Solvay Conferences, conferences on physics and chemistry held in Brussels by the International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry. Belgian chemist and industrialist Ernest Solvay founded the conferences, with the first in physics occurring in 1911 and the first in chemistry in 1922. They

Council of the Indies, supreme governing body of Spain’s colonies in America (1524–1834). Composed of between 6 and 10 councillors appointed by the king, the council prepared and issued all legislation governing the colonies in the king’s name, approved all important acts and expenditures by

consejo real, medieval Spanish advisory council consisting of nobles and church prelates. Initially created at the request of the Cortes (parliament) to serve as its permanent representative, the consejo real evolved into a body controlled by the monarch. John I of Castile formally determined the

Conselheiro Lafaiete, city, southeastern Minas Gerais estado (state), southern Brazil. It lies in the Brazilian Highlands at 3,054 feet (931 metres) above sea level. Formerly known as Lueluz, the settlement was made the seat of a municipality in 1790 and given city status in 1886. Agriculture

Portugal: Justice: …the 1976 constitution in the Council of the Revolution. A constitutional committee operated in conjunction with the Council of the Revolution, which determined the constitutionality of legislation. Revisions made to the constitution in 1982 abolished the Council of the Revolution and the constitutional committee and replaced them with a Council…

Roman law: Delict and contract: Consensual contracts needed nothing except verbal or written agreement between the parties, and though there were only four such contracts known to the law, they were the most important in ordinary life—sale, hire of things or services, partnership, and mandate (acting upon instructions). In Justinian’s…

democracy: Majoritarian and consensual systems: Because of differences in electoral systems and other factors, democratic countries differ with respect to whether laws and policies can be enacted by a single, relatively cohesive party with a legislative majority, as is ordinarily the case in Britain and Japan, or instead…

family law: …solution may be to terminate cohabitation or to remove an abused child from the family unit into some form of public or foster custody.

Northeast Indian: Social organization: …because most communities used a consensus model for decision making; issues were discussed until there was broad agreement on a course of action. Any dissidents would either leave the group or continue to express their opposition until a change was made; in either case, the effectiveness of the community would…

community organizing: Consensus organizing emerged in the last decade of the 20th century. In contrast to conflict organizing, consensus organizing pays attention to the development of strong and weak ties—namely, both the nurturing of internal cooperation among communities of interest and the creation of working relationships with…

consent, in ethics and political philosophy, an act of permitting something to be done or of recognizing some authority. Granting consent implies relinquishing some authority in a sphere of concern in which one’s sovereignty ought otherwise to be respected. Consent is, under certain conditions,

family law: Age: …the requirement of a voluntary consent to a marriage, a party must have reached an age at which he or she is able to give meaningful consent, and it is also implied that a person may be legally disqualified on mental grounds from having capacity to marry. Marriages of young…

settlement: …of the settlement into a consent judgment, recorded by the court. Such a judgment may afford the same protection against a reopening of the dispute in litigation as is provided by a court judgment at the conclusion of a fully litigated case.

South Australia: Health and welfare: …1995 South Australia enacted the Consent to Medical Treatment and Palliative Care Act. This landmark legislation gave citizens the power to predetermine their medical treatment in the event that they become incapacitated and also relieved medical practitioners of liability should the treatment chosen by the terminally ill incidentally hasten death.

Alan J. Pakula: Films of the 1990s: …stumbled with his next film, Consenting Adults (1992), which was generally regarded as overly complicated and implausible. He then wrote, directed, and produced The Pelican Brief (1993), which starred Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington. It was a big commercial hit but failed to impress the critics.

Joan Armatrading: …Too Far Away (2018), and Consequences (2021), all of which she produced herself. Armatrading also wrote the music for Phyllida Lloyd’s all-women production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, staged in London in 2016 and in New York City the following year. A documentary, Joan Armatrading: Me Myself I, was released in…

Jacques Bainville: …de la paix (1920; “The Political Consequences of the Peace”), in which he attacked the Treaty of Versailles and predicted the danger of a unified Germany. His Histoire de France (1924) was later republished with other studies under the title Heur et malheur des français (“The Fortunes and Misfortunes of…

applied logic: Hypothetical and counterfactual reasoning: …between the antecedent and the consequent. The difficulty of the first problem is illustrated by the following pair of counterfactual conditionals:

East African mountains: Drainage of the East African mountains: …systems present good examples of consequent drainage (that is, determined by the initial slope of the land) such as the radial system of Mount Elgon, in which streams radiate from a central area, and the parallel streams of the Aberdare dip slopes. The porous nature of volcanic materials often results…

applied logic: Formal fallacies: …B; not-A; therefore, not-B”) and affirming the consequent (“If A, then B; B; therefore, A”). The invalid nature of these fallacies is illustrated in the following examples:

insurance: Indirect losses: An entirely different branch of the insurance business has been developed to insure losses that are indirectly the result of one of the specified perils. A prominent example of this type of insurance is business income insurance. The insurer undertakes to reimburse the…

consequentialism, In ethics, the doctrine that actions should be judged right or wrong on the basis of their consequences. The simplest form of consequentialism is classical (or hedonistic) utilitarianism, which asserts that an action is right or wrong according to whether it maximizes the net

Victor Hugo: Early years (1802–30): …Hugo founded a review, the Conservateur Littéraire (1819–21), in which his own articles on the poets Alphonse de Lamartine and André de Chénier stand out. His mother died in 1821, and a year later Victor married a childhood friend, Adèle Foucher, with whom he had five children. In that same…

conservation, study of the loss of Earth’s biological diversity and the ways this loss can be prevented. Biological diversity, or biodiversity, is the variety of life either in a particular place or on the entire planet Earth, including its ecosystems, species, populations, and genes. Conservation

human behaviour: Cognitive development: …is called the ability to conserve; when presented with the same problem, he will recognize that the two pieces still have the same amount of clay in them, based on his awareness that liquids and solids do not change in amount or quantity merely because their external shape changes. The…

minimum viable population: Estimating MVP: …value in the field of conservation biology, which combines genetic and ecological theories to address global declines in biodiversity. One of the goals of conservation biology is to prevent extinction, which requires managing the small populations that are at greatest risk. To manage such endangered species over decades and centuries,

urban sprawl: Ecovillages and conservation developments: Ecovillages are similar to transit villages. However, they may or may not be served by mass transit. Instead, residents needing to commute to nearby towns and suburbs participate in carpool and ride-share programs. Ecovillages are also characterized by politically involved residents who cooperate…

servitude: …the creation of so-called “conservation easements” to be held by conservation organizations and governmental bodies. The name is misleading, however, because the primary function of these agreements is to limit the development of the servient estate rather than to authorize the easement beneficiary to enter and use the land.…

Conservation International, organization that works in more than 40 countries, especially developing ones, to protect biodiversity in land and marine ecosystems. It was founded in 1987. Its scientists study global biodiversity and have identified hot spots—that is, sites that are the most

conservation law, in physics, a principle that states that a certain physical property (i.e., a measurable quantity) does not change in the course of time within an isolated physical system. In classical physics, laws of this type govern energy, momentum, angular momentum, mass, and electric

charge conservation, in physics, constancy of the total electric charge in the universe or in any specific chemical or nuclear reaction. The total charge in any closed system never changes, at least within the limits of the most precise observation. In classical terms, this law implies that the

first law of thermodynamics, thermodynamic relation stating that, within an isolated system, the total energy of the system is constant, even if energy has been converted from one form to another. This law is another way of stating the law of conservation of energy. It is one of four relations

conservation of linear momentum, general law of physics according to which the quantity called momentum that characterizes motion never changes in an isolated collection of objects; that is, the total momentum of a system remains constant. Momentum is equal to the mass of an object multiplied by

servitude: …the creation of so-called “conservation easements” to be held by conservation organizations and governmental bodies. The name is misleading, however, because the primary function of these agreements is to limit the development of the servient estate rather than to authorize the easement beneficiary to enter and use the land.…

art conservation and restoration, any attempt to conserve and repair architecture, paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and objects of the decorative arts (furniture, glassware, metalware, textiles, ceramics, and so on) that have been adversely affected by negligence, willful damage, or, more

Nadine Gordimer: In 1974 Gordimer’s novel The Conservationist (1974) was a joint winner of the Booker Prize. Later novels included Burger’s Daughter (1979), July’s People (1981), A Sport of Nature (1987), My Son’s Story (1990), The House Gun (1998), and The Pickup (2001). Gordimer addressed environmental issues in Get a Life…

conservatism, political doctrine that emphasizes the value of traditional institutions and practices. Conservatism is a preference for the historically inherited rather than the abstract and ideal. This preference has traditionally rested on an organic conception of society—that is, on the belief

Conservative Baptist Association of America, association of independent, autonomous Baptist churches in the United States, organized May 17, 1947, in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The founders originally organized the Fundamentalist Fellowship in 1920 but remained within the American (then Northern)

Conservative Party: History: The Conservative Central Office, a professional organization established by Disraeli in 1870, and the newly formed National Union, which drew together local voluntary associations, gave the party additional unity and strength. At the same time, Disraeli’s emphasis on social reform to reduce the enormous disparity in…

Conservative Congregational Christian Conference (CCCC), U.S.-based evangelical Congregational denomination established in Chicago in 1948. Its founders were theologically conservative members of the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches (also known as the Congregational Christian

foundations of mathematics: Internal language: …type theory ℒ has a conservative extension to the internal language of a topos—namely, the topos generated by ℒ, assuming that this topos exists in the real (ideal) world. Here, the phrase “conservative extension” means that ℒ can be extended to LT(ℒ) without creating new theorems. The types of LT(ℒ)…

conservative force, in physics, any force, such as the gravitational force between Earth and another mass, whose work is determined only by the final displacement of the object acted upon. The total work done by a conservative force is independent of the path resulting in a given displacement and

Conservative Judaism, religious movement that seeks to conserve essential elements of traditional Judaism but allows for the modernization of religious practices in a less radical sense than that espoused by Reform Judaism. Zacharias Frankel (1801–75), whose ideology inspired early Conservative

avascular necrosis: Treatment: …options for avascular necrosis include conservative management, joint replacement, core decompression (to relieve pressure in the bone), and osteotomy (cutting and reshaping of the bone). Conservative management involves bed rest, partial weight bearing with crutches, weight bearing as tolerated, and the use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents for pain management. This…

Denmark: The Right and the Left: …Liberals had merged with the Conservatives to form the Right (Højre) Party.

Ecuador: Shift to liberalism (1875–97): Conservatives and liberals struggled for power. But Ecuador had become part of the world market; the importance of the coast slowly increased, and the liberals of that area increasingly dominated the economy.

P. W. Botha: …in 1982 to form the Conservative Party. Botha was still able to get the constitution passed by referendum of whites in 1983. The following year he was elected under the new constitution as state president by an electoral college selected from the racially segregated, white-dominated Parliament. During his term in…

Conservative Party, in the United Kingdom, a political party whose guiding principles include the promotion of private property and enterprise, the maintenance of a strong military, and the preservation of traditional cultural values and institutions. Since World War I the Conservative Party and

Venezuela: Páez and the Conservatives: The first of the military dictators was General José Antonio Páez, who gave the country better government than it would see again for nearly a century. Bolívar had left Páez in charge of the armed forces of Venezuela, and he soon took full control…

Moderate Party, centre-right Swedish political party. The Moderate Party was founded in 1904 as the Conservative Party but took its current name in 1969. From its inception the party has promoted a market economy, lower taxes, and a smaller role for the government in the economy. For much of its

Norway: Political process: The Conservative Party (Høyre), which traditionally has been the major alternative to the DNA, accepts the welfare state and approves of the extensive transfers of income and of government control of the economy. Between 1945 and 1961 the government was formed by the DNA, which won…

Bolivia: Formation of Liberal and Conservative parties: Starting with the presidency (1880–84) of Narciso Campero, Bolivia moved into an era of civilian government. The country’s upper classes divided their support between two parties—Liberal and Conservative— and then proceeded to share power through them. This intraclass political party system finally brought…

Conservative Party of Canada, conservative Canadian political party. The party was formed in 2003 by the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party. The idea for a merger of Canada’s main conservative parties arose in the 1990s when national support for the Progressive

Nicaragua: Political process: … (Partido Liberal Constitucionalista; PLC), the Conservative Party of Nicaragua (Partido Conservador de Nicaragua; PCN), and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional; FSLN). The FSLN was established in the early 1960s as a guerrilla group dedicated to the overthrow of the Somoza family. They governed Nicaragua from…

Denmark: Political process: …nonsocialist parties headed by the Conservative People’s Party (Konservative Folkeparti) and the Liberal Party (Venstre) ruled until 1993, when the Social Democrats regained power. A center-right Liberal-Conservative coalition held power from 2001 to 2011, when a center-left coalition led by the Social Democrats took the reins of government. Other prominent…

Young Americans for Freedom: …Conservative Union to create the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual event that later developed into one of the largest meetings of conservatives in the United States. YAF’s influence was perhaps greatest in 1980, when it supported Ronald Reagan—who had joined the group’s National Advisory Board in 1962—in his…

Christian fundamentalism: Origins: During the 19th century, major challenges to traditional Christian teachings arose on several fronts. Geologic discoveries revealed Earth to be far older than the few thousand years suggested by a literal reading of the biblical book of Genesis and the various scriptural genealogies. The work of Charles Darwin (1809–82) and…

Christian Democratic People’s Party, Swiss centre-right political party that endorses Christian democratic principles. With FDP. The Liberals, the Social Democratic Party, and the Swiss People’s Party, the Christian Democratic People’s Party (CVP) has governed Switzerland as part of a grand

Geneva City Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, major botanical research centre in Geneva, Switz., specializing in such areas as floristics, biosystematics, and morphology. Founded in 1817, the 19-hectare (47-acre) municipal garden cultivates about 15,000 species of plants; it has important

Sarah Bernhardt: Early life and training: …for her to enter the Paris Conservatoire, the government-sponsored school of acting. She was not considered a particularly promising student, and, although she revered some of her teachers, she regarded the Conservatoire’s methods as antiquated.

Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, public institution of higher learning in Paris, dedicated to applied science and technology, that grants degrees primarily in engineering. It is also a laboratory that specializes in testing, measuring, and standardization. Its third component is a

Sarah Bernhardt: Early life and training: …for her to enter the Paris Conservatoire, the government-sponsored school of acting. She was not considered a particularly promising student, and, although she revered some of her teachers, she regarded the Conservatoire’s methods as antiquated.

Rome: The Capitoline: The Palazzo dei Conservatori (“Palace of the Conservators”), on the south side of the square, was the initial site of a papal collection of Classical works offered back to the citizens of Rome by Sixtus IV in 1471. Following its completion in the 17th century, the…

conservatory, in architecture, building in which tender plants are protected and displayed, usually attached to and directly entered from a dwelling. It was not until the 19th century that a conservatory was distinguished from a greenhouse, also a building in which tender plants are cultivated but

conservatory, in music, institution for education in musical performance and composition. The term and institution derive from the Italian conservatorio, which in the Renaissance period and earlier denoted a type of orphanage often attached to a hospital (hence the term ospedale also applied to

jelly: Preserves, jams, conserves, and marmalades differ from jellies in their inclusion of whole fruit or fruit pulp.

Jacques Cousteau: He led the Conshelf Saturation Dive Program, conducting experiments in which men lived and worked for extended periods of time at considerable depths along the continental shelves. The undersea laboratories, called Conshelf I, II, and III, sat at depths of 10 metres (about 30 feet), 30 metres (about…

Victor-Prosper Considérant was a French Socialist who, after the death of Charles Fourier in 1837, became the acknowledged leader of Fourierist Utopianism and took charge of La Phalange, its theoretical organ. Educated at the École Polytechnique in Paris, Considérant entered the French army as an

consideration, in contract law, an inducement given to enter into a contract that is sufficient to render the promise enforceable in the courts. The technical requirement is either a detriment incurred by the person making the promise or a benefit received by the other person. Thus, the person

democracy: Solving the dilemma: …Stuart Mill, concluded in his Considerations on Representative Government (1861) that “the ideal type of a perfect government” would be both democratic and representative. Foreshadowing developments that would take place in the 20th century, the dēmos of Mill’s representative democracy included women.

James Wilson: …in 1774 of his treatise Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament. In this work he set out a scheme of empire in which the British colonies would have the equivalent of dominion status. In 1774 he became a member of the Committee…

Germaine de Staël: Banishment from Paris of Germaine de Staël: …can be found in the Considérations sur la Révolution française [1818; Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution], which represents a return to Necker’s ideas and holds up the English political system as a model for France).

Daniel Dulany: …Act of 1765, he wrote Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies (1765), which was the most influential pamphlet that appeared in opposition to the Stamp Act. He opposed revolutionary action against British rule, however, and, during the American Revolution, he remained a loyalist, being deprived…

Thomas Tooke: …and Low Prices (1823) and Considerations on the State of the Currency (1826) traced the causes of low prices to underlying cyclic conditions. He continued work along these lines in his monumental History of Prices, 6 vol. (1838–57), in the last two volumes of which he collaborated with William Newmarch.

George Julius Poulett Scrope: His first work, Considerations on Volcanoes (1825), is regarded as the earliest systematic treatise on volcanology, since it was the first attempt to frame a satisfactory theory of volcanic action and to show the part volcanoes have played in the Earth’s history. He early appreciated the important part…

history of Europe: Postrevolutionary thinking: … and Joseph de Maistre his Considérations sur la France. They differed on many points, but what both saw, like their successors, was that revolution was self-perpetuating. There is no way to stop it because liberty and equality can be endlessly claimed by group after group that feels deprived or degraded.…

Germaine de Staël: Banishment from Paris of Germaine de Staël: …can be found in the Considérations sur la Révolution française [1818; Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution], which represents a return to Necker’s ideas and holds up the English political system as a model for France).

Montesquieu: Major works of Montesquieu: …et de leur décadence (1734; Reflections on the Causes of the Grandeur and Declension of the Romans, 1734). He had thought of publishing the two together, thus following an English tradition, for, as Voltaire said, the English delighted in comparing themselves with the Romans.

Charles Bonnet: …the aphid, Bonnet argued in Considérations sur les corps organisés (1762; “Considerations on Organized Bodies”) that each female organism contains within its germ cells (i.e., eggs) an infinite series of preformed individuals, leading to an immortality and immutability of species. He responded to fossil evidence of extinct species with La…

Samuel Hartlib: …education was set forth in Considerations Tending to the Happy Accomplishment of England’s Reformation in Church and State (1647), in which he proposed a labour exchange and an international bureau for the dissemination of religious and educational ideas. Hartlib further showed his concern for universal education in his many treatises…

Francesco Guicciardini: He disagreed, however, in his Considerazioni intorno ai “Discorsi” del Machiavelli (“Considerations on the ‘Discourses’ of Machiavelli,” c. 1530), with Machiavelli’s interpretation of Roman history as evidence for a political science. After the city’s surrender, he returned as papal representative and took a leading part in the persecution of the…

Alessandro Tassoni: …on Petrarch and his followers, Considerazioni sopra le rime del Petrarca (1609; “Observations on Petrarch’s Poems”), together with a collection of philosophical, literary, scientific, and political thoughts, Dieci libri di pensieri diversi di Alessandro Tassoni (1620; “Ten Books of Diverse Thoughts of Alessandro Tassoni”).

Plan your home business carefully.Many people dream of leaving the rat race and working for themselves. After all, you gain the ability to set your own schedule, the ability to charge what you think you’re worth, and the freedom to wear what you like. But consider the things you might give up, such

Mafia: …or deputy director, and a consigliere, or counselor, who had considerable power and influence. Below the underboss were the caporegime, or lieutenants, who, acting as buffers between the lower echelon workers and the don himself, protected him from a too-direct association with the organization’s illicit operations. The lieutenants supervised squads…

marketing: Marketing intermediaries: the distribution channel: For instance, in consignment selling, the producer retains full legal ownership even though the goods may be in the hands of the wholesaler or retailer—that is, until the merchandise reaches the final user or consumer.

E.O. Wilson: In Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998), he strove to demonstrate the interrelatedness and evolutionary origins of all human thought. In Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth (2006), he developed further the evolutionarily informed humanism he had earlier explored in On Human Nature. In…

Italy: The Papal States: …which produced the important blueprint Consilium de emendanda ecclesia (“Project for the Reform of the Church”), and in 1537 he made the first attempt at convoking a reform council. By the 1540s, however, hopes for reunification of Catholics and Protestants had foundered. A true Counter-Reformation—that is, the Roman Catholic Church’s…

ancient Rome: The Roman Senate and the urban magistracies: …and an imperial council (Consilium Principis), which he consulted on matters of policy, in the manner of a republican magistrate seeking the opinion of his advisory committee, consisted of the consuls, certain other magistrates, and 15 senators—not handpicked by him but chosen by lot every six months.

Jan Tarnowski: …war against the Turks, and Consilium rationis bellicae (1558; “Plans on Methods of War”), on traditional Polish methods of warfare.

metalogic: The axiomatic method: …that non-Euclidean geometries must be self-consistent systems because they have models (or interpretations) in Euclidean geometry, which in turn has a model in the theory of real numbers. It may then be asked, however, how it is known that the theory of real numbers is consistent in the sense that…

incompleteness theorem: The second incompleteness theorem follows as an immediate consequence, or corollary, from Gödel’s paper. Although it was not stated explicitly in the paper, Gödel was aware of it, and other mathematicians, such as the Hungarian-born American mathematician John von Neumann, realized immediately that it followed as…

consistory, (from Latin consistorium, “assembly place”), a gathering of ecclesiastical persons for the purpose of administering justice or transacting business, particularly meetings of the Sacred College of Cardinals with the pope as president. From the 11th century, when the institution of the

consociationalism, a stable democratic system in deeply divided societies that is based on power sharing between elites from different social groups. Consociational democracy can be found in countries that are deeply divided into distinct religious, ethnic, racial, or regional segments—conditions

consociationalism, a stable democratic system in deeply divided societies that is based on power sharing between elites from different social groups. Consociational democracy can be found in countries that are deeply divided into distinct religious, ethnic, racial, or regional segments—conditions

consol, British government security without a maturity date. The name is a contraction for Consolidated Annuities, a form of British government stock that originated in 1751. The first issue of consols carried an interest rate of 3 percent (reduced to 2.75 percent in 1888 and to 2.5 percent in

Crantor: …a new literary genre, the consolation, which was offered on the occasion of a misfortune such as death. One of Crantor’s consolatory arguments, reminiscent of Plato’s Phaedo or Aristotle’s Eudemus, was that life is actually punishment; death, the release of the soul. He wrote the first commentary on Plato’s Timaeus,…

fable, parable, and allegory: Diversity of forms: Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (c. ad 524) and Dante’s The New Life (c. 1293) interrupt the prose discourse with short poems. Verse and prose then interact to give a new thematic perspective. A related mixing of elements appears in Menippean satire (those writings deriving from the…

Seneca: Philosophical works and tragedies: Of the Consolationes, Ad Marciam (To Marcia) consoles a lady on the loss of a son; Ad Helviam matrem (To Mother Helvia), Seneca’s mother on his exile; and Ad Polybium (To Polybius), a powerful freedman on the loss of a son but with a sycophantic plea for…

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve: Early life and Romantic period: …Thought of Joseph Delorme”) and Les Consolations (1830), which on their publication attracted some attention—not least because of their deliberate flatness and apparent uncouthness, much in contrast to the grander manner of Hugo and the poet Alfred de Vigny.

electronic fighting game: Home console games: Two reasons for the decline of arcades in the 1990s were the steep learning curve for newcomers to the fighting games and the increasing power of home video consoles. As the 16-bit home consoles, such as the Sega Genesis (1988) and the Super…