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complexity

(Encyclopedia)complexity, in science, field of study devoted to the process of self-organization. The basic concept of complexity is that all things tend to organize themselves into patterns, e.g., ant colonies, im...

Huron, indigenous people of North America

(Encyclopedia)Huron hyo͝orˈänˌ [key], confederation of four Native North American groups who spoke the Wyandot language, which belongs to the Iroquoian branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see Native Am...

folktale

(Encyclopedia)folktale, general term for any of numerous varieties of traditional narrative. The telling of stories appears to be a cultural universal, common to pre-industrial, ancient, and more modern and develop...

Balfour, Francis Maitland

(Encyclopedia)Balfour, Francis Maitland, 1851–82, Scottish embryologist; brother of A. J. Balfour. He was an early exponent of recapitulation. His Treatise on Comparative Embryology (2 vol., 1880–81) is a class...

Whitman, Charles Otis

(Encyclopedia)Whitman, Charles Otis, 1842–1910, American zoologist, b. Woodstock, Maine, grad. Bowdoin, 1868, Ph.D. Univ. of Leipzig, 1878. From 1892 he was professor of zoology at the Univ. of Chicago. He founde...

sex

(Encyclopedia)sex, term used to refer both to the two groups distinguished as males and females, and to the anatomical and physiological characteristics associated with maleness and femaleness. Sex relates to the t...

nuclear strategy

(Encyclopedia)nuclear strategy, a policy for the use of nuclear weapons. The first atomic bombs were used in the context of the Allies' World War II policy of strategic bombing. Early in the cold war, U.S. policy w...

Wright, Sewall

(Encyclopedia)Wright, Sewall, 1889–1988, American geneticist, b. Melrose, Mass., B.S. Lombard College, 1911, M.S. Univ. of Illinois, 1912, D.Sc. Harvard, 1915. From 1915 to 1925 he worked in the Bureau of Animal ...

Australopithecus

(Encyclopedia)Australopithecus ôstrāˌlōpĭthˈəkəs, –pəthēˈkəs [key], an extinct hominin genus found in Africa between about 4 and 1 million years ago. At least seven species of australopithecines are n...

Dawkins, Richard

(Encyclopedia)Dawkins, Richard (Clinton Richard Dawkins), 1941– British evolutionary biologist and ethologist, b. Kenya, Ph.D. Oxford, 1966. He was a research assistant under Nikolaas Tinbergen at Oxford until 19...