emergence of the movement from the Immutable is an eternal phenomenon and it is only because we cannot conceive it in that beginningless, endless, ever-new moment which is the eternity of the Timeless that our notions and perceptions are compelled to place it in a temporal eternity of successive duration to which are attached the ideas of an always recurrent beginning, middle and end.
  10:But all this, it may be said, is valid only so long as we accept the concepts of pure reason and remain subject to them. But the concepts of reason have no obligatory force. We must judge of existence not by what we mentally conceive, but by what we see to exist. And the purest, freest form of insight into existence as it is shows us nothing but movement. Two things alone exist, movement in Space, movement in Time, the former objective, the latter subjective. Extension is real, duration is real, Space and Time are real. Even if we can go behind extension in Space and perceive it as a psychological phenomenon, as an attempt of the mind to make existence manageable by distributing the indivisible whole in a conceptual Space, yet we cannot go behind the movement of succession and change in Time. For that is the very stuff of our consciousness. We are and the world is a movement that continually progresses and increases by the inclusion of all the successions of the past in a present which represents itself to us as the beginning of all the successions of the future, - a beginning, a present that always eludes us because it is not, for it has perished before it is born. What is, is the eternal, indivisible succession of Time carrying on its stream a progressive movement of consciousness also indivisible.2 Duration then, eternally successive movement and change in Time, is the sole absolute. Becoming is the only being.

1.09 - The Secret Chiefs, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  But for the active side it is necessary to postulate the existence of a form of Energy at their disposal which is able "to cause change to occur in conformity with the Will" one definition of "Magick."
  Now this, as you know, is an exceedingly complex subject; its theory is tortuous, and its practice encompassed with every kind of difficulty.

1.1.02 - Sachchidananda, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If your definition is correct, consciousness cannot be a selfexistent reality; it is a result, a phenomenon dependent on the reactions of something - you say a personality, but what is a personality apart from consciousness? - to the universal forces of Nature. We can take a purely external view and say that consciousness is the result of a mass of reactions to the impact of outward physical things on the brain and nerves of a physical being. In this case consciousness is a sort of effective hallucination - there is no real and permanent consciousness but only a subjective impression created by a constant activity of reactions.
  As a number of dancing fires may create a glow in the sky, so consciousness is created by these reactions and is suspended or disappears when they halt or cease. In your definition you add a real (?) subjective personality and supplement the reactions of physical outward things by reactions of inner things or things from above or below. But still the consciousness is only a seeing or interpretation of reactions, - it is a result of them, a phenomenon. If there are no more reactions, consciousness ceases to exist - for what other basis has it or standing place than the impermanent reaction to forces? Unless it is something intrinsic and inherent in the "subjective personality"; but then it is not a result of the reactions or a seeing and interpretation of them, but rather the reactions are the result of a pre-existent consciousness and the seeing or interpretation is merely an activity, perhaps only a very partial and surface activity, of the consciousness already and always inherent in the "personality". Even if there
  Letters on Yoga - I
   were no impact of forces and no reactions, the consciousness would still be there, but static and inactive. But again this activity of consciousness might not be limited to an interpretation or a passive reaction to forces; it might also, if it chose, be the creator or determinant of its reactions - as for instance to a blow on the body or the vital it might refuse the natural reactions of pain or anger and remain still and immobile or it might return an unusual reaction of love or pleasure. Also this consciousness might not be only a recipient and seer of forces, but a creator or putter out of forces - it might be not only a knower, but an energy, a dynamis. In this view, your definition becomes totally inadequate. Farther, the word personality is misleading; for what we usually know as personality is itself only a formation of consciousness. Behind it we are aware of a Person or Purusha who puts forward the mutable surface formation we call personality and who may even have many personalities at a time or different personalities at different times. This Purusha would be then a being and consciousness, would be not a result or an activity, but a constant reality, an intrinsic power of awareness and action inherent in the being, - as the being is self-existent, so the consciousness self-existent in the being, the Purusha. This is the realisation we have of it in Yogic experience, eternal reality of consciousness inherent in the eternal reality of existence, as in the concept and experience of Sachchidananda.
  This is the crucial point in the question, what is consciousness, whether it is a temporary phenomenon of Nature or a reality in itself fundamental to existence. The first is the conclusion that is drawn, and must be drawn, from normal experience on the surface. The other is at best a metaphysical speculation or an instinctive feeling in humanity unless we go beyond the normal experience, deepen and widen the range of our present consciousness and test its inner depths and inferior abysses and supernormal heights, until we can touch its fundamental or its ultimate or its total reality as is done in Yoga. To judge from only normal and superficial experience as the ordinary mind does with phenomena is to miss the truth of things - we have to go behind the surface phenomenon to find the reality of what a

1.10 - Aesthetic and Ethical Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We get then by elimination to a positive idea and definition of culture. But still on this higher plane of the mental life we are apt to be pursued by old exclusivenesses and misunderstandings. We see that in the past there seems often to have been a quarrel between culture and conduct; yet according to our definition conduct also is a part of the cultured life and the ethical ideality one of the master impulses of the cultured being. The opposition which puts on one side the pursuit of ideas and knowledge and beauty and calls that culture and on the other the pursuit of character and conduct and exalts that as the moral life must start evidently from an imperfect view of human possibility and perfection. Yet that opposition has not only existed, but is a naturally strong tendency of the human mind and therefore must answer to some real and important divergence in the very composite elements of our being. It is the opposition which Arnold drew between Hebraism and Hellenism. The trend of the Jewish nation which gave us the severe ethical religion of the Old Testament,crude, conventional and barbarous enough in the Mosaic law, but rising to undeniable heights of moral exaltation when to the Law were added the Prophets, and finally exceeding itself and blossoming into a fine flower of spirituality in Judaic Christianity,1was dominated by the preoccupation of a terrestrial and ethical righteousness and the promised rewards of right worship and right doing, but innocent of science and philosophy, careless of knowledge, indifferent to beauty. The Hellenic mind was less exclusively but still largely dominated by a love of the play of reason for its own sake, but even more powerfully by a high sense of beauty, a clear aesthetic sensibility and a worship of the beautiful in every activity, in every creation, in thought, in art, in life, in religion. So strong was this sense that not only manners, but ethics were seen by it to a very remarkable extent in the light of its master idea of beauty; the good was to its instinct largely the becoming and the beautiful. In philosophy itself it succeeded in arriving at the conception of the Divine as Beauty, a truth which the metaphysician very readily misses and impoverishes his thought by missing it. But still, striking as is this great historical contrast and powerful as were its results on European culture, we have to go beyond its outward manifestation if we would understand in its source this psychological opposition.
  The conflict arises from that sort of triangular disposition of the higher or more subtle mentality which we have already had occasion to indicate. There is in our mentality a side of will, conduct, character which creates the ethical man; there is another side of sensibility to the beautiful,understanding beauty in no narrow or hyper-artistic sense,which creates the artistic and aesthetic man. Therefore there can be such a thing as a predominantly or even exclusively ethical culture; there can be too, evidently, a predominantly or even exclusively aesthetic culture. There are at once created two conflicting ideals which must naturally stand opposed and look askance at each other with a mutual distrust or even reprobation. The aesthetic man tends to be impatient of the ethical rule; he feels it to be a barrier to his aesthetic freedom and an oppression on the play of his artistic sense and his artistic faculty; he is naturally hedonistic,for beauty and delight are inseparable powers, and the ethical rule tramples on pleasure, even very often on quite innocent pleasures, and tries to put a strait waistcoat on the human impulse to delight. He may accept the ethical rule when it makes itself beautiful or even seize on it as one of his instruments for creating beauty, but only when he can subordinate it to the aesthetic principle of his nature,just as he is often drawn to religion by its side of beauty, pomp, magnificent ritual, emotional satisfaction, repose or poetic ideality and aspiration,we might almost say, by the hedonistic aspects of religion. Even when fully accepted, it is not for their own sake that he accepts them. The ethical man repays this natural repulsion with interest. He tends to distrust art and the aesthetic sense as something lax and emollient, something in its nature undisciplined and by its attractive appeals to the passions and emotions destructive of a high and strict self-control. He sees that it is hedonistic and he finds that the hedonistic impulse is non-moral and often immoral. It is difficult for him to see how the indulgence of the aesthetic impulse beyond a very narrow and carefully guarded limit can be combined with a strict ethical life. He evolves the puritan who objects to pleasure on principle; not only in his extremesand a predominant impulse tends to become absorbing and leads towards extremes but in the core of his temperament he remains fundamentally the puritan. The misunderstanding between these two sides of our nature is an inevitable circumstance of our human growth which must try them to their fullest separate possibilities and experiment in extremes in order that it may understand the whole range of its capacities.

1.10 - Conscious Force, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  15:We may go farther. When we speak of subconscious mind, we should mean by the phrase a thing not different from the outer mentality, but only acting below the surface, unknown to the waking man, in the same sense if perhaps with a deeper plunge and a larger scope. But the phenomena of the subliminal self far exceed the limits of any such definition. It includes an action not only immensely superior in capacity, but quite different in kind from what we know as mentality in our waking self. We have therefore a right to suppose that there is a superconscient in us as well as a subconscient, a range of conscious faculties and therefore an organisation of consciousness which rise high above that psychological stratum to which we give the name of mentality. And since the subliminal self in us thus rises in superconscience above mentality, may it not also sink in subconscience below mentality? Are there not in us and in the world forms of consciousness which are submental, to which we can give the name of vital and physical consciousness? If so, we must suppose in the plant and the metal also a force to which we can give the name of consciousness although it is not the human or animal mentality for which we have hitherto preserved the monopoly of that description.
  16:Not only is this probable but, if we will consider things dispassionately, it is certain. In ourselves there is such a vital consciousness which acts in the cells of the body and the automatic vital functions so that we go through purposeful movements and obey attractions and repulsions to which our mind is a stranger. In animals this vital consciousness is an even more important factor. In plants it is intuitively evident. The seekings and shrinkings of the plant, its pleasure and pain, its sleep and its wakefulness and all that strange life whose truth an Indian scientist has brought to light by rigidly scientific methods, are all movements of consciousness, but, as far as we can see, not of mentality. There is then a sub-mental, a vital consciousness which has precisely the same initial reactions as the mental, but is different in the constitution of its self-experience, even as that which is superconscient is in the constitution of its selfexperience different from the mental being.

1.10 - Fate and Free-Will, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There is no Fate except insistent causality which is only another name for Law, and Law itself is only an instrument in the hands of Nature for the satisfaction of the spirit. Law is nothing but a mode or rule of action; it is called in our philosophy not Law but Dharma, holding together, it is that by which the action of the universe, the action of its parts, the action of the individual is held together. This action in the universal, the parts, the individuals is called Karma, work, action, energy in play, and the definition of Dharma or Law is action as decided by the nature of the thing in which action takes place,svabhva-niyata karma. Each separate existence, each individual has a swabhava or nature and acts according to it, each group, species or mass of individuals has a swabhava or nature and acts according to it, and the universe also has its swabhava or nature and acts according to it. Mankind is a group of individuals and every man acts according to his human nature, that is his law of being as distinct from animals, trees or other groups of individuals. Each man has a distinct nature of his own and that is his law of being which ought to guide him as an individual. But beyond and above these minor laws is the great dharma of the universe which provides that certain previous karma or action must lead to certain new karma or results.
  The whole of causality may be defined as previous action leading to subsequent action, Karma and Karmaphal. The Hindu theory is that thought and feeling, as well as actual speech or deeds, are part of Karma and create effects, and we do not accept the European sentiment that outward expression of thought and feeling in speech or deed is more important than the thought or feeling itself. This outward expression is only part of the thing expressed and its results are only part of the Karmaphal. The previous karma has not one kind of result but many. In the first place, a certain habit of thought or feeling produces certain actions and speech or certain habits of action and speech in this life, which materialise in the next as good fortune or evil fortune. Again, it produces by its action for the good or ill of others a necessity of happiness or sorrow for ourselves in another birth. It produces, moreover, a tendency to persistence of that habit of thought or feeling in future lives, which involves the persistence of the good fortune or evil fortune, happiness or sorrow. Or, acting on different lines, it produces a revolt or reaction and replacement by opposite habits which in their turn necessitate opposite results for good or evil. This is the chain of karma, the bondage of works, which is the Hindu Fate and from which the Hindus seek salvation.

1.10 - (Plot continued.) Definitions of Simple and Complex Plots., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  object:1.10 - (Plot continued.) definitions of Simple and Complex Plots.
  Plots are either Simple or Complex, for the actions in real life, of which the plots are an imitation, obviously show a similar distinction.

1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  mits evil. Both definitions omit suffering.214
  e l e v e n ta l k s

1.10 - The Scolex School, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
    It is simply ridiculous to try to add to the definition of Nibbana by this invention of Parinibbana, and only talkers busy themselves with these fantastic speculations. The serious student minds his own business, which is the business in hand. The President of a Corporation does not pay his bookkeeper to make a statement of the countless billions of profit to be made in some future year. It requires no great ability to string a row of zeros after a significant figure until the ink runs out. What is wanted is the actual balance of the week.
    The reader is most strongly urged not to permit himself to indulge in fantastic flights of thought, which are the poison of the mind, because they represent an attempt to run away from reality, a dispersion of energy and a corruption of moral strength. His business is, firstly, to know himself; secondly, to order and control himself; thirdly, to develop himself on sound organic lines little by little. The rest is only leather and prunella.

1.11 - A STREET, #Faust, #Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, #Poetry
  Have you not terms and definitions given
  With brazen forehead, daring breast?

1.11 - FAITH IN MAN, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  7. definition and Novelty
  by "faith in Man" we mean here the more or
  --
  But we must not leap to conclusions. Since by definition ambi-
  guity is not perversity but only the danger of perversion, which

1.11 - On Intuitive Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
  It should be observed that, in all cases of general principles, particular instances, dealing with familiar things, are more evident than the general principle. For example, the law of contradiction states that nothing can both have a certain property and not have it. This is evident as soon as it is understood, but it is not so evident as that a particular rose which we see cannot be both red and not red. (It is of course possible that parts of the rose may be red and parts not red, or that the rose may be of a shade of pink which we hardly know whether to call red or not; but in the former case it is plain that the rose as a whole is not red, while in the latter case the answer is theoretically definite as soon as we have decided on a precise definition of 'red'.)
  It is usually through particular instances that we come to be able to see the general principle. Only those who are practised in dealing with abstractions can readily grasp a general principle without the help of instances.

1.11 - (Plot continued.) Reversal of the Situation, Recognition, and Tragic or disastrous Incident defined and explained., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  Oedipus. There are indeed other forms. Even inanimate things of the most trivial kind may in a sense be objects of recognition. Again, we may recognise or discover whether a person has done a thing or not. But the recognition which is most intimately connected with the plot and action is, as we have said, the recognition of persons. This recognition, combined, with Reversal, will produce either pity or fear; and actions producing these effects are those which, by our definition, Tragedy represents. Moreover, it is upon such situations that the issues of good or bad fortune will depend. Recognition, then, being between persons, it may happen that one person only is recognised by the other-when the latter is already known--or it may be necessary that the recognition should be on both sides. Thus Iphigenia is revealed to Orestes by the sending of the letter; but another act of recognition is required to make Orestes known to Iphigenia.
  Two parts, then, of the Plot--Reversal of the Situation and

1.11 - Powers, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
  How are we to know that the mind has become concentrated? Because the idea of time will vanish. The more time passes unnoticed the more concentrated we are. In common life we see that when we are interested in a book we do not note the time at all, and when we leave the book, we are often surprised to find how many hours have passed. All time will have the tendency to come and stand in the one present. So the definition is given: When the past and present come and stand in one, the mind is said to be concentrated.1
    
  --
  We must not lose sight of the first definition of Samyama. When the mind has attained to that state when it identifies itself with the internal impression of the object, leaving the external, and when, by long practice, that is retained by the mind and the mind can get into that state in a moment, that is Samyama. If a man in that state wants to know the past and future, he has to make a Samyama on the changes in the Samskaras (III. 13). Some are working now at present, some have worked out, and some are waiting to work. So by making a Samyama on these he knows the past and future.
  l7. By making Samyama on word, meaning and knowledge, which are ordinarily confused, comes the knowledge of all animal sounds.

1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  Sri Aurobindo has given clear definitions of the Avatar
  and Vibhuti on many occasions. For instance: There are

1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  the divine beatitude. As the Isha closes with the aspiration towards the supreme felicity, so the Kena closes with the definition
  of Brahman as the Delight and the injunction to worship and
  --
  way of definition, since we can only indicate that "That" is not
  what "this" is, but is the mentally inexpressible absolute of all
  --
  the original descriptive expressions to the closing definition of
  the Life behind this life as "That which breathes not with the
  --
  HE UPANISHAD is not satisfied with the definition of
  the Brahman-consciousness as Mind of the mind. Just
  --
  which constitute the rhythm; thirdly, definition of the grouping
  of movements which are in contact, their shape; fourthly, the
  --
  the intermiscence as contact, the basis of touch, the definition as
  shape, the basis of sight, the upflow of force as rasa, sap, the basis
  --
  of the definition or form of force must be the basis of the essential
  sight; its sense of the upflow of essential being in the form, that
  --
  intermixes; it is aware of the definition or form of the sound and
  of the complex contacts or relations which make up the form;

1.12 - The Significance of Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This elaborate explanation of the Yajna sets out with a vast and comprehensive definition in which it is declared that the act and energy and materials of the sacrifice, the giver and receiver of the sacrifice, the goal and object of the sacrifice are all the one Brahman. "Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman-fire,
  Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahmanaction." This then is the knowledge in which the liberated man has to do works of sacrifice. It is the knowledge declared of old in the great Vedantic utterances, "I am He", "All this verily is the Brahman, Brahman is this Self." It is the knowledge of the entire unity; it is the One manifest as the doer and the deed and the object of works, knower and knowledge and the object of knowledge. The universal energy into which the action is poured is the Divine; the consecrated energy of the giving is the Divine; whatever is offered is only some form of the Divine; the giver of the offering is the Divine himself in man; the action, the work, the sacrifice is itself the Divine in movement, in activity; the goal to be reached by sacrifice is the Divine. For the man who has this knowledge and lives and acts in it, there can be no binding works, no personal and egoistically appropriated action; there is only the divine Purusha acting by the divine Prakriti in His own being, offering everything into the fire of His self-conscious cosmic energy, while the knowledge and the possession of His divine existence and consciousness by the soul unified with Him is the goal of all this God-directed movement and activity. To know that and to live and act in this unifying consciousness is to be free.

1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  The first wave of this new consciousness is quite visible. It is perfectly chaotic. It has caught human beings unawares. Its ebb and flow can be seen everywhere: men have been seized with errantry, or aberrancy. They have set out in search of something they did not understand, but which pushed and prodded them inside; they have taken to the road to anywhere, knocked on every door, the good as well as the bad, broken through walls and windmills, or, suddenly seized with laughter, they have left bag and baggage and said goodbye to the old establishment. It is natural that the first reaction is aberrant, since by definition it leaves the old circuit, as the primate suddenly left the instinctive wisdom of the herd. Each transition to a higher equilibrium is at first a dis-equilibrium and total disruption of the old equilibrium. Therefore, these apprentice supermen, who do not even know each other, will more likely be found among the unorthodox elements of society, the so-called misfits, the bastards, the recalcitrants of the general prison, the rebels against they don't know what except they have had enough of it. They are the new crusaders without a crusade, the partisans without a party, the antis who are so much against that they no longer want any against or for; they want something else altogether, without plus or minus, offensive or defensive, without black, good, yes or no, something completely different and completely free from all the twists and turns of the Machine, which still would like to catch them in the nets of its negations as in the nets of its affirmations. Or else, at the opposite end of the spectrum, these apprentice supermen will perhaps be found among those who have traveled the long road of the mind, its labyrinths, its endless grind, its answers that answer nothing, that raise another question and still another, its solutions that solve nothing, and its whole painful round its sudden futility at the end of the road, after a thousand questions and a thousand triumphs ever ruined, that little cry, at the end, of a man gaping at nothing and suddenly becoming like a helpless child again, as if all those days and years and labor had never been, as if nothing had happened, not a single real second in thirty years! These too, then, set out on the road. There, too, there is a crack for the Possible.
  But the very conditions of the uprooting of the old order may for a long time falsify the quest for the new order. And at first, this new order does not exist; it has to be made. A whole world has to be invented. And the aspiring superman or let us simply say the aspirant to something else must confront a primary reality: the law of freedom is a very demanding one, infinitely more demanding than all the laws imposed by the Machine. It is not a coasting into just anything, but a methodical uprooting from thousands of little slaveries; it does not mean abandoning everything, but, on the contrary, taking charge of everything, since we no longer want to depend on anybody or anything. It is a supreme apprenticeship of responsibility that of being oneself, which in the end is being all. It is not an escape, but a conquest; not a vacation from the Machine, but a great Adventure into man's unknown. And anything that may hamper this supreme freedom, at whatever level or under whatever appearance, must be fought as fiercely as the police or lawmakers of the old world. We are not leaving the slavery of the old order to fall into the worse slavery of ourselves the slavery of drugs, of a party, of one religion or another, one sect or another, a golden bubble or a white one. We want the one freedom of smiling at everything and being light everywhere, identical in destitution and pomp, in prison and palace, in emptiness and fullness and everything is full because we burn with the one little flame that possesses everything forever.

1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  It is not enough to describe Sri Aurobindo's discovery, we must also understand how it is accessible to us. It is very difficult to draw a diagram, however, and say, "Here is the way," because spiritual development is always adapted to the nature of each individual. And for good reason: this is not about learning a foreign language but about oneself, and no two natures are alike: The ideal I put before our yoga does not bind all spiritual life and endeavor. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger than the other kingdoms below it, with a hundred provinces, a thousand types, stages, forms, paths, variations of the spiritual ideal, degrees of spiritual advancement.172 Therefore we can give only a few pointers, with the hope that each person will find the particular clue that will open his or her own path. One should always keep in mind that the true system of yoga is to capture the thread of one's own consciousness, the "shining thread" of the rishis [Rig Veda, X.53], to seize hold of it, and follow it right to the end.
  Since cosmic consciousness and Nirvana do not give us the evolutionary key we are seeking, let us resume our quest, with Sri Aurobindo, where he had left it at Baroda prior to his two great experiences. The first step is the ascent into the Superconscient. As we have said, as silence settles in the seeker's mind, as he quiets his vital and frees himself from his absorption in the physical, the consciousness emerges from the countless activities in which it was indiscernibly commingled, scattered, and it takes on an independent existence. It becomes like a separate being within the being, a compact and increasingly intense Force. And the more it grows, the less it is satisfied with being confined in a body; we notice that it radiates outward, first during sleep, then during meditation, and finally with our eyes wide open. But this outward movement is not just lateral, as it were, toward the universal Mind, universal Vital, and universal Physical; the consciousness also seeks to go upward. This ascending urge may not even be the result of a conscious discipline; it may be a natural and spontaneous need (we should never forget that our efforts in this life are the continuation of many other efforts in many other lives, hence the unequal development of different individuals and the impossibility of setting up fixed rules). We may spontaneously feel something above our head drawing us, like an expanse or a light, or like a magnetic pole that is the origin of all our actions and thoughts, a zone of concentration above our head. The seeker has not silenced his mind to become like a slug; his silence is not dead, but alive; he is tuned in upward because he senses a life there. Silence is not an end but a means, just as learning to read notes is a means to capture music, and there are many kinds of music. Day after day, as his consciousness becomes increasingly concrete, he has hundreds of almost imperceptible experiences springing from this Silence above. He might think about nothing, when suddenly a thought crosses his mind not even a thought, a tiny spark and he knows exactly what he has to do and how he has to do it, down to the smallest detail, as if the pieces of a puzzle were suddenly falling into place, and with a sense of absolute certainty (below, everything is always uncertain, with always at least two solutions to every problem). Or a tiny impulse might strike him: "Go and see so-and-so"; he does, and "coincidentally" this person needs him. Or "Don't do this"; he persists, and has a bad fall. Or for no reason he is impelled toward a certain place, to find the very circumstances that will help him. Or, if some problem has to be solved, he remains immobile, silent, calling above, and the answer comes, clear and irrefutable.

1.12 - Truth and Knowledge, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
  The third of the above requisites leads us to adopt the view--which has on the whole been commonest among philosophers--that truth consists in some form of correspondence between belief and fact. It is, however, by no means an easy matter to discover a form of correspondence to which there are no irrefutable objections. By this partly--and partly by the feeling that, if truth consists in a correspondence of thought with something outside thought, thought can never know when truth has been attained--many philosophers have been led to try to find some definition of truth which shall not consist in relation to something wholly outside belief. The most important attempt at a definition of this sort is the theory that truth consists in _coherence_. It is said that the mark of falsehood is failure to cohere in the body of our beliefs, and that it is the essence of a truth to form part of the completely rounded system which is The Truth.
  There is, however, a great difficulty in this view, or rather two great difficulties. The first is that there is no reason to suppose that only _one_ coherent body of beliefs is possible. It may be that, with sufficient imagination, a novelist might invent a past for the world that would perfectly fit on to what we know, and yet be quite different from the real past. In more scientific matters, it is certain that there are often two or more hypotheses which account for all the known facts on some subject, and although, in such cases, men of science endeavour to find facts which will rule out all the hypotheses except one, there is no reason why they should always succeed.
  In philosophy, again, it seems not uncommon for two rival hypotheses to be both able to account for all the facts. Thus, for example, it is possible that life is one long dream, and that the outer world has only that degree of reality that the objects of dreams have; but although such a view does not seem inconsistent with known facts, there is no reason to prefer it to the common-sense view, according to which other people and things do really exist. Thus coherence as the definition of truth fails because there is no proof that there can be only one coherent system.
  The other objection to this definition of truth is that it assumes the meaning of 'coherence' known, whereas, in fact, 'coherence' presupposes the truth of the laws of logic. Two propositions are coherent when both may be true, and are incoherent when one at least must be false. Now in order to know whether two propositions can both be true, we must know such truths as the law of contradiction. For example, the two propositions, 'this tree is a beech' and 'this tree is not a beech', are not coherent, because of the law of contradiction. But if the law of contradiction itself were subjected to the test of coherence, we should find that, if we choose to suppose it false, nothing will any longer be incoherent with anything else. Thus the laws of logic supply the skeleton or framework within which the test of coherence applies, and they themselves cannot be established by this test.
  For the above two reasons, coherence cannot be accepted as giving the
  --
  We are now in a position to understand what it is that distinguishes a true judgement from a false one. For this purpose we will adopt certain definitions. In every act of judgement there is a mind which judges, and there are terms concerning which it judges. We will call the mind the
  _subject_ in the judgement, and the remaining terms the _objects_. Thus, when Othello judges that Desdemona loves Cassio, Othello is the subject, while the objects are Desdemona and loving and Cassio. The subject and the objects together are called the _constituents_ of the judgement.
  --
  Thus a belief is _true_ when it _corresponds_ to a certain associated complex, and _false_ when it does not. Assuming, for the sake of definiteness, that the objects of the belief are two terms and a relation, the terms being put in a certain order by the 'sense' of the believing, then if the two terms in that order are united by the relation into a complex, the belief is true; if not, it is false. This constitutes the definition of truth and falsehood that we were in search of. Judging or believing is a certain complex unity of which a mind is a constituent; if the remaining constituents, taken in the order which they have in the belief, form a complex unity, then the belief is true; if not, it is false.
  Thus although truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs, yet they are in a sense extrinsic properties, for the condition of the truth of a belief is something not involving beliefs, or (in general) any mind at all, but only the _objects_ of the belief. A mind, which believes, believes truly when there is a _corresponding_ complex not involving the mind, but only its objects. This correspondence ensures truth, and its absence entails falsehood. Hence we account simultaneously for the two facts that beliefs (a) depend on minds for their _existence_, (b) do not depend on minds for their _truth_.

1.13 - Knowledge, Error, and Probably Opinion, #The Problems of Philosophy, #Bertrand Russell, #Philosophy
  But are we to say that nothing is knowledge except what is validly deduced from true premisses? Obviously we cannot say this. Such a definition is at once too wide and too narrow. In the first place, it is too wide, because it is not enough that our premisses should be _true_, they must also be _known_. The man who believes that Mr. Balfour was the late Prime Minister may proceed to draw valid deductions from the true premiss that the late Prime Minister's name began with a B, but he cannot be said to _know_ the conclusions reached by these deductions.
  Thus we shall have to amend our definition by saying that knowledge is what is validly deduced from _known_ premisses. This, however, is a circular definition: it assumes that we already know what is meant by 'known premisses'. It can, therefore, at best define one sort of knowledge, the sort we call derivative, as opposed to intuitive knowledge. We may say: '_Derivative_ knowledge is what is validly deduced from premisses known intuitively'. In this statement there is no formal defect, but it leaves the definition of _intuitive_ knowledge still to seek.
  Leaving on one side, for the moment, the question of intuitive knowledge, let us consider the above suggested definition of derivative knowledge. The chief objection to it is that it unduly limits knowledge.
  It constantly happens that people entertain a true belief, which has grown up in them because of some piece of intuitive knowledge from which it is capable of being validly inferred, but from which it has not, as a matter of fact, been inferred by any logical process.
  --
  We must, therefore, admit as derivative knowledge whatever is the result of intuitive knowledge even if by mere association, provided there _is_ a valid logical connexion, and the person in question could become aware of this connexion by reflection. There are in fact many ways, besides logical inference, by which we pass from one belief to another: the passage from the print to its meaning illustrates these ways. These ways may be called 'psychological inference'. We shall, then, admit such psychological inference as a means of obtaining derivative knowledge, provided there is a discoverable logical inference which runs parallel to the psychological inference. This renders our definition of derivative knowledge less precise than we could wish, since the word
  'discoverable' is vague: it does not tell us how much reflection may be needed in order to make the discovery. But in fact 'knowledge' is not a precise conception: it merges into 'probable opinion', as we shall see more fully in the course of the present chapter. A very precise definition, therefore, should not be sought, since any such definition must be more or less misleading.
  The chief difficulty in regard to knowledge, however, does not arise over derivative knowledge, but over intuitive knowledge. So long as we are dealing with derivative knowledge, we have the test of intuitive knowledge to fall back upon. But in regard to intuitive beliefs, it is by no means easy to discover any criterion by which to distinguish some as true and others as erroneous. In this question it is scarcely possible to reach any very precise result: all our knowledge of truths is infected with some degree of doubt, and a theory which ignored this fact would be plainly wrong. Something may be done, however, to mitigate the difficulties of the question.

1.13 - Reason and Religion, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We shall better understand what may be this higher being and those higher faculties, if we look again at the dealings of the reason with the trend towards the absolute in our other faculties, in the divergent principles of our complex existence. Let us study especially its dealings with the suprarational in them and the infrarational, the two extremes between which our intelligence is some sort of mediator. The spiritual or suprarational is always turned at its heights towards the Absolute; in its extension, living in the luminous infinite, its special power is to realise the infinite in the finite, the eternal unity in all divisions and differences. Our spiritual evolution ascends therefore through the relative to the absolute, through the finite to the infinite, through all divisions to oneness. Man in his spiritual realisation begins to find and seize hold on the satisfying intensities of the absolute in the relative, feels the large and serene presence of the infinite in the finite, discovers the reconciling law of a perfect unity in all divisions and differences. The spiritual will in his outer as in his inner life and formulation must be to effect a great reconciliation between the secret and eternal reality and the finite appearances of a world which seeks to express and in expressing seems to deny it. Our highest faculties then will be those which make this possible because they have in them the intimate light and power and joy by which these things can be grasped in direct knowledge and experience, realised and made normally and permanently effective in will, communicated to our whole nature. The infrarational, on the other hand, has its origin and basis in the obscure infinite of the Inconscient; it wells up in instincts and impulses, which are really the crude and more or less haphazard intuitions of a subconscient physical, vital, emotional and sensational mind and will in us. Its struggle is towards definition, towards self-creation, towards finding some finite order of its obscure knowledge and tendencies. But it has also the instinct and force of the infinite from which it proceeds; it contains obscure, limited and violent velleities that move it to grasp at the intensities of the absolute and pull them down or some touch of them into its finite action: but because it proceeds by ignorance and not by knowledge, it cannot truly succeed in this more vehement endeavour. The life of the reason and intelligent will stands between that upper and this nether power. On one side it takes up and enlightens the life of the instincts and impulses and helps it to find on a higher plane the finite order for which it gropes. On the other side it looks up towards the absolute, looks out towards the infinite, looks in towards the One, but without being able to grasp and hold their realities; for it is able only to consider them with a sort of derivative and remote understanding, because it moves in the relative and, itself limited and definite, it can act only by definition, division and limitation. These three powers of being, the suprarational, rational and infrarational are present, but with an infinitely varying prominence in all our activities.
  The limitations of the reason become very strikingly, very characteristically, very nakedly apparent when it is confronted with that great order of psychological truths and experiences which we have hitherto kept in the background the religious being of man and his religious life. Here is a realm at which the intellectual reason gazes with the bewildered mind of a foreigner who hears a language of which the words and the spirit are unintelligible to him and sees everywhere forms of life and principles of thought and action which are absolutely strange to his experience. He may try to learn this speech and understand this strange and alien life; but it is with pain and difficulty, and he cannot succeed unless he has, so to speak, unlearned himself and become one in spirit and nature with the natives of this celestial empire. Till then his efforts to understand and interpret them in his own language and according to his own notions end at the worst in a gross misunderstanding and deformation. The attempts of the positive critical reason to dissect the phenomena of the religious life sound to men of spiritual experience like the prattle of a child who is trying to shape into the mould of his own habitual notions the life of adults or the blunders of an ignorant mind which thinks fit to criticise patronisingly or adversely the labours of a profound thinker or a great scientist. At the best even this futile labour can extract, can account for only the externals of the things it attempts to explain; the spirit is missed, the inner matter is left out, and as a result of that capital omission even the account of the externals is left without real truth and has only an apparent correctness.

1.13 - The Divine Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  14:But if we suppose an infinite Mind which would be free from our limitations, that at least might well be the creator of the universe? But such a Mind would be something quite different from the definition of mind as we know it: it would be something beyond mentality; it would be the supramental Truth. An infinite Mind constituted in the terms of mentality as we know it could only create an infinite chaos, a vast clash of chance, accident, vicissitude wandering towards an indeterminate end after which it would be always tentatively groping and aspiring. An infinite, omniscient, omnipotent Mind would not be mind at all, but supramental knowledge.
  15:Mind, as we know it, is a reflective mirror which receives presentations or images of a pre-existent Truth or Fact, either external to or at least vaster than itself. It represents to itself from moment to moment the phenomenon that is or has been. It possesses also the faculty of constructing in itself possible images other than those of the actual fact presented to it; that is to say, it represents to itself not only phenomenon that has been but also phenomenon that may be: it cannot, be it noted, represent to itself phenomenon that assuredly will be, except when it is an assured repetition of what is or has been. It has, finally, the faculty of forecasting new modifications which it seeks to construct out of the meeting of what has been and what may be, out of the fulfilled possibility and the unfulfilled, something that it sometimes succeeds in constructing more or less exactly, sometimes fails to realise, but usually finds cast into other forms than it forecasted and turned to other ends than it desired or intended.

1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  15 A definition of God in Nicholas of Cusa. Cf. "The Psychology of the Trans-
  ference," par. 537.

1.15 - Conclusion, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  to give a definition of good and evil that could be considered
  universally valid. In other words, we do not know what good

1.15 - On incorruptible purity and chastity to which the corruptible attain by toil and sweat., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  In the rulings made by the Fathers a distinction is drawn between different things, such as attraction, or intercourse, or consent, or captivity, or struggle, or so-called passion in the soul. And these blessed men define attraction as a simple conception, or an image of something encountered for the first time which has lodged in the heart. Intercourse is conversation with what has presented itself, accompanied by passion or dispassion. And consent is the bending of the soul to what has been presented to it, accompanied by delight. But captivity is a forcible and invo1untary rape of the heart or a permanent association with what has been encountered which destroys the good order of our condition. Struggle, according to their definition, is power equal to the attacking force, which is either victorious or else suffers defeat according to the souls desire. And they define passion in a special sense as that which lurks disquietingly in the soul for a long time, and through its intimacy with the soul brings it finally to what amounts to a habit, a self-incurred downright desertion. Of all these states
  1 Cf. 2 Kings xi.

1.15 - The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But still, apart from the possibility, there is the question of the actual divine working, - whether actually the divine consciousness does appear coming forward from beyond the veil to act at all directly in the phenomenal, the finite, the mental and material, the limited, the imperfect. The finite is indeed nothing but a definition, a face-value of the Infinite's self-representations to its own variations of consciousness; the real value of each finite phenomenon is an infinite value, is indeed the very Infinite. Each being is infinite in its self-existence, whatever it may be in the action of its phenomenal nature, its temporal selfrepresentation. The man is not, when we look closely, himself alone, a rigidly separate self-existent individual, but humanity in a mind and body of itself; and humanity too is no rigidly
  The Possibility and Purpose of Avatarhood

1.15 - The Supramental Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  It is quite difficult to define the supramental consciousness in mental terms, for it is nonmental by definition, and it defies all our threedimensional laws and perspectives. The word itself may mislead us,
  because it is not an epitome of human consciousness, but another type of consciousness. We might try to approach it by distinguishing two aspects, one of consciousness or vision, and one of power. But this means becoming caught in the mental trap again, because these two aspects are inseparable; this consciousness is power, an active vision.
  --
  falsehoods, stumblings! they cry. How bright and beautiful are Thy errors, O Lord! Thy falsehoods save Truth alive; by Thy stumblings the world is perfected.262 But the mind, which sees only the present surface of things, seeks to trim off all the rough edges, purify by exclusion, and reduce its world to a uniform, righteous and equitable truth. It decrees, "This is good, that is bad; this is friendly, that is hostile." It might want to eliminate all the Nazis from the world or all the Chinese, for instance, thinking they are quite unnecessary calamities. And the mind is right, by definition, since it is designed to be reasonable and since it, too, expresses a mental or moral absolute that has its place and purpose. But this is not the whole truth; it is only one point of view.263 Finally, this is why we lack power, for if we 260
  The Synthesis of Yoga, 21:808
  --
  Nothing to the supramental sense is really finite: it is founded on a feeling of all in each and of each in all: its sense definition . . . creates no walls of limitation; it is an oceanic and ethereal sense in which all particular sense knowledge and sensation is a wave or movement or spray or drop that is yet a concentration of the whole ocean and inseparable from the ocean. . . . It is as if the eye of the poet and artist had replaced the vague or trivial unseeing normal vision, but singularly spiritualized and glorified, as if indeed it were the sight of the supreme divine Poet and Artist in which we were participating and there were given to us the full seeing of his truth and intention in his design of the universe and of each thing in the universe. There is an unlimited intensity which makes all that is seen a revelation of the glory of quality and idea and form and colour. The physical eye seems then to carry in itself a spirit and a consciousness which sees not only the physical aspect of the object but the soul of quality in it, the vibration of energy, the light and force and spiritual substance of which it is made. . . . There is at the same time a subtle change which makes the sight see in a sort of fourth dimension, the character of which is a certain internality, the seeing not only of the superficies and the outward form but of that which informs it and subtly extends around it. The material object becomes to this sight something different from what we now see, not a separate object on the background or in the environment of the rest of Nature but an indivisible part and even in a subtle way an expression of the unity of all that we see. And this unity . . . is that of the identity of the eternal,
  the unity of the Spirit. For to the supramental seeing the material world and space and material objects cease to be material in the sense in which we now on the strength of the sole evidence of our limited physical organs . . . receive [them]; . . . they appear and are

1.16 - THE ESSENCE OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  2. Biological definition and Interpretation
  of the Spirit of Democracy

1.16 - The Triple Status of Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  13:It is indeed only when our human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of spiritual experience, affirms that to be the sole eternal truth and states it in the terms of our all-dividing mental logic that the necessity for mutually destructive schools of philosophy arises. Thus, emphasising the sole truth of the unitarian consciousness, we observe the play of the divine unity, erroneously rendered by our mentality into the terms of real difference, but, not satisfied with correcting this error of the mind by the truth of a higher principle, we assert that the play itself is an illusion. Or, emphasising the play of the One in the Many, we declare a qualified unity and regard the individual soul as a soul-form of the Supreme, but would assert the eternity of this qualified existence and deny altogether the experience of a pure consciousness in an unqualified oneness. Or, again, emphasising the play of difference, we assert that the Supreme and the human soul are eternally different and reject the validity of an experience which exceeds and seems to abolish that difference. But the position that we have now firmly taken absolves us from the necessity of these negations and exclusions: we see that there is a truth behind all these affirmations, but at the same time an excess which leads to an ill-founded negation. Affirming, as we have done, the absolute absoluteness of That, not limited by our ideas of unity, not limited by our ideas of multiplicity, affirming the unity as a basis for the manifestation of the multiplicity and the multiplicity as the basis for the return to oneness and the enjoyment of unity in the divine manifestation, we need not burden our present statement with these discussions or undertake the vain labour of enslaving to our mental distinctions and definitions the absolute freedom of the Divine Infinite.

1.17 - DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY UPON ITSELF?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  have been vouchsafed us the reality, capable of definition, of a
  Cosmogenesis; the discovery of the genesis of atoms, of the in-

1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  concentration, and yogic practices in order to attain "liberation." As we might imagine, though, Sri Aurobindo's Ashram had little to do with this particular definition, except for the fact that the disciples were indeed gathered around Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It was not an exotic kind of monastery, and still less a place for refuge and peace; it was more like a forge: This Ashram has been created . . . not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life. 380 Even before his arrest in Bengal, at a time when he was not even remotely dreaming of founding an ashram, Sri Aurobindo had said: The spiritual life finds its most potent expression in the man who lives the ordinary life of men in the strength of the Yoga. . . . It is by such a union of the inner life and the outer that mankind will eventually be lifted up and become mighty and divine. 381 Hence, Sri Aurobindo wanted his Ashram to be fully involved in everyday life, right in the midst of the world-at-large, since that is where the transformation had to take place, and not upon some Himalayan peak. Except for the main building, where the Mother lived and where Sri Aurobindo's monument is located, the 1,200-odd disciples of all nationalities and all social classes (men, women and four to five hundred children)
  were scattered throughout the city of Pondicherry in more than three hundred different houses. There were no protective walls in the Ashram, except for one's own inner light; the bustle of the bazaar was just next door.

1.18 - Mind and Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  10:Thus the depiecing is already there; the relation of form with form as if they were separate beings, of will-of-being with willof-being as if they were separate forces, of knowledge-of-being with knowledge-of-being as if they were separate consciousnesses has already been founded. It is as yet only "as if"; for the divine soul is not deluded, it is aware of all as phenomenon of being and keeps hold of its existence in the reality of being; it does not forfeit its unity: it uses mind as a subordinate action of the infinite knowledge, a definition of things subordinate to its awareness of infinity, a delimitation dependent on its awareness of essential totality - not that apparent and pluralistic totality of sum and collective aggregation which is only another phenomenon of Mind. Thus there is no real limitation; the soul uses its defining power for the play of well-distinguished forms and forces and is not used by that power.
  11:A new factor, a new action of conscious force is therefore needed to create the operation of a helplessly limited as opposed to a freely limiting mind, - that is to say, of mind subject to its own play and deceived by it as opposed to mind master of its own play and viewing it in its truth, the creature mind as opposed to the divine. That new factor is Avidya, the self-ignoring faculty which separates the action of mind from the action of the supermind that originated and still governs it from behind the veil. Thus separated, Mind perceives only the particular and not the universal, or conceives only the particular in an unpossessed universal and no longer both particular and universal as phenomena of the Infinite. Thus we have the limited mind which views every phenomenon as a thing-in-itself, separate part of a whole which again exists separately in a greater whole and so on, enlarging always its aggregates without getting back to the sense of a true infinity.

1.18 - THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  By definition and principle it is the specific function of the
  Church to Christianize all that is human in Man. But what is likely

1.19 - ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD OF US OF AN ULTRA-HUMAN, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  1. Physicobiological definition of the Human:
  A Specific Superstate of Living Matter
  --
  when it is virtually incapable of morphological definition, is a case
  in point. Even if by some inconceivable chance we were to come

1.20 - Diction, or Language in general., #Poetics, #Aristotle, #Philosophy
  A Sentence or Phrase is a composite significant sound, some at least of whose parts are in themselves significant; for not every such group of words consists of verbs and nouns--'the definition of man,' for example--but it may dispense even with the verb. Still it will always have some significant part, as 'in walking,' or 'Cleon son of Cleon.' A sentence or phrase may form a unity in two ways,--either as signifying one thing, or as consisting of several parts linked together. Thus the
  Iliad is one by the linking together of parts, the definition of man by the unity of the thing signified.]
  author class:Aristotle

1.20 - Equality and Knowledge, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Always in this sense of a supreme self-knowledge is this word jnana used in Indian philosophy and Yoga; it is the light by which we grow into our true being, not the knowledge by which we increase our information and our intellectual riches; it is not scientific or psychological or philosophic or ethical or aesthetic or worldly and practical knowledge. These too no doubt help us to grow, but only in the becoming, not in the being; they enter into the definition of Yogic knowledge only when we use them as aids to know the Supreme, the Self, the
  Divine, - scientific knowledge, when we can get through the veil of processes and phenomena and see the one Reality behind which explains them all; psychological knowledge, when we use it to know ourselves and to distinguish the lower from the higher, so that this we may renounce and into that we may grow; philosophical knowledge, when we turn it as a light upon the essential principles of existence so as to discover and live in that which is eternal; ethical knowledge, when by it having distinguished sin from virtue we put away the one and rise above the other into the pure innocence of the divine Nature; aesthetic knowledge, when we discover by it the beauty of the Divine;

1.22 - THE END OF THE SPECIES, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  human, definition of, 270
  humanization, 262

1.23 - Improvising a Temple, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  All the above, now: Buddhism refuted. Yet it is a possibility and therefore one facet of Truth. "Rest" is an idea: so immobility is one of the moving states. A certain state of mind is (almost by definition) "eternal," yet it most assuredly begins and ends.
  And so on for ever I fear it would be nugatory, pleonastic (and oh! several other lovely long adjectives!) to try to guard you from these hydra-headed and protean booby-traps; you must tackle them yourself as they arise, and deal with them as best you can: always remembering that often enough you cannot tell which is you and which is the Monkey Puzzle, or who has won. ("Everybody's won; so everybody must have a prize" applies beautifully). And none of it all matters a row of haricots verts sauts; for the conclusion must always be Doubt (see that beastly The Book of Lies again there's a gorgeous chapter about it[40]) and the practical moral is this: these contradictions don't occur (or don't matter) in Neschamah.

1.25 - On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual feeling., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
  3. Let all who are led by the Spirit of God enter with us into this spiritual and wise gathering, holding in their spiritual hands the God-inscribed tablets of knowledge. We have met, we have investigated, and we have probed the meaning of this precious inscription. And one said: It2 means constant oblivion of ones achievements. Another: It is the acknowledgement of oneself as the last of all and the greatest sinner of all. And another: The minds recognition of ones weakness and impotence. Another again: In fits of rage it means to forestall ones neighbour and be first to stop the quarrel. And again another: Recognition of divine grace and divine mercy. And again another: The feeling of a contrite soul, and the renunciation of ones own will. But when I had listened to all this and had attentively and soberly considered it, I found that I had not been able to comprehend the blessed sense of that virtue from what had been said. Therefore, last of all, having gathered what fell from the lips of those learned and blessed fathers as a dog gathers the crumbs that fall from the table, I too gave my definition of it and said: Humility is a nameless grace in the soul, its name known only to those who have learned it by experience. It is unspeakable wealth, a name and gift from God, for it is said: Learn not from an angel, not from man, and not from a book, but from Me, that is, from Me indwelling, from My illumination and action in you, for I am meek and humble in heart and in thought and in spirit, and your souls shall find rest from conflicts and relief from arguments.3
  4. The appearance of this sacred vine is one thing during the winter of the passions, another in the spring of fruit-blossom, yet another in the actual harvest of the virtues. Yet all these different stages concur in gladness and fruit-bearing, and therefore they all have their own signs and sure evidence of fruit to come. For as soon as the cluster of holy humility begins to blossom within us, we at once begin, though with an effort, to hate all human glory and praise, and to banish from ourselves irritation and anger. In proportion as this queen of virtues makes progress in our soul by spiritual growth, so we regard all the good deeds accomplished by us as nothing, or rather as an abomination, assuming that

1.28 - Need to Define God, Self, etc., #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  You ask whether these remarks do not conflict with my repeated definition of Initiation as the Way In. Not at all; the Inmost is identical with the All. As you travel inward, you become able to perceive all the layers which surround the "Self" from within, thus enlarging the scope of your vision of the Universe. It is like moving from a skirmishing patrol to G.H.Q.; and the object of so doing is obviously to exercise constantly increasing control over the whole Army. Every step in rank enables you both to see more and to do more; but one's attention is inevitably directed outward.
  When the entire system of the Universe is conterminous with your comprehension, "inward" and "outward" become identical.
  --
  Then what becomes of this privileged "us"? We are obliged to extend it to include everything. Then, as we have just seen, "God" also is unfettered by definitions.
  Net result: "God within us" means precisely nothing at all.

1.30 - Do you Believe in God?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  They say "Not that, not that!" denying to him all attributes; He is "that which is without quantity or quality." They contradict themselves at every turn; seeking to remove limit, they remove definition. Their only refuge is in "superconsciousness." Splendid! but now "belief" has disappeared altogether; for the word has no sense unless it is subject to the laws of normal thought... Tut! you must be feeling it yourself; the further one goes, the darker the path. All I have written is somehow muddled and obscure, maugre my frenzied struggle for lucidity, simplicity . . . .
  Is this the fault of my own sophistication? I asked myself. Tell you what! I'll trot round to my masseuse, and put it up to her. She is a simple country soul, by no means over-educated, but intelligent; capable of a firm grasp of the principles of her job; a steady church-goer on what she considers worthwhile occasions; dislikes the rector, but praises his policy of keeping his discourse within bounds. She has done quite a lot of thinking for herself; distrusts and despises the Press and the Radio, has no use for ready-made opinions. She shares with the flock their normal prejudices and phobias, but is not bigoted about them, and follows readily enough a line of simply-expressed destructive criticism when it is put to her. This is, however, only a temporary reaction; a day later she would repeat the previous inanities as if they had never been demolished. In the late fifties, at a guess. I sprang your question on her out of the blue, la "doodle-bug;" premising merely that I had been asked the question, and was puzzled as to how to answer it. Her reply was curious and surprising: without a moment's hesitation and with great enthusiasm, "Quickly, yes!" The spontaneous reservation struck me as extremely interesting. I said: of course, but suppose you think it over and out a bit, what am I to understand? She began glibly "He's a great big " and broke off, looking foolish. Then, although omnipotent, He needed our help we were all just as powerful as He, for we were little bits of each other but exactly how, or to what end, she did not make clear. An exclamation: "Then there is the Devil!"

1.31 - Is Thelema a New Religion?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  True, it's a slogan of AA "The method of science the aim of religion." Here the word "aim" and the context help the definition; it must mean the attainment of Knowledge and Power in spiritual matters or words to that effect: as soon as one selects a phrase, one starts to kick holes in it! Yet we both know perfectly well all the time what we do mean.
  But this is certainly not the sense of the word in your question. It may clear our minds, as has so often happened, if we examine it through the lens of dear old Skeat.

1.3.4.01 - The Beginning and the End, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Precisely because God is one, indefinable and beyond form, therefore He is capable of infinite definition and quality, realisation in numberless forms and the joy of endless selfmultiplication. These two things go together and they cannot really be divided.
  * *

1.67 - The External Soul in Folk-Custom, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
  squares very well with Sir George Grey's definition of a totem or
  _kobong_ in Western Australia. He says: "A certain mysterious

1.73 - Monsters, Niggers, Jews, etc., #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  And I don't see how to get out of swallowing this last sly bait; as you say, "Every man and every woman is a star." does need some attention to the definition of "man" and "woman." What is the position, you say, of "monsters"? And men of vinferior" races, like the Veddah, Hottentot and the Australian Blackfellow? There must be a line somewhere, and will I please draw it? You make me feel like Giotto!
  There is one remark which I must make at the beginning. It's some poet or other, Tennyson or Kipling, I think (I forget who) that wrote: "Folks in the loomp, is baad." It is true all round. Someone wisely took note that the vilest man alive had always found someone to love him. Remember the monster that Sir Frederick Treves picked up from an East End peep-show, and had petted by princesses? (What a cunning trick!) Revolting, all the same, to read his account of it. He the monster, not Treves! seems to have been a most charming individual ah! That's the word we want. Every individual has some qualities that endear him to some other. And per contra, I doubt if there is any class which is not detestable to some other class. Artists, police, the clergy, "reds," foxhunters, Freemasons, Jews, "heaven-born," women's clubwomen (especially in U.S.A.), "Methodys," golfers, dog-lovers; you can't find one body without its "natural" enemies. It's right, what's worse; every class, as a class, is almost sure to have more defects than qualities." As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.

1.83 - Epistola Ultima, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  When I say subtler, moreover, I mean it. The analysis of matter has resulted in the extraordinary discovery that the definition of matter as given by the physicist of to-day is very similar indeed to the definition of spirit as stated by the mystics of the middle ages.
  Henry Poincar has well pointed out that the results of scientific experiment as we know them, are altogether in their way dependant on the existence of our own peculiar natures. If, for example, we had no sense to use in our exploration but that of hearing, we should have worked out a classification of trees entirely different from that which we now possess. We should have taught our students how to distinguish the sounds made by an oak and an elm respectively in a storm; the differences in the rustling of various kinds of grass, and so on.

1914 03 13p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The subconscient is the intermediate zone between precise perception and ignorance, total darkness; it is probable that most beings, even human beings, live constantly in this subconscient; few emerge from it. This is the conquest that is to be made; for to be conscious in the true sense of the word is to be Thyself integrally; and is not this the very definition of the work to be accomplished, the mission to be fulfilled upon earth?
   Deliver us, O Lord, from darkness; grant that we may become perfectly awake.

1915 04 19p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   All this gives the feeling of a sort of void full of light, peace, immensity, eluding all form and all definition. It is the Nought, but a Nought which is real and can last eternally, for it is, even while having the perfect immensity of that which is not. Poor words which try to say what silence itself cannot express.
   The condition thus trying to define itself in awkward terms gradually settled in some weeks ago, and every passing day establishes it more definitively, more deeply, more irremediably so to speak. Without having wanted it, sought for it or desired it, the being sinks deeper and deeper into it, also gradually losing consciousness of itself in a Consciousness which is no longer individual and whose immobility is inexpressiblea Consciousness from which it is no longer possible to distinguish oneself.

1929-05-26 - Individual, illusion of separateness - Hostile forces and the mental plane - Psychic world, psychic being - Spiritual and psychic - Words, understanding speech and reading - Hostile forces, their utility - Illusion of action, true action, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  But in speaking of these things one must be careful not to be imprisoned by the words we use. When I speak of the psychic or the spiritual, I mean things that are very deep and real behind the flat surface of the words and intimately connected even in their difference. Intellectual definitions and distinctions are too external and rigid to seize the true truth of things. And yet, unless you are very much in the habit of speaking to one another, there is almost a necessity of defining the sense of your words, if you are to understand each other. The ideal condition for a conversation is when the minds are so well attuned that the words are only a support for a spontaneous mutual understanding and you need not explain at each step what you utter. This is the advantage when you talk always with the same persons; an attuned harmony is established between their minds and the significance of the things spoken penetrates them at once.
  There is a world of ideas without form and it is there that you must enter if you want to seize what is behind the words. So long as you have to draw your understanding from the forms of words, you are likely to fall into much confusion about the true sense; but if in a silence of your mind you can rise into the world from which ideas descend to take form, at once the real understanding comes. If you are to be sure of understanding one another, you must be able to understand in silence. There is a condition in which your minds are so well attuned and harmonised together that one perceives the thought of the other without any necessity of words. But if there is not this attunement, there will always be some deformation of your meaning, because to what you speak the other mind supplies its own significance. I use a word in a certain sense or shade of its sense; you are accustomed to put into it another sense or shade. Then, evidently, you will understand, not my exact meaning in it, but what the word means to you. This is true not of speech only, but of reading also. If you want to understand a book with a deep teaching in it, you must be able to read it in the minds silence; you must wait and let the expression go deep inside you into the region where words are no more and from there come slowly back to your exterior consciousness and its surface understanding. But if you let the words jump at your external mind and try to adapt and adjust the two, you will have entirely missed their real sense and power. There can be no perfect understanding unless you are in union with the unexpressed mind that is behind the centre of expression.

1950-12-30 - Perfect and progress. Dynamic equilibrium. True sincerity., #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Now we are going to try to find a definition which can fit all instances, that is, the individual, the collectivity, the earth and the universe.
  We may say that perfection will be attained in the individual, the collectivity, on the earth and in the universe, when, at every moment, the receptivity will be equal in quality and quantity to the Force which wants to manifest.

1951-02-22 - Surrender, offering, consecration - Experiences and sincerity - Aspiration and desire - Vedic hymns - Concentration and time, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   That depends on the definition you give to the words. In most religions, and perhaps in most philosophies also, it is the vital being which is called soul, for it is said that the soul leaves the body, while it is the vital being which leaves the body. One speaks of saving the soul, wicked souls, redeeming the soul but all that applies to the vital being, for the psychic being has no need to be saved! It does not share the faults of the external person, it is free from all reaction.
   When one works and wants to do ones best, one needs much time. But generally we dont have much time, we are in a hurry. How to do ones best when one is in a hurry?

1951-03-01 - Universe and the Divine - Freedom and determinism - Grace - Time and Creation- in the Supermind - Work and its results - The psychic being - beauty and love - Flowers- beauty and significance - Choice of reincarnating psychic being, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Returning to the definition of the word "pre-existent", Mother added the following commentary at the time of the publication of this talk: "Sat, that is, absolute Existence, is not in the Manifestation; it exists without being manifested; it is the non-manifest state of existence. There is Tat which is the state of non-existence and Sat which is the state of existence; and Tat naturally is not manifested, but Sat also is not manifested: it is only when Chit-Tapas comes, the Consciousness-Energy, the Consciousness which realises, that Sat manifests itself."
   ***

1951-04-14 - Surrender and sacrifice - Idea of sacrifice - Bahaism - martyrdom - Sleep- forgetfulness, exteriorisation, etc - Dreams and visions- explanations - Exteriorisation- incidents about cats, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Many religions are founded upon the idea of sacrifice; for instance, all the Chaldean religions. The reforms of the Muslim religion also had a very strong tendency towards sacrifice. All the first adepts, the first faithful, paid with their life for changing their religion. In Persia, they were persecuted beyond all telling. There are even many writings in which the joys of sacrifice are praised highly that is a Chaldean idea. But you should be on your guard; all depends upon the meaning given to the word. It is obvious that for him who sacrifices himself willingly, that is, who gives up his life voluntarily and with joy, it is no longer a sacrifice, by the very definition we have given to the word.
   We also speak of the sacrifice of the Divine. But I have noticed that this is called sacrifice when one understands that if obliged to do it oneself it would be very difficult! It would give you much pain, it would be very hard (laughing) so one speaks of sacrifice, but it is probable that for the Divine it was not painful and he did it willingly, with all the joy of self-giving.

1951-05-14 - Chance - the play of forces - Peace, given and lost - Abolishing the ego, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Excuse me, we have given a definition, we have said that unless an event is the result of the intervention of the divine Will expressed without mixture, it is a question of what we call chance.
   Then in the ordinary world many things are due to chance.

1953-05-27, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Later on, a disciple asked Mother what she meant by, "It is That, the Power." Mother answered, "Yes, they will find the same thing the mystics have found andreligious people have found, as everybody has foundit is That, the Power. What one finds is the Power. And to That, essentially, you can give neither a name nor a definition That is now the big quarrel about Auroville: in the 'Charter' I put the 'Divine Consciousness' (to live in Auroville one must be a 'willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness', so they say: it makes you think of God. I said (laughing), as for me, it does not make me think of God! So some translate it as 'the highest consciousness', others put other things. I agreed with the Russians to put 'Perfect Consciousness', but that is an approximation And it is Thatwhich you can neither name nor definewhich is the supreme Power. It is Power that one finds. And the supreme Power is only an aspect: the aspect concerning the creation."
   See Notes on the Way (13 March 1968 and 16 March 1968).

1953-06-17, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There is a part of the mind which receives ideas, ideas that are formed in a higher mind. Still, I dont know, it is a question of definition and one must know what exactly you mean to say.
   It is intellect that puts ideas in the form of thoughts, gathering and organising the thoughts at the same time. There are great ideas which lie beyond the ordinary human mentality, which can put on all possible forms. These great ideas tend to descend, they want to manifest themselves in precise forms. These precise forms are the thoughts; and generally it is this, I believe, that is meant by intellect: it is this that gives thought-form to the ideas.

1953-10-21, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I dont know. That depends (thats just what I was asking Parul), it depends on the definition you give to the word artist.
   If you ask me, I believe that all those who produce something artistic are artists! A word depends upon the way it is used, upon what one puts into it. One may put into it all that one wants. For instance, in Japan there are gardeners who spend their time correcting the forms of trees so that in the landscape they make a beautiful picture. By all kinds of trimmings, props, etc. they adjust the forms of trees. They give them special forms so that each form may be just what is needed in the landscape. A tree is planted in a garden at the spot where it is needed and moreover, it is given the form thats required for it to go well with the whole set-up. And they succeed in doing wonderful things. You have but to take a photograph of the garden, it is a real picture, it is so good. Well, I certainly call the man an artist. One may call him a gardener but he is an artist. All those who have a sure and developed sense of harmony in all its forms, and the harmony of all the forms among themselves, are necessarily artists, whatever may be the type of their production.

1953-12-16, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It is always pure. But it is either more or less individualised and independent in its action. What is psychic in the being is always pure, by its very definition, for it is that part of the being which is in contact with the Divine and expresses the truth of the being. But this may be like a spark in the darkness of the being or it may be a being of light, conscious, fully formed and independent. There are all the gradations between the two.
   Usually is it veiled?

1954-05-19 - Affection and love - Psychic vision Divine - Love and receptivity - Get out of the ego, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  That depends upon the meaning you give to your words. It depends upon what you call affection. I dont know, but generally affection means something personal and external and a little superficial; it depends altogether on the meaning you give to your words. Usually, when someone says, Oh! I have much affection for him, this means that one has good feelings, a sort of friendliness but it is nothing very deep; but one may also use the word in a deeper see. It is very difficult to distinguish between words unless one has already defined ones whole vocabulary quite precisely. It is at the moment of speaking, when one wants to say something, if one puts a kind of intensity of thought, perception, knowledge into the words used, then it can carry that state that soul-statewith the words. But if words are used altogether intellectually and, so to say, arbitrarily, before using them one should say, When I say this and give a long explanation, a definition.
  What does psychic vision mean?

1954-09-29 - The right spirit - The Divine comes first - Finding the Divine - Mistakes - Rejecting impulses - Making the consciousness vast - Firm resolution, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  These of course are just definitions. It depends on the sentences, the context, the way the words are used, etc.
  Then what does truth of thought mean?

1955-11-16 - The significance of numbers - Numbers, astrology, true knowledge - Divines Love flowers for Kali puja - Desire, aspiration and progress - Determining ones approach to the Divine - Liberation is obtained through austerities - ..., #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  So nobody has an interesting question according to the definition just given?
  ***

1956-01-11 - Desire and self-deception - Giving all one is and has - Sincerity, more powerful than will - Joy of progress Definition of youth, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1956-01-11 - Desire and self-deception - Giving all one is and has - Sincerity, more powerful than will - Joy of progress definition of youth
  author class:The Mother
  --
  The definition of youth: we can say that youth is constant growth and perpetual progressand the growth of capacities, possibilities, of the field of action and range of consciousness, and progress in the working out of details.
  Naturally, someone told me, So one is no longer young when one stops growing? I said, Of course, I dont imagine that one grows perpetually! But one can grow in another way than purely physically.

1956-08-08 - How to light the psychic fire, will for progress - Helping from a distance, mental formations - Prayer and the divine - Grace Grace at work everywhere, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  We are not going to speak of occult processes at all; although, to tell the truth, everything that happens in the invisible world is occult, by definition. But still, practically, there are two processes which do not exclude but complete each other, but which may be used separately according to ones preference.
  It is obvious that thought forms a part of one of the methods, quite an important part. I have already told you several times that if one thinks clearly and powerfully, one makes a mental formation, and that every mental formation is an entity independent of its fashioner, having its own life and tending to realise itself in the mental world I dont mean that you see your formation with your physical eyes, but it exists in the mental world, it has its own particular independent existence. If you have made a formation with a definite aim, its whole life will tend to the realisation of this aim. Therefore, if you want to help someone at a distance, you have only to formulate very clearly, very precisely and strongly the kind of help you want to give and the result you wish to obtain. That will have its effect. I cannot say that it will be all-powerful, for the mental world is full of innumerable formations of this kind and naturally they clash and contradict one another; hence the strongest and the most persistent will have the best of it.

1956-11-28 - Desire, ego, animal nature - Consciousness, a progressive state - Ananda, desireless state beyond enjoyings - Personal effort that is mental - Reason, when to disregard it - Reason and reasons, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Ah! no, you are playing with words. That word, as you use it here, has altogether another meaning, altogether; they are two very different things. Reason is a faculty of discernment. You are speaking of the reasons you give yourself for doing one thing or another these are excuses the mind gives itself; but the meaning of the word reason is quite different there, it is not the same word at all, though it is pronounced and written in the same way. You can look it up in your dictionary, it will give you two completely different definitions of the word reason. The reasons one gives oneself that is, the excuses or explanations one gives oneselfare always tinged with egoism and a need to delude oneself that one is indeed a reasonable being. Ninety-nine and a half times out of a hundred this is the way to convince oneself that one is very good, what one does is very good, what one feels is very good, what one thinks is very good; it is to give oneself the impression that one is truly quite satisfactory. So, whatever you do, if you begin to reflect a little, you will tell yourself, But certainly, I did that because it was like that, thats the real reason; I felt like that, but it was because of this, thats an excellent reason and so on. But that has nothing to do with being reasonable; quite the contrary. It is an excellent means of deceiving oneself and keeping oneself from progressing. It is justifying oneself in ones own eyes.
  Moreover, these are always reasons which whitewash you and blacken others; it is a means of keeping your conscience very comfortable, isnt it? What happens to you is the fault of circumstances, if you have made a mistake it is the fault of others, if you have a bad reaction it is others who are responsible, etc.; you emerge white as snow from the judgment of your mind.

1958 09 19, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I could reply, He said it like this because he saw it like this. But, to begin with, one thing should be understood; these are definitions given by Sri Aurobindo, definitions which he gives mostly in a paradoxical form to compel us to think.
   There are dictionary definitions, which are the ordinary explanations of words as they are commonly understood. These do not make you think. What Sri Aurobindo says, however, is said in order to break up the usual conception, to bring you in touch with a deeper truth. In this way a whole lot of questions are eliminated.
   The effort one must make is to try to find the deeper knowledge, the deeper truth that Sri Aurobindo has expressed in this way, which is not the usual way of defining a word.

1960 01 05, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It was while discussing these and other similar things that Sri Aurobindo was told that they were hallucinations. When you look up the word hallucination in the dictionary, you find this definition: Morbid sensation not produced by any real object. Objectless perception. Sri Aurobindo interprets this or puts it more precisely: A subjective or psychical experience which corresponds to no objective or no physical reality. There could be no better definition of these phenomena of the inner consciousness, which are most precious to man and make him something more than a mere thinking animal. Human reason is so limited, so down to earth, so arrogantly ignorant that it wants to discredit by a pejorative word the very faculties which open the gates of a higher and more marvellous life to man. In the face of this obstinate incomprehension Sri Aurobindo wonders ironically at the miracles of the human reason. For the power to change truth into falsehood to such a degree is certainly a miracle.
   5 January 1960

1961 05 21? - 62, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It is the very definition of folly that Sri Aurobindo gives here. A mask is something that conceals, that makes invisible what it covers. And if the mask is distorted, it not only renders invisible what it conceals but also totally changes its nature. So, according to this definition, folly is something that veils and distorts beyond all recognition the Truth which is at the origin of all things.
   23 June 1961

1967-05-24.1 - Defining the Divine, #Notes On The Way, #unset, #Zen
  At the same time, when there was this look towards the "something" that needed definition, there was a great silence everywhere and a great aspiration (gesture as of a flame rising up), and all the forms which this aspiration took. It was very interesting... the story of the aspiration of earth... towards the wonderful Unknown which one wants to become.
  And everyone - whoever was destined to make the joining - in his simplicity believes that the bridge he has followed is the only one. The result: religions, philosophies, dogmas, credos - battle.

1967-05-24.2 - Defining God, #Notes On The Way, #unset, #Zen
  For those who like definitions, there is another way of answering
  to "What is the Divine?"... "A vastness, smiling and luminous."
  --
  I do not give any definition purposely. Because the feeling of
  all my life has been that it is a word, and a word behind which

1969 12 15, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Could you give me your definitions of the following words?
   1) Courage and love

1.A - ANTHROPOLOGY, THE SOUL, #Philosophy of Mind, #unset, #Zen
   396 Taking the soul as an individual, we find its diversities, as alterations in it, the one permanent subject, and as stages in its development. As they are at once physical and mental diversities, a more concrete definition or description of them would require us to anticipate an acquaintance with the formed and matured mind.
  (1) The first of these is the natural lapse of the ages in man's life. He begins with Childhood - mind wrapped up in itself. His next step is the fully developed antithesis, the strain and struggle of a universality which is still subjective (as seen in ideals, fancies, hopes, ambitions) against his immediate individuality. And that individuality marks both the world which, as it exists, fails to meet his ideal requirements, and the position of the individual himself, who is still short of independence and not fully equipped for the part he has to play (Youth). Thirdly, we see man in his true relation to his environment, recognizing the objective necessity and reasonableness of the world as he finds it - a world no longer incomplete, but able in the work which it collectively achieves to afford the individual a place and a security for his performance. By his share in this collective work he first is really somebody, gaining an effective existence and an objective value (Manhood). Last of all comes the finishing touch to this unity with objectivity: a unity which, while on its realist side it passes into the inertia of deadening habit, on its idealist side gains freedom from the limited interests and entanglements of the outward present (Old Age).

1f.lovecraft - The Shunned House, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   the whitish deposits a particularly sharp definition of the huddled
   form I had suspected from boyhood. Its clearness was astonishing and

1f.lovecraft - The Trap, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   these regions, but this is really an inexact definition. In truth, each
   of the mirror scenes formed a true and quasi-permanent

1f.lovecraft - The Unnamable, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   depicted by the solid definitions of fact or the correct doctrines of
   theologypreferably those of the Congregationalists, with whatever

1.fua - The Simurgh, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Raficq Abdulla Original Language Persian/Farsi Ah, the Simurgh, who is this wondrous being Who, one fated night, when time stood still, Flew over China, not a single soul seeing? A feather fell from this King, his beauty and his will, And all hearts touched by it were in tumult thrown. Everyone who could, traced from it a liminal form; All who saw the still glowing lines were blown By longing like trees on a shore bent by storm. The feather is lodged in China's sacred places, Hence the Prophet's exhortation for knowledge to seek Even unto China where the feather's shadow graces All who shelter under it -- to know of this is not to speak. But unless the feather's image is felt and seen None knows the heart's obscure, shifting states That replace the fat of inaction with decision's lean. His grace enters the world and molds our fates Though without the limit of form or definite shape, For all definitions are frozen contradictions not fit For knowing; therefore, if you wish to travel on the Way, Set out on it now to find the Simurgh, don't prattle and sit On your haunches till into stiffening death you stray. All the birds who were by this agitation shook, Aspired to a meeting place to prepare for the Shah, To release in themselves the revelations of the Book; They yearned so deeply for Him who is both near and far, They were drawn to this sun and burned to an ember; But the road was long and perilous that was open to offer. Hooked by terror, though each was asked to remember The truth, each an excuse to stay behind was keen to proffer. [1490.jpg] -- from The Conference of the Birds: The Selected Sufi Poetry of Farid ud-Din Attar, Translated by Raficq Abdulla <
1.jm - I Have forgotten, #Milarepa - Poems, #Jetsun Milarepa, #Buddhism
  I have forgotten all definitions of this or that particular goal.
  Accustomed long to meditating on all visible phenomena as the Dharmakaya,

1.pbs - Queen Mab - Part VI., #Shelley - Poems, #Percy Bysshe Shelley, #Fiction
  as follows: "He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity means that, contemplating the events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or act in any other place than it does act. The idea of necessity is obtained by our experience of the connection between objects, the uniformity of the operations of nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, and the consequent inference of one from the other. Mankind are therefore agreed in the admission of necessity, if they admit that these two circumstances take place in voluntary action. Motive is to voluntary action in the human mind what cause is to effect in the material universe. The word liberty, as applied to mind, is analogous to the word chance as applied to matter: they spring from an ignorance of the certainty of the conjunction of antecedents and consequents. ... Religion is the perception of the relation in which we stand to the principle of the universe. But if the principle of the universe be not an organic being, the model and prototype of man, the relation between it and human beings is absolutely none. Without some insight into its will respecting our actions religion is nugatory and vain. But will is only a mode of animal mind; moral qualities are also such as only a human being can possess; to attribute them to the principle of the universe is to annex to it properties incompatible with any possible definition of its nature. It is probable
  that the word God was originally only an expression denoting the unknown

1.poe - Eureka - A Prose Poem, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  "And now, by the logic of their own propounder, let us proceed to test any one of the axioms propounded. Let us give Mr. Mill the fairest of play. We will bring the point to no ordinary issue. We will select for investigation no common-place axiom -no axiom of what, not the less preposterously because only impliedly, he terms his secondary class -as if a positive truth by definition could be either more or less positively a truth: -we will select, I say, no axiom of an unquestionability so questionable as is to be found in Euclid. We will not talk, for example, about such propositions as that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, or that the whole is greater than any one of its parts. We will afford the logician every advantage. We will come at once to a proposition which he regards as the acme of the unquestionable -as the quintessence of axiomatic undeniability. Here it is: -'Contradictions cannot both be true that is, cannot coexist in nature.' Here Mr. Mill means, for instance, -and I give the most forcible instance conceivable -that a tree must be either a tree or not a tree -that it cannot be at the same time a tree and not a tree: -all which is quite reasonable of itself and will answer remarkably well as an axiom, until we bring it into collation with an axiom insisted upon a few pages before -in other words -words which I have previously employed -until we test it by the logic of its own propounder. 'A tree,' Mr. Mill asserts, 'must be either a tree or not a tree.' Very well: -and now let me ask him, why. To this little query there is but one response: -I defy any man living to invent a second. The sole answer is this: 'Because we find it impossible to conceive that a tree can be anything else than a tree or not a tree.' This, I repeat, is Mr. Mill's sole answer: -he will not pretend to suggest another: -and yet, by his own showing, his answer is clearly no answer at all; for has he not already required us to admit, as an axiom, that ability or inability to conceive is in no case to be taken as a criterion of axiomatic truth? Thus all -absolutely his argumentation is at sea without a rudder. Let it not be urged that an exception from the general rule is to be made, in cases where the 'impossibility to conceive' is so peculiarly great as when we are called upon to conceive a tree both a tree and not a tree. Let no attempt, I say, be made at urging this sotticism; for, in the first place, there are no degrees of 'impossibility,' and thus no one impossible conception can be more peculiarly impossible than another impossible conception: -in the second place, Mr. Mill himself, no doubt after thorough deliberation, has most distinctly, and most rationally, excluded all opportunity for exception, by the emphasis of his proposition, that, in no case, is ability or inability to conceive, to be taken as a criterion of axiomatic truth: -in the third place, even were exceptions admissible at all, it remains to be shown how any exception is admissible here. That a tree can be both a tree and not a tree, is an idea which the angels, or the devils, may entertain, and which no doubt many an earthly Bedlamite, or Transcendentalist, does.
  "Now I do not quarrel with these ancients," continues the letter-writer, "so much on account of the transparent frivolity of their logic -which, to be plain, was baseless, worthless and fantastic altogether -as on account of their pompous and infatuate proscription of all other roads to Truth than the two narrow and crooked paths -the one of creeping and the other of crawling -to which, in their ignorant perversity, they have dared to confine the Soul -the Soul which loves nothing so well as to soar in those regions of illimitable intuition which are utterly incognizant of 'path.'
  --
  Hitherto, the Universe of stars has always been considered as coincident with the Universe proper, as I have defined it in the commencement of this Discourse. It has been always either directly or indirectly assumed -at least since the dawn of intelligible Astronomy -that, were it possible for us to attain any given point in space, we should still find, on all sides of us, an interminable succession of stars. This was the untenable idea of Pascal when making perhaps the most successful attempt ever made, at periphrasing the conception for which we struggle in the word "Universe." "It is a sphere," he says, "of which the centre is everywhere, the circumference, nowhere." But although this intended definition is, in fact, no definition of the Universe of stars, we may accept it, with some mental reservation, as a definition (rigorous enough for all practical purposes) of the Universe proper -that is to say, of the Universe of space. This latter, then, let us regard as "a sphere of which the centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere." In fact, while we find it impossible to fancy an end to space, we have no difficulty in picturing to ourselves any one of an infinity of beginnings.
  As our starting point, then, let us adopt the Godhead. Of this Godhead, in itself, he alone is not imbecile -he alone is not impious who propounds -nothing. "Nous ne connaissons rien," says the Baron de Bielfeld -"Nous ne connaissons rien de la nature ou de l'essence de Dieu: -pour savoir ce qu'il est, il faut etre Dieu meme." -"We know absolutely nothing of the nature or essence of God: in order to comprehend what he is, we should have to be God ourselves."
  --
  By Him, however -now, at least, the Incomprehensible -by Him assuming him as Spirit -that is to say, as not Matter -a distinction which, for all intelligible purposes, will stand well instead of a definition -by Him, then, existing as Spirit, let us content ourselves, to-night, with supposing to have been created, or made out of Nothing, by dint of his Volition -at some point of Space which we will take as a centre -at some period into which we do not pretend to inquire, but at all events immensely remote -by Him, then again, let us suppose to have been created -what? This is a vitally momentous epoch in our considerations. What is it that we are justified -that alone we are justified in supposing to have been, primarily and solely, created?
  We have attained a point where only Intuition can aid us: -but now let me recur to the idea which I have already suggested as that alone which we can properly entertain of intuition. It is but the conviction arising from those inductions or deductions of which the processes are so shadowy as to escape our consciousness, elude our reason, or defy our capacity of expression. With this understanding, I now assert -that an intuition altogether irresistible, although inexpressible, forces me to the conclusion that what God originally created -that that Matter which, by dint of his Volition, he first made from his Spirit, or from Nihility, Could have been nothing but Matter in its utmost conceivable state of what? -of Simplicity?
  --
  But let us see distinctly what it was that Newton proved according to the grossly irrational definitions of proof prescribed by the metaphysical schools. He was forced to content himself with showing how thoroughly the motions of an imaginary Universe, composed of attracting and attracted atoms obedient to the law he announced, coincide with those of the actually existing Universe so far as it comes under our observation. This was the amount of his demonstration -that is to say, this was the amount of it, according to the conventional cant of the "philosophies." His successes added proof multiplied by proof -such proof as a sound intellect admits -but the demonstration of the law itself, persist the metaphysicians, had not been strengthened in any degree. "Ocular, physical proof," however, of attraction, here upon Earth, in accordance with the Newtonian theory, was, at length, much to the satisfaction of some intellectual grovellers, afforded. This proof arose collaterally and incidentally (as nearly all important truths have arisen) out of an attempt to ascertain the mean density of the Earth. In the famous Maskelyne, Cavendish and Bailly experiments for this purpose, the attraction of the mass of a mountain was seen, felt, measured, and found to be mathematically consistent with the immortal theory of the British astronomer.
  But in spite of this confirmation of that which needed none -in spite of the so-called corroboration of the "theory" by the so-called "ocular and physical proof" -in spite of the character of this corroboration -the ideas which even really philosophical men cannot help imbibing of gravity -and, especially, the ideas of it which ordinary men get and contentedly maintain, are seen to have been derived, for the most part, from a consideration of the principle as they find it developed -merely in the planet upon which they stand.
  --
  Let me now repeat the definition of gravity: -Every atom, of every body, attracts every other atom, both of its own and of every other body, with a force which varies inversely as the squares of the distances of the attracting and attracted atom.
  Here let the reader pause with me, for a moment, in contemplation of the miraculous -of the ineffable -of the altogether unimaginable complexity of relation involved in the fact that each atom attracts every other atom -involved merely in this fact of the attraction, without reference to the law or mode in which the attraction is manifested -involved merely in the fact that each atom attracts every other atom at all, in a wilderness of atoms so numerous that those which go to the composition of a cannon-ball, exceed, probably, in mere point of number, all the stars which go to the constitution of the Universe.
  --
  I reply that they do; as will be distinctly shown; but that the cause of their so doing is quite irrespective of the centre as such. They all tend rectilinearly towards a centre, because of the sphereicity with which they have been irradiated into space. Each atom, forming one of a generally uniform globe of atoms, finds more atoms in the direction of the centre, of course, than in any other, and in that direction, therefore, is impelled -but is not thus impelled because the centre is the point of its origin. It is not to any point that the atoms are allied. It is not any locality, either in the concrete or in the abstract, to which I suppose them bound. Nothing like location was conceived as their origin. Their source lies in the principle, Unity. This is their lost parent. This they seek always -immediately -in all directions -wherever it is even partially to be found; thus appeasing, in some measure, the ineradicable tendency, while on the way to its absolute satisfaction in the end. It follows from all this, that any principle which shall be adequate to account for the LA0 or modus operandi, of the attractive force in general, will account for this law in particular: that is to say, any principle which will show why the atoms should tend to their general centre of irradiation with forces inversely proportional to the squares of the distances, will be admitted as satisfactorily accounting, at the same time, for the tendency, according to the same law, of these atoms each to each: -for the tendency to the centre is merely the tendency each to each, and not any tendency to a centre as such. -Thus it will be seen, also, that the establishment of my propositions would involve no necessity of modification in the terms of the Newtonian definition of Gravity, which declares that each atom attracts each other atom and so forth, and declares this merely; but (always under the supposition that what I propose be, in the end, admitted) it seems clear that some error might occasionally be avoided, in the future processes of Science, were a more ample phraseology adopted: -for instance: "Each atom tends to every other atom &c. with a force &c.: the general result being a tendency of all, with a similar force, to a general centre."
  The reversal of our processes has thus brought us to an identical result; but, while in the one process intuition was the starting-point, in the other it was the goal. In commencing the former journey I could only say that, with an irresistable intuition, I felt Simplicity to have been the characteristic of the original action of God: -in ending the latter I can only declare that, with an irresistible intuition, I perceive Unity to have been the source of the observed phaenomena of the Newtonian gravitation. Thus, according to the schools, I prove nothing. So be it: -I design but to suggest-and to Convince through the suggestion. I am proudly aware that there exist many of the most profound and cautiously discriminative human intellects which cannot help being abundantly content with my -suggestions. To these intellects -as to my own -there is no mathematical demonstration which Could bring the least additional TRue proof of the great TRuth which I have advanced the truth of Original Unity as the source -as the principle of the Universal Phaenomena. For my part, I am not sure that I speak and see -I am not so sure that my heart beats and that my soul lives: of the rising of to-morrow's sun -a probability that as yet lies in the Future -I do not pretend to be one thousandth part as sure -as I am of the irretrievably by-gone Fact that All Things and All Thoughts of Things, with all their ineffable Multiplicity of Relation, sprang at once into being from the primordial and irrelative One.
  --
  Now the very definition of Attraction implies particularity -the existence of parts, particles, or atoms; for we define it as the tendency of "each atom &c. to every other atom," &c. according to a certain law. Of course where there are no parts -where there is absolute Unity -where the tendency to oneness is satisfied -there can be no Attraction: -this has been fully shown, and all Philosophy admits it. When, on fulfilment of its purposes, then, Matter shall have returned into its original condition of One -a condition which presupposes the expulsion of the separative ether, whose province and whose capacity are limited to keeping the atoms apart until that great day when, this ether being no longer needed, the overwhelming pressure of the finally collective Attraction shall at length just sufficiently predominate and expel it: -when, I say, Matter, finally, expelling the Ether, shall have returned into absolute Unity, -it will then (to speak paradoxically for the moment) be Matter without Attraction and without Repulsion -in other words, Matter without Matter -in other words, again, Matter no more. In sinking into Unity, it will sink at once into that Nothingness which, to all Finite Perception, Unity must be -into that Material Nihility from which alone we can conceive it to have been evoked -to have been created by the Volition of God.
  "Gravity, therefore, must be the strongest of forces." See previous section, "Now, although the philosophic cannot be said to"

1.rb - Caliban upon Setebos or, Natural Theology in the Island, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  rejecting these elements as part of his own definition of true
  Christianity in terms of a God of Love. The passages in brackets

1.wby - The People, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
  But I, whose virtues are the definitions
  Of the analytic mind, can neither close

2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: 8-30 p.m. (Laughter) I have never bothered myself with these mental definitions. What difference is it going to make to you if you know the definition?
   Disciple: But space is something material.

2.01 - THE ADVENT OF LIFE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  in the case of thought, a psychical definition of the ' human
  critical point ' will emerge almost at once, because the direshold

2.01 - The Attributes of Omega Point - a Transcendent God, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  Such is the definition he gives in the summary of his thought (p. 145):
  It is upon this 'Physics' that, in a 'second phase', Pere

2.01 - The Object of Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  13:This supreme Existence is not conditioned by the individual or by the universe. A spiritual knowledge can therefore surpass or even eliminate these two powers of the Spirit and arrive at the conception of something utterly Transcendent, something that is unnameable and mentally Unknowable, a sheer Absolute. The traditional way of knowledge eliminates individual and universe. The Absolute it seeks after is featureless, indefinable, relationless, not this, not that, neti neti. And yet we can say of it that it is One, that it is Infinite, that it is Ineffable Bliss, Consciousness, Existence. Although Unknowable to the mind, yet through our individual being and through the names and forms of the universe we can approach the realisation of the supreme Self that is Brahman, and by the realisation of the Self we come to a certain realisation also of this utter Absolute of which our true Self is the essential form in our consciousness (svarupa). These are the devices the human mind is compelled to use if it is to form to itself any conception at all of a transcendent and unconditioned Absolute. The system of negation is indispensable to it in order to get rid of its own definitions and limited experience; it is obliged to escape through a vague Indefinite into the Infinite. For it lives in a closed prison of constructions and representations that are necessary for its action but are not the self-existent truth either of Matter or Life or Mind or Spirit. But if we can once cross beyond the Mind's frontier twilight into the vast plane of supramental Knowledge, these devices cease to be indispensable. Supermind has quite another, a positive and direct and living experience of the supreme Infinite. The Absolute is beyond personality and beyond impersonality, and yet it is both the Impersonal and the supreme Person and all persons. The Absolute is beyond the distinction of unity and multiplicity, and yet it is the One and the innumerable Many in all the universes. It is beyond all limitation by quality and yet it is not limited by a qualityless void but is too all infinite qualities. It is the individual soul and all souls and more of them; it is the formless Brahman and the universe. It is the cosmic and the supracosmic spirit, the supreme Lord, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha and supreme shakti, the Ever Unborn who is endlessly born, the Infinite who is innumerably finite, the multitudinous One, the complex Simple, the many-sided Single, the Word of the Silence Ineffable, the impersonal omnipresent Person, the Mystery, translucent in highest consciousness to its own spirit, but to a lesser consciousness veiled in its own exceeding light and impenetrable for ever. These things are to the dimensional mind irreconcilable opposites, but to the constant vision and experience of the supramental Truth-Consciousness they are so simply and inevitably the intrinsic nature of each other that even to think of them as contraries is an unimaginable violence. The walls constructed by the measuring and separating Intellect have disappeared and the Truth in its simplicity and beauty appears and reduces all to terms of its harmony and unity and light. Dimensions and distinctions remain but as figures for use, not a separative prison for the self-forgetting Spirit.
  14:The consciousness of the transcendent Absolute with its consequence in individual and universal is the last, the eternal knowledge. Our minds may deal with it on various lines, may build upon it conflicting philosophies, may limit, modify, overstress, understress sides of the knowledge, deduce from it truth or error; but our intellectual variations and imperfect statements make no difference to the ultimate fact that if we push thought and experience to their end, this is the knowledge in which they terminate. The object of a Yoga of spiritual knowledge can be nothing else than this eternal Reality, this Self, this Brahman, this Transcendent that dwells over all and in all and is manifest yet concealed in the individual, manifest yet disguised in the universe.

2.01 - The Picture, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  posing on his body a fixity, a too precise definition,
  which would seem to isolate him from all other
  --
  assumed once again its too precise definition and its
  fixity of feature."

2.01 - The Two Natures, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In this second part of the Gita we come to a more concise and easy manner of statement than we have yet had. In the first six chapters the definitions have not yet been made which give the key to the underlying truth; difficulties are being met and solved; the progress is a little laboured and moves through several involutions and returns; much is implied the bearing of which is not yet clear. Here we seem to get on to clearer ground and to lay hold of a more compact and pointed expression. But because of this very conciseness we have to be careful always
  Gita, VII. 1-14.

2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But although thus indeterminable to Mind, because of its absoluteness and infinity, we discover that this Supreme and Eternal Infinite determines itself to our consciousness in the universe by real and fundamental truths of its being which are beyond the universe and in it and are the very foundation of its existence. These truths present themselves to our conceptual cognition as the fundamental aspects in which we see and experience the omnipresent Reality. In themselves they are seized directly, not by intellectual understanding but by a spiritual intuition, a spiritual experience in the very substance of our consciousness; but they can also be caught at in conception by a large and plastic idea and can be expressed in some sort by a plastic speech which does not insist too much on rigid definition or limit the wideness and subtlety of the idea. In order to express this experience or this idea with any nearness a language has to be created which is at once intuitively metaphysical and revealingly poetic, admitting significant and living images as the vehicle of a close, suggestive and vivid indication, - a language such as we find hammered out into a subtle and pregnant massiveness in the Veda and the Upanishads. In the ordinary tongue of metaphysical thought we have to be content with a distant indication, an approximation by abstractions, which may still be of some service to our intellect, for it is this kind of speech which suits our method of logical and rational understanding; but if it is to be of real service, the intellect must consent to pass out of the bounds of a finite logic and accustom itself to the logic of the Infinite. On this condition alone, by this way of seeing and thinking, it ceases to be paradoxical or futile to speak of the Ineffable: but if we insist on applying a finite logic to the Infinite, the omnipresent Reality will escape us and we shall grasp instead an abstract shadow, a dead form petrified into speech or a hard incisive graph which speaks of the Reality but does not express it. Our way of knowing must be appropriate to that which is to be known; otherwise we achieve only a distant speculation, a figure of knowledge and not veritable knowledge.
  The supreme Truth-aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this founds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature, self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory, Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept.

2.02 - Habit 2 Begin with the End in Mind, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
  If you carefully consider what you wanted to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success. It may be very different from the definition you thought you had in mind.
  Perhaps fame, achievement, money, or some of the other things we strive for are not even part of the right wall.

2.03 - The Christian Phenomenon and Faith in the Incarnation, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  ity (sola caritas). That magnificent definition of the pantheism
  92

2.03 - THE ENIGMA OF BOLOGNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [63] By He knows and knows not Maier thinks that Lucius knew it at first but no longer knew it afterwards, because he himself was ungratefully forgotten. It is not clear to me what this is intended to mean. Barnaud takes the monument as an allegory of the lapis, of which Lucius knew. He explains the quid as quantum, for Lucius probably did not know how much the stone weighed. Neither, of course, did he know for what future discoverer he had made the inscription. Barnauds explanation of quid is decidedly feeble. It would be more to the point to remember that the lapis is a fabulous entity of cosmic dimensions which surpasses human understanding. Consideration for the prestige of the alchemist may have prevented him from indulging this suggestive thought, for as an alchemist he could not very well admit that the artifex himself did not know what he was producing with his art. Had he been a modern psychologist he might have realized, with a little effort, that mans totality, the self, is by definition145 beyond the bounds of knowledge.
  [64] With This is a tomb etc. we reach the first positive statement (barring the names) of the inscription. Maiers opinion is that this has nothing to do with the tomb, which was no tomb, but that Aelia herself is meant. For she herself is the container, converting into herself the contained; and thus she is a tomb or receptacle that has no body or content in it, as was said of Lots wife, who was her own tomb without a body, and a body without a tomb.146 He is evidently alluding to the second version of the Arisleus Vision, which says: With so much love did Beya embrace Gabricus that she absorbed him wholly into her own nature and dissolved him into indivisible particles.147 Ripley says that at the death of the king all his limbs were torn into atoms.148 This is the motif of dismemberment which is well known in alchemy.149 The atoms are or become white sparks shining in the terra foetida.150 They are also called the fishes eyes.151

2.03 - The Eternal and the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The normal experience of the reason therefore is not applicable to these higher truths. In the first place the ego is the individual only in the ignorance; there is a true individual who is not the ego and still has an eternal relation with all other individuals which is not egoistic or self-separative, but of which the essential character is practical mutuality founded in essential unity. This mutuality founded in unity is the whole secret of the divine existence in its perfect manifestation; it must be the basis of anything to which we can give the name of a divine life. But, secondly, we see that the whole difficulty and confusion into which the normal reason falls is that we are speaking of a higher and illimitable self-experience founded on divine infinities and yet are applying to it a language formed by this lower and limited experience which founds itself on finite appearances and the separative definitions by which we try to distinguish and classify the phenomena of the material universe. Thus we have to use the word individual and speak of the ego and the true individual, just as we speak sometimes of the apparent and the real Man.
  Evidently, all these words, man, apparent, real, individual, true, have to be taken in a very relative sense and with a full awareness of their imperfection and inability to express the things that we mean. By individual we mean normally something that separates itself from everything else and stands apart, though in reality there is no such thing anywhere in existence; it is a figment of our mental conceptions useful and necessary to express a partial and practical truth. But the difficulty is that the mind gets dominated by its words and forgets that the partial and practical truth becomes true truth only by its relation to others which seem to the reason to contradict it, and that taken by itself it contains a constant element of falsity. Thus when we speak of an individual we mean ordinarily an individualisation of mental, vital, physical being separate from all other beings, incapable of unity with them by its very individuality. If we go beyond these three terms of mind, life and body, and speak of the soul or individual self, we still think of an individualised being separate from all others, incapable of unity and inclusive mutuality, capable at most of a spiritual contact and soul-sympathy.
  --
  Our mistake is that in trying to define the indefinable we think we have succeeded when we have described by an allexclusive negation this Absolute which we are yet compelled to conceive of as a supreme positive and the cause of all positives. It is not surprising that so many acute thinkers, with their eye on the facts of being and not on verbal distinctions, should be driven to infer that the Absolute is a fiction of the intelligence, an idea born of words and verbal dialectics, a zero, non-existent, and to conclude that an eternal Becoming is the only truth of our existence. The ancient sages spoke indeed ofBrahman negatively, - they said of it, neti neti, it is not this, it is not that, - but they took care also to speak of it positively; they said of it too, it is this, it is that, it is all: for they saw that to limit it either by positive or negative definitions was to fall away from its truth. Brahman, they said, is Matter, is Life, is Mind, is Supermind, is cosmic Delight, is Sachchidananda; yet it cannot really be defined by any of these things, not even by our largest conception of Sachchidananda. In the world as we see it, for our mental consciousness however high we carry it, we find that to every positive there is a negative. But the negative is not a zero, - indeed whatever appears to us a zero is packed with force, teeming with power of existence, full of actual or potential contents. Neither does the existence of the negative make its corresponding positive non-existent or an unreality; it only makes the positive an incomplete statement of the truth of things and even, we may say, of the positive's own truth. For the positive and the negative exist not only side by side, but in relation to each other and by each other; they complete and would to the all-view, which a limited mind cannot reach, explain one another. Each by itself is not really known; we only begin to know it in its deeper truth when we can read into it the suggestions of its apparent opposite. It is through such a profounder catholic intuition and
   not by exclusive logical oppositions that our intelligence ought to approach the Absolute.
  --
  Cosmos and individual go back to something in the Absolute which is the true truth of individuality, the true truth of cosmic being and not their denial and conviction of their falsity. The Absolute is not a sceptical logician denying the truth of all his own statements and self-expressions, but an existence so utterly and so infinitely positive that no finite positive can be formulated which can exhaust it or bind it down to its definitions.
  It is evident that if such is the truth of the Absolute, we cannot bind it either by our law of contradictions. That law is necessary to us in order that we may posit partial and practical truths, think out things clearly, decisively and usefully, classify, act, deal with them effectively for particular purposes in our divisions of Space, distinctions of form and property, moments of Time. It represents a formal and strongly dynamic truth of existence in its practical workings which is strongest in the most outward term of things, the material, but becomes less and less rigidly binding as we go upward in the scale, mount on the more subtle rungs of the ladder of being. It is especially necessary for us in dealing with material phenomena and forces; we have to suppose them to be one thing at a time, to have one power at a time and to be limited by their ostensible and practically effective capacities and properties; otherwise we cannot deal with them.

2.03 - The Purified Understanding, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An understanding thus purified would be a perfectly flexible, entire and faultless instrument of intellectual thought and being free from the inferior sources of obstruction and distortion would be capable of as true and complete a perception of the truths of the Self and the universe as the intellect can attain. But for real knowledge something more is necessary, since real knowledge is by our very definition of it supra-intellectual. In order that the understanding may not interfere with our attainment to real knowledge, we have to reach to that something more and cultivate a power exceedingly difficult for the active intellectual thinker and distasteful to his proclivities, the power of intellectual passivity. The object served is double and therefore two different kinds of passivity have to be acquired.
  In the first place we have seen that intellectual thought is in itself inadequate and is not the highest thinking; the highest is that which comes through the intuitive mind and from the supramental faculty. So long as we are dominated by the intellectual habit and by the lower workings, the intuitive mind can only send its messages to us subconsciously and subject to a distortion more or less entire before it reaches the conscious mind; or if it works consciously, then only with an inadequate rarity and a great imperfection in its functioning. In order to streng then the higher knowledge-faculty in us we have to effect the same separation between the intuitive and intellectual elements of our thought as we have already effected between the understanding and the sense-mind; and this is no easy task, for not only do our intuitions come to us incrusted in the intellectual action, but there are a great number of mental workings which masquerade and ape the appearances of the higher faculty. The remedy is to train first the intellect to recognise the true intuilion, to distinguish it from the false and then to accustom it, when it arrives at an intellectual perception or conclusion, to attach no final value to it, but rather look upward, refer all to the divine principle and wait in as complete a silence as it can comm and for the light from above. In this way it is possible to transmute a great part of our intellectual thinking into the luminous truth-conscious vision, -- the ideal would be a complete transition, -- or at least to increase greatly the frequency, purity and conscious force of the ideal knowledge working behind the intellect. The latter must learn to be subject and passive to the ideal faculty.

2.05 - Habit 3 Put First Things First, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
  But first-generation managers, by definition, are not effective people. They produce very little, and their life-style does nothing to build their Production Capability. Buffeted by outside forces, they are often seen as undependable and irresponsible, and they have very little sense of control and self-esteem.
  Second-generation managers assume a little more control. They plan and schedule in advance and generally are seen as more responsible because they "show up" when they're supposed to.

2.05 - The Religion of Tomorrow, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  universal dimensions of Christ-Omega and its definition of mysticism
  from the more inclusive angle of Super-charity.

2.06 - On Beauty, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Beauty is the Divine himself in his Ananda power seeking to express himself in perfect form. That is, perhaps, the only definition that could be given. Since you are particular about it one can say that there are several elements of beauty: one is the power of Ananda that seeks expression, the other is the form or you can say, the manner in which it expresses itself.
   Disciple: I suppose it is also necessary that the physical instrument should be prepared so that it can express perfect beauty.

2.06 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This is necessary for its action since its business is to deal with the finite as finite, and we have to accept for practical purposes and for the reason's dealings with the finite the cadre it gives us, because it is valid as an effect of reality and so cannot be disregarded. When we come to the experience of the spiritual which is itself the whole or contains the whole in itself, our mind carries there too its segmenting reason and the definitions necessary to a finite cognition; it cuts a line of section between the infinite and the finite, the spirit and its phenomena or manifestations, and dubs those as real and these as unreal. But an original and ultimate consciousness embracing all the terms of existence in a single integral view would see the whole in its spiritual essential reality and the phenomenon as a phenomenon or manifestation of that reality. If this greater spiritual consciousness saw in things only unreality and an entire disconnection with the truth of the spirit, it could not have - if it were itself a Truth-consciousness
  6 This position has been shaken by the theory of Relativity, but it must hold as a pragmatic basis for experiment and affirmation of the scientific fact.

2.06 - The Higher Knowledge and the Higher Love are one to the true Lover, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  The Upanishads distinguish between a higher knowledge and a lower knowledge; and to the Bhakta there is really no dfference between this higher knowledge and his higher love (Par-Bhakti). The Mundaka Upanishad says: The knowers of Brahman declare that there are two kinds of knowledge worthy to be known. namely, the Higher (Par) and the Lower (Apar). Of these the Lower (knowledge) consists of the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Smaveda, the Atharvaveda, the Shiksh (or the science dealing with pronunciation and accent), the Kalpa (or the sacrificial liturgy), Grammar, the Nirukta (or the science dealing with etymology and the meaning of words), Prosody, and Astronomy; and the Higher (knowledge) is that by which that unchangeable is known. The higher knowledge is thus clearly shown to be the knowledge of Brahman: and the Devi-Bhgavata gives us the following definition of the higher love (Par-Bhakti):As oil poured from one vessel to another falls in an unbroken line, so, when the mind in an unbroken stream thinks of the Lord, we have what is called Para-Bhakti or supreme love. This kind of undisturbed and ever steady direction of the mind and the heart to the Lord with an inseparable attactment is indeed the highest manifestation of mans love to God. All other forms of Bhakti are only preparatory to the attainment of this highest form thereof, viz. the Par-Bhakti which is also known as the love that comes after attachment (Rgnug). When this supreme love once comes into the heart of man, his mind will continuously think of God and remember nothing else.
  He will give no room in himself to thoughts other than those of God, and his soul will be unconquerably pure, and will alone break all the bonds of mind and matter and become serenely free. He alone can worship the Lord in his own heart; to him, forms, symbols, books, and doctrines are all unnecessary and are incapable of proving serviceable in any way. It is not easy to love the Lord thus. Ordinarily human love is seen to flourish only in places where it is returned; where love is not returned for love, cold indifference is the natural result. There are, however, rare instances in which we may notice love exhibiting itself even where there is no return of love. We may compare this kind of love, for purposes of illustration, to the love of the moth for the fire; the insect loves the fire, falls into it and dies. It is indeed in the nature of this insect to love so. To love, because it is the nature of love to love, is undeniably the highest and the most unselfish manifestation of love that may be seen in the world. Such love working itself out on the plane of spirituality necessarily leads to the attainment of ParaBhakti.

2.07 - On Congress and Politics, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: Mahatmaji's definition differs. According to him Satyagraha is not merely a political weapon; and secondly, it conveys the idea of Truth with non-violence as its necessary corollary.
   Sri Aurobindo: But passive resistance can be done in all the fields of life; he himself did it. Perhaps passive resistance is a plain and unpretentious expression while Satyagraha is high-sounding. It conveys to others the idea that what one stands for is the Truth. Some may find an air of moral superiority in it.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes, that is another definition of spirituality or rather spiritualism, in Europe.
   Disciple: The one thing they accept is the physical body and in France they have come to accept vital force or 'living matter'.

2.07 - The Supreme Word of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   worship and highest knowledge of the Eternal are the knowledge and the adoration of him as the supreme and divine Origin of all that is in existence and the mighty Lord of the world and its peoples of whose being all things are the becomings. It is, secondly, the declaration of a unified knowledge and bhakti as the supreme Yoga; that is the destined and the natural way given to man to arrive at union with the eternal Godhead. And to make more significant this definition of the way, to give an illuminating point to this highest importance of bhakti founded upon and opening to knowledge and made the basis and motivepower for divinely appointed works, the acceptance of it by the heart and mind of the disciple is put as a condition for the farther development by which the final comm and to action comes at last to be given to the human instrument, Arjuna. "I will speak this supreme word to thee" says the Godhead "from my will for thy soul's good, now that thy heart is taking delight in me," te pryaman.aya vaks.yami. For this delight of the heart in God is the whole constituent and essence of true bhakti, bhajanti prtipurvakam. As soon as the supreme word is given, Arjuna is made to utter his acceptance of it and to ask for a practical way of seeing God in all things in Nature, and from that question immediately and naturally there develops the vision of the Divine as the Spirit of the universe and there arises the tremendous comm and to the world-action.1
  The idea of the Divine on which the Gita insists as the secret of the whole mystery of existence, the knowledge that leads to liberation, is one that bridges the opposition between the cosmic procession in Time and a supracosmic eternity without denying either of them or taking anything from the reality of either. It harmonises the pantheistic, the theistic and the highest transcendental terms of our spiritual conception and spiritual experience. The Divine is the unborn Eternal who has no origin; there is and can be nothing before him from which he proceeds, because he is one and timeless and absolute. "Neither the gods nor the great Rishis know any birth of me. . . . He who knows

2.08 - ALICE IN WONDERLAND, #God Exists, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
  Plato used the words, Idea of the good. A strange definition of his. You may say, Idea of God if you like. It is not an idea of God, but the idea which is God. Actually, God is only an idea; not your idea, but an Idea as such, which is the cause of other ideas. The Yoga Vasishtha goes into great detail in explaining this point that the whole universe is mind. Not my mind, or your mind, but mind as such. Pure impersonal existence, of which our minds and thoughts and feelings and evolutions are ripples.
  Read the great book of Samuel Alexander, Space, Time and Deity, which is the great exposition of the structure of the universe which is so hard and real in space-time only. Space-time is not a substance. It is not something tangible. You cannot touch it, you cannot see it, you cannot sense it, you cannot taste it, you cannot smell it. And a thing which cannot be sensed is not reality at all. But that is the reality!
  --
  I brought those ideas before you to bring about a comparison between the greatest thinkers of the East like Acharya Sankara, the Rishis of the Upanishads, and Sri Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita and Western thinkers like Plato, Aristotle and Kant. They seem to be thinking alike. Only they seem to be thinking in different languages and giving different definitions.
  So we are now face to face with the great reality, the God of the cosmos. We have passed through the analysis. We have conducted a study of the three stages of consciousness waking, dream and deep sleep. We studied epistomological processes the perception of the world, how we come in contact with things, and how we know that the world exists at all. This also we have concluded. Many of you may not remember it, but think over or see your diaries if you have noted anything down.

2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
  latter's _peccatum originale._ definition of Protestantism: the
  partial paralysis of Christianity--and of reason.... One needs only to

2.1.01 - God The One Reality, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Infinite. No object or person could come into being or remain in being by its own finite and individual power; none exists by its own limited substance and essence other than the substance and essence of all others; all are at bottom indissolubly one. There is effective determination, definition, demarcation, diverse formation in the universe but no essential separation or division. A tree is separate as an object or phenomenon, but it is not a separate existence divided from all around it; there is a one-existence and a one-energy that has taken form of tree, constitutes every atom, molecule, fibre of it, pervades and is its whole structure of being and this existence, this energy not only abides in all of it and flows through all of it but extends everywhere around and is, constitutes, energises all other objects in the cosmos. Each finite is in fact the Infinite; all apparently separate or divided existence is only a front of the Indivisible.
  All that we see as temporal is not other than the Eternal.
  --
  The Unmanifested Supreme is beyond all definition and description by mind or speech; no definition the mind can make, affirmative or negative, can be at all expressive of it or adequate.
  To the Mind this Unmanifest can present itself as a Self, a supreme Nihil (Tao or Sunya), a featureless Absolute, an

2.1.02 - Combining Work, Meditation and Bhakti, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I do not know why you drag in humanitarianism, activism, philanthropical sev etc. None of these are part of my Yoga or in harmony with my definition of works, so they dont touch me. I never thought that politics or feeding the poor or writing beautiful poems would lead straight to Vaikuntha or the Absolute. If it were so, Romesh Dutt on one side and Baudelaire on the other would be the first to attain the Highest and welcome us there. It is not the form of the work itself or mere activity but the consciousness and Godward will behind it that are the essence of Karmayoga; the work is only the necessary instrumentation for the union with the Master of works, the transit to the pure Will and power of Light from the will and power of the Ignorance.
  Finally, why suppose that I am against meditation or bhakti? I have not the slightest objection to your taking either or both as the means of approach to the Divine. Only I saw no reason why anyone should fall foul of works and deny the truth of those who have reached, as the Gita says, through works perfect realisation and oneness of nature with the Divine, sasiddhim, sdharmyam, as did Janaka and others, simply because he himself cannot find or has not yet found their deeper secre thence my defence of works.

2.1.02 - Nature The World-Manifestation, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If one could conceive a centre that contains its own circle, we might have a just definition of God in the universe.
  What is the Impersonality of God? It is the fact of the Is Not, the Is & the Becoming. And what is the personality of God? It is the fact that all this, the Is like the Becoming, the Is not like the Is, is aware of itself in Time & Space & beyond them.
  --
  The Mayavadins fix their definition, their rigid iti to the
  Parabrahman, the Absolute, and say that since it is that, it can never be anything else and therefore the world must be an illusion. But the Absolute is beyond all definitions, descriptions, qualifications, he is [not] bound by them, neither by features nor featurelessness, by unity nor multiplicity[.]
  It is said by certain Adwaitists with an unusual largeness of philosophic toleration that the views of all other philosophies are true on the way or at least useful and mark stages in the realisation of the Truth, but the highest realisation is the truth of

2.11 - The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Ignorance striving to become an all-embracing Knowledge is the definition of the consciousness of man the mental being, - or, looking at it from another side, we may say equally that it is a limited separative awareness of things striving to become an integral consciousness and an integral Knowledge.

2.11 - The Modes of the Self, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Connected with this triple mode of the Self is that distinction which Indian philosophy has drawn between the Qualitied and the Qualityless Brahman and European thought has made between the Personal and the Impersonal God. The Upanishad indicates clearly enough the relative nature of this opposition, when it speaks of the Supreme as the "Qualitied who is without qualities"363. We have again two essential modes, two fundamental aspects, two poles of eternal being, both of them exceeded in the transcendent divine Reality. They correspond practically to the Silent and the Active Brahman. For the whole action of the universe may be regarded from a certain point of view as the expression and shaping out in various ways of the numberless and infinite qualities of the Brahman. His being assumes by conscious Will all kinds of properties, shapings of the stuff of conscious being, habits as it were of cosmic character and power of dynamic self-consciousness, gunas, into which all the cosmic action can be resolved. But by none of these nor by all of them nor by their utmost infinite potentiality is He bound; He is above all His qualities and on a certain plane of being rests free from them. The Nirguna or Unqualitied is not incapable of qualities, rather it is this very Nirguna or No-Quality who manifests Himself as Saguna, as Ananta-guna, infinite quality, since He contains all in His absolute capacity of boundlessly varied self-revelation. He is free from them in the sense of exceeding them; and indeed if He were not free from .them they could not be infinite; God would be subject to His qualities, bound by His nature, prakriti would be supreme and Purusha its creation and plaything. The Eternal is bound neither by quality nor absence of quality, neither by Personality nor by Impersonality; He is Himself, beyond all our positive and all our negative definitions.
  But if we cannot define the Eternal, we call unify ourselves with it. It has been said that we can become the Impersonal, but not tile personal God, but this is only true in the sense that no one can become individually the Lord of all the universes; we can free ourselves into the existence of the active Brahman as well as that of the Silence; we can live in both, go back to our being in both, but each in its proper way, by becoming one with the Nirguna in our essence and one with the Saguna in the liberty of our active being, in our nature364. The Supreme pours Himself out of an eternal peace, poise and silence into an eternal activity, free and infinite, freely fixing for itself its self-determinations, using infinite quality to shape out of it varied combination of quality. We have to go back to that peace, poise and silence and act out of it with the divine freedom from the bondage of qualities but still using qualities even the most opposite largely and flexibly for the divine work in the world. Only, while the Lord acts out of the centre of all things, we have to act by transmission of His will and power and self-knowledge through the individual centre, the soul-form of Him which we are. The Lord is subject to nothing; the Individual soul-form is subject to its own highest Self and the greater and more absolute is that subjection the greater becomes its sense of absolute force and freedom.
  --
  The place of the divine Personality in our synthesis will best be considered when we come to speak of the Yoga of devotion; it is enough here to indicate that it has its place and keeps it in the integral Yoga even when liberation has been attained. There are practically three grades of the approach to the personal Deity; the first in which He is conceived with a particular form or particular qualities as the name and form of the Godhead which our nature and personality prefers365; a second in which He is the one real Person, the All-Personality, the Ananta-guna; a third in which we get back to the ultimate source of all idea and fact of personality in that which the Upanishad indicates by the single word Lie without fixing any attributes. It is there that our realisations of the personal and the impersonal Divine meet and become one in the utter Godhead. For the impersonal Divine is not ultimately an abstraction or a mere principle or a mere state or power and degree of being any more than we ourselves are really such abstractions. The intellect first approaches it through such conceptions, but realisation ends by exceeding them. Through the realisation of higher and higher principles of being and states of conscious existence we arrive not at the annullation of all in a sort of positive zero or even an inexpressible state of existence, but at the transcendent Existence itself which is also the Existent who transcends all definition by personality and yet is always that which is the essence of personality.
  When in That we live and have our being, we can possess it in both its modes, the Impersonal in a supreme state of being and consciousness, in an infinite impersonality of self-possessing power and bliss, the Personal by the divine nature acting through the individual soul-form and by the relation between that and its transcendent and universal Self. We may keep even our relation with the personal Deity in His forms and names; if, for instance, our work is predominantly a work of Love it is as the Lord of Love that we can seek to serve and express Him, but we shall have at the same time an integral realisation of Him in all His names and forms and qualities and not mistake the front of Him which is prominent in our attitude to the world for all the infinite Godhead.

2.15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Isha Upanishad insists on the unity and reality of all the manifestations of the Absolute; it refuses to confine truth to any one aspect. Brahman is the stable and the mobile, the internal and the external, all that is near and all that is far whether spiritually or in the extension of Time and Space; it is the Being and all becomings, the Pure and Silent who is without feature or action and the Seer and Thinker who organises the world and its objects; it is the One who becomes all that we are sensible of in the universe, the Immanent and that in which he takes up his dwelling. The Upanishad affirms the perfect and the liberating knowledge to be that which excludes neither the Self nor its creations: the liberated spirit sees all these as becomings of the Self-existent in an internal vision and by a consciousness which perceives the universe within itself instead of looking out on it, like the limited and egoistic mind, as a thing other than itself. To live in the cosmic Ignorance is a blindness, but to confine oneself in an exclusive absolutism of Knowledge is also a blindness: to know Brahman as at once and together the Knowledge and the Ignorance, to attain to the supreme status at once by the Becoming and the Non-Becoming, to relate together realisation of the transcendent and the cosmic self, to achieve foundation in the supramundane and a self-aware manifestation in the mundane, is the integral knowledge; that is the possession of Immortality. It is this whole consciousness with its complete knowledge that builds the foundation of the Life Divine and makes its attainment possible. It follows that the absolute reality of the Absolute must be, not a rigid indeterminable oneness, not an infinity vacant of all that is not a pure self-existence attainable only by the exclusion of the many and the finite, but something which is beyond these definitions, beyond indeed any description either positive or negative. All affirmations and negations are expressive of its aspects, and it is through both a supreme affirmation and a supreme negation that we can arrive at the Absolute.
  On the one side, then, presented to us as the Reality, we have an absolute Self-Existence, an eternal sole self-being, and through the experience of the silent and inactive Self or the detached immobile Purusha we can move towards this featureless and relationless Absolute, negate the actions of the creative Power, whether that be an illusory Maya or a formative Prakriti, pass from all circling in cosmic error into the eternal Peace and Silence, get rid of our personal existence and find or lose ourselves in that sole true Existence. On the other side, we have a Becoming which is a true movement of Being, and both the Being and the Becoming are truths of one absolute Reality.

2.19 - Feb-May 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Not at all. Poets from Shakespeare and Milton to Shelley and others did not write in the Anglo-Saxon language except William Morris, who consciously used Anglo-Saxon words. They followed Latin and Greek vocabulary. And this idea of writing for the masses is stupid. Poetry was never written for the masses. It is only a minority that read and appreciate poetry. The definition of modern poetry is what the poet himself and a few of his admirers around him understand. Shakespeare and Milton are not mass poets.
   Mrs. Hemans, like Martin Tupper, wrote for the masses: "The boy stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled;" that sort of thing. Tupper sold more in his life than all the best poets put together. It is curious, many of the modern poets are communists, but they don't write for the proletariat.

2.2.03 - The Psychic Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The psychic is not, by definition,1 that part [of the being] which is in direct touch with the supramental plane, - although, once
  1 Someone had asked what the psychic being was, whether it could be defined as that
   part of the being which is always in direct touch with the supramental. I replied that it could not be so defined. For the psychic being in animals or in most human beings is not in direct touch with the supramental - therefore it cannot be so described, by definition.
  But once the connection between the supramental and the human consciousness is made, it is the psychic being that gives the readiest response - more ready than the mind, the vital or the physical. It may be added that it is also a purer response; the mind, vital and physical can allow other things to mix with their reception of the supramental influence and spoil its truth. The psychic is pure in its response and allows no such mixture.

2.2.03 - The Science of Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This definition at once takes us out of the field of ordinary psychology and extends the range of our observation to an immense mass of facts and experiments which exceed the common surface and limited range very much as the vastly extended range of observation of Science exceeds that of the common man looking at natural external phenomena only with the help
  [of] his unaided mind and senses. The field of Yoga is practically unlimited and its processes and instrumentation have a plasticity and adaptability and power of expansion to which it is difficult to see or set any limit.

2.27 - The Gnostic Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Mental nature and mental thought are based on a consciousness of the finite; supramental nature is in its very grain a consciousness and power of the Infinite. Supramental Nature sees everything from the standpoint of oneness and regards all things, even the greatest multiplicity and diversity, even what are to the mind the strongest contradictions, in the light of that oneness; its will, ideas, feelings, sense are made of the stuff of oneness, its actions proceed upon that basis. Mental Nature, on the contrary, thinks, sees, wills, feels, senses with division as a starting-point and has only a constructed understanding of unity; even when it experiences oneness, it has to act from the oneness on a basis of limitation and difference. But the supramental, the divine life is a life of essential, spontaneous and inherent unity. It is impossible for the mind to forecast in detail what the supramental change must be in its parts of life action and outward behaviour or lay down for it what forms it shall create for the individual or the collective existence. For the mind acts by intellectual rule or device or by reasoned choice of will or by mental impulse or in obedience to life impulse; but supramental nature does not act by mental idea or rule or in subjection to any inferior impulse: each The Gnostic Being of its steps is dictated by an innate spiritual vision, a comprehensive and exact penetration into the truth of all and the truth of each thing; it acts always according to inherent reality, not by the mental idea, not according to an imposed law of conduct or a constructive thought or perceptive contrivance. Its movement is calm, self-possessed, spontaneous, plastic; it arises naturally and inevitably out of a harmonic identity of the truth which is felt in the very substance of the conscious being, a spiritual substance which is universal and therefore intimately one with all that is included in its cognition of existence. A mental description of supramental nature could only express itself either in phrases which are too abstract or in mental figures which might turn it into something quite different from its reality. It would not seem to be possible, therefore, for the mind to anticipate or indicate what a supramental being shall be or how he shall act; for here mental ideas and formulations cannot decide anything or arrive at any precise definition or determination, because they are not near enough to the law and self-vision of supramental Nature.
  At the same time certain deductions can be made from the very fact of this difference of nature which might be valid at least for a general description of the passage from Overmind to Supermind or might vaguely construct for us an idea of the first status of the evolutionary supramental existence.
  --
  But flux of nature and fixity of nature are two aspects of being neither of which, nor indeed both together, can be a definition of personality. For in all men there is a double element, the unformed though limited flux of being or Nature out of which personality is fashioned and the personal formation out of that flux. The formation may become rigid and ossify or it may remain sufficiently plastic to change constantly and develop; but it develops out of the formative flux, by a modification or enlargement or remoulding of the personality, not, ordinarily, by an abolition of the formation already made and the substitution of a new form of being, - this can only occur in an abnormal turn or a supernormal conversion. But besides this flux and this fixity there is also a third and occult element, the Person behind of whom the personality is a self-expression; the Person puts forward the personality as his role, character, persona, in the present act of his long drama of manifested existence. But the Person is larger than his personality, and it may happen that this inner largeness overflows into the surface formation; the result is a self-expression of being which can no longer be described The Gnostic Being by fixed qualities, normalities of mood, exact lineaments, or marked out by any structural limits. But neither is it a mere indistinguishable, quite amorphous and unseizable flux: though its acts of nature can be characterised but not itself, still it can be distinctively felt, followed in its action, it can be recognised, though it cannot easily be described; for it is a power of being rather than a structure. The ordinary restricted personality can be grasped by a description of the characters stamped on its life and thought and action, its very definite surface building and expression of self; even if we may miss whatever was not so expressed, that might seem to detract little from the general adequacy of our understanding, because the element missed is usually little more than an amorphous raw material, part of the flux, not used to form a significant part of the personality. But such a description would be pitifully inadequate to express the Person when its Power of Self within manifests more amply and puts forward its hidden daemonic force in the surface composition and the life. We feel ourselves in presence of a light of consciousness, a potency, a sea of energy, can distinguish and describe its free waves of action and quality, but not fix itself; and yet there is an impression of personality, the presence of a powerful being, a strong, high or beautiful recognisable Someone, a Person, not a limited creature of Nature but a Self or Soul, a Purusha. The gnostic Individual would be such an inner Person unveiled, occupying both the depths - no longer selfhidden - and the surface in a unified self-awareness; he would not be a surface personality partly expressive of a larger secret being, he would be not the wave but the ocean: he would be the Purusha, the inner conscious Existence self-revealed, and would have no need of a carved expressive mask or persona.
  This, then, would be the nature of the gnostic Person, an infinite and universal being revealing - or, to our mental ignorance, suggesting - its eternal self through the significant form and expressive power of an individual and temporal selfmanifestation. But the individual nature-manifestation, whether strong and distinct in outline or multitudinous and protean but still harmonic, would be there as an index of the being, not as the whole being: that would be felt behind, recognisable but indefinable, infinite. The consciousness also of the gnostic Person would be an infinite consciousness throwing up forms of self-expression, but aware always of its unbound infinity and universality and conveying the power and sense of its infinity and universality even in the finiteness of the expression, - by which, moreover, it would not be bound in the next movement of farther self-revelation. But this would still not be an unregulated unrecognisable flux but a process of self-revelation making visible the inherent truth of its powers of existence according to the harmonic law natural to all manifestation of the Infinite.

2.2.9.02 - Plato, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In his book Plato, Taylor says that the standing Academic definition of man is Soul using a body and that the soul is the man.1 But it is not clear whether the soul is the mental being or something which uses the mind also.
  The European mind, for the most part, has never been able to go beyond the formula of soul + bodyusually including mind in soul and everything except body in mind. Some occultists make a distinction between spirit, soul and body. At the same time there must be some vague feeling that soul and mind are not quite the same thing, for there is the phrase this man has no soul, or he is a soul meaning he has something in him beyond a mere mind and body. But all that is very vague. There is no clear distinction between mind and soul and none between mind and vital and often the vital is taken for the soul.

2.3.02 - Opening, Sincerity and the Mother's Grace, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  What is meant by sincere sadhana? In the Mother's definition of sincere, it means "opening only to the Divine Forces", i.e. rejecting all the others even if they come.
  21 April 1936

2.3.02 - The Supermind or Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  You will say however that it is not the Supramental but at most the Overmind that helped me to these non-nebulous motions. But the Supermind is by definition a greater dynamic activity than mind or Overmind. I have said that what is not true is not supramental; I will add that what is ineffective is not supramental. And finally I will conclude by saying that I have
  The Supermind or Supramental

30.08 - Poetry and Mantra, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   What is poetry? It is delightful speech. There can hardly be any better definition of poetry than this. Admitting this fact I would like to say that the definition of mantra is the Brahman manifested as sound. At both the places we see the glory and greatness of vak(speech). But there is a subtle border-line. On one side vakgrows into the mantra, on the" other vakgrows into poetry however beautiful and great it may be. The real thing is this: when vakdoes not assert itself in the least, when it does not hanker after displaying its own skill, remains self-enamoured like a deer with the fragrance of its musk, having no other object than to possess inner delight, then only it amounts to a mantra. When vakabounds in mere words; it simply comes down to the category of poetry.
   But it is not that mantra means something solely dealing with spiritual disciplines or religious practices. Even the experiences and realisations of this terrestrial world can reveal themselves through the mantras provided their fundamental truth is the truth of delight.

3.00 - Introduction, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  2. [Part of the Preliminary definition of Magic which appears at the start of
  some MSS. of the Lemegeton, a 17th-century English compilation of magical texts
  --
  my position by formulating a definition of
  MAGICK
  --
  I. definition.
  MAGICK
  --
  (Illustration: See definition above.)
  2. Every successful act has conformed to the postulate.

3.00 - The Magical Theory of the Universe, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  magical sigil. The student must not expect to be given a cut-anddried definition of what exactly is meant by any of all this. On the
  contrary, he must work backwards, putting the whole of his mental
  --
  1. He is this only by definition. The universe may contain an infinite variety of
  world inaccessible to human apprehension. Yet, for this very reason, they do not

30.17 - Rabindranath, Traveller of the Infinite, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   IN Rabindranath, in his life as well as in his art, especially in his poetry, the thing that has taken shape is what we call aspiration, an upward urge and longing of the inner soul. In common parlance it is a seeking for the Divine, in philosophical terms it is a spiritual quest. But Rabindranath is a poet, and he is a modern poet. He cannot be wholly included in the older category, fixed in a mould of clear definition. To be sure, the special characteristic of his consciousness is to keep as far as possible the aim, the ideal, the goal and the Deity of the worship indivisible and indefinable. To make' something definite and clear is to limit and make it gross and material. Therefore to name the Deity whom he loves, adores and worships he has used words that are expansive, general and vague - infinite, boundless, formless and non-manifest. If the Deity appears in a manifested form the worship of the worshipper ends. The Deity also will no longer be a Deity of the worship. But it does not mean that the Deity of Rabindranath is the One beyond sound, touch, form and change' of the Upanishad. His aspiration is for another realisation of the Upanishad:
   "One who has taken this form, that form and all the forms."

3.01 - Forms of Rebirth, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  go into greater detail, but I venture to think that my definitions
  cover at least the cardinal meanings. In the first part of my ex-

3.01 - The Principles of Ritual, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  There is a single main definition of the object of all magical
  Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm.

3.02 - Mysticism, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  i. First, our charity is universalized. By definition, the
  Christian is and always has been, the man who loves God,

3.02 - SOL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [133] I must point out to the reader that these remarks on the significance of the ego might easily prompt him to charge me with grossly contradicting myself. He will perhaps remember that he has come across a very similar argument in my other writings. Only there it was not a question of ego but of the self, or rather, of the personal atman in contradistinction and in relation to the suprapersonal atman. I have defined the self as the totality of the conscious and the unconscious psyche, and the ego as the central reference-point of consciousness. It is an essential part of the self, and can be used pars pro toto when the significance of consciousness is borne in mind. But when we want to lay emphasis on the psychic totality it is better to use the term self. There is no question of a contradictory definition, but merely of a difference of standpoint.

3.02 - THE DEPLOYMENT OF THE NOOSPHERE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  in the definition of the spirit and in the appreciation of the
  bonds which attach it to the sublimations of matter.

3.03 - SULPHUR, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [143] From all this it is apparent that for the alchemists sulphur was one of the many synonyms for the mysterious transformative substance.143 This is expressed most plainly in the Turba:144 Therefore roast it for seven days, until it becomes shining like marble, because, when it does, it is a very great secret [arcanum], since sulphur has been mixed with sulphur; and thereby is the greatest work accomplished, by mutual affinity, because natures meeting their nature mutually rejoice.145 It is a characteristic of the arcane substance to have everything it needs; it is a fully autonomous being, like the dragon that begets, reproduces, slays, and devours itself. It is questionable whether the alchemists, who were anything but consistent thinkers, ever became fully conscious of what they were saying when they used such images. If we take their words literally, they would refer to an Increatum, a being without beginning or end, and in need of no second. Such a thing can by definition only be God himself, but a God, we must add, seen in the mirror of physical nature and distorted past recognition. The One for which the alchemists strove corresponds to the res simplex, which the Liber quartorum defines as God.146 This reference, however, is unique, and in view of the corrupt state of the text I would not like to labour its significance, although Dorns speculations about the One and the unarius are closely analogous. The Turba continues: And yet they are not different natures, nor several, but a single one, which unites their powers in itself, through which it prevails over the other things. See you not that the Master has begun with the One and ended with the One? For he has named those unities the water of the sulphur, which conquers the whole of nature.147 The peculiarity of sulphur is also expressed in the paradox that it is incremabile (incombustible), ash extracted from ash.148 Its effects as aqua sulfurea are infinite.149 The Consilium coniugii says: Our sulphur is not the common sulphur,150 which is usually said of the philosophical gold. Paracelsus, in his Liber Azoth, describes sulphur as lignum (wood), the linea vitae (line of life), and fourfold (to correspond with the four elements); the spirit of life is renewed from it.151 Of the philosophical sulphur Mylius says that such a thing is not to be found on earth except in Sol and Luna, and it is known to no man unless revealed to him by God.152 Dorn calls it the son begotten of the imperfect bodies, who, when sublimated, changes into the highly esteemed salt of four colours. In the Tractatus Micreris it is even called the treasure of God.153
  [144] These references to sulphur as the arcane and transformative substance must suffice. I would only like to stress Paracelsus remark about its fourfold nature, and that of his pupil Dorn about the four colours as symbols of totality. The psychic factor which appears in projection in all similarly characterized arcane substances is the unconscious self. It is on this account that the well-known Christ-lapis154 parallel reappears again and again, as for instance in the above-mentioned parable of the adepts adventure in the grove of Venus. As we saw, he fell asleep after having a long and instructive conversation with the voice of Saturn. In his dream he beholds the figures of two men by the fountain in the grove, one of them Sulphur, the other Sal. A quarrel arises, and Sal gives Sulphur an incurable wound. Blood pours from it in the form of whitest milk. As the adept sinks deeper into sleep, it changes into a river. Diana emerges from the grove and bathes in the miraculous water. A prince (Sol), passing by, espies her, they are inflamed for love of one another, and she falls down in a swoon and sinks beneath the surface. The princes retinue refuse to rescue her for fear of the perilous water,155 whereupon the prince plunges in and is dragged down by her to the depths. Immediately their souls appear above the water and explain to the adept that they will not go back into bodies so polluted, and are glad to be quit of them. They would remain afloat until the fogs and clouds have disappeared. At this point the adept returns to his former dream, and with many other alchemists he finds the corpse of Sulphur by the fountain. Each of them takes a piece and operates with it, but without success.156 We learn, further, that Sulphur is not only the medicina but also the medicus the wounded physician.157 Sulphur suffers the same fate as the body that is pierced by the lance of Mercurius. In Reusners Pandora158 the body is symbolized as Christ, the second Adam, pierced by the lance of a mermaid, or a Lilith or Edem.159
  [145] This analogy shows that sulphur as the arcane substance was set on a par with Christ, so that for the alchemists it must have meant something very similar. We would turn away in disgust from such an absurdity were it not obvious that this analogy, sometimes in clear and sometimes in veiled form, was thrust upon them by the unconscious. Certainly there could be no greater disparity than that between the holiest conception known to mans consciousness and sulphur with its evil-smelling compounds. The analogy therefore is in no sense evidential but can only have arisen through intense and passionate preoccupation with the chemical substance, which gradually formed a tertium comparationis in the alchemists mind and forced it upon him with the utmost insistence. The common denominator of these two utterly incommensurable conceptions is the self, the image of the whole man, which reached its finest and most significant development in the Ecce Homo, and on the other hand appears as the meanest, most contemptible, and most insignificant thing, and manifests itself to consciousness precisely in that guise. As it is a concept of human totality, the self is by definition greater than the ego-conscious personality, embracing besides this the personal shadow and the collective unconscious. Conversely, the entire phenomenon of the unconscious appears so unimportant to ego-consciousness that we would rather explain it as a privatio lucis160 than allow it an autonomous existence. In addition, the conscious mind is critical and mistrustful of everything hailing from the unconscious, convinced that it is suspect and somehow dirty. Hence the psychic phenomenology of the self is as full of paradoxes as the Hindu conception of the atman, which on the one hand embraces the universe and on the other dwells no bigger than a thumb in the heart. The Eastern idea of atman-purusha corresponds psychologically to the Western figure of Christ, who is the second Person of the Trinity and God himself, but, so far as his human existence is concerned, conforms exactly to the suffering servant of God in Isaiah161from his birth in a stable among the animals to his shameful death on the cross between two thieves.
  [146] The contrast is even sharper in the Naassene picture of the Redeemer, as reported by Hippolytus:162 Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in.163 This is the wonder of wonders. For who, saith he [the Naassene], is this King of glory? A worm and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people;164 this same is the King, and mighty in battle. But the battle, say the Naassenes, refers to the warring elements in the body. This association of the passage from the Psalms with the idea of conflict is no accident, for psychological experience shows that the symbols of the self appear in dreams and in active imagination at moments of violent collision between two opposite points of view, as compensatory attempts to mitigate the conflict and make enemies friends. Therefore the lapis, which is born of the dragon, is extolled as a saviour and mediator since it represents the equivalent of a redeemer sprung from the unconscious. The Christ-lapis parallel vacillates between mere analogy and far-reaching identity, but in general it is not thought out to its logical conclusion, so that the dual focus remains. This is not surprising since even today most of us have not got round to understanding Christ as the psychic reality of an archetype, regardless of his historicity. I do not doubt the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth, but the figure of the Son of Man and of Christ the Redeemer has archetypal antecedents. It is these that form the basis of the alchemical analogies.

3.04 - LUNA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [171] The moon appears to be in a disadvantageous position compared with the sun. The sun is a concentrated luminary: The day is lit by a single sun. The moon, on the other handas if less powerfulneeds the help of the stars when it comes to the task of composition and separation, rational reflection, definition, etc.257 The appetites, as potentiae sensuales, pertain to the sphere of the moon; they are anger (ira) and desire (libido) or, in a word, concupiscentia. The passions are designated by animals because we have these things in common with them, and, what is more unfortunate, they often drive us into leading a bestial life.258 According to Pico, Luna has an affinity with Venus, as is particularly to be seen from the fact that she is sublimated in Taurus, the House of Venus, so much that she nowhere else appears more auspicious and more beneficent.259 Taurus is the house of the hierogamy of Sol and Luna.260 Indeed, Pico declares that the moon is the lowest earth and the most ignoble of all the stars,261 an opinion which recalls Aristotles comparison of the moon with the earth. The moon, says Pico, is inferior to all the other planets.262 The novilunium is especially unfavourable, as it robs growing bodies of their nourishment and in this way injures them.263
  [172] Psychologically, this means that the union of consciousness (Sol) with its feminine counterpart the unconscious (Luna) has undesirable results to begin with: it produces poisonous animals such as the dragon, serpent, scorpion, basilisk, and toad;264 then the lion, bear, wolf, dog,265 and finally the eagle266 and the raven. The first to appear are the cold-blooded animals, then warm-blooded predators, and lastly birds of prey or ill-omened scavengers. The first progeny of the matrimonium luminarium are all, therefore, rather unpleasant. But that is only because there is an evil darkness in both parents which comes to light in the children, as indeed often happens in real life. I remember, for instance, the case of a twenty-year-old bank clerk who embezzled several hundred francs. His old father, the chief cashier at the same bank, was much pitied, because for forty years he had discharged his highly responsible duties with exemplary loyalty. Two days after the arrest of his son he decamped to South America with a million. So there must have been something in the family. We have seen in the case of Sol that he either possesses a shadow or is even a Sol niger. As to the position of Luna, we have already been told what this is when we discussed the new moon. In the Epistola Solis ad Lunam crescentem267 Sol cautiously says: If you do me no hurt, O moon.268 Luna has promised him complete dissolution while she herself coagulates, i.e., becomes firm, and is clothed with his blackness (induta fuero nigredine tua).269 She assumes in the friendliest manner that her blackness comes from him. The matrimonial wrangle has already begun. Luna is the shadow of the sun, and with corruptible bodies she is consumed, and through her corruption . . . is the Lion eclipsed.270
  --
  [232] The dark sun of feminine psychology is connected with the father-imago, since the father is the first carrier of the animus-image. He endows this virtual image with substance and form, for on account of his Logos he is the source of spirit for the daughter. Unfortunately this source is often sullied just where we would expect clean water. For the spirit that benefits a woman is not mere intellect, it is far more: it is an attitude, the spirit by which a man lives.377 Even a so-called ideal spirit is not always the best if it does not understand how to deal adequately with nature, that is, with the animal man. This really would be ideal. Hence every father is given the opportunity to corrupt, in one way or another, his daughters nature, and the educator, husband, or psychiatrist then has to face the music. For what has been spoiled by the father378 can only be made good by a father, just as what has been spoiled by the mother can only be repaired by a mother. The disastrous repetition of the family pattern could be described as the psychological original sin, or as the curse of the Atrides running through the generations. But in judging these things one should not be too certain either of good or of evil. The two are about equally balanced. It should, however, have begun to dawn on our cultural optimists that the forces of good are not sufficient to produce either a rational world-order or the faultless ethical behaviour of the individual, whereas the forces of evil are so strong that they imperil any order at all and can imprison the individual in a devilish system that commits the most fearful crimes, so that even if he is ethical-minded he must finally forget his moral responsibility in order to go on living. The malignity of collective man has shown itself in more terrifying form today than ever before in history, and it is by this objective standard that the greater and the lesser sins should be measured. We need more casuistic subtlety, because it is no longer a question of extirpating evil but of the difficult art of putting a lesser evil in place of a greater one. The time for the sweeping statements so dear to the evangelizing moralist, which lighten his task in the most agreeable way, is long past. Nor can the conflict be escaped by a denial of moral values. The very idea of this is foreign to our instincts and contrary to nature. Every human group that is not actually sitting in prison will follow its accustomed paths according to the measure of its freedom. Whatever the intellectual definition and evaluation of good and evil may be, the conflict between them can never be eradicated, for no one can ever forget it. Even the Christian who feels himself delivered from evil will, when the first rapture is over, remember the thorn in the flesh, which even St. Paul could not pluck out.
  [233] These hints may suffice to make clear what kind of spirit it is that the daughter needs. They are the truths which speak to the soul, which are not too loud and do not insist too much, but reach the individual in stillness the individual who constitutes the meaning of the world. It is this knowledge that the daughter needs, in order to pass it on to her son.

3.05 - SAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [271] By reason of its solar nature the eye is a symbol of consciousness, and accordingly multiple eyes would indicate a multiplicity of conscious centres which are co-ordinated into a unity like the many-faceted eye of an insect. As Ezekiels vision can be interpreted psychologically as a symbol of the self, we may also mention in this connection the Hindu definition of the selfhere hiranyagarbhaas the collective aggregate of all individual souls.500
  [272] Ezekiels vision is of psychological importance because the quaternity embodied in it is the vehicle or throne of him who had the appearance of a man. Together with the spirit of life in the wheels it represents the empirical self, the totality of the four functions. These four are only partly conscious. The auxiliary functions are partly, and the inferior or subliminal function is wholly, autonomous; they cannot be put to conscious use and they reach consciousness only indirectly as a fait accompli, through their sometimes disturbing effects. Their specific energy adds itself to the normal energy of the unconscious and thereby gives it an impulse that enables it to irrupt spontaneously into consciousness. As we know, these invasions can be observed systematically in the association experiment.501

3.08 - Of Equilibrium, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  2. See the Book of the Law and the Commentaries thereon for the true definition of
  this virtue. [Also Little Essays toward Truth, essay Chastity.]

3.09 - Of Silence and Secrecy, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  are interchangeable, by definition, so that it is based on relativity from the start.
   70

3.1.02 - Spiritual Evolution and the Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  As for the Supramental, it is by definition a consciousness above the Overmind in which all aspects are infused in the integral Divine. But none is bound to seek after the Supramental consciousness if his tendency is elsewhere.
  The manifestation is complex and there are beings in it who belong to various levels. If a soul wishes to plunge into the Divine through Nirvana or seeks spiritual fulfilment in a world of the

3.10 - The New Birth, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  birth to itself, by definition an increatum, despite a quotation from
  Rosarius to the effect that Mercurius noster nobilissimus was created by

3.12 - Of the Bloody Sacrifice, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  that one may get something which one does not want. This is bad by definition.
  Nothing is in itself good or evil. The shields of the Sabines which crushed Tarpeia

3.14 - Of the Consecrations, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  potato-growing or banking from our definition.
  Let us take a very simple example of a Magical Act: that of a man [108]

3.16.2 - Of the Charge of the Spirit, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  talisman, for the definition of a talisman is: something upon which
  an act of will (that is, of Magick) has been performed in order to fit

3.17 - Of the License to Depart, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  assimilated. Samdhi is, by definition, that very process. But, from the
  point of view of the young magician, there is a waystrait and difficultof performing this. One cannot too frequently repeat that what

3.18 - Of Clairvoyance and the Body of Light, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  limitations in your private definition of wisdom, in reference to
  your present circumstances. It would not involve guarantee against

3.20 - Of the Eucharist, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  by our definition, is Initiation? The First Matter is a man, that is to
  say, a perishable parasite, bred of the earths crust, crawling

3.2.1 - Food, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  I think the importance of sattwic food from the spiritual point of view has been exaggerated. Food is rather a question of hygiene and many of the sanctions and prohibitions laid down in ancient religions had more a hygienic than a spiritual motive. The Gitas definitions seem to point in the same directiontamasic food, it seems to say, is what is stale or rotten with the virtue gone out of it, rajasic food is that which is too acrid, pungent etc., heats the blood and spoils the health, sattwic food is what is pleasing, healthy etc. It may well be that different kinds of food nourish the action of the different gunas and so indirectly are helpful or harmful apart from their physical action. But that is as far as we can confidently go. What particular eatables are or are not sattwic is another question and more difficult to determine. Spiritually, I should say that the effect of food depends more on the occult atmosphere and influences that come with it than on anything in the food itself. Vegetarianism is another question altogether; it stands, as you say, on a will not to do harm to the more conscious forms of life for the satisfaction of the belly.
  As to the question of practising to take all kinds of food with equal rasa, it is not necessary to practise nor does it really come by practice. One has to acquire equality within in the consciousness and as this equality grows one can extend it or apply it to the various fields of the activity of the consciousness.

3.3.03 - The Delight of Works, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Know last the Master to be thyself; but to this self put no form and seek for it no definition of quality. Be one with That in thy being, commune with That in thy consciousness, obey That in thy force, be subject to That and clasped by it in thy delight, fulfil That in thy life and body and mentality. Then before an opening eye within thee there shall emerge that true and only Person, thyself and not thyself, all others and more than all others, the Director and Enjoyer of thy works, the Master of the worker and the instrument, the Reveller and Trampler in the dance of the universe and yet hushed and alone with thee in thy souls silent and inner chamber.
  The joy of the Master possessed, there is nothing else for thee to conquer. For He shall give thee Himself and all things and all creatures gettings and havings and doings and enjoyings for thy own proper portion, and He shall give thee that also which cannot be portioned.

33.15 - My Athletics, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   To a certain extent, I too have gone through this phase of modern "training", as you all know. I have given up the old methods of learning by rule-of-thumb and have tried to acquire some kind of proficiency through a process of regular training, following in the footsteps of many among yourselves, although I may not have been able to tread the lines of our Madanlal. His theory seems to be that the more effort you put in, "the greater becomes your skill or ability and that there is no game on earth that you cannot master by sheer dint of hard work. Madanlal himself is a living proof of his doctrine, for he is without a rival in this method of hard painstaking practice. There are, as you know, two main types among those who do well in studies or - shall we say? - there are two ways of becoming a good student. There are those who, gifted with natural intelligence and ability, waste the whole year in all sorts of extra-curricular activities and in pleasures and pastimes and then read up for days and nights for a month or two just before the examination and get through the test and even secure high places. There is the second type who read and work hard throughout the whole year, devote some time every day to their studies, and never run the risk of falling ill or having a nervous breakdown about the time of the examination on account of excessive work. Our Madanlal belongs to this second category. He is really out to prove by his own example that definition of genius which makes it nothing but the capacity for taking infinite pains.
   I have to mention another name in this connection. For much of what I have now achieved in the field of athletics I owe a deep debt to our Chinmoy. He has been my coach. What have I learnt from him? It is enthusiasm. What do I mean by enthusiasm? I shall explain. One of the secrets of physical training is that you must always try to perform a little more than your capacity, or what you may think is the limit of your powers. Perhaps it was with this end in view that in our time when one had to exercise a particular part of the body, the instructions were to go on repeating the movement until one began to sweat and felt exhausted. For how long am I to manipulate the dumb-bells or the Indian clubs? Until you are tired, the chart said, that is, until you felt you could do no more. Now of course nothing is done by such haphazard guesswork. You have to repeat the movements for a certain definite number of times, by actual count, say, five or six repetitions for the first day, to be increased by one or two every day or week, a final limit being set in respect of each individual according to his capacity. This is the method of scientific training today.

3.4.02 - The Inconscient, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
    See the Mandukya Upanishad for these brief and profound definitions.
  ***

3.4.03 - Materialism, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The gates of escape by which a knowledge starting from materialism can get away from its own self-immuring limitations, can here only be casually indicated. I may take another occasion to show how the possibility must become in eventual fact a necessity. Physical science has before its eye two eternal factors of existence, Matter and Energy, and no others at all are needed in the account of its operations. Mind dealing with the facts and relations of Matter and Energy as they are arranged to the senses in experience and continuative experiment and are analysed by the reason, would be a sufficient definition of physical science. Its first regard is on Matter as the one principle of being and on Energy only as a phenomenon of Matter; but in the end one questions whether it is not the other way round, all things the action of Energy and Matter only the field, body and instrument of her workings. The first view is quantitative and purely mechanical, the second lets in a qualitative and a more spiritual element. We do not at once leap out of the materialistic circle, but we see an opening in it which may widen into an outlet when, stirred by this suggestion, we look at life and mind not merely as phenomenon in Matter but as energies and see that they are quite other energies than the material with their own peculiar qualities, powers and workings. If indeed all action of life and mind could be reduced, as it was once hoped, to none but material, quantitative and mechanical, to mathematical, physiological and chemical terms, the opening would cease to be an outlet; it would be choked. That attempt has failed and there is no sign of its ever being successful. Only a limited range of the phenomena of life and mind could be satisfied by a purely bio-physical, psycho-physical or biopsychical explanation, and even if more could be dealt with by these data, still they would only have been accounted for on one side of their mystery, the lower end. Life and Mind, like the Vedic Agni, have their two extremities hidden in a secrecy, and we should by this way only have hold of the tail-end: the head would still be mystic and secret. To know more we must have studied not only the actual or possible action of body and matter on mind and life, but explored all the possible action of mind too on life and body; that opens undreamed vistas. And there is always the vast field of the action of mind in itself and on itself, which needs for its elucidation another, a mental, a psychic science.
  Having examined and explained Matter by physical methods and in the language of the material Brahman,it is not really explained, but let that pass,having failed to carry that way of knowledge into other fields beyond a narrow limit, we must then at least consent to scrutinise life and mind by methods appropriate to them and explain their facts in the language and tokens of the vital and mental Brahman. We may discover then where and how these tongues of the one existence render the same truth and throw light on each others phrases, and discover too perhaps another, high, brilliant and revealing speech which may shine out as the definitive all-explaining word. That can only be if we pursue these other sciences too in the same spirit as the physical, with a scrutiny, not only of their obvious and first actual phenomena, but of all the countless untested potentialities of mental and psychic energy, and with a free unlimited experimentation. We shall find out that their ranges of the unknown are immense. We shall perceive that until the possibilities of mind and spirit are better explored and their truths better known, we cannot yet pronounce the last all-ensphering formula of universal existence. Very early in this process the materialistic circle will be seen opening up on all its sides until it rapidly breaks up and disappears. Adhering still to the essential rigorous method of science, though not to its purely physical instrumentation, scrutinising, experimenting, holding nothing for established which cannot be scrupulously and universally verified, we shall still arrive at supraphysical certitudes. There are other means, there are greater approaches, but this line of access too can lead to the one universal truth.

3-5 Full Circle, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Implicit in this abstraction hierarchy is the following exceedingly important fact: human beings are by definition unable to grasp abstraction levels higher than their own abstraction ceilings; unable to understand, often even to become aware of, and never to operate on levels of abstraction higher than their own abstraction ceilings. (Hence the loneliness, frustration, impotence, and sometimes martyrdom of great and good men and women throughout human history.) These characteristic numbers and some of their consequences appear below in the Periodic Table of Human Cultures and in our mappings of the web-of-mind.8
  By postulating three more cumulative "repetitions" of this process, we obtain human Periods 4, 5, and 6 with the correct number of Strata and Sub-strata in each Period; the correct kinds of tools, foods, social positions, and vocabulary levels in each Stratum; the correct kinds and amounts of control; and the correct kinds and amounts of socio-genetic mobility among the Strata Skipping Periods 4 and 5 for lack of space, we come to our own Period 6, Lower Industrialists.
  --
  Implicit in this abstraction hierarchy is the following exceedingly important fact: human beings are by definition unable to grasp abstraction levels higher than their own abstraction ceilings; unable to understand, often even to become aware of, and never to operate on levels of abstraction higher than their own abstraction ceilings. (Hence the loneliness, frustration, impotence, and sometimes martyrdom of great and good men and women throughout human history.) These characteristic numbers and some of their consequences appear below in the Periodic Table of Human Cultures and in our mappings of the web-of-mind.8
  By postulating three more cumulative "repetitions" of this process, we obtain human Periods 4, 5, and 6 with the correct number of Strata and Sub-strata in each Period; the correct kinds of tools, foods, social positions, and vocabulary levels in each Stratum; the correct kinds and amounts of control; and the correct kinds and amounts of socio-genetic mobility among the Strata Skipping Periods 4 and 5 for lack of space, we come to our own Period 6, Lower Industrialists.
  --
  Though we had corresponded briefly, and I had publicly discussed "The Religious Force of Unified Science",11 he did not say that Unified Science would, by its definition and intrinsic structure, have to be this sort of synthesis. Nor did he say that the public philosophy of Higher Industrial Civilization can scarcely be anything but this over-all sort of synthesis. Nonetheless, he sensed and said clearly that the Two Cultures were about to unite. This prediction is now being fulfilled. And as this happens it will restore in our New World the ancient oneness of the human spirit.26
  In 1955 Walter Lippmann hoped and pleaded for this restoration in The Public Philosophy--On the Decline and Revival of Western Democracy. I had replied that Unified Science is The Public Philosophy of the Space Age.12 And this involves a global, and thus Copernican, change of attitude.
  --
  Theory becomes a social force only when it has gripped the masses, Marx declared. But the masses have, by definition, 1, 2, 3 and 4~ human level.s of abstraction, while theory includes levels 5, 6, and 7 (see Figures IV-1 to 4). To grip the masses, theory has to be transposed to every level. For without transposition, theory cannot grip the masses and is sterile. And who knows how to transpose theory better than organized specialists and generalists?
  It is not, however, primarily scientists, but leaders of the great public who can execute prescriptions, carry out the patterns of action now being formulated. Their training is provided for in the New University's School of Management, shown on the left-hand side of Figure IV-9.
  --
  "Mankind," wrote Dr. Fosdick, "desperately needs what Christianity at its best has to offer--that idea has become ever more urgent and commanding. I emphasize at its best because Christianity can be and often is perverted, corrupted, degraded, until far from serving good ends it becomes a deplorable evil. I grow weary at times with preachers who, without clarifying definitions, set over against each other words like `Christianity' and `secularism,' as though secularism were cursing the world and Christianity alone could save it. The fact is that so-called `Christianity' at its worst has produced some of the most hideous persecutions, wars and fanaticisms in history, and that today it is sometimes bigoted, superstitious, intolerant, socially disruptive, while so-called `secularism' is sometimes humane, ethically-minded and socially constructive." pp. 267-8.45
  Dr. Fosdick's sermons and books display hundreds of concrete examples of Christianity and secularism at their best and also at their worst: These examples can now be mapped into the Periodic coordinate system, as in Figures V-3 and 4, and thus be given more clarifying definitions than humanists have here-to-fore commanded.
  "I do not wish to use the word `Christianity' as though it were an unambiguous term," he wrote a little further on. "One needs to define what one means by it." He then uses what scientists call a type specimen or a paradigmatic case:46 "For me the essence of Christianity is incarnate in the personality of the Master . . . and in the fundamental principles of life's conduct which Jesus of Nazareth exhibited. I am sure that the world today desperately needs his faith and his way of life, and that without them there is no hope."45,47 Each concrete aspect of this paradigmatic case can be mapped unambiguously into the Periodic coordinate system, and the word `Christianity' thus rendered quite unambiguous.--A number of its parts will, I predict, be found to belong to the Literate Culture (Period 5), and to require transposition in order to regain their original meaning for Industrial culture. And others of its parts will have to be completed.
  --
  18. The present concept and definition of System-hierarchy were formulated in discussions among Cassidy, Quine and Haskell between 1964 and 1969.
  19. Peccei, A. "The Club of Rome and the Predicament of Mankind" in Science Policy News, September 1970 (pp. 13-14).
  --
  "General systems theory in the narrower sense (G.S.T.)," says von Bertalanffy, "is trying to derive from a general definition of `system' a complex of interacting components, concepts characteristic of organized wholes . . . and to apply them to concrete phenomena."3 This method is typical of the deductive-theoretical mode of thought.
  A major objective of Unified Science, therefore, is to organize the verbal and visual symbols for this deductive operation. Its further objectives include the arrangement of the empirical data in such a way as to permit the attainment of what Kenneth Boulding regards as a major objective of Systems Theorists; namely, the transformation of the present aggregation of primarily empirical sciences into "a spectrum of theories--a system of systems."4 This objective has, I believe, been reached in the present model of Unified Science by combining Boulding's two approaches in a concrete, practical way.
  --
  Accordingly, Unified Science's glossary is presented in two complementary forms: The relational, graphic form for holistic coherence, and the alphabetical form combined with the index, for retrieval and the definition of terms not spelled out in the first form.
  GRAPHIC, DEDUCTIVE-THEORETICAL GLOSSARY.6
  --
  4) General Periodic Table and the Taxonomic System of Unified Science. Figure 2-13 by Harold G. Cassidy. Verbal definitions of the whole and some of its components follow.
  5) Empirical Periodic Table (paradigmatic form), item 3 in the center column of Figure 2-1b, shown in Figure 2-5a.
  --
  A General System in which the abstract Entity is replaced by an empirical entity, and in which all other abstract components are replaced by empirical components implied by the definitions of habitat and environment. Examples: Any one of the empirical systems represented in the left-hand column of Figure 2-lb.
  3) Systems-Hierarchy
  --
  Feedback (n.) The returning of a portion of the output of a system to the input for purposes of control. Negative feedback directs the output closer to the system's goal or norm. (See Constancy effector.) Positive feedback directs the output away from the goal, toward infinity or zero. (See Tendency effector). Synonym: retroaction. These definitions are by Pierre de Latil (Thinking by Machine).
  Feedback, double, triple, etc. A closed system of simulated responses which enables a system to reflect upon perceived phenomena and also upon the simulated actions called thoughts. In this manner, a number of possible actions can be imagined and the best one implemented: the one which will presumably come closest to the system's goal. Feedbacks may be double, triple, quadruple, etc., according to the number of levels of abstraction involved. C.f. Abstraction, levels of.
  --
  Mimesis (n.) (Ref. Toynbee, A. J., A Study of History) Simulation, within a Systems-hierarchy (q.v.), of the behavior of higher members by lower members of the hierarchy. Since lower members by definition lack the structure which enacts the system's highest levels of abstraction (q.v.), mimesis is confined to those aspects of behavior which lie beneath their abstraction ceiling (q.v.). Mimesis is seen by higher members of the hierarchy as inept, valuable, dangerous, ludicrous, cute, etc. depending upon the situation. None the less, mimesis is essential to the coherence and operation of societies in all human Periods: Even in the lowest, it characterizes much activity of children and young people (lower Sub-strata).--Understanding of mimesis by the top Strata is important to society's control, confidence and trust (q.v.), which are necessary conditions for social stability and Omega-ward development. C.f. Class cooperation, Symbiosis, vertical Front.
  Minority, creative A controlling class in a society which cooperates with the society's working class, thereby either transmuting the whole society to a higher Period (q.v.) or forming a vertical front (q.v.) and transforming predation and parasitism (q.v.) into symbiosis (q.v.). Term coined by Arnold Toynbee. C.f. Minority, dominant, Control, function.
  --
  The decisive advance displayed by ecology lies in its empirical study of, and emphasis upon, the coactions between the traditionally classified entities and their habitats. Unified Science contri butes theoretical definition and classification of these coactions; their mapping into the framework called Periodic Table and the Periodic Coordinate System.
  The first step, then, in defining type specimens in this domain, is to select ecosystems with clearly discernible controllers such as, say, beaver valleys, and to compile the most reliable written, pictorial, and film records of them in existence. The next step is to draw up the ecosystem's web-of life, on the general pattern displayed in Figure II-14b. This involves clear assessment of each participant's Characteristic Number, relating each organismic and abiotic factor to the Periodic Table in each major respect. This will disclose role-duplications, triplications, and higher multiplications; reveal many unsuspected forms of indirect coaction; display gaps in our image of the web and lead us to fill them in. This procedure will yield us far more complete and detailed understanding of each participant's own ecosystem--its own organism habitat system--than we now have, and prepare the third step. This is to assess the quantities of the processes comprising the strategic organismic or abiotic factors' webs. This will, in turn, permit us to simulate strategic webs with a computer, modifying, introducing, or eliminating factors at will and predicting the consequences. This will permit empirical verification, with subsequent changes and improvements of our image (theory) until its accuracy is as great as necessary for feasible and effective control.

36.07 - An Introduction To The Vedas, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
   As for instance, when the Vedic seers speak of fire, they mean something of which the gross form is fire and which itself is tejas (luminous energy) in its subtle form. In the spiritual world, in its subtler form it is called energising consciousness. Likewise the sun is, serially and simultaneously, light, the power of revelation and knowledge. When the Vedic seers say, idam srestham jyotisam... (This is the Light, the highest of all lights; it has come; the Supreme knowledge, beautiful and diverse, vast and all-pervading, has taken birth), they make use of the gross dawn to hint at some subtle dawn. They could visualise the entire creation in its wholeness. That is why their realisations had the stamp of wholeness which can be applied to all the levels and phases of creation. We, the modernists, look upon truth as something entirely comprehensible by the intellect. We put it syllogistically and understand it part by part separately. The ancients used to grasp the truth through the fullness of their heart, the inner being. So it could manifest as an indivisible embodiment of mundane forms and supraphysical concepts. To us the truth has three distinct forms: in the material, vital and mental worlds. Each is different from the other, having a definition of its own. But the angle of vision of the ancient seers was not of such an analytical type. Their synthetic realisation revealed such mantras as comprised the essence of all the levels.
   In the process of Nature, in the material world and in its activities they did not see something mundane and material, but found in them a reflection of the supernatural. It may be asked: if, the gross forms were mere symbols, then why is the Veda so replete with them and why has so much importance been given to them? Then we have to enquire into the symbolism of the ancients. Here in this connection we want only to mention that the language of the ancients used to flow from their heart. It was not subject to any intellectual reasoning and was not analytical as that of t day. The language was simply symbol of their direct realisation. All languages originate from the perceptions of the senses and the emotions of the heart. The inner urge was kept intact in the language of the ancients. The language and their direct perception were not intercepted by the syllogistic reasoning. So the subtle experiences when expressed in language used to entail the corresponding gross perceptions as well. The ceremonials and the sacrifices are but symbols of inner experiences. According to the Chhandogya Upanishad, yavanva ayamakasastavanesontarhrdaya akash ... (The sky that we see in the outer space is also in our inner heart. Both the Heaven and the earth, Agni as well as Vayu all are concentrated in our inner heart).

3.7.1.06 - The Ascending Unity, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Man began this familiar process of simple cuttings by emphasising his sense of himself as man; he made of himself a being separate, unique and peculiar in this world, for whom or round whom everything else was supposed to be created, - and all the rest, the subhuman existence, animal, plant, inanimate object, everything to the original atom seemed to him a creation different from himself, separate, of another nature; he condemned all to be without a soul, he was the one ensouled being. He saw life, defined it by certain characters that struck his mind, and set apart all other existence as non-living, inanimate. He looked at his earth, made it the centre of the universe, because the one inhabited scene of embodied souls or living beings; but the innumerable other heavenly bodies were only lights to illumine earth's day or to relieve her night. He perceived the insufficiency of this one earthly life only to create another opposite definition of a perfect heavenly existence and set it in the skies he saw above him. He perceived his "I" or self and conceived of it as a
  The Ascending Unity
  --
   to its view void of a spiritual existence. The logical abstracting intellect with its passion for clean sections intermediately swept away these large beliefs as an imaginative superstition or a primitive animism and, mastered by its limiting and dividing definitions, it drove a trenchant sectional cleavage between man and animal, animal and plant, animate and inanimate being. But now to the eye of our enlarging reason this system of intolerant cleavages is in rapid course of disappearance. The human mind is a development from what is inchoate in the animal mentality; there is, even, in that inferior type a sort of suppressed reason, for that name may well be given to a power of instinctive and customary conclusion from experience, association, memory and nervous response, and man himself begins with these things though he develops out of this animal inheritance a free human self-detaching power of reflective will and intelligence.
  And it is now clear that the nervous life which is the basis of that physical mentality in man and animal, exists also in the plant with a fundamental identity; not only so, but it is akin to us by a sort of nervous psychology which amounts to the existence of a suppressed mind. A subconscient mind in the plant, it is now not unreasonable to suggest, - but is it not at the summits of plant experience only half subconscious? - becomes conscient in the animal body. When we go lower down, we find hints that there are involved in the subvital most brute material forms the rudiments of precisely the same energy of life and its responses.

3.7.1.09 - Karma and Freedom, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But if this extinction may be called a liberation, it is yet not a status of freedom; for that can only repose upon an affirmation, a permanence, not upon a negative and extinction of all affirmations, and needs too, one would imagine, a someone or something that is free. The Buddha himself, it may be remarked, seems to have conceived of Nirvana as a status of absolute bliss of freedom, a negation of Karmic existence in some incognisable Absolute which he refused steadfastly to describe or define by any positive or any negative,as indeed definition by any exclusive positive or widest sum of positives or any negative or complete sum of negatives would seem by the very fact of its bringing in a definition and thereby a limitation to be inapplicable to the Absolute. The Illusionists Maya is a more mystic thing and more obscure to the intelligence; but we have at least here a Self, a positive Infinite which is capable therefore of an eternal freedom, but only in inaction, by cessation from Karma. For the self as the individual, the soul in action of Karma is bound always by ignorance, and only by rejection of individuality and of the cosmic illusion can we return to the liberty of the Absolute. What we see in both these systems is that spiritual freedom and the cosmic compulsion are equally admitted, but in a total separation and an exclusion from each others own proper field,still as absolute opposites and contraries. Compulsion of ignorance or Karma is absolute in the world of birth; freedom of the spirit is absolute in a withdrawal from birth and cosmos and Karma.
  But these trenchant systems, however satisfactory to the logical reason, are suspect to a synthetic intelligence; and at any rate, as we find that knowledge and ignorance are not in their essence absolute contraries but ignorance and inconscience itself the veil of a secret knowledge, so it may be at least possible that liberty and the compulsion of Karma are not such unbridgeable opposites, but that behind and even in Karma itself there is all the time a secret liberty of the indwelling Spirit. Buddhism and Illusionism too do not assert any external or internal predestination, but only a self-imposed bondage. And very insistently they demand of man a choice between the right and the wrong way, between the will to an impermanent existence and the will to Nirvana, between a will to cosmic existence and the will to an absolute spiritual being. Nor do they demand this choice of the Absolute or of the universal Being or Power, who indeed cares nothing for their claim and goes on very tranquilly and securely with his mighty eternal action, but they ask it of the individual, of the soul of man halting perplexed between the oppositions of his mentality. It would seem then that there is something in our individual being which has some real freedom of will, some power of choice of a great consequence and magnitude, and what is it then that thus chooses, and what are the limits, where the beginning or the end of its actual or its possible liberty?

3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Vedic word Nama connotes definition, distribution & law, (cf
  from nam, Greek nomos, law, nemo, to distribute, Latin numerus, number) & is, in its nature, defining idea. The Nama,
  --
  arrive from this mental definition to the divine idea in them
  and from the divine idea to the one truth of which all ideas are

4.02 - BEYOND THE COLLECTIVE - THE HYPER-PERSONAL, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  It is by definition in Omega that in its flower and its integrity
   the hoard of consciouness liberated little by little on earth

4.02 - GOLD AND SPIRIT, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [355] The definition of the king as pneuma carried considerably more weight than his interpretation as gold. Rulands Lexicon defines Rex as follows: RexKing, Soul, Spiritual Water which gives Moisture to the Female and is restored to the Fountain whence it was derived. The Spirit is Water.24 Here Rex is still the divine soul, the moist Osiris,25 a life-giving, fertilizing pneuma and not primarily the physical gold. The mystique of the king comes out even more clearly in Khunrath: When at last, he says, the ash-colour, the whitening, and the yellowing are over, you will see the Philosophical Stone, our King and Lord of Lords, come forth from the couch and throne of his glassy sepulchre26 onto the stage of this world, in his glorified body, regenerated and more than perfect, shining like a carbuncle, and crying out, Behold, I make all things new.27 In his story of how the lapis is made, Khunrath describes the mystic birth of the king. Ruach Elohim (the spirit of God) penetrated to the lowest parts and to the centre (meditullium) of the virginal massa confusa, and scattered the sparks and rays of his fruitfulness. Thus the form impressed itself [forma informavit], and the purest soul quickened and impregnated the tohu-bohu, which was without form and void. This was a mysterium typicum (a symbolical mystery), the procreation of the Preserver and Saviour of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm. The Word is become flesh . . . and God has revealed himself in the flesh, the spirit of God has appeared in the body. This, the son of the Macrocosm . . . that, the son of God, the God-man . . . the one in the womb of the Macrocosm, the other in the womb of the Microcosm, and both times the womb was virginal. In the Book or Mirror of Nature, the Stone of the Wise, the Preserver of the Macrocosm, is the symbol of Christ Jesus Crucified, Saviour of the whole race of men, that is, of the Microcosm.28 The son of the Macrocosm begotten by the divine pneuma (the Egyptian ka-mutef) is of like kind and consubstantial with the Begetter. His soul is a spark of the world-soul. Our stone is three and one, which is to say triune, namely earthly, heavenly, and divine. This reminds us of the Egyptian sequence: Pharaoh, ka, God. The triune stone consists of three different and distinct substances: Sal-Mercurius-Sulphur.29

4.02 - Humanity in Progress, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  formed and purified and is taking on definition and
  clarity. No, we are not like the cut flowers that

4.03 - Prayer to the Ever-greater Christ, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  14; origin and definition, in
  movement, sense of, 24-5

4.04 - Conclusion, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  the mythologist when an exact definition or clear and concise
  information is demanded of him. The picture is concrete, clear,

4.05 - THE DARK SIDE OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [480] It is a spirit of light that descends from the sun,313 a living spirit that lives in all creatures as the spirit of wisdom,314 and teaches man the art whereby the soul enchained in the elements may be freed. From Mercurius comes the illumination of the adept, and it is through his work that Mercurius is freed from his chains. This Mercurius duplex, who ascends and descends, is the uroboros, by definition an increatum. 315 It is the snake that begets itself from itself.316 Although the poem takes Mercurius chiefly as a spirit of light, the uroboros is a
   (subterranean Hermes). Mercurius is a compound of opposites, and the alchemists were primarily concerned with his dark side, the serpent.

4.08 - THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE KINGS RENEWAL, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [517] Mans ideas and definitions of God have followed one another kaleidoscopically in the course of the millennia, and the evangelist Mark would have been very much astonished if he could have taken a look at Harnacks History of Dogma. And yet it is not a matter of indifference which definitions of his conscious dominant man considers to be binding, or what sort of views he happens to have in this regard. For on this depends whether consciousness will be king or not. If the unconscious rules to the exclusion of all else, everything is liable to end in destruction, as the present state of things gives us reason to fear. If the dominant is too weak, life is wasted in fruitless conflict because Sol and Luna will not unite. But if the son is the dominant, then Sol is his right eye and Luna his left. The dominant must contain them both, the standpoint of ego-consciousness and the standpoint of the archetypes in the unconscious. The binding force that inevitably attaches to a dominant should not mean a prison for one and a carte-blanche for the other, but duty and justice for both.
  [518] What the nature is of that unity which in some incomprehensible way embraces the antagonistic elements eludes our human judgment, for the simple reason that nobody can say what a being is like that unites the full range of consciousness with that of the unconscious. Man knows no more than his consciousness, and he knows himself only so far as this extends. Beyond that lies an unconscious sphere with no assignable limits, and it too belongs to the phenomenon Man. We might therefore say that perhaps the One is like a man, that is, determined and determinable and yet undetermined and indeterminable. Always one ends up with paradoxes when knowledge reaches its limits. The ego knows it is part of this being, but only a part. The symbolic phenomenology of the unconscious makes it clear that although consciousness is accorded the status of spiritual kingship with all its attendant dangers, we cannot say what kind of king it will be. This depends on two factors: on the decision of the ego and the assent of the unconscious. Any dominant that does not have the approval of the one or the other proves to be unstable in the long run. We know how often in the course of history consciousness has subjected its highest and most central ideas to drastic revision and correction, but we know little or nothing about the archetypal processes of change which, we may suppose, have taken place in the unconscious over the millennia, even though such speculations have no firm foundation. Nevertheless the possibility remains that the unconscious may reveal itself in an unexpected way at any time.*

4.09 - REGINA, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [542] The psychological union of opposites is an intuitive idea which covers the phenomenology of this process. It is not an explanatory hypothesis for something that, by definition, transcends our powers of conception. For, when we say that conscious and unconscious unite, we are saying in effect that this process is inconceivable. The unconscious is unconscious and therefore can neither be grasped nor conceived. The union of opposites is a transconscious process and, in principle, not amenable to scientific explanation. The marriage must remain the mystery of the queen, the secret of the art, of which the Rosarium reports King Solomon as saying:
  This is my daughter, for whose sake men say that the Queen of the South came out of the east, like the rising dawn, in order to hear, understand, and behold the wisdom of Solomon. Power, honour, strength, and dominion are given into her hand; she wears the royal crown of seven glittering stars, like a bride adorned for her husband, and on her robe is written in golden lettering, in Greek, Arabic, and Latin: I am the only daughter of the wise, utterly unknown to the foolish.433

4.1.3 - Imperfections and Periods of Arrest, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  As for the other matter how can the carts of the sadhaks here, none of whom have reached perfection or anywhere near it, be a proof that spiritual experience is null or worthless? You write as if the moment one had any kind of spiritual experience or realisation, one must at once become a perfect person without defects or weaknesses. That is to make a demand which it is impossible to satisfy and it is to ignore the fact that spiritual life is a growth and not a sudden and inexplicable miracle. No sadhak can be judged as if he were already a siddha Yogi, least of all those who have only travelled a quarter or less of a very long path as is the case with most of us who are here. Even great Yogis do not claim perfection and you cannot say that because they are not absolutely perfect, therefore their spirituality is false or of no use to the world. There are besides all kinds of spiritual men, some who are content with spiritual experience and do not seek after an outward perfection or progress, some who are saints, others who do not seek after sainthood, others who are content to live in the cosmic consciousness in touch or union with the All but allowing all kinds of forces to play through them, e.g., as in the typical description of the Paramhansa. The ideal I put before our Yoga is one thing, but it does not bind all spiritual life and endeavour. The spiritual life is not a thing that can be formulated in a rigid definition or bound by a fixed mental rule; it is a vast field of evolution, an immense kingdom potentially larger than the other kingdoms below it with a hundred provinces, a thousand types, stages, forms, paths, variations of the spiritual ideal, degrees of spiritual achievement. It is from the basis of this truth which I shall try to explain in subsequent letters that things regarding spirituality and its seekers must be judged, if they are to be judged with knowledge. Let me do that first and afterwards if I am able to give some idea of it, which is not easy, particular questions can be more soluble.
  P.S. All these things I say, must not be applied to the personal cases you mention which are only an occasion for saying them. The one thing that applies to them is that they are sadhaks, not siddhas, raw still, not ripe.

4.24 - The supramental Sense, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The action of the supramental sense is founded on this true truth of sense; it is an organisation of this pure, spiritual, infinite, absolute samjnana. The supermind acting through sense feels all as God and in God, all as the manifest touch, sight, hearing, taste, perfume, all as the felt, seen, directly experienced substance and power and energy and movement, play, penetration, vibration, form, nearness, pressure, substantial interchange of the Infinite. Nothing exists independently to its sense, but all is felt as one being and movement and each thing as indivisible from the rest and as having in it all the Infinite, all the Divine. This supramental sense has the direct feeling and experience, not only of forms, but of forces and of the energy and the quality in things and of a divine substance and presence which is within them and round them and into which they open and expand themselves in their secret subtle self and elements, extending themselves in oneness into the illimitable. Nothing to the supramental sense is really finite it is founded on a feeling of all in each and of each in all: its sense definition, although more precise and complete than the mental, creates no walls of limitation; it is an oceanic and ethereal sense in which all particular sense knowledge and sensation is a wave or movement or spray or drop that is yet a concentration of the whole ocean inseparable from the ocean. Its action is a result of the extension and vibration of being and consciousness in a supra-ethereal ether of light, ether of power, ether of bliss, the Ananda Akasha of the Upanishads, which is the matrix and continent of the universal expression of the Self, -- here in body and mind experienced only in limited extensions and vibrations, -- and the medium of its true experience. This' sense even at its lowest power is luminous with a revealing light that carries in it the secret of the thing it experiences and can therefore be a starting-point and basis of all the rest of the supramental knowledge, -- the supramental thought, spiritual intelligence and comprehension, conscious identity, -- and on its highest plane or at its fullest intensity of action it opens into or contains and at once liberates these things. It is strong with a luminous power that carries in it the force of self-realisation and an intense or infinite effectiveness, and this sense-experience can therefore be the starting-point of impulsion for a creative or fulfilling action of the spiritual and supramental will and knowledge. It is rapturous with a powerful and luminous delight that makes of it, makes of all sense and sensation a key to or a vessel of the divine and infinite Ananda.
  The supramental sense can act in its own power and is independent of the body and the physical life and outer mind and it is above too the inner mind and its experiences. It can be aware of all things in whatever world, on whatever plane, in whatever formation of universal consciousness. It can be aware of the things of the material universe even in the trance of Samadhi, aware of them as they are or appear to the physical sense, even as it is of other states of experience, of the pure vital, the mental, the psychical, the supramental presentation of things. It can in the waking state of the physical consciousness present to us the things concealed from the limited receptivity or beyond the range of the physical organs, distant forms, scenes and happenings, things that have passed out of physical existence or that are not yet in physical existence, scenes, forms, happenings, symbols of the vital, psychical, mental, supramental, spiritual worlds and all these in their real or significant truth as well as their appearance. It can use all the other states of sense consciousness and their appropriate senses and organs adding to them what they have not, setting right their errors and supplying their deficiencies: for it is the source of the others and they are only inferior derivations from this higher sense, this true and illimitable samijnana.

4.3.1.11 - Living in the Divine, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  There can be no mental rule or definition [of the kind of life
  possible after union with the Purushottama]. One has first to live

4.3.4 - Accidents, Possession, Madness, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Neuras thenia in the sense it is now given is not nervous debility that is an antiquated definition. Nervous debility is a special thing, an illness of the physical nervous;neuras thenia proper is a weakness of the vital nervous. One may be as strong as a bull and hardy as an evergreen, yet have neuras thenia. Its mark is depression, gloom, reiteration of melancholy slogans, broodings on darkness, death, despair. The bull indulges in a sorrowful lowing; the evergreen moans, Sunshine? sunshine? it is a fablethere is only cloud, mist, rain and tears! Thats neuras thenia! Of course there are other and more exaggerated forms, but those are not in question. One can get rid of this kind, if the will is determined to do so.
  ***

5.01 - EPILOGUE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  d,!cisive of all which completes the definition and clarification
  o I my scientific position as regards the phenomenon of man.

5.08 - ADAM AS TOTALITY, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [649] If the alchemical process of thought corresponded only to the three stages of purification, illumination, perfection, it would be difficult to see the justification for paraphrasing the analogous Christian ideas, which are so patently betrayed, for instance, in the fixing to the black cross. But the need for a symbolism other than the Christian one is evident from the fact that the transformation process does not culminate in the second Adam and the white dove but in the lapis, which, with Gods help, is made by the empirical man. It is a half physical, half metaphysical product, a psychological symbol expressing something created by man and yet supra-ordinate to him. This paradox can only be something like the symbol of the self, which likewise can be brought forth, i.e., made conscious, by human effort but is at the same time by definition a pre-existent totality that includes the conscious and the unconscious.
  [650] This is a thought that goes beyond the Christian world of ideas and involves a mystery consummated in and through man. It is as though the drama of Christs life were, from now on, located in man as its living carrier. As a result of this shift, the events formulated in dogma are brought within range of psychological experience and become recognizable in the process of individuation.

5.4.01 - Occult Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Predestination and chance are words - words that obscure the truth by their extreme rigidity of definition. All is done through a play of forces which seems to be a play of different possibles, but there is Something that looks and selects and uses without being either blindly arbitrary (predestination) or capriciously decisive
  (chance).

5 - The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  air of probability attaches to the alchemical definition of anima as Mercurius.
  211
  --
  says "God is spirit," it sounds more like the definition of a
  substance, or like a qualification. But the devil too, it seems,
  --
  though by definition a negative figure, sometimes has certain
  clearly discernible traits and associations which point to a quite

6.01 - THE ALCHEMICAL VIEW OF THE UNION OF OPPOSITES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [668] I have just said that symbols are tendencies whose goal is as yet unknown.54 We may assume that the same fundamental rules obtain in the history of the human mind as in the psychology of the individual. In psycho therapy it often happens that, long before they reach consciousness, certain unconscious tendencies betray their presence by symbols, occurring mostly in dreams but also in waking fantasies and symbolic actions. Often we have the impression that the unconscious is trying to enter consciousness by means of all sorts of allusions and analogies, or that it is making more or less playful attempts to attract attention to itself. One can observe these phenomena very easily in a dream-series. The series I discussed in Psychology and Alchemy offers a good example.55 Ideas develop from seeds, and we do not know what ideas will develop from what seeds in the course of history. The Assumption of the Virgin, for instance, is vouched for neither in Scripture nor in the tradition of the first five centuries of the Christian Church. For a long time it was officially denied even, but, with the connivance of the whole medieval and modern Church, it gradually developed as a pious opinion and gained so much power and influence that it finally succeeded in thrusting aside the necessity for scriptural proof and for a tradition going back to primitive times, and in attaining definition in spite of the fact that the content of the dogma is not even definable.56 The papal declaration made a reality of what had long been condoned. This irrevocable step beyond the confines of historical Christianity is the strongest proof of the autonomy of archetypal images.

6.06 - SELF-KNOWLEDGE, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [707] Expressed in the language of Hermetic philosophy, the ego-personalitys coming to terms with its own background, the shadow, corresponds to the union of spirit and soul in the unio mentalis, which is the first stage of the coniunctio. What I call coming to terms with the unconscious the alchemists called meditation. Ruland says of this: Meditation: The name of an Internal Talk of one person with another who is invisible, as in the invocation of the Deity, or communion with ones self, or with ones good angel.128 This somewhat optimistic definition must immediately be qualified by a reference to the adepts relations with his spiritus familiaris, who we can only hope was a good one. In this respect Mercurius is a rather unreliable companion, as the testimony of the alchemists agrees. In order to understand the second stage, the union of the unio mentalis with the body, psychologically, we must bear in mind what the psychic state resulting from a fairly complete recognition of the shadow looks like. The shadow, as we know, usually presents a fundamental contrast to the conscious personality. This contrast is the prerequisite for the difference of potential from which psychic energy arises. Without it, the necessary tension would be lacking. Where considerable psychic energy is at work, we must expect a corresponding tension and inner opposition. The opposites are necessarily of a characterological nature: the existence of a positive virtue implies victory over its opposite, the corresponding vice. Without its counterpart virtue would be pale, ineffective, and unreal. The extreme opposition of the shadow to consciousness is mitigated by complementary and compensatory processes in the unconscious. Their impact on consciousness finally produces the uniting symbols.
  [708] Confrontation with the shadow produces at first a dead balance, a standstill that hampers moral decisions and makes convictions ineffective or even impossible. Everything becomes doubtful, which is why the alchemists called this stage nigredo, tenebrositas, chaos, melancholia. It is right that the magnum opus should begin at this point, for it is indeed a well-nigh unanswerable question how one is to confront reality in this torn and divided state. Here I must remind the reader who is acquainted neither with alchemy nor with the psychology of the unconscious that nowadays one very seldom gets into such a situation. Nobody now has any sympathy with the perplexities of an investigator who busies himself with magical substances, and there are relatively few people who have experienced the effects of an analysis of the unconscious on themselves, and almost nobody hits on the idea of using the objective hints given by dreams as a theme for meditation. If the ancient art of meditation is practised at all today, it is practised only in religious or philosophical circles, where a theme is subjectively chosen by the meditant or prescribed by an instructor, as in the Ignatian Exercitia or in certain theosophical exercises that developed under Indian influence. These methods are of value only for increasing concentration and consolidating consciousness, but have no significance as regards effecting a synthesis of the personality. On the contrary, their purpose is to shield consciousness from the unconscious and to suppress it. They are therefore of therapeutic value only in cases where the conscious is liable to be overwhelmed by the unconscious and there is the danger of a psychotic interval.

6.08 - THE CONTENT AND MEANING OF THE FIRST TWO STAGES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  [744] The demand that arises under such conditions is for a new interpretation, in accord with the spirit of the age, of the archetypes that compensate the altered situation of consciousness. Christianity, for instance, was a new and more suitable formulation of the archetypal myth, which in its turn gave the rite its vitality. The archetype is a living idea that constantly produces new interpretations through which that idea unfolds. This was correctly recognized by Cardinal Newman in regard to Christianity.218 Christian doctrine is a new interpretation and development of its earlier stages, as we can see very clearly from the ancient tradition of the God-man. This tradition is continued in the unfolding of ecclesiastical dogma, and it is naturally not only the archetypes mentioned in the canonical writings of the New Testament that develop, but also their near relatives, of which we previously knew only the pagan forerunners. An example of this is the newest dogma concerning the Virgin; it refers unquestionably to the mother goddess who was constantly associated with the young dying son. She is not even purely pagan, since she was very distinctly prefigured in the Sophia of the Old Testament. For this reason the definition of the new dogma does not really go beyond the depositum fidei, for the mother goddess is naturally implied in the archetype of the divine son and accordingly underwent a consistent development in the course of the centuries.219 The depositum fidei corresponds in empirical reality to the treasure-house of the archetypes, the gazophylacium of the alchemists, and the collective unconscious of modern psychology.
  [745] The objection raised by theologians that the final state of the dogma in any such development would be necessarily more complete or perfect than in the apostolic era is untenable. Obviously the later interpretation and formulation of the archetype will be much more differentiated than in the beginning. A glance at the history of dogma is sufficient to confirm this. One has only to think of the Trinity, for which there is no direct evidence in the canonical writings. But it does not follow from this that the primitive Christians had a less complete knowledge of the fundamental truths. Such an assumption borders on pernicious intellectualism, for what counts in religious experience is not how explicitly an archetype can be formulated but how much I am gripped by it. The least important thing is what I think about it.220

6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  logical Types, definitions.
  303
  --
  They do not form four functions, different by definition, but
  they might well represent the a priori possibility for the forma-
  --
  animus and, 245, 286; definition,
  42; diagnosis not always easy, 44;

7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  thought and talk, do not require any definition of the words
  they use or even a large use to understand each other.

Aeneid, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  the lesson of freedom and definition is what is important here. That
  freedom also reached an area that Dante, the fastest of poets, never

Avatars of the Tortoise, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  manner that definitions are in vain, since one will have to define each of the
  words used and then define the definition (Hypotyposes, II, 207). One
  thousand six hundred years later, Byron, in the dedication to Don Juan, will

Blazing P2 - Map the Stages of Conventional Consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  postmodern world, we do not have a homogeneous definition of who we should be and how
  we should live. Were living in the midst of a rapidly expanding pluralism of tribes, which

Blazing P3 - Explore the Stages of Postconventional Consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  automatic. They realize, for instance, that concepts and their definitions are based on
  arbitrary conventions that make reality appear fixed and static in ways it never is.
  --
  moral reasoning, which requires an autonomous moral philosophy for its definition. In the
  case of morality, we claim that there is a single definable structure defining sixth or highest

BOOK II. - A review of the calamities suffered by the Romans before the time of Christ, showing that their gods had plunged them into corruption and vice, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  When this question has been handled to the satisfaction of the company, Scipio reverts to the original thread of discourse, and repeats with commendation his own brief definition of a republic, that it is the weal of the people. "The people" he defines as being not every assemblage or mob, but an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of law, and by a community of interests. Then he shows the use of definition in debate; and from these definitions of his own he gathers that a republic, or "weal of the people," then exists only when it is well and justly governed, whether by a monarch, or an aristocracy, or by the whole people. But when the monarch is unjust, or, as the Greeks say, a tyrant; or the aristocrats are unjust, and form a faction; or the people themselves are unjust, and become, as Scipio for want of a better name calls them, themselves the tyrant, then the republic is not only blemished (as had been proved the day[Pg 76] before), but by legitimate deduction from those definitions, it altogether ceases to be. For it could not be the people's weal when a tyrant factiously lorded it over the state; neither would the people be any longer a people if it were unjust, since it would no longer answer the definition of a people"an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of law, and by a community of interests."
  When, therefore, the Roman republic was such as Sallust described it, it was not "utterly wicked and profligate," as he says, but had altogether ceased to exist, if we are to admit the reasoning of that debate maintained on the subject of the republic by its best representatives. Tully himself, too, speaking not in the person of Scipio or any one else, but uttering his own sentiments, uses the following language in the beginning of the fifth book, after quoting a line from the poet Ennius, in which he said, "Rome's severe morality and her citizens are her safeguard." "This verse," says Cicero, "seems to me to have all the sententious truthfulness of an oracle. For neither would the citizens have availed without the morality of the community, nor would the morality of the commons without outstanding men have availed either to establish or so long to maintain in vigour so grand a republic with so wide and just an empire. Accordingly, before our day, the hereditary usages formed our foremost men, and they on their part retained the usages and institutions of their fathers. But our age, receiving the republic as a chef-d'uvre of another age which has already begun to grow old, has not merely neglected to restore the colours of the original, but has not even been at the pains to preserve so much as the general outline and most outstanding features. For what survives of that primitive morality which the poet called Rome's safeguard? It is so obsolete and forgotten, that, far from practising it, one does not even know it. And of the citizens what shall I say? Morality has perished through poverty of great men; a poverty for which we must not only assign a reason, but for the guilt of which we must answer as criminals charged with a capital crime. For it is through our vices, and not by any mishap, that we retain only the name of a republic, and have long since lost the reality."
  --
  This is the confession of Cicero, long indeed after the death of Africanus, whom he introduced as an interlocutor in his work De Republica, but still before the coming of Christ. Yet, if the disasters he bewails had been lamented after the Christian religion had been diffused, and had begun to prevail, is there a man of our adversaries who would not have thought that they were to be imputed to the Christians? Why, then, did their gods not take steps then to prevent the decay and extinction of that republic, over the loss of which Cicero, long before Christ had come in the flesh, sings so lugubrious a dirge? Its admirers have need to inquire whether, even in the days of primitive men and morals, true justice flourished in it; or was it not perhaps even then, to use the casual expression of Cicero, rather a coloured painting than the living reality? But, if God will, we shall consider this elsewhere. For I mean in its own place to show thataccording to the definitions in which Cicero himself, using Scipio as his mouthpiece, briefly propounded what a republic is, and what a people is, and according to many testimonies, both of his own lips and of those who took part in that same debateRome never was a republic, because true justice had never a place in it. But accepting the more feasible definitions of a republic, I grant there was a republic of a certain kind, and certainly much better administered by the more ancient Romans than by their modern representatives. But the fact is, true justice has no existence save in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ, if at least any choose to call this a republic; and indeed we cannot deny that it is the people's weal. But if perchance this name, which has become familiar in other connections, be considered alien to our common parlance, we may at all events say that in this city is true justice; the city of which Holy Scripture says, "Glorious things are said of thee, O city of God."
  22. That the Roman gods never took any steps to prevent the republic from being ruined by immorality.

BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  the evolution theory, namely, that no Darwinian is able to give even an approximate definition of the
  period at which, and the form in which, the first man appeared, is smoothed down to a trifling
  --
  We open Webster's Dictionary and read the definitions of the word "empirical": "Depending upon
  experience or observation alone, without due regard to modern science and theory." This applies to
  --
  the sense of Webster's second definition.
  [[Vol. 2, Page]] 671 HAECKEL CREATES SOULS.
  --
  dormant state -- as in stone. The definition which states that when this indestructible force is
  disconnected with one set of atoms (molecules ought to have been said) it becomes immediately

BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  This very same idea is clearly found at the bottom of the ablest definitions of the Kabala and its
  mysteries, e.g., by John A. Parker, as quoted in the same work: -"The key of the Kabala is thought to be the geometrical relation of the area of the circle
  --
  reverse, and maintain it solely out of their desire to veil their doctrine. By the way, the definition of
  Deity by the Circle is not Pascal's at all, as E. Levi thought. It was borrowed by the French
  --
  shelter and security, which is rather a prosaic definition. But such is the usual destiny of ideas and
  things in this world of spiritual decadence, if also of physical progress. PAN was at one time absolute
  --
  Spirit -- which Buddhi is, as the vehicle of Atma (Vide Ar. Theism, 17; and Liddell's definitions).
  * C. W. King's Gnostics, p. 38.
  --
  in the definition of the Gods. Those who are ignorant of the esoteric doctrine of the earliest Aryans,
  can never assimilate or understand correctly the metaphysical meaning contained in these BEINGS.

BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  answering, in the terminology of practical occultism, to scientific definitions of gases, which, to
  convey a clear idea to both Occultists and laymen, must be defined as Parahydrogenic,* Paraoxygenic,
  --
  same curve -- or that which we call the circle." No better definition could thus be given of the natural
  symbol and the evident nature of Deity, which having its circumference everywhere (the boundless)
  --
  motion, and a correlation of physical and chemical forces in general. And this scientific definition is
  philosophically supplemented by the theological one in Webster's Dictionary, which explains fire as
  --
  been asked what was the exact definition of Fohat and his powers and functions, as he seems to
  exercise those of a Personal God as understood in the popular religions. The answer has just been
  --
  when it is put into operation." (The definitions of Asclepios, p. 134, "Virgin of the World.")
  "Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. . . . There is nothing dead, in Nature.

BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  this is the vibratory envelope of all atoms. In my definition of atom I do not confine
  myself to the sixth sub-division where this luminiferous ether is developed in its crude
  --
  body which increases in weight with every chemical change.' Such definitions are doubly
  unsatisfactory: they are provisional, and may cease to-morrow to be applicable in any given case. They
  --
  universe, every monad reflecting every other, and compare this view and definition with certain
  Sanskrit stanzas (Slokas) translated by Sir William Jones, in which it is said that the creative source of
  --
  The definition of the extended substances had already become untenable: it was natural that a similar
  inquiry was made into the definition of mind, the thinking substance. . ."
  The divisions made by Leibnitz, however incomplete and faulty from the standpoint of Occultism,
  --
  immutable law, that no theological definition of a personal deity can give an idea of this impersonal,
  yet ever present and active Principle, is to speak in vain. Nor can it be called Providence. For
  --
  Zodiac, in the words addressed by the dying Jacob to his Sons, and in his definitions of the future of
  each Tribe. (Vide Genesis, ch. xlix.) Moreover, the respective banners of the same tribes are claimed

BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
  "temptation" is defined in its theological sense, and forthwith you find two definitions: (1) "Those
  afflictions and troubles whereby God tries his people;" (2) Those means and enticements which the
  --
  The best metaphysical definition of primeval theogony in the spirit of the Vedantins may be found in
  the "Notes on the Bhagavat-Gita," by Mr. T. Subba Row. (See "Theosophist" for February, 1887.)
  --
  Now the Kabala gives the definition thus: "There are three kinds of light, and that (fourth) which
  interpenetrates the others; (1) the clear and the penetrating, the objective light, (2) the reflected light,
  --
  Solomon Ben Gabirol in "the Kether Malchuth," we select a few definitions given in the prayers of
  Kippur. . . . "Thou art one, the beginning of all numbers, and the foundation of all edifices; Thou art
  --
  explanation and definitions to the "Lord God of Israel," under the same circumstances, or renounce
  our right of abusing the gods and creeds of other nations.

BOOK IV. - That empire was given to Rome not by the gods, but by the One True God, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  What shall we say, besides, of the idea that Felicity also is a goddess? She has received a temple; she has merited an altar; suitable rites of worship are paid to her. She alone, then, should be worshipped. For where she is present, what good thing can be absent? But what does a man wish, that he thinks Fortune also a goddess and worships her? Is felicity one thing, fortune another? Fortune, indeed, may be bad as well as good; but felicity, if it could be bad, would not be felicity. Certainly we ought to think all the gods of either sex (if they also have sex) are only good. This says Plato; this say other philosophers; this say all estimable rulers of the republic and the nations. How is it, then, that the goddess Fortune is sometimes good, sometimes bad? Is it perhaps the case that when she is bad she is not a goddess, but is suddenly changed into a malignant demon? How many Fortunes are there then? Just as many as there are men who are fortunate, that is, of good fortune. But since there must also be very many others who at the very same time are men of bad fortune, could she, being one and the same Fortune, be at the same time both bad and good the one to these, the other to those? She who is the goddess, is she always good? Then she herself is felicity. Why, then, are two names given her? Yet this is tolerable; for it is customary that one thing should be called by two names. But why different temples, different altars, different rituals? There is a reason, say they, because Felicity is she whom the good have by previous merit; but fortune, which is termed good without any trial of merit, befalls both good and bad men fortuitously, whence also she is named Fortune. How, therefore, is she good, who without any discernment comes both to the good and to the bad? Why is she worshipped,[Pg 156] who is thus blind, running at random on any one whatever, so that for the most part she passes by her worshippers, and cleaves to those who despise her? Or if her worshippers profit somewhat, so that they are seen by her and loved, then she follows merit, and does not come fortuitously. What, then, becomes of that definition of fortune? What becomes of the opinion that she has received her very name from fortuitous events? For it profits one nothing to worship her if she is truly fortune. But if she distinguishes her worshippers, so that she may benefit them, she is not fortune. Or does Jupiter send her too, whither he pleases? Then let him alone be worshipped; because Fortune is not able to resist him when he commands her, and sends her where he pleases. Or, at least, let the bad worship her, who do not choose to have merit by which the goddess Felicity might be invited.
  19. Concerning Fortuna Muliebris.[169]

BOOK IX. - Of those who allege a distinction among demons, some being good and others evil, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  The definition which Apuleius gives of demons, and in which he of course includes all demons, is that they are in nature animals, in soul subject to passion, in mind reasonable, in body aerial, in duration eternal. Now in these five qualities he has named absolutely nothing which is proper to good men and not also to bad. For when Apuleius had spoken of the celestials first, and had then extended his description so as to include an account of those who dwell far below on the earth, that, after describing the two extremes of rational being, he might proceed to speak of the intermediate demons, he says, "Men, therefore, who are endowed with the faculty of reason and speech, whose soul is immortal and their members mortal, who have weak and anxious spirits, dull and corruptible bodies, dissimilar characters, similar ignorance, who are obstinate in their audacity, and persistent in their hope, whose labour is vain, and whose fortune is ever on the wane, their race immortal, themselves perishing, each generation replenished with creatures whose life is swift and their wisdom slow, their death sudden and their life a wail,these are the men who dwell on the earth."[341] In recounting so many qualities which belong to the large proportion of men, did he forget that which is the property of the few when he speaks of their wisdom being slow? If this had been omitted, this his description of the human race, so carefully elaborated, would have been defective. And when he commended the excellence of the gods, he affirmed that they excelled in that very blessedness to which he thinks men must attain by wisdom. And therefore, if he had wished us to believe that some of the demons[Pg 363] are good, he should have inserted in his description something by which we might see that they have, in common with the gods, some share of blessedness, or, in common with men, some wisdom. But, as it is, he has mentioned no good quality by which the good may be distinguished from the bad. For although he refrained from giving a full account of their wickedness, through fear of offending, not themselves but their worshippers, for whom he was writing, yet he sufficiently indicated to discerning readers what opinion he had of them; for only in the one article of the eternity of their bodies does he assimilate them to the gods, all of whom, he asserts, are good and blessed, and absolutely free from what he himself calls the stormy passions of the demons; and as to the soul, he quite plainly affirms that they resemble men and not the gods, and that this resemblance lies not in the possession of wisdom, which even men can attain to, but in the perturbation of passions which sway the foolish and wicked, but is so ruled by the good and wise that they prefer not to admit rather than to conquer it. For if he had wished it to be understood that the demons resembled the gods in the eternity not of their bodies but of their souls, he would certainly have admitted men to share in this privilege, because, as a Platonist, he of course must hold that the human soul is eternal. Accordingly, when describing this race of living beings, he said that their souls were immortal, their members mortal. And, consequently, if men have not eternity in common with the gods because they have mortal bodies, demons have eternity in common with the gods because their bodies are immortal.
  9. Whether the intercession of the demons can secure for men the friendship of the celestial gods.
  --
  According to the Platonists, then, the gods, who occupy the highest place, enjoy eternal blessedness, or blessed eternity; men, who occupy the lowest, a mortal misery, or a miserable mortality; and the demons, who occupy the mean, a miserable eternity, or an eternal misery. As to those five things which Apuleius included in his definition of demons, he did not show, as he promised, that the demons are mediate. For three of them, that their nature is animal, their mind rational, their soul subject to passions, he said that they have in common with men; one thing, their eternity, in common with the gods; and one proper to themselves, their aerial body. How, then, are they intermediate, when they have three things in common with the lowest, and only one in common with the highest? Who does not see that the intermediate position is abandoned in proportion as they tend to, and are depressed towards, the lowest extreme? But perhaps we are to accept them as[Pg 368] intermediate because of their one property of an aerial body, as the two extremes have each their proper body, the gods an ethereal, men a terrestrial body, and because two of the qualities they possess in common with man they possess also in common with the gods, namely, their animal nature and rational mind. For Apuleius himself, in speaking of gods and men, said, "You have two animal natures." And Platonists are wont to ascribe a rational mind to the gods. Two qualities remain, their liability to passion, and their eternity,the first of which they have in common with men, the second with the gods; so that they are neither wafted to the highest nor depressed to the lowest extreme, but perfectly poised in their intermediate position. But then, this is the very circumstance which constitutes the eternal misery, or miserable eternity, of the demons. For he who says that their soul is subject to passions would also have said that they are miserable, had he not blushed for their worshippers. Moreover, as the world is governed, not by fortuitous haphazard, but, as the Platonists themselves avow, by the providence of the supreme God, the misery of the demons would not be eternal unless their wickedness were great.
  If, then, the blessed are rightly styled eudemons, the demons intermediate between gods and men are not eudemons. What, then, is the local position of those good demons, who, above men but beneath the gods, afford assistance to the former, minister to the latter? For if they are good and eternal, they are doubtless blessed. But eternal blessedness destroys their intermediate character, giving them a close resemblance to the gods, and widely separating them from men. And therefore the Platonists will in vain strive to show how the good demons, if they are both immortal and blessed, can justly be said to hold a middle place between the gods, who are immortal and blessed, and men, who are mortal and miserable. For if they have both immortality and blessedness in common with the gods, and neither of these in common with men, who are both miserable and mortal, are they not rather remote from men and united with the gods, than intermediate between them? They would be intermediate if they held one of their qualities in common with the one party, and the other with[Pg 369] the other, as man is a kind of mean between angels and beasts,the beast being an irrational and mortal animal, the angel a rational and immortal one, while man, inferior to the angel and superior to the beast, and having in common with the one mortality, and with the other reason, is a rational and mortal animal. So, when we seek for an intermediate between the blessed immortals and miserable mortals, we should find a being which is either mortal and blessed, or immortal and miserable.

Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  impossible. A vain or foolish fancy is the definition of Chimera that we now find in dictionaries.
  The Chinese Dragon

BOOK VIII. - Some account of the Socratic and Platonic philosophy, and a refutation of the doctrine of Apuleius that the demons should be worshipped as mediators between gods and men, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  Then, again, as far as regards the doctrine which treats of that which they call logic, that is, rational philosophy, far be it from us to compare them with those who attri buted to the bodily senses the faculty of discriminating truth, and thought that all we learn is to be measured by their untrustworthy and fallacious rules. Such were the Epicureans, and all of the same school. Such also were the Stoics, who ascribed to the bodily senses that expertness in disputation which they so ardently love, called by them dialectic, asserting that from the senses the mind conceives the notions () of those things which they explicate by definition. And hence is developed the whole plan and connection of their learning and teaching. I often wonder, with respect to this, how they can say that none are beautiful but the wise; for by what bodily sense have they perceived that beauty, by what eyes of the flesh have they seen wisdom's comeliness[Pg 317] of form? Those, however, whom we justly rank before all others, have distinguished those things which are conceived by the mind from those which are perceived by the senses, neither taking away from the senses anything to which they are competent, nor attri buting to them anything beyond their competency. And the light of our understandings, by which all things are learned by us, they have affirmed to be that selfsame God by whom all things were made.
  8. That the Platonists hold the first rank in moral philosophy also.
  --
  The same Apuleius, when speaking concerning the manners of demons, said that they are agitated with the same perturbations of mind as men; that they are provoked by injuries, propitiated by services and by gifts, rejoice in honours, are delighted with a variety of sacred rites, and are annoyed if any of them be neglected. Among other things, he also says that on them depend the divinations of augurs, soothsayers, and prophets, and the revelations of dreams; and that from them also are the miracles of the magicians. But, when giving a brief definition of them, he says, "Demons are of an animal nature, passive in soul, rational in mind, aerial in body, eternal in time." "Of which five things, the three first are common to them and us, the fourth peculiar to themselves, and the fifth common to them with the gods."[308] But I see that they have in common with the gods two of the first things, which they have in common with us. For he says that the gods also are animals; and when he is assigning to every order of beings its own element, he places us among the other[Pg 330] terrestrial animals which live and feel upon the earth. Wherefore, if the demons are animals as to genus, this is common to them, not only with men, but also with the gods and with beasts; if they are rational as to their mind, this is common to them with the gods and with men; if they are eternal in time, this is common to them with the gods only; if they are passive as to their soul, this is common to them with men only; if they are aerial in body, in this they are alone. Therefore it is no great thing for them to be of an animal nature, for so also are the beasts; in being rational as to mind, they are not above ourselves, for so are we also; and as to their being eternal as to time, what is the advantage of that if they are not blessed? for better is temporal happiness than eternal misery. Again, as to their being passive in soul, how are they in this respect above us, since we also are so, but would not have been so had we not been miserable? Also, as to their being aerial in body, how much value is to be set on that, since a soul of any kind whatsoever is to be set above every body? and therefore religious worship, which ought to be rendered from the soul, is by no means due to that thing which is inferior to the soul. Moreover, if he had, among those things which he says belong to demons, enumerated virtue, wisdom, happiness, and affirmed that they have those things in common with the gods, and, like them, eternally, he would assuredly have attri buted to them something greatly to be desired, and much to be prized. And even in that case it would not have been our duty to worship them like God on account of these things, but rather to worship Him from whom we know they had received them. But how much less are they really worthy of divine honour,those aerial animals who are only rational that they may be capable of misery, passive that they may be actually miserable, and eternal that it may be impossible for them to end their misery!
  17. Whether it is proper that men should worship those spirits from whose vices it is necessary that they be freed.

BOOK VII. - Of the select gods of the civil theology, and that eternal life is not obtained by worshipping them, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  Next, I ask what place they find any longer for this Jupiter among the gods, if Janus is the world; for Varro defined the true gods to be the soul of the world, and the parts of it. And therefore whatever falls not within this definition, is certainly not a true god, according to them. Will they then say that Jupiter is the soul of the world, and Janus the body that is, this visible world? If they say this, it will not be possible for them to affirm that Janus is a god. For even, according to them, the body of the world is not a god, but the soul of the world and its parts. Wherefore Varro, seeing this, says that he thinks God is the soul of the world, and that this world itself is God; but that as a wise man, though he consists of soul and body, is nevertheless called wise from the soul, so the world is called God from the soul, though it consists of soul and body. Therefore the body of the world alone is not God, but either the soul of it alone, or the soul and the body together, yet so as that it is God not by virtue of the body, but by virtue of the soul. If, therefore, Janus is the world, and Janus is a god, will they say, in order that Jupiter may be a god, that he is some part of Janus? For they are wont rather to attri bute universal existence to Jupiter; whence the saying, "All things are full of Jupiter."[265] Therefore they must think Jupiter also, in order that he may be a god, and especially king of the gods, to be the world, that he may rule over the other godsaccording to them, his parts. To this effect, also, the same Varro expounds certain verses of Valerius Soranus[266] in that book which he wrote apart from the others concerning the worship of the gods. These are the verses:
  "Almighty Jove, progenitor of kings, and things, and gods, And eke the mother of the gods, god one and all."

BOOK V. - Of fate, freewill, and God's prescience, and of the source of the virtues of the ancient Romans, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  9. Concerning the foreknowledge of God and the free will of man, in opposition to the definition of Cicero.
  The manner in which Cicero addresses himself to the task of refuting the Stoics, shows that he did not think he could effect anything against them in argument unless he had first demolished divination.[189] And this he attempts to accomplish by denying that there is any knowledge of future things, and maintains with all his might that there is no such knowledge either in God or man, and that there is no prediction of events. Thus he both denies the foreknowledge of God, and attempts by vain arguments, and by opposing to himself certain oracles very easy to be refuted, to overthrow all prophecy, even such as is clearer than the light (though even these oracles are not refuted by him).

BOOK XIII. - That death is penal, and had its origin in Adam's sin, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  [385] On the service rendered to the Church by this definition, see Waterland's Works, v. 124.
  [386] Literally, a sacred action.
  --
  [467] Vives remarks that the ancients defined blessedness as an absolutely perfect state in all good, peculiar to God. Perhaps Augustine had a reminiscence of the remarkable discussion in the Tusc. Disp. lib. v., and the definition "Neque ulla alia huic verbo, quum beatum dicimus, subjecta notio est, nisi, secretis malis omnibus, cumulata bonorum complexio."
  [468] With this chapter compare the books De Dono Persever. and De Correp. et Gratia.

BOOK XIX. - A review of the philosophical opinions regarding the Supreme Good, and a comparison of these opinions with the Christian belief regarding happiness, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
    2. How Varro, by removing all the differences which do not form sects, but are merely secondary questions, reaches three definitions of the chief good, of which we must choose one.
  The same may be said of those three kinds of life, the life of studious leisure and search after truth, the life of easy engagement in affairs, and the life in which both these are mingled. When it is asked, which of these should be adopted, this involves no controversy about the end of good, but inquires which of these three puts a man in the best position for finding and retaining the supreme good. For this good, as soon as a man finds it, makes him happy; but lettered leisure, or public business, or the alternation of these, do not necessarily constitute happiness. Many, in fact, find it possible to adopt one or other of these modes of life, and yet to miss what makes a man happy. The question, therefore, regarding the supreme[Pg 298] good and the supreme evil, and which distinguishes sects of philosophy, is one; and these questions concerning the social life, the doubt of the Academy, the dress and food of the Cynics, the three modes of life the active, the contemplative, and the mixedthese are different questions, into none of which the question of the chief good enters. And therefore, as Marcus Varro multiplied the sects to the number of 288 (or whatever larger number he chose) by introducing these four differences derived from the social life, the New Academy, the Cynics, and the threefold form of life, so, by removing these differences as having no bearing on the supreme good, and as therefore not constituting what can properly be called sects, he returns to those twelve schools which concern themselves with inquiring what that good is which makes man happy, and he shows that one of these is true, the rest false. In other words, he dismisses the distinction founded on the threefold mode of life, and so decreases the whole number by two-thirds, reducing the sects to ninety-six. Then, putting aside the Cynic peculiarities, the number decreases by a half, to forty-eight. Taking away next the distinction occasioned by the hesitancy of the New Academy, the number is again halved, and reduced to twenty-four. Treating in a similar way the diversity introduced by the consideration of the social life, there are left but twelve, which this difference had doubled to twenty-four. Regarding these twelve, no reason can be assigned why they should not be called sects. For in them the sole inquiry is regarding the supreme good and the ultimate evil,that is to say, regarding the supreme good, for this being found, the opposite evil is thereby found. Now, to make these twelve sects, he multiplies by three these four thingspleasure, repose, pleasure and repose combined, and the primary objects of nature which Varro calls primigenia. For as these four things are sometimes subordinated to virtue, so that they seem to be desired not for their own sake, but for virtue's sake; sometimes preferred to it, so that virtue seems to be necessary not on its own account, but in order to attain these things; sometimes joined with it, so that both they and virtue are desired for their own sakes,we must multiply the four by three, and thus we get twelve sects. But from those[Pg 299] four things Varro eliminates threepleasure, repose, pleasure and repose combinednot because he thinks these are not worthy of the place assigned them, but because they are included in the primary objects of nature. And what need is there, at any rate, to make a threefold division out of these two ends, pleasure and repose, taking them first severally and then conjunctly, since both they, and many other things besides, are comprehended in the primary objects of nature? Which of the three remaining sects must be chosen? This is the question that Varro dwells upon. For whether one of these three or some other be chosen, reason forbids that more than one be true. This we shall afterwards see; but meanwhile let us explain as briefly and distinctly as we can how Varro makes his selection from these three, that is, from the sects which severally hold that the primary objects of nature are to be desired for virtue's sake, that virtue is to be desired for their sake, and that virtue and these objects are to be desired each for their own sake.
  --
  21. Whether there ever was a Roman republic answering to the definitions of Scipio in Cicero's dialogue.
  This, then, is the place where I should fulfil the promise I[Pg 331] gave in the second book of this work,[656] and explain, as briefly and clearly as possible, that if we are to accept the definitions laid down by Scipio in Cicero's De Republica, there never was a Roman republic; for he briefly defines a republic as the weal of the people. And if this definition be true, there never was a Roman republic, for the people's weal was never attained among the Romans. For the people, according to his definition, is an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of right and by a community of interests. And what he means by a common acknowledgment of right he explains at large, showing that a republic cannot be administered without justice. Where, therefore, there is no true justice there can be no right. For that which is done by right is justly done, and what is unjustly done cannot be done by right. For the unjust inventions of men are neither to be considered nor spoken of as rights; for even they themselves say that right is that which flows from the fountain of justice, and deny the definition which is commonly given by those who misconceive the matter, that right is that which is useful to the stronger party. Thus, where there is not true justice there can be no assemblage of men associated by a common acknowledgment of right, and therefore there can be no people, as defined by Scipio or Cicero; and if no people, then no weal of the people, but only of some promiscuous multitude unworthy of the name of people. Consequently, if the republic is the weal of the people, and there is no people if it be not associated by a common acknowledgment of right, and if there is no right where there is no justice, then most certainly it follows that there is no republic where there is no justice. Further, justice is that virtue which gives every one his due. Where, then, is the justice of man, when he deserts the true God and yields himself to impure demons? Is this to give every one his due? Or is he who keeps back a piece of ground from the purchaser, and gives it to a man who has no right to it, unjust, while he who keeps back himself from the God who made him, and serves wicked spirits, is just?
  This same book, De Republica, advocates the cause of justice[Pg 332] against injustice with great force and keenness. The pleading for injustice against justice was first heard, and it was asserted that without injustice a republic could neither increase nor even subsist, for it was laid down as an absolutely unassailable position that it is unjust for some men to rule and some to serve; and yet the imperial city to which the republic belongs cannot rule her provinces without having recourse to this injustice. It was replied in behalf of justice, that this ruling of the provinces is just, because servitude may be advantageous to the provincials, and is so when rightly administered,that is to say, when lawless men are prevented from doing harm. And further, as they became worse and worse so long as they were free, they will improve by subjection. To confirm this reasoning, there is added an eminent example drawn from nature: for "why," it is asked, "does God rule man, the soul the body, the reason the passions and other vicious parts of the soul?" This example leaves no doubt that, to some, servitude is useful; and, indeed, to serve God is useful to all. And it is when the soul serves God that it exercises a right control over the body; and in the soul itself the reason must be subject to God if it is to govern as it ought the passions and other vices. Hence, when a man does not serve God, what justice can we ascribe to him, since in this case his soul cannot exercise a just control over the body, nor his reason over his vices? And if there is no justice in such an individual, certainly there can be none in a community composed of such persons. Here, therefore, there is not that common acknowledgment of right which makes an assemblage of men a people whose affairs we call a republic. And why need I speak of the advantageousness, the common participation in which, according to the definition, makes a people? For although, if you choose to regard the matter attentively, you will see that there is nothing advantageous to those who live godlessly, as every one lives who does not serve God but demons, whose wickedness you may measure by their desire to receive the worship of men though they are most impure spirits, yet what I have said of the common acknowledgment of right is enough to demonstrate that, according to the above definition, there can be no people,[Pg 333] and therefore no republic, where there is no justice. For if they assert that in their republic the Romans did not serve unclean spirits, but good and holy gods, must we therefore again reply to this evasion, though already we have said enough, and more than enough, to expose it? He must be an uncommonly stupid, or a shamelessly contentious person, who has read through the foregoing books to this point, and can yet question whether the Romans served wicked and impure demons. But, not to speak of their character, it is written in the law of the true God, "He that sacrificeth unto any god save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed."[657] He, therefore, who uttered so menacing a commandment decreed that no worship should be given either to good or bad gods.
  22. Whether the God whom the Christians serve is the true God to whom alone sacrifice ought to be paid.
  --
  When Porphyry or Hecate praises Christ, and adds that He gave Himself to the Christians as a fatal gift, that they might be involved in error, he exposes, as he thinks, the causes of this error. But before I cite his words to that purpose, I would ask, If Christ did thus give Himself to the Christians to involve them in error, did He do so willingly, or against His will? If willingly, how is He righteous? If against His will, how is He blessed? However, let us hear the causes of this error. "There are," he says, "in a certain place very small earthly spirits, subject to the power of evil demons. The wise men of the Hebrews, among whom was this Jesus, as you have heard from the oracles of Apollo cited above, turned religious persons from these very wicked demons and minor spirits, and taught them rather to worship the celestial gods, and especially to adore God the Father. This," he said, "the gods enjoin; and we have already shown how they admonish the soul to turn to God, and comm and it to worship Him. But the ignorant and the ungodly, who are not destined to receive favours from the gods, nor to know the immortal Jupiter, not listening to the gods and their messages, have turned away from all gods, and have not only refused to hate, but have venerated the prohibited demons. Professing to worship God, they refuse to do those things by which alone God is worshipped. For God, indeed, being the Father of all, is in need of nothing; but for us it is good to adore Him by means of justice, chastity, and other virtues, and thus to make life itself a prayer to Him, by inquiring into and imitating His nature. For inquiry," says he, "purifies and imitation deifies us, by moving us nearer to Him." He is right in so far as he proclaims God the Father, and the conduct by which we should worship Him. Of such precepts the prophetic books of the Hebrews are full, when they praise or blame the life of the saints. But in speaking of the Christians he is in error,[Pg 338] and calumniates them as much as is desired by the demons whom he takes for gods, as if it were difficult for any man to recollect the disgraceful and shameful actions which used to be done in the theatres and temples to please the gods, and to compare with these things what is heard in our churches, and what is offered to the true God, and from this comparison to conclude where character is edified, and where it is ruined. But who but a diabolical spirit has told or suggested to this man so manifest and vain a lie, as that the Christians reverenced rather than hated the demons, whose worship the Hebrews prohibited? But that God, whom the Hebrew sages worshipped, forbids sacrifice to be offered even to the holy angels of heaven and divine powers, whom we, in this our pilgrimage, venerate and love as our most blessed fellow-citizens. For in the law which God gave to His Hebrew people He utters this menace, as in a voice of thunder: "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed."[659] And that no one might suppose that this prohibition extends only to the very wicked demons and earthly spirits, whom this philosopher calls very small and inferior,for even these are in the Scripture called gods, not of the Hebrews, but of the nations, as the Septuagint translators have shown in the psalm where it is said, "For all the gods of the nations are demons,"[660]that no one might suppose, I say, that sacrifice to these demons was prohibited, but that sacrifice might be offered to all or some of the celestials, it was immediately added, "save unto the Lord alone."[661] The God of the Hebrews, then, to whom this renowned philosopher bears this signal testimony, gave to His Hebrew people a law, composed in the Hebrew language, and not obscure and unknown, but published now in every nation, and in this law it is written, "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord alone, he shall be utterly destroyed." What need is there to seek further proofs in the law or the prophets of this same thing? Seek, we need not say, for the passages are neither few nor difficult to find; but what need to collect[Pg 339] and apply to my argument the proofs which are thickly sown and obvious, and by which it appears clear as day that sacrifice may be paid to none but the supreme and true God? Here is one brief but decided, even menacing, and certainly true utterance of that God whom the wisest of our adversaries so highly extol. Let this be listened to, feared, fulfilled, that there may be no disobedient soul cut off. "He that sacrifices," He says, not because He needs anything, but because it behoves us to be His possession. Hence the Psalmist in the Hebrew Scriptures sings, "I have said to the Lord, Thou art my God, for Thou needest not my good."[662] For we ourselves, who are His own city, are His most noble and worthy sacrifice, and it is this mystery we celebrate in our sacrifices, which are well known to the faithful, as we have explained in the preceding books. For through the prophets the oracles of God declared that the sacrifices which the Jews offered as a shadow of that which was to be would cease, and that the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun, would offer one sacrifice. From these oracles, which we now see accomplished, we have made such selections as seemed suitable to our purpose in this work. And therefore, where there is not this righteousness whereby the one supreme God rules the obedient city according to His grace, so that it sacrifices to none but Him, and whereby, in all the citizens of this obedient city, the soul consequently rules the body and reason the vices in the rightful order, so that, as the individual just man, so also the community and people of the just, live by faith, which works by love, that love whereby man loves God as He ought to be loved, and his neighbour as himself,there, I say, there is not an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of right, and by a community of interests. But if there is not this, there is not a people, if our definition be true, and therefore there is no republic; for where there is no people there can be no republic.
    24. The definition which must be given of a people and a republic, in order to vindicate the assumption of these titles by the Romans and by other kingdoms.
  But if we discard this definition of a people, and, assuming another, say that a people is an assemblage of reasonable[Pg 340] beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love, then, in order to discover the character of any people, we have only to observe what they love. Yet whatever it loves, if only it is an assemblage of reasonable beings and not of beasts, and is bound together by an agreement as to the objects of love, it is reasonably called a people; and it will be a superior people in proportion as it is bound together by higher interests, inferior in proportion as it is bound together by lower. According to this definition of ours, the Roman people is a people, and its weal is without doubt a commonwealth or republic. But what its tastes were in its early and subsequent days, and how it declined into sanguinary seditions and then to social and civil wars, and so burst asunder or rotted off the bond of concord in which the health of a people consists, history shows, and in the preceding books I have related at large. And yet I would not on this account say either that it was not a people, or that its administration was not a republic, so long as there remains an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of love. But what I say of this people and of this republic I must be understood to think and say of the Athenians or any Greek state, of the Egyptians, of the early Assyrian Babylon, and of every other nation, great or small, which had a public government. For, in general, the city of the ungodly, which did not obey the comm and of God that it should offer no sacrifice save to Him alone, and which, therefore, could not give to the soul its proper comm and over the body, nor to the reason its just authority over the vices, is void of true justice.
  25. That where there is no true religion there are no true virtues.

BOOK XVI. - The history of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
  The same account which is given of monstrous births in individual cases can be given of monstrous races. For God, the Creator of all, knows where and when each thing ought to be, or to have been created, because He sees the similarities and diversities which can contri bute to the beauty of the whole. But he who cannot see the whole is offended by the deformity of the part, because he is blind to that which balances it, and to which it belongs. We know that men are born with more than four fingers on their hands or toes on their feet: this is a smaller matter; but far from us be the folly of supposing that the Creator mistook the number of a man's fingers, though we cannot account for the difference. And so in cases where the divergence from the rule is greater. He whose works no man justly finds fault with, knows what He has done. At Hippo-Diarrhytus there is a man whose hands are crescent-shaped, and have only two fingers each, and his feet similarly formed. If there were a race like him, it would be added to the history of the curious and wonderful. Shall we therefore deny that this man is descended from that one man who was first created? As for the Androgyni, or Hermaphrodites, as they are called, though they are rare, yet from time to time there appear persons of sex so doubtful, that it remains uncertain from which sex they take their name; though it is customary to give them a masculine name, as the more worthy. For no one ever called them Hermaphroditesses. Some years ago, quite within my own memory, a man was born in the East, double in his upper, but single in his lower halfhaving two heads, two chests, four hands, but one body and two feet like an ordinary man; and he lived so long that many had an opportunity of seeing[Pg 118] him. But who could enumerate all the human births that have differed widely from their ascertained parents? As, therefore, no one will deny that these are all descended from that one man, so all the races which are reported to have diverged in bodily appearance from the usual course which nature generally or almost universally preserves, if they are embraced in that definition of man as rational and mortal animals, unquestionably trace their pedigree to that one first father of all. We are supposing these stories about various races who differ from one another and from us to be true; but possibly they are not: for if we were not aware that apes, and monkeys, and sphinxes are not men, but beasts, those historians would possibly describe them as races of men, and flaunt with impunity their false and vainglorious discoveries. But supposing they are men of whom these marvels are recorded, what if God has seen fit to create some races in this way, that we might not suppose that the monstrous births which appear among ourselves are the failures of that wisdom whereby He fashions the human nature, as we speak of the failure of a less perfect workman? Accordingly, it ought not to seem absurd to us, that as in individual races there are monstrous births, so in the whole race there are monstrous races. Wherefore, to conclude this question cautiously and guardedly, either these things which have been told of some races have no existence at all; or if they do exist, they are not human races; or if they are human, they are descended from Adam.
  9. Whether we are to believe in the Antipodes.

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun definition

The noun definition has 2 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (11) definition ::: (a concise explanation of the meaning of a word or phrase or symbol)
2. (10) definition ::: (clarity of outline; "exercise had given his muscles superior definition")


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun definition

2 senses of definition                        

Sense 1
definition
   => explanation, account
     => statement
       => message, content, subject matter, substance
         => communication
           => abstraction, abstract entity
             => entity

Sense 2
definition
   => distinctness, sharpness
     => clearness, clarity, uncloudedness
       => quality
         => attribute
           => abstraction, abstract entity
             => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun definition

1 of 2 senses of definition                      

Sense 1
definition
   => contextual definition
   => dictionary definition
   => explicit definition
   => ostensive definition
   => recursive definition
   => redefinition
   => stipulative definition


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun definition

2 senses of definition                        

Sense 1
definition
   => explanation, account

Sense 2
definition
   => distinctness, sharpness




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun definition

2 senses of definition                        

Sense 1
definition
  -> explanation, account
   => simplification
   => accounting
   => reason
   => justification
   => exposition
   => explication
   => gloss, rubric
   => deriving, derivation, etymologizing
   => definition
   => interpretation
   => walk-through

Sense 2
definition
  -> distinctness, sharpness
   => definition
   => discernability, legibility
   => focus




--- Grep of noun definition
contextual definition
definition
dictionary definition
explicit definition
high-definition television
ostensive definition
recursive definition
redefinition
stipulative definition



IN WEBGEN [10000/449]

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Kheper - definitions -- 32
Kheper - definitions -- 50
Kheper - definitions -- 60
Kheper - tikkun-definition -- 18
Kheper - My_definition_Gnosis -- 59
Kheper - definition -- 23
Integral World - Towards a Larger Definition of the Integral, Part One, Alan Kazlev
Integral World - Towards a Larger Definition of the Integral, Part Two, Alan Kazlev
Integral World - Towards a Larger Definition of the Integral, Part Three, Alan Kazlev
Integral World - Towards a Larger Definition of the Integral, Part Four, Alan Kazlev
Integral World - The Integral/Holistic Paradigm - a larger definition (Integral Esotericisn - Part Three), Alan Kazlev
Integral World - Questioning Kazlev's Redefinitions, Joe Perez
http://integraltransformation.blogspot.com/2006/08/suggested-definition-for-complete.html
selforum - definition of personality
selforum - sri aurobindo gave profound definition
dedroidify.blogspot - sony-says-high-definition-is-in-your
dedroidify.blogspot - the-definition-of-hell
Dharmapedia - Historical_definitions_of_races_in_India
Psychology Wiki - Enlightenment_(concept)#Adorno.27s_and_Horkheimer.27s_definition_of_enlightenment
Psychology Wiki - Enlightenment_(concept)#Definition
Psychology Wiki - Enlightenment_(concept)#Kant.27s_definition_of_enlightenment
Psychology Wiki - Fallacies_of_definition
Psychology Wiki - Hinduism#Definitions
Psychology Wiki - Integral_psychotherapy#Aurobindonian_and_Wilberian_definitions
Psychology Wiki - Integral_thought#Problem_of_definition
Psychology Wiki - Migratory_behavior_(animal)#Definition
Psychology Wiki - Operational_definition
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - art-definition
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - death-definition
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - definitions
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - lying-definition
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - morality-definition
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/DefinitionOnlyPages
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DarthWiki/CrappyTropeDefinitions
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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CircularDefinition
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https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/HighDefinition
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Definition
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ECW on TNN (1999 - 2000) - ECW is the definition of HARDCORE. ECW on TNN has no rules in their wrestling matches! Announced by Joey Styles & Joel Gertner, and bossed by Cyrus The Virus.
Kirarin Revolution (2006 - 2009) - Kirarin Reboryshon, lit. "Sparkling Revolution")The anime adaptation is a Japan and South Korea coproduction, and it premiered on 7 April 2006 in Japan on TV Tokyo and ran for 153 episodes until March 27, 2009.[4] Starting from episode 103, this show aired in High-Definition 16:9 with 3D animation....
Soundstage (1974 - Current) - Soundstage is an American live concert television series produced by WTTW Chicago and HD Ready. The original series aired for 13 seasons between 1974 and 1985. A new series of seasons began in 2003, with the latest (Season 11) starting in April 2018, each presented in high definition with surround s...
WTTG-TV Newscasts (1950 - Current) - WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C. presently broadcasts 72 hours of locally produced newscasts each week. On January 30, 2009, WTTG became the third station in the Washington, D.C. market to broadcast local news in high definition.
Tennis on USA (1984 - 2008) - Tennis on USA is a television program produced by the USA Network that broadcasts the main professional tennis tournaments in the United States. The network was the longtime cable home of the US Open, which moved to ESPN2 and the Tennis Channel as of 2009. Universal HD provided the high definition s...
Lost Highway(1997) - Director David Lynch gives us a psycho thriller beyond definition that has audiences tangled in the provocations of nightmares, violence, sex sequences, reality, the subconscious, and madness as they must create their own interpretations of the film.
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues(1993) - Sissy Hankshaw is born with thumbs that are larger than those of the average person. Missy sees her thumbs, as it says under the definition of thumbs, as greater freedom of movement. She uses them to hitchhike all over the country because she believes that is what she was born to do. A gay man named...
Idiocracy (2006) ::: 6.6/10 -- R | 1h 24min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi | 25 January 2007 (Germany) -- Private Joe Bauers, the definition of "average American", is selected by the Pentagon to be the guinea pig for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, he awakes five centuries in the future. He discovers a society so incredibly dumbed down that he's easily the most intelligent person alive. Director: Mike Judge
Planet Earth ::: TV-PG | 8h 58min | Documentary | TV Mini-Series (2006) Episode Guide 11 episodes Planet Earth Poster -- Emmy Award-winning, 11 episodes, five years in the making, the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC, and the first to be filmed in high definition. Stars:
Sanctuary ::: TV-14 | 44min | Action, Drama, Fantasy | TV Series (2008-2011) Episode Guide 59 episodes Sanctuary Poster -- Stem cells, gene therapy, transplants, and cloning have changed the definition of "humanity" in the modern world, but the darker side contains monsters that only few are brave enough to face, because the future lies in their hands. Creator:
Sanctuary ::: TV-14 | 44min | Action, Drama, Fantasy | TV Series (20082011) -- Stem cells, gene therapy, transplants, and cloning have changed the definition of "humanity" in the modern world, but the darker side contains monsters that only few are brave enough to face, because the future lies in their hands. Creator:
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Cyberpunk: Edgerunners -- -- Trigger -- 10 eps -- Game -- Sci-Fi -- Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Cyberpunk: Edgerunners -- Cyberpunk: Edgerunners tells a standalone story about a street kid trying to survive in a technology and body modification-obsessed city of the future. Having everything to lose, he chooses to stay alive by becoming an edgerunner—a mercenary outlaw also known as a cyberpunk. -- -- (Source: Official Site) -- ONA - ??? ??, 2022 -- 14,850 N/A -- -- Dr. Slump -- -- Toei Animation -- 74 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Comedy Sci-Fi Shounen -- Dr. Slump Dr. Slump -- In Penguin Village, humans live alongside talking animals and objects. Senbei Norimaki is one of these humans, and he's an inventor with the lofty dream of creating the world's best robot girl. -- -- The product of his efforts is Arale, but depending on your definition of perfect, she's anything but! Not only is Arale severely nearsighted, but she also has no common sense! At least she has super-strength, though that often proves to be a setback as well. -- -- Although she means well, Arale only causes trouble for her neighbors in the whimsical Penguin Village! -- 14,849 7.00
Dr. Slump -- -- Toei Animation -- 74 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Comedy Sci-Fi Shounen -- Dr. Slump Dr. Slump -- In Penguin Village, humans live alongside talking animals and objects. Senbei Norimaki is one of these humans, and he's an inventor with the lofty dream of creating the world's best robot girl. -- -- The product of his efforts is Arale, but depending on your definition of perfect, she's anything but! Not only is Arale severely nearsighted, but she also has no common sense! At least she has super-strength, though that often proves to be a setback as well. -- -- Although she means well, Arale only causes trouble for her neighbors in the whimsical Penguin Village! -- 14,849 7.00
Mushishi -- -- Artland -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Slice of Life Mystery Historical Supernatural Fantasy Seinen -- Mushishi Mushishi -- "Mushi": the most basic forms of life in the world. They exist without any goals or purposes aside from simply "being." They are beyond the shackles of the words "good" and "evil." Mushi can exist in countless forms and are capable of mimicking things from the natural world such as plants, diseases, and even phenomena like rainbows. -- -- This is, however, just a vague definition of these entities that inhabit the vibrant world of Mushishi, as to even call them a form of life would be an oversimplification. Detailed information on Mushi is scarce because the majority of humans are unaware of their existence. -- -- So what are Mushi and why do they exist? This is the question that a "Mushishi," Ginko, ponders constantly. Mushishi are those who research Mushi in hopes of understanding their place in the world's hierarchy of life. -- -- Ginko chases rumors of occurrences that could be tied to Mushi, all for the sake of finding an answer. -- -- It could, after all, lead to the meaning of life itself. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 641,581 8.69
One Piece -- -- Toei Animation -- ? eps -- Manga -- Action Adventure Comedy Super Power Drama Fantasy Shounen -- One Piece One Piece -- Gol D. Roger was known as the "Pirate King," the strongest and most infamous being to have sailed the Grand Line. The capture and execution of Roger by the World Government brought a change throughout the world. His last words before his death revealed the existence of the greatest treasure in the world, One Piece. It was this revelation that brought about the Grand Age of Pirates, men who dreamed of finding One Piece—which promises an unlimited amount of riches and fame—and quite possibly the pinnacle of glory and the title of the Pirate King. -- -- Enter Monkey D. Luffy, a 17-year-old boy who defies your standard definition of a pirate. Rather than the popular persona of a wicked, hardened, toothless pirate ransacking villages for fun, Luffy's reason for being a pirate is one of pure wonder: the thought of an exciting adventure that leads him to intriguing people and ultimately, the promised treasure. Following in the footsteps of his childhood hero, Luffy and his crew travel across the Grand Line, experiencing crazy adventures, unveiling dark mysteries and battling strong enemies, all in order to reach the most coveted of all fortunes—One Piece. -- -- -- Licensor: -- 4Kids Entertainment, Funimation -- 1,439,903 8.53
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1985 World Health Organization AIDS surveillance case definition
20052019 definitions of the SI base units
2019 redefinition of the SI base units
Abstract-Type and Scheme-Definition Language
Agent Open Service Interface Definition
Algebraic definition
Analog high-definition television system
Assessment Open Service Interface Definition
Asynchronous module definition
Authentication Open Service Interface Definition
Authorization Open Service Interface Definition
Business Process Definition Metamodel
Chalcedonian Definition
Channel Definition Format
China Blue High-definition Disc
Circular definition
Classical definition of probability
Clinical case definition
Comparison of high-definition optical disc formats
Comparison of high-definition smartphone displays
Concept image and concept definition
CourseManagement Open Service Interface Definition
Data definition language
Definition
Definition 6
Definition (disambiguation)
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Dictionary Open Service Interface Definition
Digital eXtreme Definition
Document Definition Markup Language
Document Schema Definition Languages
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Dynamical system (definition)
Elementary definition
Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum
Enhanced-definition television
Extensional and intensional definitions
Extension by definitions
Fallacies of definition
Filing Open Service Interface Definition
Further Definitions
Genocide definitions
Genusdifferentia definition
Geophysical definition of 'planet'
Grading Open Service Interface Definition
Guidelines for the Definition of Managed Objects
Hierarchy Open Service Interface Definition
High definition
High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance
High-Definition Coding
High Definition Compatible Digital
High Definition Earth Viewing cameras
High-definition fiber tracking
High-definition optical disc format war
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High-definition television in Australia
High-Definition Versatile Disc
High-definition video
High-resolution high-definition
Historical definitions of races in India
IAU definition of planet
IEA-EBC Annex 66: Definition and Simulation of Occupant Behavior in Buildings
Intel High Definition Audio
Java Interface Definition Language
Job Definition Format
Lexical definition
Logging Open Service Interface Definition
Low-definition television
Lower Definition
Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Act 2017
Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Act 2013
MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition
Messaging Open Service Interface Definition
Microsoft Interface Definition Language
Military Scenario Definition Language
Mobile High-Definition Link
Model-based definition
One Definition Rule
Open service interface definitions
Operational definition
Ostensive definition
Persuasive definition
Planning Domain Definition Language
Poi definitions
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Redefinition (song)
Repository Open Service Interface Definition
Scheduling Open Service Interface Definition
Security Descriptor Definition Language
Set-theoretic definition of natural numbers
Standard-definition television
Stipulative definition
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System V Interface Definition
Talk:High Definition Compatible Digital
Technical definition
Tensor (intrinsic definition)
Terrestrial high-definition television
The DEFinition
The Definition
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The Definition Of...
The Definition of X: The Pick of the Litter
The Free Software Definition
The Open Definition
The Open Source Definition
Theoretical definition
Ultra-high-definition television
User talk:WHEELER/Principles of Definition
Welfare definition of economics
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Archive definition dispute
Workflow Open Service Interface Definition
Working Definition of Antisemitism
(, )-definition of limit



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