Word Finder - phenomena

definition

A thing or being, event or process, perceptible through senses; or a fact or occurrence thereof.

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(by extension) A knowable thing or event (eg by inference, especially in science)

example

An electromagnetic phenomenon.

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A kind or type of phenomenon (sense 1 or 2)

example

A volcanic eruption is an impressive phenomenon.

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Appearance; a perceptible aspect of something that is mutable.

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A fact or event considered very unusual, curious, or astonishing by those who witness it.

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A wonderful or very remarkable person or thing.

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(chiefly Kantian idealism) An experienced object whose constitution reflects the order and conceptual structure imposed upon it by the human mind (especially by the powers of perception and understanding).

The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale.

In all his travels he studied only the phenomena of nature and human life.

Dissipation seems largely dependent on meteorological conditions, but the phenomena at different stations vary so much as to suggest that the connexion is largely indirect.

We shall then observe the following phenomena.

The various electrical phenomena of plants also are obscure.

Cylindrical organs may exhibit similar phenomena.

This oral theory was for a long time the favourite one in England; it was never widely held in Germany, and in recent years the majority of English students of the Synoptic Problem have come to feel that it does not satisfactorily explain the phenomena.

And as I look to the past and the present, I see two phenomena that especially drive my optimism.

Diogenes made this conception of a vital and intelligent air the ground of a teleological view of climatic and atmospheric phenomena.

It reminds us of a similar property of animal protoplasm which finds its expression in the rhythmic beat of the heart and other phenomena.

Within it or its modifications all the vital phenomena of which living organisms are capable have their origin.

The method included a recognition of the causes and effects of phenomena as well as the mere fact of their occurrence, and for the first time the importance of the vertical relief of the land was fairly recognized.

It is a plain, straightforward description of the globe, and of the various phenomena of the surface, dealing only with definitely ascertained facts in the natural order of their relationships, but avoiding any systematic classification or even definitions of terms.

It thus draws upon physics for the explanation of the phenomena with the space-relations of which it is specially concerned.

Thus the scenery of a limestone country depends on the solubility and permeability of the rocks, leading to the typical Karst-formations of caverns, swallowholes and underground stream courses, with the contingent phenomena of dry valleys and natural bridges.

Daniel Dunglas Home, the next medium of importance who appeared in London, came over from America in 1855; and for many years almost all the chief mediums for physical phenomena known in England came from the United States.

The greater part of the phenomena may be divided into two classes.

There have been several professional photographers (all detected in fraud sooner or later) who made it their business to take photo complaints, to certain epidemics of the middles ages,' and to phenomena that have occurred at some religious revivals.

It is with a full knowledge of these difficulties in the way of investigation that they maintain that unmistakably genuine phenomena are of constant occurrence.

Many volumes containing accounts of such phenomena have been printed, and appeal is often made to the mass of evidence so accumulated.

Yet, if there is not a mass of scientific evidence, there are a number of witnesses - among them distinguished men of science and others of undoubted intelligence --who have convinced themselves by observation that phenomena occur which cannot be explained by known causes; and this fact must carry weight, even without careful records, when the witnesses are otherwise known to be competent and trustworthy observers.

Among proposed normal explanations of these phenomena that of hallucination (q.v.), including illusion as to what is seen almost amounting to hallucination, deserves careful consideration.

What may broadly be called "conjuring" is a much more probable explanation of most of the recorded phenomena; and in the vast majority of cases the witnesses do not seem to have duly appreciated the possibilities of conjuring, and have consequently neither taken sufficient precautions to exclude it nor allowed for the accidental circumstances which may on any particular occasion favour special tricks or illusions.

Besides the general arguments for supposing that the physical phenomena of spiritualism may be due to conjuring, there are two special reasons which gain in force as time goes on.

Nevertheless there does exist evidence for the genuineness of the physical phenomena which deserves consideration.

There is also an English translation entitled Metapsychical Phenomena (London, 1905).

The intellectual influence of Greece, manifested in Alexandrian philosophy, tended to remove God still further from the human world of phenomena into that of an inaccessible transcendental abstraction.

Gauss had shown how to reduce all the phenomena of statical electricity to mere attractions and repulsions exerted at a distance by particles of an imponderable on one another.

The step to magnetic phenomena was comparatively simple; but it was otherwise as regards electromagnetic phenomena, where current electricity is essentially involved.

Weber, which was found capable of explaining all the phenomena investigated by Ampere as well as the induction currents of Faraday.

The portion of Carniola belonging to the Karst region presents a great number of caves, subterranean streams, funnels and similar phenomena.

Although these and other phenomena cannot yet be safely placed in a historical frame, the methodical labours of past scholars have shed much light upon the obscurities of the exilic and post-exilic ages, and one must await the more comprehensive study of the two or three centuries which are of the first importance for biblical history and theology.

The growth of the Old Testament into its present form, and its preservation despite hostile forces, are the two remarkable phenomena which most arrest the attention of the historian; it is for the theologian to interpret their bearing upon the history of religious thought.

Although the foregoing account of the temperatures of Asia supplies the main outline of the observed phenomena, a very important modifying cause, of which more will be said hereafter, comes into operation over the whole of the tropical region, namely, the periodical summer rains.

Among the more remarkable phenomena of the hotter seas of Asia must be noticed the revolving storms or cyclones, which are of frequent occurrence in the hot months in the Indian Ocean and China Sea, in which last they are known under the name of typhoon.

On the 18th of the same month he presented a paper to the Academy, containing a far more complete exposition of that and kindred phenomena.

What was the secret power which enabled him to bring under the domain of scientific laws phenomena of disease which had so far baffled human endeavour?

But in his character as phenomena must be examined or what may be neglected p y g in economic inquiry.

For short historical periods, indeed, many phenomena are so remotely connected with the ordinary business of life that we may ignore them.

On this subject many monographs and larger works have been published in recent years, but dealing rather with such questions as trade unionism, co-operation and factory legislation, than the structure and organization of particular industries, or the causes and the results of the formation of the great combinations, peculiarly characteristic of the United States, but not wanting in England, which are amongst the most striking economic phenomena of modern times.

In 1834 he was appointed professor of physics, but in 5839 contracted an affection of the eyes while studying the phenomena of colour and vision, and, after much suffering, resigned.

His best known work was Die Betooverde Wereld (1691), or The World Bewitched (1695; one volume of an English translation from a French copy), in which he examined critically the phenomena generally ascribed to spiritual agency, and attacked the belief in sorcery and "possession" by the devil, whose very existence he questioned.

Insect metamorphosis may be briefly described as phenomena of development characterized by abrupt changes of appearance and of structure, occurring during the period subsequent to embryonic development and antecedent to the reproductive state.

The differences in appearance between the caterpillar and the butterfly, striking as they are to the eye, do not sufficiently represent the phenomena of metamorphosis to the intelligence.

A much more thorough appreciation than we yet possess of the phenomena in these cases is necessary in order completely to demonstrate the special characteristics of the holometabolous transformation.

It has been previously remarked that the phenomena of holometabolism are connected with the development of wings inside the body (except in the case of the fleas, where there are no wings in the perfect insect).

An attempt is made to get rid of the distinctive nature of miracle when the exceptionalness of the events so regarded is reduced to a new subjective mode of regarding natural phenomena.

The miracles connected with the beginnings of the national history - the period of the Exodus - appear on closer inspection to have been ordinarily natural phenomena, to which a supernatural character was given by their connexion with the prophetic word of Moses.

Under the pressure of this strain "spiritualistic" phenomena began to appear.

It was in the ranks of the Provencals, where the religiosity of Count Raymund seems to have extended to his followers, that these phenomena appeared; and they culminated in the discovery of the Holy Lance, which had pierced the side of the Saviour.