Aenesidemus

Philosopher and dialectician of the Greek Academy who revived the Pyrrhonian principle of “suspended judgment” (epoche) as a practical solution to the vexing and “insoluble” problem of knowledge. In his Pyrrhonian Discourses Aenesidemus formulated 10 tropes in defense of Skepticism, four suggesting arguments that arise from the nature

Scandinavian Literature, Icelandic literature

The literary and linguistic renaissance in Iceland at the start of the 19th century was fostered by three men in particular: a philologist, Hallgrímur Scheving; a poet and lexicographer, Sveinbjörn Egilsson; and a philosopher and mathematician, Björn Gunnlaugsson. The principal movement in this renaissance was Romanticism. Inspired by the German philosopher Henrik

Rectocele

Disorder in which the rectum bulges into the back wall of the vagina. It is caused when the muscles and connective tissues supporting the rectum and back wall of the vagina are weakened, usually due to repeated childbirth or to aging, and the rectum sags until it abuts the vagina. A rectocele often occurs together with an enterocele, which is a bulge of the small

Tree Ear

Chinese  Mu Erh,  also called  Wood Ear, or Black Fungus,   any of several edible mushrooms of the genus Auricularia that are popular in Chinese cuisine, especially that of Sichuan (Szechwan) province. Tree ears grow wild on and are cultivated on the bark of trees. They are gathered for use in a fresh state and are dried for storage. Dried tree ears resemble gray-black flakes of ash; when reconstituted the mushrooms expand into

Baghdad, Districts

The city extends along both banks of the Tigris. The east-bank settlement is known as Rusafah, the west-bank as Al-Karkh. A series of bridges, including one railroad trestle, link the two banks. From a built-up area of about 4 square miles (10 square km) at the beginning of the 20th century, Baghdad has expanded into a bustling metropolis with suburbs spreading north and south along

Igboid Languages

A language cluster that constitutes a subbranch of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo language family. There are nearly 20 million speakers of Igboid languages in southeastern Nigeria. In the early years of the 20th century an attempt to develop an artificial form of Igbo called Union-Igbo, based on four Igbo dialects, was not successful. Later a standard literary

Appleton, Sir Edward Victor

Educated