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Definition: Evolution from Black's Medical Dictionary, 43rd Edition

An uninterrupted process of change from one condition, form or state to another.


evolution

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
concept that embodies the belief that existing animals and plants developed by a process of gradual, continuous change from previously existing forms. This theory, also known as descent with modification, constitutes organic evolution. Inorganic evolution, on the other hand, is concerned with the development of the physical universe from unorganized matter. Organic evolution, as opposed to belief in the special creation of each individual species as an immutable form, conceives of life as having had its beginnings in a simple primordial protoplasmic mass (probably originating in the sea) from which, through the long eras of time, arose all subsequent living forms. Early Theories Evolutionary concepts appeared in some early Greek writings, e.g., in the works of Thales, Empedocles, Anaximander, and Aristotle. Under the restraining influence of the Church, no evolutionary theories developed during some 15 centuries of the Christian era to challenge the belief in special creation and the…
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Full text Article evolution

From Philip's Encyclopedia
In biology, theory that a species undergoes gradual changes to survive and reproduce in a competitive, and often changing, environment, and that a new species is the result of change from the ancestral forms. In the early 1800s French biologist Jean Lamarck began to develop evolutionary theory. In…
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Evolution originally meant simply ‘unfolding’, or metaphorically ‘development’; it was not used in its main current sense, ‘gradual change in form of a species over the centuries’, until the early 19th century. The Scottish geologist Charles Lyell appears to have been the first to do so, in his…
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Full text Article EVOLUTION

From The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis
According to Bion, when an analyst suspends memory and desire in the session, s/he is in a position to be at-one with O (becoming O). O can never be known but being in the process of ‘becoming O’ allows the analyst to know events that are evolutions (the development) of O. Psychoanalysis takes place…
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Full text Article evolution

From Encyclopedia of Evolution
Evolution is a term that has been used, in the broad sense, to denote many different kinds of change, usually gradual change. Stars evolve, life evolved from nonliving molecules, one form of life evolves into another, societies evolve, ideas evolve. This broad-sense meaning, referring even to the…
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Full text Article evolution

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
concept that embodies the belief that existing animals and plants developed by a process of gradual, continuous change from previously existing forms. This theory, also known as descent with modification, constitutes organic evolution. Inorganic evolution, on the other hand, is concerned with the…
| 1,210 words
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Full text Article Evolution

From Brenner's Encyclopedia of Genetics
Populations and the Darwin–Wallace...
Abstract Evolution is the process through which populations of organisms change into new types over time and space, as individuals gradually diverge from one another during the course of subsequent generations. The fact that evolution has occurred (and continues to take place) is documented in the…
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Full text Article evolution

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Biological theory that animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations. It is one of the keystones of modern biological theory. In 1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace jointly…
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Full text Article evolution

From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
a. A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form. b. A result of this process; a development: Judo is an evolution of an earlier martial art. Biology a. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, often…
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Full text Article EVOLUTION

From Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
American environmentalist and nature writer Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Desert Solitaire Water (p. 143 ) Ballantine Books. New York New York USA . 1968. English author, comic…
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Full text Article evolution

From The Chambers Dictionary
the cumulative change in the genetic composition of a population of an organism over succeeding generations, resulting in a species totally different from remote ancestors; the act of unrolling or unfolding ( archaic ); the giving off (of heat, etc); gradual working out or development; a series of…
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