Skip to main content Skip to Search Box
Definition: death from Philip's Encyclopedia

Cessation of life. In medicine, death has traditionally been pronounced on cessation of the heartbeat. However, modern resuscitation and life-support techniques have enabled the revival of patients whose hearts have stopped. In a tiny minority of cases, while breathing and heartbeat can be maintained artificially, the potential for life is extinct. In this context, death may be pronounced when it is clear that the brain no longer controls vital functions. The issue is highly controversial.

death

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
cessation of all life (metabolic) processes. Death may involve the organism as a whole (somatic death) or may be confined to cells and tissues within the organism. Causes of death in human beings include injury, acute or chronic disease, and neoplasia (cancer). The physiological death of cells that are normally replaced throughout life is called necrobiosis; the death of cells caused by external changes, such as an abnormal lack of blood supply, is called necrosis. is characterized by the discontinuance of cardiac activity and respiration, and eventually leads to the death of all body cells from lack of oxygen, although for approximately six minutes after somatic death—a period referred to as clinical death—a person whose vital organs have not been damaged may be revived. However, achievements of modern biomedical technology have enabled the physician to artificially maintain critical functions for indefinite periods. Somatic death is followed by a number of irreversible changes that…
92,855 results

Full text Article Death

From Book of Bible Quotations
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art , and unto dust shalt thou…
| 851 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article death

From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
The cessation of physical life, considered by many to be the greatest human mystery. Because of its finality, and the mystery of what, if anything, lies beyond it, death has always been invested with great ritual significance throughout the ages. Many religions and belief systems subscribe to the…
| 208 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article DEATH

From Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms
‘Death, be not proud’ Donne, Holy Sonnets , X, in 1896 ‘But at my back I always hearTime's winged chariot hurrying near:And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity’ Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’, in 1974: 51 ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a…
| 2,226 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Death

From Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World
© AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Muslim...
The end of human life is a central concern of Muslim thought and occasions a variety of ritual practices connected to the dying process, burial, and mourning. The most widely held view is that death is the unavoidable fate prescribed by God for all living things, and that the event itself marks a…
| 1,274 words , 1 image
Key concepts:

Full text Article death

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
cessation of all life (metabolic) processes. Death may involve the organism as a whole (somatic death) or may be confined to cells and tissues within the organism. Causes of death in human beings include injury, acute or chronic disease, and neoplasia (cancer). The physiological death of cells that…
| 420 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article death

From Encyclopedia of Ethics
By definition, death is the cessation of life. It is clear why it is rational to fear the process of dying and why we may say that pain or disability can harm the one who suffers it. But is it rational to fear death as such— Is death itself a harm— And by extension, can conduct such as breaking a…
| 1,378 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article death

From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
All human cultures attach a central place to interpreting the processes of human existence. Among these, reproduction and the representation of death, with the associated practices which these representations entail, are always of the greatest importance. This fact, however, does not mean that death…
| 2,349 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article DEATH

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
[Remark made at a funeral] This is the last time I will take part as an amateur. [Attr.] Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. BACON, Francis Essays (1625). I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. [Quoted…
| 1,203 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article DEATH

From Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity
In the Greco-Roman world, various conceptions of death are found in different philosophical and religious sects. Parmenides, in line with his assertion of the existence of the sole Being and not of Non-Being, in fact denied death; he refused to admit the existence of birth and death and the…
| 7,499 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article DEATH

From Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions
Yohrzeit Plaque. Zittau, Czech Republic, 1890....
The human focus on the inevitable end of life, with its attendant fears, has created a mass of beliefs, ceremonies, and customs. There is a wealth of material on dying, death, and mourning in the Bible and the rabbinic literature. The Shulḥan arukh, which, at the end of the sixteenth century, …
| 1,237 words , 1 image
Key concepts:
Mind Map

Stack overflow
More Library Resources