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For the first time in American history read and learn definitions from Wikipedia's staff, who write about historical or scientific facts. Hear their academic opinions. Let them explain to you in their own words about new technology to develop problem solving skills, how to understand the transmission of mind viruses or pandemics, even learn the true facts of American history or slavery in the United States. You may be amazed at how studying definitions alone can enhance your abilities to solve the most complex problems that may surround us.

Definition of Definition
	A definition describes the meaning of a concept by stating the properties of the entities denoted by the concept.

Definition of Etymology
	Etymology is the study of the origins of words. Some words have been derived from other languages, possibly in a changed form. Through old texts and comparisons with other languages, etymologists try to reconstruct the history of words.

Definition of Epistemology
	Epistemology is the branch of philosophy which studies the origin, nature, and scope of knowledge. The word "epistemology" originated from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/speech).

Definition of Academia

Academia is a collective term for the scientific and cultural community engaged in higher education and peer-reviewed research, taken as a whole. The word comes from the akademeia just outside ancient Athens, where the Gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning. The sacred space had formerly been an olive grove, hence the expression 'the groves of Academe". By extension Academia has come to connote the cultural accumulation of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations and its practitioners and transmitters.

Definition of University
	A university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees at all levels in a variety of subjects. A university provides both tertiary and quaternary education. University is derived from the Latin universitas, meaning corporation (since the first medieval European universities were simply groups of scholars).

Definition of Knowledge
	Knowlege is information of which someone is aware. Knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject, with the ability to use it for specific purpose. The unreliability of memory limits the certainty of knowledge about the past, while unpredictability of events yet to occur limits the certainty of knowledge about the future.

Definition of Ignorance
	Ignorance  is a lack of knowledge. Ignorance is also a "state of being ignorant" or unaware/uninformed.

Definition of School Accreditation
	Generally, accreditation is the process by which a facility becomes officially certified as providing services of a reasonably good quality, so that the public can trust in the qualtiy of its services.

Definition of Board of Governors
	A board of governors is usually the governing board of a public entity. Many public services, such as universities or federal independent agencies are created as corporations owned by the government.

Definition of Philosophy
	Philosophy is a field of study that includes diverse subfields such as aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, logic, and metaphysics, in which people ask questions such as whether God exists, what is the nature of reality, whether knowledge is possible, and what makes actions right or wrong. The fundamental method of philosophy is the use of reasoning to evaluate arguments concerning these questions.

Definition of Reasoning
	Reasoning is defined very differently depending on the content of the understanding it as a form of knowledge. The logical definition is the act of using reason, to derive conclusion from certain premises, using a given methodology; and the two most commonly used methods to reach a conclusion are deductive reasoning; and inductive reasoning.

Definition of Logic
	Logic is most often said to be the study of criteria for the evaluation of arguments, although the exact definition of logic is a matter of controversy.

Definition of Science
	Science refers to the system of acquiring knowledge - based on empiricism, experimentation, and methodological naturalism. The term science also refers to the organized body of knowledge humans have gained by such research.

Definition of Mathematics
	Mathematics can be defined as the logically rigorous study of topics such as quantity, structure, space, and change. Another view is theat mathematics is the body of knowledge justified by deductive reasoning, starting from axioms and definitions.

Definition of Statistics
	Statistics is a mathematical science pertaining to collection, analysis, and presentation of data. It is applicable to a wide variety of academic disciplines from the physical and social sciences to the humanities, as well as to business, government, medicine and industry.

Definition of Extrapolation
	Extrapolation is the process of constructing new data points outside a discrete set of know data points. It is similar to the process of interpolation, which constructs new points between known points, but its results are often less meaningful, and are subject to greater uncertainty.

Definition of Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is the systematic scientific investigation of quantitative properties and phenomena and their relationships. Quantitative research is widely used in both the natural and social sciences, including physics, biology, psychology, sociology, geology, education, and journalism. The objective of quantitative research is to develop and employ mathematical models, theories and hypotheses pertaining to natural phenomena.

Definition of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is one of the two major approaches to research methodology in social science. Qualitative research involves investigation participants' opinions, behaviors and experiences from the informants' point of view. It is contrasted with quantitative research in that it does not rely on quantitative measurement and mathematical models, but instead uses logical deductions to decipher gathered data dealing with the human element.

Definition of Aristotle
	Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote books on many subjects, including physics, poetry, zoology, logic, rhetoric, government, and biology.

Definition of Metaphysics
	Metaphysics is a branch of speculative philosophy concerned with explaining the world.

Definition of Biology
	Biology is the branch of science dealing with the study of life. It is concerned with the characteristics, classification, and behaviors of organisms, how species come into existence, and the interactions they have with each other and with the environment.

Definition of Zoology
	Zoology is the biological discipline which involves the study of animals. It comes from the Greek zoon "animal", and logy "study".

Definition of Anthropology
	Anthropology consists of the study of humanity. It is holistic in two senses: it is concerned with all humans and with all dimensions of humanity. A primary trait that distinguished anthropology from other humanistic disciplines is an emphasis on cultural relativity, in-depth examination of context, and cross-cultural comparisons.

Definition of Sociology
	Sociology is the study of society and human social action, and includes the examination of the groups, institutions, organization, and development of human life.

Definition of Behavioural Science
	Behavioural sciences is a term that encompasses all the disciplines that explore the activities of and interactions among organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of human and animal behaviour through controlled and naturalistic experimental observations and rigorous formulations.

Definition of Ethics
	Ethics is the branch of axiology, one of the four major branches of philosophy, which attempts to understand the nature of morality; to distinguish that which is right from that which is wrong.

Definition of American Bar Association
	The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. The ABA's most important non-controversial activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation of model legal codes, of which the most important is a code of ethical standards for lawyers.

Definition of Cato Institute

The Cato Institute is a large libertarian, non-profit public policy research foundation (think tank) headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institute's stated mission is "to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the tradtional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace" by seeking greater involvement of the "lay public in questions of public policy and the role of government."

Definition of Newton's Law of Motion
	Isaac Newton's laws of motion were published in his work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton used them to prove many results concerning the motion of physical objects.

Definition of Albert Einstein
	Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist widely regarded as the most important scientist of the 20th century. He developed the special and general theories of relativity and made significant contribution to quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and cosmology.

Definition of Physics
	Physics is the science of the natural world, which deals with the fundamental constituents of the universe, the forces they exert on one another, and the results of these forces.

Definition of Energy
	The concept of energy refers to "the potential for causing changes". The word is used in several different contexts. The scientific use has a precise, well defined meaning, whilst the many non-scientifc uses often do not.

Definition of Electron Configuration
	The electron configuration is the arrangement of electrons in an atom, molecule or other body. It is the placement of electrons into atomic, molecular, or other forms of electron orbitals.

Definition of Electricity
	Electricity is a property of matter that results from the presence or movement of electric charge.

Definition of Ohm's Law
	Ohm's law states that the potential difference between two points along a connected path and the current flowing through it are proportional at a given temperature:

Definition of Atom
	An atom is the smallest possible particle of a chemical element that retains its chemical properties.

Definition of Matter
	Matter is defined as the substance of which physical objects are composed. It constitutes the observable Universe. According to the theory of relativity there is no distinction between matter and energy, because matter can be converted to energy, and vice versa.

Definition of Remote Control
	A remote control is an electronic device used for the remote operation of a machine.

Definition of Resonance
	Resonance is the tendency of a system to absorb more energy when the frequency of its oscillations matches the system's natural frequency of vibration than it does at other frequencies.

Definition of Technology
	Technology is a word with origins in the Greek word technologia, techne "craft" and logia "saying." It is a broad term dealing with the use and knowledge of humanity's tools and crafts.

Definition of Philanthropist
	A philanthropist is someone who devotes his/her time, money, or effort towards helping others. The label is most often applied to someone who gives large amounts to charity.

Definition of Humanitarianism

Humanitarianism is an informal ideology of practice whereby people practice humane treatment and provide assistance to others. Humanitarianism is based on a view that all human beings deserve respect and dignity and should be treated as such. Therefore, humanitarians work towards advancing the well-being of humanity as a whole. Humanitarianism is the antithesis of the "us vs. them" mentality that characterizes tribalism and ethnic nationalism. Humanitarians abhor slavery, violation of basic and human rights and discrimination on the basis of color of skin, religion, ancestry, place of birth, etc.

Definition of Observatory
	An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial and/or celestial events, Astronomy, astrology, climatology, geology, meterology, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed.

Definition of Problem
	Problem  refers to a situation, condition, or issue that is unresolved or undersired. Usually, the nature of a problem is such that an answer or solution is needed. In such cases, problem solving is used to understand important aspects of the problem so that an answer or solution can be found. Problems occur in different forms, and can exist in different domains.

Definition of Racism
	Racism refers to a belief system that humans can be separated into various groups based on physical attributes and that these goupings determine cultural or individual achievement and the value of human beings. This can lead to hostility against individuals based on a perceived or ascribed "race".

Definition of Discrimination
	To discriminate socially is to make a distinction between people on the basis of class or category without regard to individual merit.

Definition of Invidious
	Invidious Envious; causing or arising from envy Enviable; desirable Prompted by or expressing dislike or ill will Hateful, odious; detestable

Definition of To Kill a Mockingbird
	To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1960 novel by Harper Lee, which won the Pultizer Prize for Fiction in 1961. A coming-of-age story, it is told from the point of view of Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, the young daughter of Atticus Finch, an educated lawyer in Maycomb, Alabama, a fictional small town in the Deep South of the United States. She is accompanied by her brother Jem and their mutual fiend Dill.

Definition of Willie Lynch Speech
	The William Lynch Speech is a text of unknown origin which drew widespread attention when it circulated throughout the internet during the 1990s. It purports to be an address given to an audience on the bank of the James River in Virginia in 1712 regarding control of slaves within the colony.

Definition of Blueprint
	A blueprint is, conceptually, a plan or design documenting an architecture of an engineering design. While this may be as simple as a quick sketch or outline using pencil and paper, a blueprint is traditionally reflected as the contact printing process of  cyanotype.

Definition of Sex Offender Registration
	A Sex offender registration is a registry set up by some jurisdictions for sex offenders, in which is used for the state or province to keep in track of sex offenders activities and residence. Often the registry is public and can be viewed on the internet, television, and newspaper.

Definition of Aggravated Assault
	Aggravated assault is a form of violent crime. In many jurisdictions, a person has committed an aggravated assault when that person attempts to cause serious bodily injury to anorther person; or causes such injury purposely, knowingly, or recklessly causes bodily injury with a weapon

Definition of Probation
	Probation is the suspension of a jail sentence - the criminal who is "on probation" has been convicted of a crime, but instead os serving jail time, has been found by the Court to be amenable to probation and will be returned to the community for a period in which they will have to abide to certain conditions of the Court under the supervision of a probation officer.

Definition of Human Branding
	Branding persons refers to the use of the same physical techniques as in livestock branding on a human, either with consent as a form of body modification; or under coercion, as a punishment or imposing masterly rights over a slave or other legally subservient inferior.

Definition of Pejorative
	A word or phase is pejorative  if it implies contempt or disapproval.

Definition of Redneck
	Redneck predominantly refers to a particular stereotype of individuals living in Appalachia, the Southern United States, the Ozarks, and later the Rocky Mountain States. The word can be used either as a perjorative or as a matter of pride, depending on context.

Definition of Peckerwood
	Peckerwood is a perjorative slang term coined in the 19th century by southern blacks to describe poor whites. Blacks saw blackbirds as a symbol of themselves and the contrasting redheaded woodpecker as a representation of working class whites. They considered them loud and troublesome like the bird, and often with red hair like the woodpecker's head plumes.

Definition of Archie Bunker
	Archie Bunker was a fictional character in the long-running and top-rated American television sitcoms All in the Family and Archie Bunker's Place. He was reactionary, bigoted, blue-collar worker and family man, played to acclaim by Carroll O'Connor.

Definition of Nigger

Nigger is an extremely perjorative term used for racial abuse towards black people. During the period when slavery was practiced worldwide, and in particular by the United States and European countries, and for several decades after Europe and North America prohibited slavery, it was a standard, casual English term for black people. The word has been associated with an often casual contempt, a racist assumption of black inherent inferiority, even of bestiality, making it extremely perjorative.

Definition of Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas
	Billie Thomas was an African-American child actor best remembered for portraying the character of Buckwheat in the Our Gang (Little Rascals) short films from 1934 until the series; end in 1944.

Definition of Amos 'n' Andy
	Amos 'n' Andy was a situation comedy popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s. The show began as one of the first radio comedy serials, written and voiced by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll and originating from station WMAQ in Chicago, Illinois.

Definition of Mike Tyson
	Michael Gerald Tyson is a former American professional boxer and World Heavyweight Champion, and is considered by many to be one of the greatest boxers of all times.

Definition of Michael Jackson
	Michael Joseph Jackson is an American musician and entertainer whose successful music career and controversial personal life have been at the forefront of pop culture for the last quarter-century.

Definition of Kobe Bryant
	Kobe Bean Bryant is an All-Start shooting gurard in the NBA who plays for LA Lakers.

Definition of 2006 Duke Lacrosse Team Scandal
	The 2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal began in April 2006 when two members of Duke University's lacrosse team were accused of raping a female stripper during a party held at the residence of two of the team captains.

Definition of Respect
	Respect is an attitude of acknowledging the feelings and interests of another party in a relationship, and of treating as consequential for the self the helping or harming of the other.

Definition of Dr. Charles R. Drew
	Dr. Charles Richard Drew was an African-American physician and medical researcher. He protested against the practice of racial segragation in the donation of blood to blood banks from donors of different races since it lacked scientific foundation.

Definition of Aretha Franklin
	Aretha Louise Franklin is an American gospel, soul and R&B singer born in Memphis, Tennessee, but raised in Detroit, MI. She has been dubbed for years "The Queen Of Soul" also the "Lady Soul".

Definition of Rodney Dangerfield
	Rodney Dangerfield was an American comedian and actor, best known for the line "I don't get no respect" and his monologues on that theme.

Definition of Hate Crime
	Hate crimes are crimes that are motivated by feelings of hostility against any identifiable group of people within a society. If systematic, rather than spontaneous, instigators of such crimes are sometimes organized into hate groups.

Definition of Emmett Till
	Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till  was an African-American teenager from Chicago, IL who was brutally murdered in a region of MS known as the Mississippi Delta near the small town of Drew in Sunflower County.

Definition of Melchizedek
	Melchizekek is a character in the Old Testament who appeared in Genesis to the patriarch Abraham. He is called the "king of Salem" (believed to be ancient Jerusalem) and "priest of the most high god" in Genesis 14:18.

Definition of Jesus
	Jesus is the central figure of Christianity. In thsi context, he is known as Jesus Christ, where "Christ" is a Greek title meaning "Anointed One which corresponds to the Hebrew term "Messiah".

Definition of Doctrine
	Doctrine means "a body of teaching" or "instructions", taught principles of positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system.

Definition of Trinity
	Within Christianity, the doctrine of the Trinity states that God is a single Being who exists, simultaneously and eternally, as a perichoresis of three persons: Father; the Son; and the Holy Spirit.

Definition of the Gospel
	In Christianity, gospel means "good news". Received opinion holds that the word gospel/derives from the Old English god "good", and spell "news", a translation of the Greek workd, euangelion (eu good, -angelon message) (from this word comes the term "evangelist").

Definition of Golden Rule
	The ethic of reciprocality or the Golden Rule, is a fundamental moral principle found in virtually all major religions and cultures, which simply means "treat others as you want them to treat you." Its universality suggests an innate human altruism, and is arguably the most essential basis for the modern concept of human rights.

Definition of Christianity
	Christianity is a montheistic religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recounted in the Gospels. Christians believe Jesus to be the Messiah, and thus refer to him as Jesus Christ.

Definition of Salvation
	In religion, salvation refers to a rescue ("deliverance") from an undersirable state or condition - typically one in which the soul of an individual is in turmoil, and hence is peril of being lost.

Definition of Crucifix
	A crucifix is a cross with a representation of Jesus's body, or corpus. It is a principal symbol of the Christian religion. It is primarily used among Roman Catholic, certain Lutheran, and Anglican Christians, and emphasizes Christ's sacrifice-his death by crucifixion.

Definition of Effigy
	An effigy is a representation of a person, especially in the form of sculpture. The term is usually associated with full-length figures of a deceased person depicted in stone or wood on church monuments.

Definition of Incarnation
	Incarnation, which literally means enfleshment, refers to the conception, and live birth of a sentient creature who is the material manifestation of an entity or force whose original nature is immaterial.

Definition of Baptism
	Baptism is generally a water purification ritual practiced in many of various religions including Christianity, Mandaeanism, and Sikhism.

Definition of Resurrection
	The term resurrection  is used in the literal sense to mean either the religious concept of the reunion of the spirit and the body of a dead person, or the return to life of a dead person.

Definition of Immortality
	Immortality (or eternal life) is the concept of existing for a potentially infinite, or indeterminate, length of time.

Definition of Holy Spirit
	In various religions, most notably Trinitarian Christianity, the Holy Spirit  (i.e. Holy Ghost) is the third consustantial Person of the Holy Trinity. As such, the various Christian perspectives view Him as God himself, a form of God, or a manifestation of God.

Definition of Blasphemy
	Blasphemy  is the defamation of the name of God.

Definition of Hypocrisy
	Hypocrisy is the act of pretending to have morals or virtues that one does not truly possess or practice.

Definition of Leaven
	A leeavening agent (sometimes called just leavening or leaven) is a substance used in doughs and batters that causes them to rise. In the presence of moisture, heat, acidity, or other triggers the leavening agent reacts to produce gas (often carbon dioxide) that becomes trapped as bubbles within the dough.

Definition of Pride

Pride refers to a strong sense of self-respect, a refusal to be humiliated as well as joy in the accomplishments of oneself or a person, group, or object that one identifies with. In Christianity, pride (or vanity or arrogance) is the essentially competitive and excessive belief in one's own abilities that interferes with the individual's recognition of the grace of God, or the worth which God sees in others. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is listed as one of the seven deadly sins, as superbia.

Definition of Seven Deadly Sins
	The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, are a classification of vices used in early Christian teachings to educate and protect followers from basic human instincts.

Definition of Causality
	The philosophical concept of causality, the principles of causes, or causation, the working of causes, refers to the set of all particular "causal" or "cause-and-effect" relations. A neutral definition is hard to provide since every aspect of causation has received substantial debate. Most generally, causation is a relationship that holds between events, objects, variables, or states of affairs.

Definition of Diagnosis
	Diagnosis (from the Greek words dia = by and gnosis = knowledge) is the process of identifying a disease by its signs, symptoms and results of various diagnostic procedures.

Definition of George Boole
	George Boole was a mathematician and philosopher. As the inventor of Boolean algebra, the basis of all modern computer arithmetic, Booleis regarded in hindsight as one of the founders of the field of computer science, althought computers did not exist in his day.

Definition of Boolean Algebra
	In abstract algebra, a Boolean algebra is an algebraic structure that captures essential properties of both set operations and logic operation. Specifically, it deals with the set operations of intersection, union, complement; and the logic operations of AND, OR, NOT.

Definition of Norbert Wiener
	Norbert Wiener was a U.S. mathematician and applied mathematician, especially in the field of electronics engineering. He was a pioneer in the study of stochastic processes and noise processes, expecially in the field of electronic communication sytems and control systems. He is known as the founder of cybernetics.

Definition of Cybernetics
	Cybernetics is the study of communication and control, involving regulartory feedback, in living organisms, in machines, and in combinations of the two. The term stems from the Greek (kybernetes, steersman, governor, pilot, or rudder - the same root as government).

Definition of Homeostasis
	Homeostasis is the property of an open system, especially living organism, to regulate its internal environment to maintain a stable, constant condition, by means of multiple dynamic equilibrium adjustments, controlled by interrelated regulation mechanisms.

Definition of Algorithm
	In mathematics and computing, an algorithm is a procedure (a finite set of well-defined instructions) for accomplishing some task which, given an initial state, will terminate in defined end-state.

Definition of ASCII Code
	ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), is a character encoding based on the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communication equipment, and other devices that work with text.

Definition of Morse Code
	Morse code is a method for transmitting information, using standardized sequences of short and long marks or pulses - commonly known as "dots" and "dashes" - for the letters, numerals and special characters of a message.

Definition of Flowchart
	A flowchart (also spelled flow-chart and flow chart) is a schematic representation of a process. They are commonly used in business/economic presentations to help the audience visulalize the content better, or to find flaws in the process.

Definition of Medicine
	Medicine is the branch of health science and the sector of public life concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis and treatment of disease and injury.

Definition of Hippocratic Oath
	The Hippocratic Oath is an oath traditionally taken by physicians pertaining to the ethical practice of medicine. It is widely believed that the oath was written by Hippocrates, the father of medicine, in the 4th Century B.C.

Definition of Euthanasia
	Euthanasia refers to assisted dying. The assistance ends the life of a person or an animal in painless way. It is most often performed in a merciful way, in order to end suffering.

Definition of Jack Kevorkian
	Jack Kevorkian, M.D. is a controversial American pathologist. He is most noted for publicly championing a terminal patient's "right to die" and for assisting nearly 100 patients to that end, and is currently serving out a prison sentence for his practice.

Definition of Abortion
	An abortion is the removal or expulsion from the uterus of an embryo or fetus, resulting in or caused by its death. This can occur spontaneously as a miscarriage, or be artificially induced through chemical, surgical or other means.

Definition of Criminology
	Criminology is the study of crime as a social phenomenon, including the causes and affects of crime, criminal behaviour, as well as the development of, and impact of laws. Research in criminology applies the scientific method to test hypotheses and utltimately develop theories that help explain the causes and other aspects of crime.

Definition of Surgeon General of the United States
	The Surgeon General of the United States is the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Public Health Service, and -ex Officia 0 is the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the Government of the United States.

Definition of Centers for Disease Control and