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Northumberland, Henry Percy, 1st earl of

(Encyclopedia)Northumberland, Henry Percy, 1st earl of, 1342–1408, English nobleman. He fought in France in the Hundred Years War, became warden of the Scottish Marches, and was a supporter of John Wyclif. Create...

Soissons

(Encyclopedia)Soissons swäsôNˈ [key], city (1990 pop. 32,144), Aisne dept., N France, on the Aisne River. It is an agricultural and industrial center. Soissons was an old Roman town and early episcopal see. Its ...

Carlos the Jackal

(Encyclopedia)Carlos the Jackal, pseud. of the revolutionary and international terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, 1949–, b. Caracas, Venezuela. Son of an affluent Marxist lawyer, he joined the Communist party at ...

bow and arrow

(Encyclopedia)bow and arrow, weapon consisting of two parts; the bow is made of a strip of flexible material, such as wood, with a cord linking the two ends of the strip to form a tension from which is propelled th...

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice

(Encyclopedia)Merleau-Ponty, Maurice mōrēsˈ mĕrlōˈ-pôNtēˈ [key], 1908–61, French philosopher. He graduated (1931) from the École normale supérieure, Paris, and after World War II taught at the Univ. of...

Lotze, Rudolf Hermann

(Encyclopedia)Lotze, Rudolf Hermann ro͞oˈdôlf hĕrˈmän lōˈtsə [key], 1817–81, German philosopher and psychologist. After studying medicine and philosophy at Leipzig, he was lecturer in both departments an...

chaos theory

(Encyclopedia)chaos theory, in mathematics, physics, and other fields, a set of ideas that attempts to reveal structure in aperiodic, unpredictable dynamic systems such as cloud formation or the fluctuation of biol...

eutrophication

(Encyclopedia)eutrophication yo͞otrōˌfĭkāˈshən [key], aging of a lake by biological enrichment of its water. In a young lake the water is cold and clear, supporting little life. With time, streams draining i...

parathyroid hormone

(Encyclopedia)parathyroid hormone or parathormone, a hormone secreted by the parathyroid glands that regulates the metabolism of calcium and phosphate in the body. It has been purified extensively and appears to be...

naturalism, in philosophy

(Encyclopedia)naturalism, in philosophy, a position that attempts to explain all phenomena and account for all values by means of strictly natural (as opposed to supernatural) categories. The particular meaning of ...