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injunction

(Encyclopedia)injunction, in law, order of a court directing a party to perform a certain act or to refrain from an act or acts. The injunction, which developed as the main remedy in equity, is used especially wher...

diffusion

(Encyclopedia)diffusion, in chemistry, the spontaneous migration of substances from regions where their concentration is high to regions where their concentration is low. Diffusion is important in many life process...

pigmentation

(Encyclopedia)pigmentation, name for the coloring matter found in certain plant and animal cells and for the color produced thereby. Pigmentation occurs in nearly all living organisms. Almost all plants synthesize ...

pastoral

(Encyclopedia)pastoral, literary work in which the shepherd's life is presented in a conventionalized manner. In this convention the purity and simplicity of shepherd life is contrasted with the corruption and arti...

protozoan

(Encyclopedia)protozoan prōˌtəzōˈən [key], informal term for the unicellular heterotrophs of the kingdom Protista. Protozoans comprise a large, diverse assortment of microscopic or near-microscopic organisms ...

Basel, Council of

(Encyclopedia)Basel, Council of, 1431–49, first part of the 17th ecumenical council in the Roman Catholic Church. It is generally considered to have been ecumenical until it fell into heresy in 1437; after that i...

Byzantine music

(Encyclopedia)Byzantine music, the music of the Byzantine Empire composed to Greek texts as ceremonial, festival, or church music. Long thought to be only a further development of ancient Greek music, Byzantine mus...

Butler, Judith

(Encyclopedia)Butler, Judith, 1956–, American philosopher and political theorist, b. Cleveland, Ph.D. Yale University, 1984. Holds the Hannah Arendt Chair at The Eu...

Franciscans

(Encyclopedia)Franciscans frănsĭsˈkənz [key], members of several Roman Catholic religious orders following the rule of St. Francis (approved by Honorius III, 1223). There are now three organizations of Francisc...

Arabian music

(Encyclopedia)Arabian music, classical musical tradition of the Islamic peoples of Arabia, the Fertile Crescent, and North Africa. Little is known of Arabian music before the Hegira (a.d. 622), but afterward unde...