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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence#Goals] | [TOKENS: 16553] |
Contents Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and use learning and intelligence to take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals. High-profile applications of AI include advanced web search engines (e.g., Google Search); recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix); virtual assistants (e.g., Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa); autonomous vehicles (e.g., Waymo); generative and creative tools (e.g., language models and AI art); and superhuman play and analysis in strategy games (e.g., chess and Go). However, many AI applications are not perceived as AI: "A lot of cutting edge AI has filtered into general applications, often without being called AI because once something becomes useful enough and common enough it's not labeled AI anymore." Various subfields of AI research are centered around particular goals and the use of particular tools. The traditional goals of AI research include learning, reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, natural language processing, perception, and support for robotics.[a] To reach these goals, AI researchers have adapted and integrated a wide range of techniques, including search and mathematical optimization, formal logic, artificial neural networks, and methods based on statistics, operations research, and economics.[b] AI also draws upon psychology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, and other fields. Some companies, such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta, aim to create artificial general intelligence (AGI) – AI that can complete virtually any cognitive task at least as well as a human. Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956, and the field went through multiple cycles of optimism throughout its history, followed by periods of disappointment and loss of funding, known as AI winters. Funding and interest vastly increased after 2012 when graphics processing units started being used to accelerate neural networks, and deep learning outperformed previous AI techniques. This growth accelerated further after 2017 with the transformer architecture. In the 2020s, an ongoing period of rapid progress in advanced generative AI became known as the AI boom. Generative AI's ability to create and modify content has led to several unintended consequences and harms. Ethical concerns have been raised about AI's long-term effects and potential existential risks, prompting discussions about regulatory policies to ensure the safety and benefits of the technology. Goals The general problem of simulating (or creating) intelligence has been broken into subproblems. These consist of particular traits or capabilities that researchers expect an intelligent system to display. The traits described below have received the most attention and cover the scope of AI research.[a] Early researchers developed algorithms that imitated step-by-step reasoning that humans use when they solve puzzles or make logical deductions. By the late 1980s and 1990s, methods were developed for dealing with uncertain or incomplete information, employing concepts from probability and economics. Many of these algorithms are insufficient for solving large reasoning problems because they experience a "combinatorial explosion": They become exponentially slower as the problems grow. Even humans rarely use the step-by-step deduction that early AI research could model. They solve most of their problems using fast, intuitive judgments. Accurate and efficient reasoning is an unsolved problem. Knowledge representation and knowledge engineering allow AI programs to answer questions intelligently and make deductions about real-world facts. Formal knowledge representations are used in content-based indexing and retrieval, scene interpretation, clinical decision support, knowledge discovery (mining "interesting" and actionable inferences from large databases), and other areas. A knowledge base is a body of knowledge represented in a form that can be used by a program. An ontology is the set of objects, relations, concepts, and properties used by a particular domain of knowledge. Knowledge bases need to represent things such as objects, properties, categories, and relations between objects; situations, events, states, and time; causes and effects; knowledge about knowledge (what we know about what other people know); default reasoning (things that humans assume are true until they are told differently and will remain true even when other facts are changing); and many other aspects and domains of knowledge. Among the most difficult problems in knowledge representation are the breadth of commonsense knowledge (the set of atomic facts that the average person knows is enormous); and the sub-symbolic form of most commonsense knowledge (much of what people know is not represented as "facts" or "statements" that they could express verbally). There is also the difficulty of knowledge acquisition, the problem of obtaining knowledge for AI applications.[c] An "agent" is any entity (artificial or not) that perceives and takes actions in the world. A rational agent has goals or preferences and takes actions to make them happen.[d] In automated planning, the agent has a specific goal. In automated decision-making, the agent has preferences—there are some situations it would prefer to be in, and some situations it is trying to avoid. The decision-making agent assigns a number to each situation (called the "utility") that measures how much the agent prefers it. For each possible action, it can calculate the "expected utility": the utility of all possible outcomes of the action, weighted by the probability that the outcome will occur. It can then choose the action with the maximum expected utility. In classical planning, the agent knows exactly what the effect of any action will be. In most real-world problems, however, the agent may not be certain about the situation they are in (it is "unknown" or "unobservable") and it may not know for certain what will happen after each possible action (it is not "deterministic"). It must choose an action by making a probabilistic guess and then reassess the situation to see if the action worked. Alongside thorough testing and improvement based on previous decisions, having an explanation for why the agent took certain decisions is a way to build trust, especially when the decisions have to be relied upon. In some problems, the agent's preferences may be uncertain, especially if there are other agents or humans involved. These can be learned (e.g., with inverse reinforcement learning), or the agent can seek information to improve its preferences. Information value theory can be used to weigh the value of exploratory or experimental actions. The space of possible future actions and situations is typically intractably large, so the agents must take actions and evaluate situations while being uncertain of what the outcome will be. A Markov decision process has a transition model that describes the probability that a particular action will change the state in a particular way and a reward function that supplies the utility of each state and the cost of each action. A policy associates a decision with each possible state. The policy could be calculated (e.g., by iteration), be heuristic, or it can be learned. Game theory describes the rational behavior of multiple interacting agents and is used in AI programs that make decisions that involve other agents. Machine learning is the study of programs that can improve their performance on a given task automatically. It has been a part of AI from the beginning.[e] There are several kinds of machine learning. Unsupervised learning analyzes a stream of data and finds patterns and makes predictions without any other guidance. Supervised learning requires labeling the training data with the expected answers, and comes in two main varieties: classification (where the program must learn to predict what category the input belongs in) and regression (where the program must deduce a numeric function based on numeric input). In reinforcement learning, the agent is rewarded for good responses and punished for bad ones. The agent learns to choose responses that are classified as "good". Transfer learning is when the knowledge gained from one problem is applied to a new problem. Deep learning is a type of machine learning that runs inputs through biologically inspired artificial neural networks for all of these types of learning. Computational learning theory can assess learners by computational complexity, by sample complexity (how much data is required), or by other notions of optimization. Natural language processing (NLP) allows programs to read, write and communicate in human languages. Specific problems include speech recognition, speech synthesis, machine translation, information extraction, information retrieval and question answering. Early work, based on Noam Chomsky's generative grammar and semantic networks, had difficulty with word-sense disambiguation[f] unless restricted to small domains called "micro-worlds" (due to the common sense knowledge problem). Margaret Masterman believed that it was meaning and not grammar that was the key to understanding languages, and that thesauri and not dictionaries should be the basis of computational language structure. Modern deep learning techniques for NLP include word embedding (representing words, typically as vectors encoding their meaning), transformers (a deep learning architecture using an attention mechanism), and others. In 2019, generative pre-trained transformer (or "GPT") language models began to generate coherent text, and by 2023, these models were able to get human-level scores on the bar exam, SAT test, GRE test, and many other real-world applications. Machine perception is the ability to use input from sensors (such as cameras, microphones, wireless signals, active lidar, sonar, radar, and tactile sensors) to deduce aspects of the world. Computer vision is the ability to analyze visual input. The field includes speech recognition, image classification, facial recognition, object recognition, object tracking, and robotic perception. Affective computing is a field that comprises systems that recognize, interpret, process, or simulate human feeling, emotion, and mood. For example, some virtual assistants are programmed to speak conversationally or even to banter humorously; it makes them appear more sensitive to the emotional dynamics of human interaction, or to otherwise facilitate human–computer interaction. However, this tends to give naïve users an unrealistic conception of the intelligence of existing computer agents. Moderate successes related to affective computing include textual sentiment analysis and, more recently, multimodal sentiment analysis, wherein AI classifies the effects displayed by a videotaped subject. A machine with artificial general intelligence would be able to solve a wide variety of problems with breadth and versatility similar to human intelligence. Techniques AI research uses a wide variety of techniques to accomplish the goals above.[b] AI can solve many problems by intelligently searching through many possible solutions. There are two very different kinds of search used in AI: state space search and local search. State space search searches through a tree of possible states to try to find a goal state. For example, planning algorithms search through trees of goals and subgoals, attempting to find a path to a target goal, a process called means-ends analysis. Simple exhaustive searches are rarely sufficient for most real-world problems: the search space (the number of places to search) quickly grows to astronomical numbers. The result is a search that is too slow or never completes. "Heuristics" or "rules of thumb" can help prioritize choices that are more likely to reach a goal. Adversarial search is used for game-playing programs, such as chess or Go. It searches through a tree of possible moves and countermoves, looking for a winning position. Local search uses mathematical optimization to find a solution to a problem. It begins with some form of guess and refines it incrementally. Gradient descent is a type of local search that optimizes a set of numerical parameters by incrementally adjusting them to minimize a loss function. Variants of gradient descent are commonly used to train neural networks, through the backpropagation algorithm. Another type of local search is evolutionary computation, which aims to iteratively improve a set of candidate solutions by "mutating" and "recombining" them, selecting only the fittest to survive each generation. Distributed search processes can coordinate via swarm intelligence algorithms. Two popular swarm algorithms used in search are particle swarm optimization (inspired by bird flocking) and ant colony optimization (inspired by ant trails). Formal logic is used for reasoning and knowledge representation. Formal logic comes in two main forms: propositional logic (which operates on statements that are true or false and uses logical connectives such as "and", "or", "not" and "implies") and predicate logic (which also operates on objects, predicates and relations and uses quantifiers such as "Every X is a Y" and "There are some Xs that are Ys"). Deductive reasoning in logic is the process of proving a new statement (conclusion) from other statements that are given and assumed to be true (the premises). Proofs can be structured as proof trees, in which nodes are labelled by sentences, and children nodes are connected to parent nodes by inference rules. Given a problem and a set of premises, problem-solving reduces to searching for a proof tree whose root node is labelled by a solution of the problem and whose leaf nodes are labelled by premises or axioms. In the case of Horn clauses, problem-solving search can be performed by reasoning forwards from the premises or backwards from the problem. In the more general case of the clausal form of first-order logic, resolution is a single, axiom-free rule of inference, in which a problem is solved by proving a contradiction from premises that include the negation of the problem to be solved. Inference in both Horn clause logic and first-order logic is undecidable, and therefore intractable. However, backward reasoning with Horn clauses, which underpins computation in the logic programming language Prolog, is Turing complete. Moreover, its efficiency is competitive with computation in other symbolic programming languages. Fuzzy logic assigns a "degree of truth" between 0 and 1. It can therefore handle propositions that are vague and partially true. Non-monotonic logics, including logic programming with negation as failure, are designed to handle default reasoning. Other specialized versions of logic have been developed to describe many complex domains. Many problems in AI (including reasoning, planning, learning, perception, and robotics) require the agent to operate with incomplete or uncertain information. AI researchers have devised a number of tools to solve these problems using methods from probability theory and economics. Precise mathematical tools have been developed that analyze how an agent can make choices and plan, using decision theory, decision analysis, and information value theory. These tools include models such as Markov decision processes, dynamic decision networks, game theory and mechanism design. Bayesian networks are a tool that can be used for reasoning (using the Bayesian inference algorithm),[g] learning (using the expectation–maximization algorithm),[h] planning (using decision networks) and perception (using dynamic Bayesian networks). Probabilistic algorithms can also be used for filtering, prediction, smoothing, and finding explanations for streams of data, thus helping perception systems analyze processes that occur over time (e.g., hidden Markov models or Kalman filters). The simplest AI applications can be divided into two types: classifiers (e.g., "if shiny then diamond"), on one hand, and controllers (e.g., "if diamond then pick up"), on the other hand. Classifiers are functions that use pattern matching to determine the closest match. They can be fine-tuned based on chosen examples using supervised learning. Each pattern (also called an "observation") is labeled with a certain predefined class. All the observations combined with their class labels are known as a data set. When a new observation is received, that observation is classified based on previous experience. There are many kinds of classifiers in use. The decision tree is the simplest and most widely used symbolic machine learning algorithm. K-nearest neighbor algorithm was the most widely used analogical AI until the mid-1990s, and Kernel methods such as the support vector machine (SVM) displaced k-nearest neighbor in the 1990s. The naive Bayes classifier is reportedly the "most widely used learner" at Google, due in part to its scalability. Neural networks are also used as classifiers. An artificial neural network is based on a collection of nodes also known as artificial neurons, which loosely model the neurons in a biological brain. It is trained to recognise patterns; once trained, it can recognise those patterns in fresh data. There is an input, at least one hidden layer of nodes and an output. Each node applies a function and once the weight crosses its specified threshold, the data is transmitted to the next layer. A network is typically called a deep neural network if it has at least 2 hidden layers. Learning algorithms for neural networks use local search to choose the weights that will get the right output for each input during training. The most common training technique is the backpropagation algorithm. Neural networks learn to model complex relationships between inputs and outputs and find patterns in data. In theory, a neural network can learn any function. In feedforward neural networks the signal passes in only one direction. The term perceptron typically refers to a single-layer neural network. In contrast, deep learning uses many layers. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) feed the output signal back into the input, which allows short-term memories of previous input events. Long short-term memory networks (LSTMs) are recurrent neural networks that better preserve longterm dependencies and are less sensitive to the vanishing gradient problem. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) use layers of kernels to more efficiently process local patterns. This local processing is especially important in image processing, where the early CNN layers typically identify simple local patterns such as edges and curves, with subsequent layers detecting more complex patterns like textures, and eventually whole objects. Deep learning uses several layers of neurons between the network's inputs and outputs. The multiple layers can progressively extract higher-level features from the raw input. For example, in image processing, lower layers may identify edges, while higher layers may identify the concepts relevant to a human such as digits, letters, or faces. Deep learning has profoundly improved the performance of programs in many important subfields of artificial intelligence, including computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing, image classification, and others. The reason that deep learning performs so well in so many applications is not known as of 2021. The sudden success of deep learning in 2012–2015 did not occur because of some new discovery or theoretical breakthrough (deep neural networks and backpropagation had been described by many people, as far back as the 1950s)[i] but because of two factors: the incredible increase in computer power (including the hundred-fold increase in speed by switching to GPUs) and the availability of vast amounts of training data, especially the giant curated datasets used for benchmark testing, such as ImageNet.[j] Generative pre-trained transformers (GPT) are large language models (LLMs) that generate text based on the semantic relationships between words in sentences. Text-based GPT models are pre-trained on a large corpus of text that can be from the Internet. The pretraining consists of predicting the next token (a token being usually a word, subword, or punctuation). Throughout this pretraining, GPT models accumulate knowledge about the world and can then generate human-like text by repeatedly predicting the next token. Typically, a subsequent training phase makes the model more truthful, useful, and harmless, usually with a technique called reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF). Current GPT models are prone to generating falsehoods called "hallucinations". These can be reduced with RLHF and quality data, but the problem has been getting worse for reasoning systems. Such systems are used in chatbots, which allow people to ask a question or request a task in simple text. Current models and services include ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Meta AI. Multimodal GPT models can process different types of data (modalities) such as images, videos, sound, and text. In the late 2010s, graphics processing units (GPUs) that were increasingly designed with AI-specific enhancements and used with specialized TensorFlow software had replaced previously used central processing unit (CPUs) as the dominant means for large-scale (commercial and academic) machine learning models' training. Specialized programming languages such as Prolog were used in early AI research, but general-purpose programming languages like Python have become predominant. The transistor density in integrated circuits has been observed to roughly double every 18 months—a trend known as Moore's law, named after the Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, who first identified it. Improvements in GPUs have been even faster, a trend sometimes called Huang's law, named after Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang. Applications AI and machine learning technology is used in most of the essential applications of the 2020s, including: The deployment of AI may be overseen by a chief automation officer (CAO). It has been suggested that AI can overcome discrepancies in funding allocated to different fields of research. AlphaFold 2 (2021) demonstrated the ability to approximate, in hours rather than months, the 3D structure of a protein. In 2023, it was reported that AI-guided drug discovery helped find a class of antibiotics capable of killing two different types of drug-resistant bacteria. In 2024, researchers used machine learning to accelerate the search for Parkinson's disease drug treatments. Their aim was to identify compounds that block the clumping, or aggregation, of alpha-synuclein (the protein that characterises Parkinson's disease). They were able to speed up the initial screening process ten-fold and reduce the cost by a thousand-fold. Game playing programs have been used since the 1950s to demonstrate and test AI's most advanced techniques. Deep Blue became the first computer chess-playing system to beat a reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, on 11 May 1997. In 2011, in a Jeopardy! quiz show exhibition match, IBM's question answering system, Watson, defeated the two greatest Jeopardy! champions, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, by a significant margin. In March 2016, AlphaGo won 4 out of 5 games of Go in a match with Go champion Lee Sedol, becoming the first computer Go-playing system to beat a professional Go player without handicaps. Then, in 2017, it defeated Ke Jie, who was the best Go player in the world. Other programs handle imperfect-information games, such as the poker-playing program Pluribus. DeepMind developed increasingly generalistic reinforcement learning models, such as with MuZero, which could be trained to play chess, Go, or Atari games. In 2019, DeepMind's AlphaStar achieved grandmaster level in StarCraft II, a particularly challenging real-time strategy game that involves incomplete knowledge of what happens on the map. In 2021, an AI agent competed in a PlayStation Gran Turismo competition, winning against four of the world's best Gran Turismo drivers using deep reinforcement learning. In 2024, Google DeepMind introduced SIMA, a type of AI capable of autonomously playing nine previously unseen open-world video games by observing screen output, as well as executing short, specific tasks in response to natural language instructions. Large language models, such as GPT-4, Gemini, Claude, Llama or Mistral, are increasingly used in mathematics. These probabilistic models are versatile, but can also produce wrong answers in the form of hallucinations. They sometimes need a large database of mathematical problems to learn from, but also methods such as supervised fine-tuning or trained classifiers with human-annotated data to improve answers for new problems and learn from corrections. A February 2024 study showed that the performance of some language models for reasoning capabilities in solving math problems not included in their training data was low, even for problems with only minor deviations from trained data. One technique to improve their performance involves training the models to produce correct reasoning steps, rather than just the correct result. The Alibaba Group developed a version of its Qwen models called Qwen2-Math, that achieved state-of-the-art performance on several mathematical benchmarks, including 84% accuracy on the MATH dataset of competition mathematics problems. In January 2025, Microsoft proposed the technique rStar-Math that leverages Monte Carlo tree search and step-by-step reasoning, enabling a relatively small language model like Qwen-7B to solve 53% of the AIME 2024 and 90% of the MATH benchmark problems. Alternatively, dedicated models for mathematical problem solving with higher precision for the outcome including proof of theorems have been developed such as AlphaTensor, AlphaGeometry, AlphaProof and AlphaEvolve all from Google DeepMind, Llemma from EleutherAI or Julius. When natural language is used to describe mathematical problems, converters can transform such prompts into a formal language such as Lean to define mathematical tasks. The experimental model Gemini Deep Think accepts natural language prompts directly and achieved gold medal results in the International Math Olympiad of 2025. Some models have been developed to solve challenging problems and reach good results in benchmark tests, others to serve as educational tools in mathematics. Topological deep learning integrates various topological approaches. Finance is one of the fastest growing sectors where applied AI tools are being deployed: from retail online banking to investment advice and insurance, where automated "robot advisers" have been in use for some years. According to Nicolas Firzli, director of the World Pensions & Investments Forum, it may be too early to see the emergence of highly innovative AI-informed financial products and services. He argues that "the deployment of AI tools will simply further automatise things: destroying tens of thousands of jobs in banking, financial planning, and pension advice in the process, but I'm not sure it will unleash a new wave of [e.g., sophisticated] pension innovation." Various countries are deploying AI military applications. The main applications enhance command and control, communications, sensors, integration and interoperability. Research is targeting intelligence collection and analysis, logistics, cyber operations, information operations, and semiautonomous and autonomous vehicles. AI technologies enable coordination of sensors and effectors, threat detection and identification, marking of enemy positions, target acquisition, coordination and deconfliction of distributed Joint Fires between networked combat vehicles, both human-operated and autonomous. AI has been used in military operations in Iraq, Syria, Israel and Ukraine. Generative artificial intelligence, also known as generative AI or GenAI, is a subfield of artificial intelligence that uses generative models to generate text, images, videos, audio, software code or other forms of data. These models learn the underlying patterns and structures of their training data, and use them to generate new data in response to input, which often takes the form of natural language prompts. The prevalence of generative AI tools has increased significantly since the AI boom in the 2020s. This boom was made possible by improvements in deep neural networks, particularly large language models (LLMs), which are based on the transformer architecture. Generative AI applications include chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, DeepSeek, Google Gemini and Grok; text-to-image models such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DALL-E; and text-to-video models such as Veo, LTX and Sora. Companies in a variety of sectors have used generative AI, including those in software development, healthcare, finance, entertainment, customer service, sales and marketing, art, writing, and product design. AI agents are software entities designed to perceive their environment, make decisions, and take actions autonomously to achieve specific goals. These agents can interact with users, their environment, or other agents. AI agents are used in various applications, including virtual assistants, chatbots, autonomous vehicles, game-playing systems, and industrial robotics. AI agents operate within the constraints of their programming, available computational resources, and hardware limitations. This means they are restricted to performing tasks within their defined scope and have finite memory and processing capabilities. In real-world applications, AI agents often face time constraints for decision-making and action execution. Many AI agents incorporate learning algorithms, enabling them to improve their performance over time through experience or training. Using machine learning, AI agents can adapt to new situations and optimise their behaviour for their designated tasks. Microsoft introduced Copilot Search in February 2023 under the name Bing Chat, as a built-in feature for Microsoft Edge and Bing mobile app. Copilot Search provides AI-generated summaries and step-by-step reasoning based of information from web publishers, ranked in Bing Search. For safety, Copilot uses AI-based classifiers and filters to reduce potentially harmful content. Google officially pushed its AI Search at its Google I/O event on 20 May 2025. It keeps people looking at Google instead of clicking on a search result. AI Overviews uses Gemini 2.5 to provide contextual answers to user queries based on web content. Applications of AI in this domain include AI-enabled menstruation and fertility trackers that analyze user data to offer predictions, AI-integrated sex toys (e.g., teledildonics), AI-generated sexual education content, and AI agents that simulate sexual and romantic partners (e.g., Replika). AI is also used for the production of non-consensual deepfake pornography, raising significant ethical and legal concerns. AI technologies have also been used to attempt to identify online gender-based violence and online sexual grooming of minors. There are also thousands of successful AI applications used to solve specific problems for specific industries or institutions. In a 2017 survey, one in five companies reported having incorporated "AI" in some offerings or processes. A few examples are energy storage, medical diagnosis, military logistics, applications that predict the result of judicial decisions, foreign policy, or supply chain management. AI applications for evacuation and disaster management are growing. AI has been used to investigate patterns in large-scale and small-scale evacuations using historical data from GPS, videos or social media. Furthermore, AI can provide real-time information on the evacuation conditions. In agriculture, AI has helped farmers to increase yield and identify areas that need irrigation, fertilization, pesticide treatments. Agronomists use AI to conduct research and development. AI has been used to predict the ripening time for crops such as tomatoes, monitor soil moisture, operate agricultural robots, conduct predictive analytics, classify livestock pig call emotions, automate greenhouses, detect diseases and pests, and save water. Artificial intelligence is used in astronomy to analyze increasing amounts of available data and applications, mainly for "classification, regression, clustering, forecasting, generation, discovery, and the development of new scientific insights." For example, it is used for discovering exoplanets, forecasting solar activity, and distinguishing between signals and instrumental effects in gravitational wave astronomy. Additionally, it could be used for activities in space, such as space exploration, including the analysis of data from space missions, real-time science decisions of spacecraft, space debris avoidance, and more autonomous operation. During the 2024 Indian elections, US$50 million was spent on authorized AI-generated content, notably by creating deepfakes of allied (including sometimes deceased) politicians to better engage with voters, and by translating speeches to various local languages. Ethics AI has potential benefits and potential risks. AI may be able to advance science and find solutions for serious problems: Demis Hassabis of DeepMind hopes to "solve intelligence, and then use that to solve everything else". However, as the use of AI has become widespread, several unintended consequences and risks have been identified. In-production systems can sometimes not factor ethics and bias into their AI training processes, especially when the AI algorithms are inherently unexplainable in deep learning. Machine learning algorithms require large amounts of data. The techniques used to acquire this data have raised concerns about privacy, surveillance and copyright. AI-powered devices and services, such as virtual assistants and IoT products, continuously collect personal information, raising concerns about intrusive data gathering and unauthorized access by third parties. The loss of privacy is further exacerbated by AI's ability to process and combine vast amounts of data, potentially leading to a surveillance society where individual activities are constantly monitored and analyzed without adequate safeguards or transparency. Sensitive user data collected may include online activity records, geolocation data, video, or audio. For example, in order to build speech recognition algorithms, Amazon has recorded millions of private conversations and allowed temporary workers to listen to and transcribe some of them. Opinions about this widespread surveillance range from those who see it as a necessary evil to those for whom it is clearly unethical and a violation of the right to privacy. AI developers argue that this is the only way to deliver valuable applications and have developed several techniques that attempt to preserve privacy while still obtaining the data, such as data aggregation, de-identification and differential privacy. Since 2016, some privacy experts, such as Cynthia Dwork, have begun to view privacy in terms of fairness. Brian Christian wrote that experts have pivoted "from the question of 'what they know' to the question of 'what they're doing with it'." Generative AI is often trained on unlicensed copyrighted works, including in domains such as images or computer code; the output is then used under the rationale of "fair use". Experts disagree about how well and under what circumstances this rationale will hold up in courts of law; relevant factors may include "the purpose and character of the use of the copyrighted work" and "the effect upon the potential market for the copyrighted work". Website owners can indicate that they do not want their content scraped via a "robots.txt" file. However, some companies will scrape content regardless because the robots.txt file has no real authority. In 2023, leading authors (including John Grisham and Jonathan Franzen) sued AI companies for using their work to train generative AI. Another discussed approach is to envision a separate sui generis system of protection for creations generated by AI to ensure fair attribution and compensation for human authors. The commercial AI scene is dominated by Big Tech companies such as Alphabet Inc., Amazon, Apple Inc., Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. Some of these players already own the vast majority of existing cloud infrastructure and computing power from data centers, allowing them to entrench further in the marketplace. In January 2024, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released Electricity 2024, Analysis and Forecast to 2026, forecasting electric power use. This is the first IEA report to make projections for data centers and power consumption for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. The report states that power demand for these uses might double by 2026, with additional electric power usage equal to electricity used by the whole Japanese nation. Prodigious power consumption by AI is responsible for the growth of fossil fuel use, and might delay closings of obsolete, carbon-emitting coal energy facilities. There is a feverish rise in the construction of data centers throughout the US, making large technology firms (e.g., Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon) into voracious consumers of electric power. Projected electric consumption is so immense that there is concern that it will be fulfilled no matter the source. A ChatGPT search involves the use of 10 times the electrical energy as a Google search. The large firms are in haste to find power sources – from nuclear energy to geothermal to fusion. The tech firms argue that – in the long view – AI will be eventually kinder to the environment, but they need the energy now. AI makes the power grid more efficient and "intelligent", will assist in the growth of nuclear power, and track overall carbon emissions, according to technology firms. A 2024 Goldman Sachs Research Paper, AI Data Centers and the Coming US Power Demand Surge, found "US power demand (is) likely to experience growth not seen in a generation...." and forecasts that, by 2030, US data centers will consume 8% of US power, as opposed to 3% in 2022, presaging growth for the electrical power generation industry by a variety of means. Data centers' need for more and more electrical power is such that they might max out the electrical grid. The Big Tech companies counter that AI can be used to maximize the utilization of the grid by all. In 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that big AI companies have begun negotiations with the US nuclear power providers to provide electricity to the data centers. In March 2024 Amazon purchased a Pennsylvania nuclear-powered data center for US$650 million. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said nuclear power is a good option for the data centers. In September 2024, Microsoft announced an agreement with Constellation Energy to re-open the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to provide Microsoft with 100% of all electric power produced by the plant for 20 years. Reopening the plant, which suffered a partial nuclear meltdown of its Unit 2 reactor in 1979, will require Constellation to get through strict regulatory processes which will include extensive safety scrutiny from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If approved (this will be the first ever US re-commissioning of a nuclear plant), over 835 megawatts of power – enough for 800,000 homes – of energy will be produced. The cost for re-opening and upgrading is estimated at US$1.6 billion and is dependent on tax breaks for nuclear power contained in the 2022 US Inflation Reduction Act. The US government and the state of Michigan are investing almost US$2 billion to reopen the Palisades Nuclear reactor on Lake Michigan. Closed since 2022, the plant is planned to be reopened in October 2025. The Three Mile Island facility will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center after Chris Crane, a nuclear proponent and former CEO of Exelon who was responsible for Exelon's spinoff of Constellation. After the last approval in September 2023, Taiwan suspended the approval of data centers north of Taoyuan with a capacity of more than 5 MW in 2024, due to power supply shortages. Taiwan aims to phase out nuclear power by 2025. On the other hand, Singapore imposed a ban on the opening of data centers in 2019 due to electric power, but in 2022, lifted this ban. Although most nuclear plants in Japan have been shut down after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, according to an October 2024 Bloomberg article in Japanese, cloud gaming services company Ubitus, in which Nvidia has a stake, is looking for land in Japan near a nuclear power plant for a new data center for generative AI. Ubitus CEO Wesley Kuo said nuclear power plants are the most efficient, cheap and stable power for AI. On 1 November 2024, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) rejected an application submitted by Talen Energy for approval to supply some electricity from the nuclear power station Susquehanna to Amazon's data center. According to the Commission Chairman Willie L. Phillips, it is a burden on the electricity grid as well as a significant cost shifting concern to households and other business sectors. In 2025, a report prepared by the International Energy Agency estimated the greenhouse gas emissions from the energy consumption of AI at 180 million tons. By 2035, these emissions could rise to 300–500 million tonnes depending on what measures will be taken. This is below 1.5% of the energy sector emissions. The emissions reduction potential of AI was estimated at 5% of the energy sector emissions, but rebound effects (for example if people switch from public transport to autonomous cars) can reduce it. YouTube, Facebook and others use recommender systems to guide users to more content. These AI programs were given the goal of maximizing user engagement (that is, the only goal was to keep people watching). The AI learned that users tended to choose misinformation, conspiracy theories, and extreme partisan content, and, to keep them watching, the AI recommended more of it. Users also tended to watch more content on the same subject, so the AI led people into filter bubbles where they received multiple versions of the same misinformation. This convinced many users that the misinformation was true, and ultimately undermined trust in institutions, the media and the government. The AI program had correctly learned to maximize its goal, but the result was harmful to society. After the U.S. election in 2016, major technology companies took some steps to mitigate the problem. In the early 2020s, generative AI began to create images, audio, and texts that are virtually indistinguishable from real photographs, recordings, or human writing, while realistic AI-generated videos became feasible in the mid-2020s. It is possible for bad actors to use this technology to create massive amounts of misinformation or propaganda; one such potential malicious use is deepfakes for computational propaganda. AI pioneer and Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton expressed concern about AI enabling "authoritarian leaders to manipulate their electorates" on a large scale, among other risks. The ability to influence electorates has been proved in at least one study. This same study shows more inaccurate statements from the models when they advocate for candidates of the political right. AI researchers at Microsoft, OpenAI, universities and other organisations have suggested using "personhood credentials" as a way to overcome online deception enabled by AI models. Machine learning applications can be biased[k] if they learn from biased data. The developers may not be aware that the bias exists. Discriminatory behavior by some LLMs can be observed in their output. Bias can be introduced by the way training data is selected and by the way a model is deployed. If a biased algorithm is used to make decisions that can seriously harm people (as it can in medicine, finance, recruitment, housing or policing) then the algorithm may cause discrimination. The field of fairness studies how to prevent harms from algorithmic biases. On 28 June 2015, Google Photos's new image labeling feature mistakenly identified Jacky Alcine and a friend as "gorillas" because they were black. The system was trained on a dataset that contained very few images of black people, a problem called "sample size disparity". Google "fixed" this problem by preventing the system from labelling anything as a "gorilla". Eight years later, in 2023, Google Photos still could not identify a gorilla, and neither could similar products from Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. COMPAS is a commercial program widely used by U.S. courts to assess the likelihood of a defendant becoming a recidivist. In 2016, Julia Angwin at ProPublica discovered that COMPAS exhibited racial bias, despite the fact that the program was not told the races of the defendants. Although the error rate for both whites and blacks was calibrated equal at exactly 61%, the errors for each race were different—the system consistently overestimated the chance that a black person would re-offend and would underestimate the chance that a white person would not re-offend. In 2017, several researchers[l] showed that it was mathematically impossible for COMPAS to accommodate all possible measures of fairness when the base rates of re-offense were different for whites and blacks in the data. A program can make biased decisions even if the data does not explicitly mention a problematic feature (such as "race" or "gender"). The feature will correlate with other features (like "address", "shopping history" or "first name"), and the program will make the same decisions based on these features as it would on "race" or "gender". Moritz Hardt said "the most robust fact in this research area is that fairness through blindness doesn't work." Criticism of COMPAS highlighted that machine learning models are designed to make "predictions" that are only valid if we assume that the future will resemble the past. If they are trained on data that includes the results of racist decisions in the past, machine learning models must predict that racist decisions will be made in the future. If an application then uses these predictions as recommendations, some of these "recommendations" will likely be racist. Thus, machine learning is not well suited to help make decisions in areas where there is hope that the future will be better than the past. It is descriptive rather than prescriptive.[m] Bias and unfairness may go undetected because the developers are overwhelmingly white and male: among AI engineers, about 4% are black and 20% are women. There are various conflicting definitions and mathematical models of fairness. These notions depend on ethical assumptions, and are influenced by beliefs about society. One broad category is distributive fairness, which focuses on the outcomes, often identifying groups and seeking to compensate for statistical disparities. Representational fairness tries to ensure that AI systems do not reinforce negative stereotypes or render certain groups invisible. Procedural fairness focuses on the decision process rather than the outcome. The most relevant notions of fairness may depend on the context, notably the type of AI application and the stakeholders. The subjectivity in the notions of bias and fairness makes it difficult for companies to operationalize them. Having access to sensitive attributes such as race or gender is also considered by many AI ethicists to be necessary in order to compensate for biases, but it may conflict with anti-discrimination laws. At the 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency a paper reported that a CLIP‑based (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training) robotic system reproduced harmful gender‑ and race‑linked stereotypes in a simulated manipulation task. The authors recommended robot‑learning methods which physically manifest such harms be "paused, reworked, or even wound down when appropriate, until outcomes can be proven safe, effective, and just." Many AI systems are so complex that their designers cannot explain how they reach their decisions. Particularly with deep neural networks, in which there are many non-linear relationships between inputs and outputs. But some popular explainability techniques exist. It is impossible to be certain that a program is operating correctly if no one knows how exactly it works. There have been many cases where a machine learning program passed rigorous tests, but nevertheless learned something different than what the programmers intended. For example, a system that could identify skin diseases better than medical professionals was found to actually have a strong tendency to classify images with a ruler as "cancerous", because pictures of malignancies typically include a ruler to show the scale. Another machine learning system designed to help effectively allocate medical resources was found to classify patients with asthma as being at "low risk" of dying from pneumonia. Having asthma is actually a severe risk factor, but since the patients having asthma would usually get much more medical care, they were relatively unlikely to die according to the training data. The correlation between asthma and low risk of dying from pneumonia was real, but misleading. People who have been harmed by an algorithm's decision have a right to an explanation. Doctors, for example, are expected to clearly and completely explain to their colleagues the reasoning behind any decision they make. Early drafts of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation in 2016 included an explicit statement that this right exists.[n] Industry experts noted that this is an unsolved problem with no solution in sight. Regulators argued that nevertheless the harm is real: if the problem has no solution, the tools should not be used. DARPA established the XAI ("Explainable Artificial Intelligence") program in 2014 to try to solve these problems. Several approaches aim to address the transparency problem. SHAP enables to visualise the contribution of each feature to the output. LIME can locally approximate a model's outputs with a simpler, interpretable model. Multitask learning provides a large number of outputs in addition to the target classification. These other outputs can help developers deduce what the network has learned. Deconvolution, DeepDream and other generative methods can allow developers to see what different layers of a deep network for computer vision have learned, and produce output that can suggest what the network is learning. For generative pre-trained transformers, Anthropic developed a technique based on dictionary learning that associates patterns of neuron activations with human-understandable concepts. Artificial intelligence provides a number of tools that are useful to bad actors, such as authoritarian governments, terrorists, criminals or rogue states. A lethal autonomous weapon is a machine that locates, selects and engages human targets without human supervision.[o] Widely available AI tools can be used by bad actors to develop inexpensive autonomous weapons and, if produced at scale, they are potentially weapons of mass destruction. Even when used in conventional warfare, they currently cannot reliably choose targets and could potentially kill an innocent person. In 2014, 30 nations (including China) supported a ban on autonomous weapons under the United Nations' Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, however the United States and others disagreed. By 2015, over fifty countries were reported to be researching battlefield robots. AI tools make it easier for authoritarian governments to efficiently control their citizens in several ways. Face and voice recognition allow widespread surveillance. Machine learning, operating this data, can classify potential enemies of the state and prevent them from hiding. Recommendation systems can precisely target propaganda and misinformation for maximum effect. Deepfakes and generative AI aid in producing misinformation. Advanced AI can make authoritarian centralized decision-making more competitive than liberal and decentralized systems such as markets. It lowers the cost and difficulty of digital warfare and advanced spyware. All these technologies have been available since 2020 or earlier—AI facial recognition systems are already being used for mass surveillance in China. There are many other ways in which AI is expected to help bad actors, some of which can not be foreseen. For example, machine-learning AI is able to design tens of thousands of toxic molecules in a matter of hours. Economists have frequently highlighted the risks of redundancies from AI, and speculated about unemployment if there is no adequate social policy for full employment. In the past, technology has tended to increase rather than reduce total employment, but economists acknowledge that "we're in uncharted territory" with AI. A survey of economists showed disagreement about whether the increasing use of robots and AI will cause a substantial increase in long-term unemployment, but they generally agree that it could be a net benefit if productivity gains are redistributed. Risk estimates vary; for example, in the 2010s, Michael Osborne and Carl Benedikt Frey estimated 47% of U.S. jobs are at "high risk" of potential automation, while an OECD report classified only 9% of U.S. jobs as "high risk".[p] The methodology of speculating about future employment levels has been criticised as lacking evidential foundation, and for implying that technology, rather than social policy, creates unemployment, as opposed to redundancies. In April 2023, it was reported that 70% of the jobs for Chinese video game illustrators had been eliminated by generative artificial intelligence. Unlike previous waves of automation, many middle-class jobs may be eliminated by artificial intelligence; The Economist stated in 2015 that "the worry that AI could do to white-collar jobs what steam power did to blue-collar ones during the Industrial Revolution" is "worth taking seriously". Jobs at extreme risk range from paralegals to fast food cooks, while job demand is likely to increase for care-related professions ranging from personal healthcare to the clergy. In July 2025, Ford CEO Jim Farley predicted that "artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S." From the early days of the development of artificial intelligence, there have been arguments, for example, those put forward by Joseph Weizenbaum, about whether tasks that can be done by computers actually should be done by them, given the difference between computers and humans, and between quantitative calculation and qualitative, value-based judgement. Recent public debates in artificial intelligence have increasingly focused on its broader societal and ethical implications. It has been argued AI will become so powerful that humanity may irreversibly lose control of it. This could, as physicist Stephen Hawking stated, "spell the end of the human race". This scenario has been common in science fiction, when a computer or robot suddenly develops a human-like "self-awareness" (or "sentience" or "consciousness") and becomes a malevolent character.[q] These sci-fi scenarios are misleading in several ways. First, AI does not require human-like sentience to be an existential risk. Modern AI programs are given specific goals and use learning and intelligence to achieve them. Philosopher Nick Bostrom argued that if one gives almost any goal to a sufficiently powerful AI, it may choose to destroy humanity to achieve it (he used the example of an automated paperclip factory that destroys the world to get more iron for paperclips). Stuart Russell gives the example of household robot that tries to find a way to kill its owner to prevent it from being unplugged, reasoning that "you can't fetch the coffee if you're dead." In order to be safe for humanity, a superintelligence would have to be genuinely aligned with humanity's morality and values so that it is "fundamentally on our side". Second, Yuval Noah Harari argues that AI does not require a robot body or physical control to pose an existential risk. The essential parts of civilization are not physical. Things like ideologies, law, government, money and the economy are built on language; they exist because there are stories that billions of people believe. The current prevalence of misinformation suggests that an AI could use language to convince people to believe anything, even to take actions that are destructive. Geoffrey Hinton said in 2025 that modern AI is particularly "good at persuasion" and getting better all the time. He asks "Suppose you wanted to invade the capital of the US. Do you have to go there and do it yourself? No. You just have to be good at persuasion." The opinions amongst experts and industry insiders are mixed, with sizable fractions both concerned and unconcerned by risk from eventual superintelligent AI. Personalities such as Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk, as well as AI pioneers such as Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Demis Hassabis, and Sam Altman, have expressed concerns about existential risk from AI. In May 2023, Geoffrey Hinton announced his resignation from Google in order to be able to "freely speak out about the risks of AI" without "considering how this impacts Google". He notably mentioned risks of an AI takeover, and stressed that in order to avoid the worst outcomes, establishing safety guidelines will require cooperation among those competing in use of AI. In 2023, many leading AI experts endorsed the joint statement that "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war". Some other researchers were more optimistic. AI pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber did not sign the joint statement, emphasising that in 95% of all cases, AI research is about making "human lives longer and healthier and easier." While the tools that are now being used to improve lives can also be used by bad actors, "they can also be used against the bad actors." Andrew Ng also argued that "it's a mistake to fall for the doomsday hype on AI—and that regulators who do will only benefit vested interests." Yann LeCun ", a Turing Award winner, disagreed with the idea that AI will subordinate humans "simply because they are smarter, let alone destroy [us]", "scoff[ing] at his peers' dystopian scenarios of supercharged misinformation and even, eventually, human extinction." In the early 2010s, experts argued that the risks are too distant in the future to warrant research or that humans will be valuable from the perspective of a superintelligent machine. However, after 2016, the study of current and future risks and possible solutions became a serious area of research. Friendly AI are machines that have been designed from the beginning to minimize risks and to make choices that benefit humans. Eliezer Yudkowsky, who coined the term, argues that developing friendly AI should be a higher research priority: it may require a large investment and it must be completed before AI becomes an existential risk. Machines with intelligence have the potential to use their intelligence to make ethical decisions. The field of machine ethics provides machines with ethical principles and procedures for resolving ethical dilemmas. The field of machine ethics is also called computational morality, and was founded at an AAAI symposium in 2005. Other approaches include Wendell Wallach's "artificial moral agents" and Stuart J. Russell's three principles for developing provably beneficial machines. Active organizations in the AI open-source community include Hugging Face, Google, EleutherAI and Meta. Various AI models, such as Llama 2, Mistral or Stable Diffusion, have been made open-weight, meaning that their architecture and trained parameters (the "weights") are publicly available. Open-weight models can be freely fine-tuned, which allows companies to specialize them with their own data and for their own use-case. Open-weight models are useful for research and innovation but can also be misused. Since they can be fine-tuned, any built-in security measure, such as objecting to harmful requests, can be trained away until it becomes ineffective. Some researchers warn that future AI models may develop dangerous capabilities (such as the potential to drastically facilitate bioterrorism) and that once released on the Internet, they cannot be deleted everywhere if needed. They recommend pre-release audits and cost-benefit analyses. Artificial intelligence projects can be guided by ethical considerations during the design, development, and implementation of an AI system. An AI framework such as the Care and Act Framework, developed by the Alan Turing Institute and based on the SUM values, outlines four main ethical dimensions, defined as follows: Other developments in ethical frameworks include those decided upon during the Asilomar Conference, the Montreal Declaration for Responsible AI, and the IEEE's Ethics of Autonomous Systems initiative, among others; however, these principles are not without criticism, especially regarding the people chosen to contribute to these frameworks. Promotion of the wellbeing of the people and communities that these technologies affect requires consideration of the social and ethical implications at all stages of AI system design, development and implementation, and collaboration between job roles such as data scientists, product managers, data engineers, domain experts, and delivery managers. The UK AI Safety Institute released in 2024 a testing toolset called 'Inspect' for AI safety evaluations available under an MIT open-source licence which is freely available on GitHub and can be improved with third-party packages. It can be used to evaluate AI models in a range of areas including core knowledge, ability to reason, and autonomous capabilities. The regulation of artificial intelligence is the development of public sector policies and laws for promoting and regulating AI; it is therefore related to the broader regulation of algorithms. The regulatory and policy landscape for AI is an emerging issue in jurisdictions globally. According to AI Index at Stanford, the annual number of AI-related laws passed in the 127 survey countries jumped from one passed in 2016 to 37 passed in 2022 alone. Between 2016 and 2020, more than 30 countries adopted dedicated strategies for AI. Most EU member states had released national AI strategies, as had Canada, China, India, Japan, Mauritius, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, U.S., and Vietnam. Others were in the process of elaborating their own AI strategy, including Bangladesh, Malaysia and Tunisia. The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence was launched in June 2020, stating a need for AI to be developed in accordance with human rights and democratic values, to ensure public confidence and trust in the technology. Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher published a joint statement in November 2021 calling for a government commission to regulate AI. In 2023, OpenAI leaders published recommendations for the governance of superintelligence, which they believe may happen in less than 10 years. In 2023, the United Nations also launched an advisory body to provide recommendations on AI governance; the body comprises technology company executives, government officials and academics. On 1 August 2024, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act entered into force, establishing the first comprehensive EU-wide AI regulation. In 2024, the Council of Europe created the first international legally binding treaty on AI, called the "Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law". It was adopted by the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other signatories. In a 2022 Ipsos survey, attitudes towards AI varied greatly by country; 78% of Chinese citizens, but only 35% of Americans, agreed that "products and services using AI have more benefits than drawbacks". A 2023 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 61% of Americans agree, and 22% disagree, that AI poses risks to humanity. In a 2023 Fox News poll, 35% of Americans thought it "very important", and an additional 41% thought it "somewhat important", for the federal government to regulate AI, versus 13% responding "not very important" and 8% responding "not at all important". In November 2023, the first global AI Safety Summit was held in Bletchley Park in the UK to discuss the near and far term risks of AI and the possibility of mandatory and voluntary regulatory frameworks. 28 countries including the United States, China, and the European Union issued a declaration at the start of the summit, calling for international co-operation to manage the challenges and risks of artificial intelligence. In May 2024 at the AI Seoul Summit, 16 global AI tech companies agreed to safety commitments on the development of AI. History The study of mechanical or "formal" reasoning began with philosophers and mathematicians in antiquity. The study of logic led directly to Alan Turing's theory of computation, which suggested that a machine, by shuffling symbols as simple as "0" and "1", could simulate any conceivable form of mathematical reasoning. This, along with concurrent discoveries in cybernetics, information theory and neurobiology, led researchers to consider the possibility of building an "electronic brain".[r] They developed several areas of research that would become part of AI, such as McCulloch and Pitts design for "artificial neurons" in 1943, and Turing's influential 1950 paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence', which introduced the Turing test and showed that "machine intelligence" was plausible. The field of AI research was founded at a workshop at Dartmouth College in 1956.[s] The attendees became the leaders of AI research in the 1960s.[t] They and their students produced programs that the press described as "astonishing":[u] computers were learning checkers strategies, solving word problems in algebra, proving logical theorems and speaking English.[v] Artificial intelligence laboratories were set up at a number of British and U.S. universities in the latter 1950s and early 1960s. Researchers in the 1960s and the 1970s were convinced that their methods would eventually succeed in creating a machine with general intelligence and considered this the goal of their field. In 1965 Herbert Simon predicted, "machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work a man can do". In 1967 Marvin Minsky agreed, writing that "within a generation ... the problem of creating 'artificial intelligence' will substantially be solved". They had, however, underestimated the difficulty of the problem.[w] In 1974, both the U.S. and British governments cut off exploratory research in response to the criticism of Sir James Lighthill and ongoing pressure from the U.S. Congress to fund more productive projects. Minsky and Papert's book Perceptrons was understood as proving that artificial neural networks would never be useful for solving real-world tasks, thus discrediting the approach altogether. The "AI winter", a period when obtaining funding for AI projects was difficult, followed. In the early 1980s, AI research was revived by the commercial success of expert systems, a form of AI program that simulated the knowledge and analytical skills of human experts. By 1985, the market for AI had reached over a billion dollars. At the same time, Japan's fifth generation computer project inspired the U.S. and British governments to restore funding for academic research. However, beginning with the collapse of the Lisp Machine market in 1987, AI once again fell into disrepute, and a second, longer-lasting winter began. Up to this point, most of AI's funding had gone to projects that used high-level symbols to represent mental objects like plans, goals, beliefs, and known facts. In the 1980s, some researchers began to doubt that this approach would be able to imitate all the processes of human cognition, especially perception, robotics, learning and pattern recognition, and began to look into "sub-symbolic" approaches. Rodney Brooks rejected "representation" in general and focussed directly on engineering machines that move and survive.[x] Judea Pearl, Lotfi Zadeh, and others developed methods that handled incomplete and uncertain information by making reasonable guesses rather than precise logic. But the most important development was the revival of "connectionism", including neural network research, by Geoffrey Hinton and others. In 1990, Yann LeCun successfully showed that convolutional neural networks can recognize handwritten digits, the first of many successful applications of neural networks. AI gradually restored its reputation in the late 1990s and early 21st century by exploiting formal mathematical methods and by finding specific solutions to specific problems. This "narrow" and "formal" focus allowed researchers to produce verifiable results and collaborate with other fields (such as statistics, economics and mathematics). By 2000, solutions developed by AI researchers were being widely used, although in the 1990s they were rarely described as "artificial intelligence" (a tendency known as the AI effect). However, several academic researchers became concerned that AI was no longer pursuing its original goal of creating versatile, fully intelligent machines. Beginning around 2002, they founded the subfield of artificial general intelligence (or "AGI"), which had several well-funded institutions by the 2010s. Deep learning began to dominate industry benchmarks in 2012 and was adopted throughout the field. For many specific tasks, other methods were abandoned.[y] Deep learning's success was based on both hardware improvements (faster computers, graphics processing units, cloud computing) and access to large amounts of data (including curated datasets, such as ImageNet). Deep learning's success led to an enormous increase in interest and funding in AI.[z] The amount of machine learning research (measured by total publications) increased by 50% in the years 2015–2019. In 2016, issues of fairness and the misuse of technology were catapulted into center stage at machine learning conferences, publications vastly increased, funding became available, and many researchers re-focussed their careers on these issues. The alignment problem became a serious field of academic study. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, AGI companies began to deliver programs that created enormous interest. In 2015, AlphaGo, developed by DeepMind, beat the world champion Go player. The program taught only the game's rules and developed a strategy by itself. GPT-3 is a large language model that was released in 2020 by OpenAI and is capable of generating high-quality human-like text. ChatGPT, launched on 30 November 2022, became the fastest-growing consumer software application in history, gaining over 100 million users in two months. It marked what is widely regarded as AI's breakout year, bringing it into the public consciousness. These programs, and others, inspired an aggressive AI boom, where large companies began investing billions of dollars in AI research. According to AI Impacts, about US$50 billion annually was invested in "AI" around 2022 in the U.S. alone and about 20% of the new U.S. Computer Science PhD graduates have specialized in "AI". About 800,000 "AI"-related U.S. job openings existed in 2022. According to PitchBook research, 22% of newly funded startups in 2024 claimed to be AI companies. Philosophy Philosophical debates have historically sought to determine the nature of intelligence and how to make intelligent machines. Another major focus has been whether machines can be conscious, and the associated ethical implications. Many other topics in philosophy are relevant to AI, such as epistemology and free will. Rapid advancements have intensified public discussions on the philosophy and ethics of AI. Alan Turing wrote in 1950 "I propose to consider the question 'can machines think'?" He advised changing the question from whether a machine "thinks", to "whether or not it is possible for machinery to show intelligent behaviour". He devised the Turing test, which measures the ability of a machine to simulate human conversation. Since we can only observe the behavior of the machine, it does not matter if it is "actually" thinking or literally has a "mind". Turing notes that we can not determine these things about other people but "it is usual to have a polite convention that everyone thinks." Russell and Norvig agree with Turing that intelligence must be defined in terms of external behavior, not internal structure. However, they are critical that the test requires the machine to imitate humans. "Aeronautical engineering texts", they wrote, "do not define the goal of their field as making 'machines that fly so exactly like pigeons that they can fool other pigeons.'" AI founder John McCarthy agreed, writing that "Artificial intelligence is not, by definition, simulation of human intelligence". McCarthy defines intelligence as "the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world". Another AI founder, Marvin Minsky, similarly describes it as "the ability to solve hard problems". Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach defines it as the study of agents that perceive their environment and take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals. The many differing definitiuons of AI have been critically analyzed. During the 2020s AI boom, the term has been used as a marketing buzzword to promote products and services which do not use AI. The International Organization for Standardization describes an AI system as a "an engineered system that generates outputs such as content, forecasts, recommendations, or decisions for a given set of human‑defined objectives, and can operate with varying levels of automation". The EU AI Act defines an AI system as "a machine-based system that is designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy and that may exhibit adaptiveness after deployment, and that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments". In the United States, influential but non‑binding guidance such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology's AI Risk Management Framework describes an AI system as "an engineered or machine-based system that can, for a given set of objectives, generate outputs such as predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments. AI systems are designed to operate with varying levels of autonomy". No established unifying theory or paradigm has guided AI research for most of its history.[aa] The unprecedented success of statistical machine learning in the 2010s eclipsed all other approaches (so much so that some sources, especially in the business world, use the term "artificial intelligence" to mean "machine learning with neural networks"). This approach is mostly sub-symbolic, soft and narrow. Critics argue that these questions may have to be revisited by future generations of AI researchers. Symbolic AI (or "GOFAI") simulated the high-level conscious reasoning that people use when they solve puzzles, express legal reasoning and do mathematics. They were highly successful at "intelligent" tasks such as algebra or IQ tests. In the 1960s, Newell and Simon proposed the physical symbol systems hypothesis: "A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means of general intelligent action." However, the symbolic approach failed on many tasks that humans solve easily, such as learning, recognizing an object or commonsense reasoning. Moravec's paradox is the discovery that high-level "intelligent" tasks were easy for AI, but low level "instinctive" tasks were extremely difficult. Philosopher Hubert Dreyfus had argued since the 1960s that human expertise depends on unconscious instinct rather than conscious symbol manipulation, and on having a "feel" for the situation, rather than explicit symbolic knowledge. Although his arguments had been ridiculed and ignored when they were first presented, eventually, AI research came to agree with him.[ab] The issue is not resolved: sub-symbolic reasoning can make many of the same inscrutable mistakes that human intuition does, such as algorithmic bias. Critics such as Noam Chomsky argue continuing research into symbolic AI will still be necessary to attain general intelligence, in part because sub-symbolic AI is a move away from explainable AI: it can be difficult or impossible to understand why a modern statistical AI program made a particular decision. The emerging field of neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence attempts to bridge the two approaches. "Neats" hope that intelligent behavior is described using simple, elegant principles (such as logic, optimization, or neural networks). "Scruffies" expect that it necessarily requires solving a large number of unrelated problems. Neats defend their programs with theoretical rigor, scruffies rely mainly on incremental testing to see if they work. This issue was actively discussed in the 1970s and 1980s, but eventually was seen as irrelevant. Modern AI has elements of both. Finding a provably correct or optimal solution is intractable for many important problems. Soft computing is a set of techniques, including genetic algorithms, fuzzy logic and neural networks, that are tolerant of imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth and approximation. Soft computing was introduced in the late 1980s and most successful AI programs in the 21st century are examples of soft computing with neural networks. AI researchers are divided as to whether to pursue the goals of artificial general intelligence and superintelligence directly or to solve as many specific problems as possible (narrow AI) in hopes these solutions will lead indirectly to the field's long-term goals. General intelligence is difficult to define and difficult to measure, and modern AI has had more verifiable successes by focusing on specific problems with specific solutions. The sub-field of artificial general intelligence studies this area exclusively. There is no settled consensus in philosophy of mind on whether a machine can have a mind, consciousness and mental states in the same sense that human beings do. This issue considers the internal experiences of the machine, rather than its external behavior. Mainstream AI research considers this issue irrelevant because it does not affect the goals of the field: to build machines that can solve problems using intelligence. Russell and Norvig add that "[t]he additional project of making a machine conscious in exactly the way humans are is not one that we are equipped to take on." However, the question has become central to the philosophy of mind. It is also typically the central question at issue in artificial intelligence in fiction. David Chalmers identified two problems in understanding the mind, which he named the "hard" and "easy" problems of consciousness. The easy problem is understanding how the brain processes signals, makes plans and controls behavior. The hard problem is explaining how this feels or why it should feel like anything at all, assuming we are right in thinking that it truly does feel like something (Dennett's consciousness illusionism says this is an illusion). While human information processing is easy to explain, human subjective experience is difficult to explain. For example, it is easy to imagine a color-blind person who has learned to identify which objects in their field of view are red, but it is not clear what would be required for the person to know what red looks like. Computationalism is the position in the philosophy of mind that the human mind is an information processing system and that thinking is a form of computing. Computationalism argues that the relationship between mind and body is similar or identical to the relationship between software and hardware and thus may be a solution to the mind–body problem. This philosophical position was inspired by the work of AI researchers and cognitive scientists in the 1960s and was originally proposed by philosophers Jerry Fodor and Hilary Putnam. Philosopher John Searle characterized this position as "strong AI": "The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds."[ac] Searle challenges this claim with his Chinese room argument, which attempts to show that even a computer capable of perfectly simulating human behavior would not have a mind. It is difficult or impossible to reliably evaluate whether an advanced AI is sentient (has the ability to feel), and if so, to what degree. But if there is a significant chance that a given machine can feel and suffer, then it may be entitled to certain rights or welfare protection measures, similarly to animals. Sapience (a set of capacities related to high intelligence, such as discernment or self-awareness) may provide another moral basis for AI rights. Robot rights are also sometimes proposed as a practical way to integrate autonomous agents into society. In 2017, the European Union considered granting "electronic personhood" to some of the most capable AI systems. Similarly to the legal status of companies, it would have conferred rights but also responsibilities. Critics argued in 2018 that granting rights to AI systems would downplay the importance of human rights, and that legislation should focus on user needs rather than speculative futuristic scenarios. They also noted that robots lacked the autonomy to take part in society on their own. Progress in AI increased interest in the topic. Proponents of AI welfare and rights often argue that AI sentience, if it emerges, would be particularly easy to deny. They warn that this may be a moral blind spot analogous to slavery or factory farming, which could lead to large-scale suffering if sentient AI is created and carelessly exploited. Future A superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that would possess intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human mind. If research into artificial general intelligence produced sufficiently intelligent software, it might be able to reprogram and improve itself. The improved software would be even better at improving itself, leading to what I. J. Good called an "intelligence explosion" and Vernor Vinge called a "singularity". However, technologies cannot improve exponentially indefinitely, and typically follow an S-shaped curve, slowing when they reach the physical limits of what the technology can do. Robot designer Hans Moravec, cyberneticist Kevin Warwick and inventor Ray Kurzweil have predicted that humans and machines may merge in the future into cyborgs that are more capable and powerful than either. This idea, called transhumanism, has roots in the writings of Aldous Huxley and Robert Ettinger. Edward Fredkin argues that "artificial intelligence is the next step in evolution", an idea first proposed by Samuel Butler's "Darwin among the Machines" as far back as 1863, and expanded upon by George Dyson in his 1998 book Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence. In fiction Thought-capable artificial beings have appeared as storytelling devices since antiquity, and have been a persistent theme in science fiction. A common trope in these works began with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, where a human creation becomes a threat to its masters. This includes such works as Arthur C. Clarke's and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (both 1968), with HAL 9000, the murderous computer in charge of the Discovery One spaceship, as well as The Terminator (1984) and The Matrix (1999). In contrast, the rare loyal robots such as Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Bishop from Aliens (1986) are less prominent in popular culture. Isaac Asimov introduced the Three Laws of Robotics in many stories, most notably with the "Multivac" super-intelligent computer. Asimov's laws are often brought up during lay discussions of machine ethics; while almost all artificial intelligence researchers are familiar with Asimov's laws through popular culture, they generally consider the laws useless for many reasons, one of which is their ambiguity. Several works use AI to force us to confront the fundamental question of what makes us human, showing us artificial beings that have the ability to feel, and thus to suffer. This appears in Karel Čapek's R.U.R., the films A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Ex Machina, as well as the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick. Dick considers the idea that our understanding of human subjectivity is altered by technology created with artificial intelligence. See also Explanatory notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(biology)] | [TOKENS: 7426] |
Contents Cell (biology) The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all forms of life or organisms. The term comes from the Latin word cellula meaning 'small room'. A biological cell basically consists of a semipermeable cell membrane enclosing cytoplasm that contains genetic material. Most cells are only visible under a microscope. Except for highly-differentiated cell types (examples include red blood cells and gametes) most cells are capable of replication, and protein synthesis. Some types of cell are motile. Cells emerged on Earth about four billion years ago. All organisms are grouped into prokaryotes, and eukaryotes. Prokaryotes are single-celled and include archaea and bacteria. Eukaryotes can be single-celled or multicellular, and include protists, plants, animals, most species of fungi, and some species of algae. All multicellular organisms are made up of many different types of cell. The diploid cells that make up the body of a plant or animal are known as somatic cells, which excludes the haploid gametes. Prokaryotes lack a membrane-bound nucleus and have a nucleoid instead. In eukaryotic cells, the nucleus is enclosed in the nuclear membrane. Eukaryotic cells contain other membrane-bound organelles such as mitochondria, which provide energy for cell functions, and chloroplasts, in plants that create sugars by photosynthesis. Other non-membrane-bound organelles may be proteinaceous, such as the ribosomes present (though different) in both groups. A unique membrane-bound prokaryotic organelle, the magnetosome has been discovered in magnetotactic bacteria. Cells were discovered by Robert Hooke in 1665, who named them after their resemblance to cells in a monastery. Cell theory, developed in 1839 by Matthias Jakob Schleiden and Theodor Schwann, states that all organisms are composed of one or more cells, that cells are the fundamental unit of structure and function in all organisms, and that all cells come from pre-existing cells. Types Organisms are broadly grouped into eukaryotes, and prokaryotes. Eukaryotic cells possess a membrane-bound nucleus, and prokaryotic cells lack a nucleus but have a nucleoid region. Prokaryotes are single-celled organisms, whereas eukaryotes can be either single-celled or multicellular. Single-celled eukaryotes include microalgae such as diatoms. Multicellular eukaryotes include all animals, and plants, most fungi, and some species of algae. All prokaryotes are single-celled and include bacteria and archaea, two of the three domains of life. Prokaryotic cells were likely the first form of life on Earth, characterized by having vital biological processes including cell signaling. They are simpler and smaller than eukaryotic cells, lack a nucleus, and the other usually present membrane-bound organelles. Prokaryotic organelles are less complex, and are typically membrane-less. All prokaryotic cells secrete different substances from their membranes, including exoenzymes, and extracellular polymeric substances. Most prokaryotes are the smallest of all organisms, ranging from 0.5 to 2.0 μm in diameter. The largest bacterium known, Thiomargarita magnifica, is visible to the naked eye with an average length of 1 cm, but can be as much as 2 cm Bacteria are enclosed in a cell envelope, that protects the interior from the exterior. It generally consists of a plasma membrane covered by a cell wall which, for some bacteria, is covered by a third gelatinous layer called a bacterial capsule. The capsule may be polysaccharide as in pneumococci, meningococci or polypeptide as Bacillus anthracis or hyaluronic acid as in streptococci. Mycoplasma only possess the cell membrane. The cell envelope gives rigidity to the cell and separates the interior of the cell from its environment, serving as a protective mechanical and chemical filter. The cell wall consists of peptidoglycan and acts as an additional barrier against exterior forces. The cell wall acts to protect the cell mechanically and chemically from its environment, and is an additional layer of protection to the cell membrane. It also prevents the cell from expanding and bursting (cytolysis) from osmotic pressure due to a hypotonic environment. The DNA of a bacterium typically consists of a single circular chromosome that is in direct contact with the cytoplasm in a region called the nucleoid. Some bacteria contain multiple circular or even linear chromosomes. The cytoplasm also contains ribosomes and various inclusions where transcription takes place alongside translation. Extrachromosomal DNA as plasmids, are usually circular and encode additional genes, such as those of antibiotic resistance. Linear bacterial plasmids have been identified in several species of spirochete bacteria, including species of Borrelia which causes Lyme disease. The prokaryotic cytoskeleton in bacteria is involved in the maintenance of cell shape, polarity and cytokinesis. Compartmentalization is a key feature of eukaryotic cells but some species of bacteria, have protein-based organelle-like microcompartments such as gas vesicles, and carboxysomes, and encapsulin nanocompartments. Certain membrane-bound prokaryotic organelles have also been discovered. They include the magnetosome of magnetotactic bacteria, and the anammoxosome of anammox bacteria. Cell-surface appendages can include flagella, and pili, protein structures that facilitate movement and communication between cells. The flagellum stretches from the cytoplasm through the cell membrane and extrudes through the cell wall. Fimbriae are short attachment pili, the other type of pilus is the longer conjugative type. Fimbriae are formed of an antigenic protein called pilin, and are responsible for the attachment of bacteria to specific receptors on host cells. Archaea are enclosed in a cell envelope consisting of a plasma membrane and a cell wall. An exception to this is the Thermoplasma that only has the cell membrane. The cell membranes of archaea are unique, consisting of ether-linked lipids. The prokaryotic cytoskeleton has homologues of eukaryotic actin and tubulin. A unique form of metabolism in the archaean is methanogenesis. Their cell-surface appendage equivalent of the flagella is the differently structured and unique archaellum. The DNA is contained in a circular chromosome in direct contact with the cytoplasm, in a region known as the nucleoid. Ribosomes are also found freely in the cytoplasm, or attached to the cell membrane where DNA processing takes place. The archaea are noted for their extremophile species, and many are selectively evolved to thrive in extreme heat, cold, acidic, alkaline, or high salt conditions. There are no known archaean pathogens. Eukaryotes can be single-celled, as in diatoms (microscopic algae), or multicellular, as in animals, plants, most fungi, and some algae. Multicellular organisms are made up of many different types of cell known overall as somatic cells. Eukaryotes are distinguished by the presence of a membrane-bound nucleus. The nucleus gives the eukaryote its name, which means "true nut" or "true kernel", where "nut" means the nucleus. A eukaryotic cell can be 2 to 100 times larger in diameter than a typical prokaryotic cell. Eukaryotic cells have a cell membrane that surrounds a gel-like cytoplasm. The cytoplasm contains the cytoskeleton, and surrounds the cell nucleus, the endoplasmic reticulum, ribosomes, the Golgi apparatus, mitochondria, lysosomes, peroxisomes, endosomes, vacuoles and vesicles, and may have a cell wall, chloroplasts, vaults, and cell-surface appendages. There are many cell variations among the different eukaryote groups. The membranes of most of the organelles including the cell membrane are sometimes referred to as the endomembrane system. All of these membranes are involved in the secretory and endocytic pathways, modifying, packaging, and transporting proteins and lipids to and from the trans-Golgi network. In mammalian cells, endocytosis includes early, late, and recycling endosomes. Most distinct cell types arise from a single totipotent cell, called a zygote, that differentiates into hundreds of different cell types during the course of development. Differentiation of cells is driven by different environmental cues (such as cell–cell interaction) and intrinsic differences (such as those caused by the uneven distribution of molecules during division). Eukaryotic cell types include those that make up animals, plants, fungi, algae, and protists. All of which have many different species and cell differences. Animal cells All the cells in an animal body develop from one totipotent diploid cell called a zygote. During the embryonic development of an animal, the cells differentiate into the specialised tissues and organs of the organism. Different groups of cells differentiate from the germ layers. The sponge has only one layer. Some other animals known as diploblasts have two germ layers the ectoderm, and the endoderm. More advanced animals have an extra layer, the middle mesodermal layer, and are known as triploblastic. Triploblastic animals make up the large clade of Bilateria. Differentiation results in structural or functional changes to stem cells, and progenitor cells. The ectoderm gives rise to several different types of epithelial tissues including the skin, and glands, and to the nervous tissue. Epithelium as mesothelium forms the lining of many organs, and inner cavities. Epithelial cells are joined together in sheets by way of cell junctions; adherens junctions, and desmosomes bind the cells together, and hemidesmosomes bind the cells to the basement membrane. All three types are linked to the cell cytoskeleton. There are an estimated 200 different cell types in the human body. The estimated cell count in a typical adult human body is around 30 trillion cells, 36 trillion in an adult male, and 28 trillion in a female. An animal cell has a cell membrane that surrounds a gel-like cytoplasm. The cytoplasm contains the cytoskeleton, the cell nucleus, the endoplasmic reticulum, ribosomes, the Golgi apparatus, mitochondria, lysosomes, peroxisomes, endosomes, vacuoles and vesicles, and vaults. An animal cell structure, as other eukaryotes, includes an endomembrane system encompassing all the membranes of the organelles and the cell membrane, excluding the mitochondria.The whole system cooperates in the modification, packaging, and transport of proteins and lipids. The cell membrane, or plasma membrane, is a selectively permeable membrane as an outer boundary of the cell that encloses the cytoplasm. The membrane serves to separate and protect a cell from its surrounding environment and is made mostly from a lipid bilayer of phospholipids, which are amphiphilic (partly hydrophobic and partly hydrophilic). It has been best described in the fluid mosaic model. Embedded within the cell membrane are secretory macromolecular lipoprotein structures called porosomes; and a number of different channels and pumps involved in actively transporting molecules into and out of the cell. The membrane is semi-permeable, and selectively permeable, in that it can either let a substance (molecule or ion) pass through freely, to a limited extent or not at all. Cell surface receptors in the membrane allow cells to detect external signaling molecules such as hormones. Underlying, and attached to the cell membrane is the cell cortex, the outermost part of the actin cytoskeleton. The cell membrane encloses the cytoplasm of the cell that surrounds all of the cell's organelles. It is made up of two main components, the cytoskeleton made up of protein filaments, and the cytosol. The network of filaments and microtubules of the cytoskeleton gives shape and support to the cell, and has a part in organising the cell components. The cytosol is a gel-like substance made up of water, ions, and non-essential biomolecules, and is the main site of protein synthesis, and degradation. The acidity (pH) of the cytosol is near neutral, and is regulated by transporters in the cell membrane. Different proteins in the cytoplasm operate optimally at different pHs. The cytosol forms 30%–50% of the cell's volume. The cytoskeleton acts to organize and maintain the cell's shape; anchors organelles in place; helps during endocytosis, and in the uptake of external materials by a cell.The cytoskeleton is composed of microtubules, intermediate filaments and microfilaments. There are a great number of proteins associated with them, each controlling a cell's structure by directing, bundling, and aligning filaments. The outermost part of the cytoskeleton is the cell cortex, or actin cortex, a thin layer of cross-linked actomyosins. Its thickness varies with cell type and physiology. It directs the transport through the ER and the Golgi apparatus. The cytoskeleton in the animal cell also plays a part in cytokinesis, in the formation of the spindle apparatus during cell division, the separation of daughter cells. Organelles are compartments of the cell that are specialized for carrying out one or more functions, analogous to the organs, such as the heart, and lungs. There are several types of organelles held in the cytoplasm. Most organelles are membrane-bound, and vary in size and number based on the growth of the host cell. Organelles include the nucleus, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, vesicles, and vacuoles. Membrane-less organelles include the centrosome, typically the ribosome, and vaults. The cell nucleus is the largest organelle in the animal cell. It houses the cell's chromosomes, and is the place where almost all DNA replication and RNA synthesis (transcription) occur. The nucleus is spherical and separated from the cytoplasm by a double-membraned nuclear envelope. A space between the membranes is called the perinuclear space. The nuclear envelope isolates and protects a cell's DNA from various molecules that could accidentally damage its structure or interfere with its processing. During processing, DNA is transcribed, or copied into a special RNA, called messenger RNA (mRNA). This mRNA is then transported out of the nucleus, where it is translated into a specific protein molecule. The nucleolus is a specialized biomolecular condensate within the nucleus where ribosome subunits are assembled. It is one of several types of membrane-less nuclear bodies. Cells use DNA for their long-term information storage that is encoded in its DNA sequence. RNA is used for information transport (e.g., mRNA) and enzymatic functions (e.g., ribosomal RNA). Transfer RNA (tRNA) molecules are used to add amino acids during protein translation. The DNA of each cell is its genetic material, and is organized in multiple linear molecules, called chromosomes, that are coiled around histone proteins and housed in the cell nucleus. In humans, the nuclear genome is divided into 46 linear chromosomes, including 22 homologous chromosome pairs and a pair of sex chromosomes. The nucleus is a membrane-bound organelle. The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is a transport network for molecules targeted for certain modifications and specific destinations, as compared to molecules that float freely in the cytoplasm. The ER has two forms: the rough endoplasmic reticulum (RER), which has ribosomes on its surface that secrete proteins into the ER, and the smooth endoplasmic reticulum (SER), which lacks ribosomes. The smooth ER plays a role in calcium sequestration and release, and helps in synthesis of lipid. The Golgi apparatus processes and packages proteins, and lipids, that are synthesized by the cell. It is organized as a stack of plate-like structures known as cisternae. Mitochondria are self-replicating double membrane-bound organelles that occur in various numbers, shapes, and sizes in the cytoplasm of the cell. Aerobic respiration in the mitochondria generates the cell's energy by oxidative phosphorylation, using oxygen to release energy stored in cellular nutrients (typically pertaining to glucose) to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondria are descended from bacteria that formed an endosymbiotic relationship with ancient prokaryotes. Mitochondria multiply by binary fission and have their own DNA contained in multiple small circular chromosomes. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is very small compared to nuclear DNA, but it codes for 13 proteins involved in mitochondrial energy production and specific transfer RNAs (tRNAs). Mitochondria also have their own ribosomes known as mitoribosomes. A lysosome is the most acidic compartment in the cell. It contains over 60 different hydrolytic enzymes that need an acidic environment. They digest excess or worn-out organelles, food particles, and engulfed viruses or bacteria. The cell could not house these destructive enzymes if they were not contained in a membrane-bound compartment. Peroxisomes, are microbodies bounded by a single membrane. A peroxisome has no DNA or ribosomes and the proteins that it needs are encoded in the nucleus, and selectively imported from the cytosol. Some proteins enter via the endomembrane reticulum. They have enzymes that rid the cell of toxic peroxides. The enzymatic content of the peroxisomes varies widely across the species, as it can in an individual organism. The peroxisomes in animal cells are concentrated in the liver cells and adipocytes. Vacuoles sequester waste products. Some cells, most notably Amoeba, have contractile vacuoles, which can pump water out of the cell if there is too much water. The centrosome is a membrane-less organelle composed of pericentriolar material and the two centrioles. The centrosome is the main microtubule organizing center in the animal cell that produces the microtubules key components of the cytoskeleton. Centrosomes are composed of two centrioles which lie perpendicular to each other in which each has an organization like a cartwheel, which separate during cell division and help in the formation of the mitotic spindle. A ribosome is a large complex of RNA and protein molecules often considered as a non-membrane-bound organelle. They each consist of two subunits, one larger than the other, and act as an assembly line where messenger RNA from the nucleus is used to synthesise proteins from amino acids. Eukaryotic ribosomes are often bound to, and give the name to the rough type of endoplasmic reticulum, but they are also found freely floating in the cytoplasm. A vault is a large ribonuclear protein particle, a non-membrane-bound organelle, three times the size of a ribosome but with only three proteins in contrast to the near hundred in the ribosome. Most human cells have around 10,000 vaults, and in some types of immune cell there may be up to 100,000. Macrophages have the greatest number of vaults of any human cell. Vaults are largely overlooked because their functions are purely speculative. They may play a role in transport from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, and may serve as scaffolds for signal transduction proteins. They are present in normal tissues, and more so in secretory and excretory epithelial cells. Some types of specialised cell are localised to a particular animal group. Vertebrates for example have specialised, structurally changed cells including muscle cells. The cell membrane of a skeletal muscle cell or of a cardiac muscle cell is termed the sarcolemma. And the cytoplasm is termed the sarcoplasm. Skeletal muscle cells also become multinucleated. Populations of animal groups evolve to become distinct species, where sexual reproduction is isolated. The many species of vertebrates for example have other unique characteristics by way of additional specialised cells. In some species of electric fish for example modified muscle cells or nerve cells have specialised to become electerocytes capable of creating and storing electrical energy for future release, as in stunning prey, or use in electrolocation. These are large flat cells in the electric eel, and electric ray in which thousands are stacked into an electric organ comparable to a voltaic pile. Many animal cells are ciliated and most cells except red blood cells have primary cilia. Primary cilia play important roles in chemosensation and mechanosensation. Each cilium may be "viewed as a sensory cellular antennae that coordinates a large number of cellular signaling pathways, sometimes coupling the signaling to ciliary motility or alternatively to cell division and differentiation." The cilia in other cells are motile organelles, and in the respiratory epithelium play an important role in the movement of mucus. In the reproductive system ciliated epithelium in the fallopian tubes move the egg from the uterus to the ovary. Motile cilia also known as flagella, drive the sperm cells. Invertebrate planarians have ciliated excretory flame cells. Other excretory cells also found in planarians are solenocytes that are long and flagellated. Plant cells Other types of organelle specific to plant cells, are pigment-containing plastids, especially chloroplasts that contain chlorophyll. Chloroplasts capture the sun's energy to make carbohydrates through photosynthesis. Chromoplasts contain fat-soluble carotenoid pigments such as orange carotene and yellow xanthophylls which helps in synthesis and storage. Leucoplasts are non-pigmented plastids and helps in storage of nutrients. Plastids divide by binary fission. Vacuoles in plant cells store water, and are surrounded by a membrane. The vacuoles of plant cells are usually larger than those of animal cells. The vacuole membrane transports ions against concentration gradients. The plant cytoskeleton is a dynamic structure that has a scaffold of microtubules and microfilaments, but not the intermediate filaments. The microtubule organizing center in plant cells is often sited underneath the cell membrane where nucleated microtubules often form sheet-like semi-parallel arrays. There are two types of peroxisomes in plants. One type is in the leaves where it takes part in photorespiration. The other type is in germinating seeds where they take part in the conversion of fatty acids into sugars for the plant's growth. In this peroxisome type the enzymatic content is so different than in other groups that it has an alternative name of glyoxysome, their enzymes are of the glyoxylate cycle. Algal cells Algae members are photoautotrophs able to use photosynthesis to produce energy. Photosynthesis is made possible by the use of plastids, organelles in the cytoplasm known as chloroplasts. Algal photoautotrophs include red algae. Alginate is a polysaccharide found in the matrix of the cell walls of brown algae, and has many important uses in the food industry, and in pharmacology. Fungal cells The cells of fungi have in addition to the shared eukaryotic organelles a spitzenkörper in their endomembrane system, associated with hyphal tip growth. It is a phase-dark body that is composed of an aggregation of membrane-bound vesicles containing cell wall components, serving as a point of assemblage and release of such components intermediate between the Golgi and the cell membrane. The spitzenkörper is motile and generates new hyphal tip growth as it moves forward. The cell walls of fungi are uniquely made of a chitin-glucan complex. Protist cells The cells of protists may be bounded only by a cell membrane, or may in addition have a cell wall, or may be covered by a pellicle (in ciliates), a test (in testate amoebae), or a frustule (in diatoms). Some protists such as amoebae may feed on other organisms and ingest food by phagocytosis. Vacuoles known as phagosomes in the cytoplasm may be used to draw in and incorporate the captured particles. Other types of protists are photoautotrophs, providing themselves with energy by photosynthesis. Most single-celled protists are motile, and generate movement with cilia, flagella, or pseudopodia. Ciliates have two different sorts of nuclei: a tiny, diploid micronucleus (the "generative nucleus", which carries the germline of the cell), and a large, ampliploid macronucleus (the "vegetative nucleus", which takes care of general cell regulation. Cellular processes During cell division, a single cell, the mother cell divides into two daughter cells. This leads to the growth of tissue in multicellular organisms. Prokaryotic cells divide by binary fission, while eukaryotic cells usually undergo a process of nuclear division, called mitosis, followed by division of the cell, called cytokinesis. A diploid cell may undergo meiosis to produce haploid cells, usually four. Haploid cells serve as gametes in multicellular organisms, fusing to form new diploid cells.[citation needed] DNA replication, or the process of duplicating a cell's genome, always happens when a cell divides through mitosis or binary fission.[citation needed] This occurs during the S (synthesis) phase of the cell cycle. In meiosis, the DNA is replicated only once, while the cell divides twice. DNA replication only occurs before meiosis I. DNA replication does not occur when the cells divide the second time, in meiosis II. Replication, like all cellular activities, requires specialized proteins. Cell signaling is the process by which a cell interacts with itself, other cells, and the environment. Typically, the signaling process involves three components: the first messenger (the ligand), the receptor, and the signal itself. Most cell signaling is chemical in nature, and can occur with neighboring cells or more distant targets. Signal receptors are complex proteins or tightly bound multimer of proteins, located in the plasma membrane or within the interior. Each cell is programmed to respond to specific extracellular signal molecules, and this process is the basis of development, tissue repair, immunity, and homeostasis. Individual cells are able to manage receptor sensitivity including turning them off, and receptors can become less sensitive when they are occupied for long durations. Errors in signaling interactions may cause diseases such as cancer, autoimmunity, and diabetes. Protein targeting or protein sorting is the biological mechanism by which proteins are transported to their appropriate destinations within or outside the cell. Proteins can be targeted to the inner space of an organelle, different intracellular membranes, the plasma membrane, or to the exterior of the cell via secretion. Information contained in the protein itself directs this delivery process. Correct sorting is crucial for the cell; errors or dysfunction in sorting have been linked to multiple diseases. All cells contain enzyme systems that scan for DNA damage and carry out repair. Diverse repair processes have evolved in all organisms. Repair is vital to maintain DNA integrity, avoid cell death and errors of replication that could lead to mutation. Repair processes include nucleotide excision repair, DNA mismatch repair, non-homologous end joining of double-strand breaks, recombinational repair and light-dependent repair (photoreactivation). Between successive cell divisions, cells grow through the functioning of cellular metabolism. Cell metabolism is the process by which individual cells process nutrient molecules. Metabolism has two distinct divisions: catabolism, in which the cell breaks down complex molecules to produce energy and reducing power, and anabolism, in which the cell uses energy and reducing power to construct complex molecules and perform other biological functions. Complex sugars can be broken down into simpler sugar molecules called monosaccharides such as glucose. Once inside the cell, glucose is broken down to make adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that possesses readily available energy, through two different pathways. In plant cells, chloroplasts create sugars by photosynthesis, using the energy of light to join molecules of water and carbon dioxide. Cells are capable of synthesizing new proteins, which are essential for the modulation and maintenance of cellular activities. This process involves the formation of new protein molecules from amino acid building blocks based on information encoded in DNA/RNA. Protein synthesis generally consists of two major steps: transcription and translation. Transcription is the process where genetic information in DNA is used to produce a complementary RNA strand. This RNA strand is then processed to give messenger RNA (mRNA), which is free to migrate into the cytoplasm. mRNA molecules bind to protein-RNA complexes called ribosomes located in the cytosol, where they are translated into polypeptide sequences. The ribosome mediates the formation of a polypeptide sequence based on the mRNA sequence. The mRNA sequence directly relates to the polypeptide sequence by binding to transfer RNA (tRNA) adapter molecules in binding pockets within the ribosome. The new polypeptide chain then folds into a functional three-dimensional protein molecule. Unicellular organisms can move in order to find food or escape predators. Common mechanisms of motion include flagella and cilia, and the projection of pseudopodia in amoeboid movement. Cells in multicellular organisms can move during processes such as wound healing, the immune response, and cancer metastasis. In wound healing in animals, white blood cells move to the wound site to kill the pathogens causing infection. Cell motility involves many receptors, crosslinking, bundling, binding, adhesion, motor and other proteins. The process is divided into three steps: protrusion of the leading edge of the cell, adhesion of the leading edge and de-adhesion at the cell body and rear, and cytoskeletal contraction to pull the cell forward. Each step is driven by physical forces generated by unique segments of the cytoskeleton. In August 2020, scientists described one way cells—in particular cells of a slime mold and mouse pancreatic cancer-derived cells—are able to navigate efficiently through a body and identify the best routes through complex mazes: generating gradients after breaking down diffused chemoattractants which enable them to sense upcoming maze junctions before reaching them, including around corners. Cell death occurs when a cell ceases to carry out its functions, as a result of ageing, or types of cell injury (necrosis). Programmed cell death, including apoptosis, and autophagy is a natural process of replacing dead cells with new ones. A separate mode of cellular death is known as a mitotic catastrophe, which occurs during mitosis, following the improper progression of, or entrance to the cell cycle. This mechanism operates to prevent genomic instability. Other cell death pathways are described, and include anoikis, pyroptosis, mitoptosis, parthanatos, and necroptosis. Origins The origin of cells has to do with the origin of life, which began the history of life on Earth. Small molecules needed for life may have been carried to Earth on meteorites, created at deep-sea vents, or synthesized by lightning in a reducing atmosphere. There is little experimental data defining what the first self-replicating forms were. RNA may have been the earliest self-replicating molecule, as it can both store genetic information and catalyze chemical reactions. This process required an enzyme to catalyze the RNA reactions, which may have been the early peptides that formed in hydrothermal vents. Cells emerged around 4 billion years ago. The first cells were most likely heterotrophs. The early cell membranes were probably simpler and more permeable than later ones, with only a single fatty acid chain per lipid. Lipids spontaneously form bilayered vesicles in water, and could have preceded RNA. Eukaryotic cells were created some 2.2 billion years ago in a process called eukaryogenesis. This is widely agreed to have involved symbiogenesis, in which an archaean and a bacterium came together to create the first eukaryotic common ancestor. It evolved into a population of single-celled organisms that included the last eukaryotic common ancestor, gaining capabilities along the way. This cell had a new level of complexity, with a nucleus and facultatively aerobic mitochondria. It featured at least one centriole and cilium, sex (meiosis and syngamy), peroxisomes, and a dormant cyst with a cell wall of chitin and/or cellulose. The last eukaryotic common ancestor gave rise to the eukaryotes' crown group, containing the ancestors of animals, fungi, plants, and a diverse range of single-celled organisms. The green plants were created around 1.6 billion years ago with a second episode of symbiogenesis that added chloroplasts, derived from cyanobacteria. Multicellular behavior is demonstrated by microorganisms that are cloned from a single cell and form visible microbial colonies. A microbial consortium of two or more species can form a biofilm by the secretion of extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs). Slime molds consist of different groups of microorganisms grouped together in a multicellular-like fashion. The first evidence of multicellularity in an organism comes from cyanobacteria-like organisms that lived between 3 and 3.5 billion years ago. Cyanobacteria are variable in morphology, filamentous forms exhibit functional cell differentiation such as heterocysts (for nitrogen fixation), akinetes (resting stage cells), and hormogonia (reproductive, motile filaments). These, together with the intercellular connections they possess, are considered the first signs of multicellularity. Multicellularity was made possible by the development of the extracellular matrix (ECM) similar in function to the bacterial EPS that consists of extracellular polymeric substances. EPS enables microbial cell adhesion, and is believed to be the first evolutionary step toward multicellular organisms. Basement membranes are a type of specialized extracellular matrix that surrounds most animal tissues, and are essential in their formation. Extracellular matrix components of laminin domains, integrated with other proteins such as cadherins have been described in single-celled motile choanoflagellates that pre-dates the evolutionary emergence of basement membranes, one of the two types of ECM. The emergence of the basement membrane coincided with the origin of multicellularity. The other type of ECM is the interstial matrix. The evolution of multicellularity from unicellular ancestors has been replicated in the laboratory, in evolution experiments using predation as the selective pressure. History of research In 1665, Robert Hooke examined a thin slice of cork under his microscope, and saw a structure of small enclosures. He wrote "I could exceeding plainly perceive it to be all perforated and porous, much like a honeycomb, but that the pores of it were not regular". To further support his theory, Matthias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann studied cells of both animal and plants. What they discovered were significant differences between the two types of cells. This put forth the idea that cells were fundamental to both plants and animals. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_on_his_departure_from_the_Department_of_Government_Efficiency.wav] | [TOKENS: 80] |
File:Elon Musk on his departure from the Department of Government Efficiency.wav Summary Licensing https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/PDMCreative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0falsefalse File history Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. File usage The following page uses this file: Global file usage The following other wikis use this file: |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_activism] | [TOKENS: 1244] |
Contents Data activism Data activism is a form of activism that uses data and data analysis to generate evidence and visualizations with the aim of revealing injustices, improving people's lives and promoting social change. It emerged from living in a time of data abundance, and the varieties of new technologies we possess; such as aerial sensors, ubiquitous mobile devices, and radio-frequency identification readers. With these new technologies, we have entered a new phase in human history called the "industrial revolution of data". Data activism uses the production and collection of digital, volunteered, and open data to challenge existing power relations. Although this is a form of activism, it is not to be confused with the term slacktivism, meaning a low-effort method of using the internet to support political or social issues. Forms of data activism can include digital humanitarianism and engaging in hackathons, which is an event in which software developers are working at an accelerated pace. Data activism is a social practice that is becoming more well known with the expansion of technology, open-sourced software and the ability to communicate beyond an individual's immediate community. A defining characteristic of data activism is that ordinary citizens can participate, in comparison to previous forms of media activism where elite skill sets were required to participate. It gives power back to civilians, as they can leverage data activism in two ways: proactive data activism and reactive data activism, which will be discussed in the later paragraphs. By increasingly involving everyday users, data activism reflects a shift in how civil society perceives and responds to large-scale data collection. Data activism can be the act of providing data on events or issues that individuals feel have not been properly addressed by those in power. For example, the first deployment of the Ushahidi platform in 2008 in Kenya visualized the post-electoral violence that had been silenced by the government and the new media. The social practice of data activism revolves around the idea that data is political in nature. By collecting data for a particular purpose, it allows data activists to quantify and expose specific issues using statistical evidence. Types A twofold classification of data activism has been proposed by Stefania Milan and Miren Gutiérrez, later explored more in-depth by Milan according to the type of activists' engagement with data politics. 'Re-active data activism' can be characterized as motivated by the perception of massive data collection as a threat, for instance when activists seek to resist corporate and government snooping, whereas 'pro-active data activism' sees the increasing availability of data as an opportunity to foster social change. These differentiated approaches to using data result in different repertoires of action. These two types of data activism are not at odds with one another, since they share a crucial feature: they take information as a constitutive force capable of shaping social reality and contribute to generate new alternative ways of interpreting it. Examples of re-active data activism include the development and usage of encryption and anonymity networks to resist corporate or state surveillance, while instances of pro-active data activism include projects in which data is mobilized to advocate for change and contest established social narrative. Examples It was discovered that in the United States between 180,000 and 500,000 rape kits were left unprocessed in storage in forensic warehouses. Registration and entry of criminal DNA had been inconsistent, which caused this large backlog in date rape kits. The delay in analyzing these DNA samples would approximately be six months to two years. The information from rape kits was meant to be entered into the forensic warehouse database, but there was a disconnect between the warehouse system and the national DNA database Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) that left these rape kits unexamined. Testing these rape kits is important in identifying and prosecuting offenders, recognizing serial rapists, and providing justice for rape victims. The Ending the Backlog Initiative used data activism to bring attention to this issue, demanding that the data from these rape kits be processed. It was this initiative got the attention of the United States government, who stated that this was unacceptable and put $79 million in grants toward helping eliminate the backlog of rape kits. The quantification of this data changed the way in which the public perceived the process of analyzing rape kits. This data was then used to gain the attention of politicians and decision-makers. DataKind is a digital activism organization that brings together data scientists, other activists, and members of governments for the purpose of using big data in similar ways that corporations currently do, namely to monetize data. However, here big data is used to help solve social problems, like food shortages and homelessness. DataKind was founded in 2011 and today there are chapters in the United Kingdom, India, Singapore and the United States of America. Jake Porway is the founder and executive director of DataKind. Criticism While data activists may have good intentions, one criticism is that by allowing citizens to generate data without training or reliable forms of measurement, the data can be skewed or presented in different forms. Additionally, unexperienced people analyzing data may misinterpret secondary data or charts which can lead to falsifying or misleading information. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Safecast was an organization established by a group of citizens that were concerned about high levels of radiation in the area. After receiving conflicting messages about levels of radiation from different media sources and scientists, individuals were uncertain which information was the most reliable. This brought about a movement where citizens would use Geiger counter readings to measure levels of radiation and circulate that data over the internet so that it was accessible by the public. Safecast was developed as a means of producing multiple sources of data on radiation for public usage. It was assumed that if the data was collected by similar Geiger counter measurements in mass volume, the data produced was likely to be accurate. Safecast allows individuals to download the raw radiation data, but Safecast also visualizes the data. The data that is used to create a visual map is processed, monitored, and categorized by Safecast. This data is different from the raw radiation data because it has been filtered. The change in presentation of data may alter the information that individuals take from it, which can pose a threat if misunderstood. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust] | [TOKENS: 6816] |
Contents In God We Trust "In God We Trust" (also rendered as "In God we trust") is the official motto of the United States, the U.S. state of Florida, and the nation of Nicaragua (Spanish: En Dios confiamos). It was adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1956, via a joint resolution, replacing E pluribus unum ("Out of many, one"), which had been the de facto motto since the initial design of the Great Seal of the United States. The fourth stanza of the U.S. national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner", adopted from the 1814 poem "The Defence of Fort M'Henry", contains the line: "And this be our motto—"In God is our trust"". The origins of "In God We Trust" as a political motto lie in the American Civil War, where Union supporters wanted to emphasize their attachment to God and to boost morale. The capitalized form "IN GOD WE TRUST" first appeared on the two-cent piece in 1864 and initially only appeared on coins, but it gradually became accepted among Americans. Much wider adoption followed in the 1950s. The first postage stamps with the motto appeared in 1954. A law passed in July 1955 by a joint resolution of the 84th Congress (Pub. L. 84–140) and approved by President Dwight Eisenhower requires that "In God We Trust" appear on all American currency. This law was first implemented on the updated one-dollar silver certificate that entered circulation on October 1, 1957. The 84th Congress later passed legislation (Pub. L. 84–851), also signed by President Eisenhower on July 30, 1956, declaring the phrase to be the national motto.[a] Several states have also mandated or authorized its use in public institutions or schools; while Florida, Georgia and Mississippi have incorporated the phrase in some of their state symbols. The motto has also been used in some cases in other countries, most notably on Nicaragua's coins. The motto remains popular among the American public, as most polls indicate. Some groups and people in the United States, however, have objected to its use, contending that its religious reference violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. These groups believe the phrase should be removed from currency and public property, which has resulted in numerous lawsuits. This argument has not overcome the interpretational doctrine of accommodationism and the notion of "ceremonial deism". The former allows the government to endorse religious establishments as long as they are all treated equally, while the latter states that a repetitious invocation of a religious entity in ceremonial matters strips the phrase of its original religious connotation. The New Hampshire Supreme Court, as well as the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits, have all upheld the constitutionality of the motto in various settings. The Supreme Court has discussed the motto in footnotes but has never directly ruled on its compliance with the U.S. constitution. Origins The earliest recorded usage of the motto in English was in January 1748, when The Pennsylvania Gazette reported on the colours of Associators regiments, namely that of Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania militia, one of which said: "IX. A Coronet and Plume of Feathers. Motto, In God we Trust." According to Thomas S. Kidd, an American historian, this appears to be an isolated instance of an official usage, which could be traced to some renderings of Psalm 56:11. The precise phrase, "In God We Trust" is also found in a publication of Isaac Watts' Psalter which was revised and printed in the United States in 1785. Watts had translated Psalm 115:9–11 with the words, "Britain, trust the Lord." An American publisher, Joel Barlow, sought to revise Watts' Psalter for an American audience. Barlow's goal was to modify Watts in such a way as to purge the un-American flavor. Barlow simply translated Psalm 115: 9–11 with the words "In God we Trust." There were several other unrelated recordings of the motto. It can be encountered in some literary works of the early 19th century. One of them, "Defence of Fort M'Henry", contained a version of the motto and subsequently became the national anthem of the United States. It also appeared in 1845, when D.S. Whitney published an anti-slavery hymn in The Liberator. Odd Fellows have also used the phrase as their motto from the 1840s at least into the 1870s. Motto on U.S. currency In a letter dated November 13, 1861, Rev. Mark R. Watkinson of Ridleyville, Pennsylvania (pastor of the Prospect Hill Baptist Church in present-day Prospect Park), petitioned the Treasury Department to add a statement recognizing "Almighty God in some form on our coins" in order to "relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism". At least part of the motivation was to declare that God was on the Union side of the Civil War, given that the Confederacy's constitution, unlike the Union's, invoked God.[b] This sentiment was shared by other citizens who supported such inclusion in their letters. Indeed, the 125th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment of the Union Army assumed the motto "In God we trust" in early August 1862. In the South, the phrase has also gained significant traction. A Confederate bunting with "In God We Trust" printed in the center, dated to late 1861 or early 1862 and attributed to the 37th Arkansas Infantry Regiment, was probably captured by the 33rd Iowa Infantry Regiment at the Battle of Helena and is currently in possession of the Iowa Historical Society. Another flag with exactly the same motto, this time of the 60th Tennessee Infantry Regiment, was captured in the course of the Battle of Big Black River Bridge. Additionally, in 1864, Harper's Weekly reported that the Union Navy had captured a flag whose motto said: "Our cause is just, our duty we know; In God we trust, to battle we go." Other Confederate symbols included close paraphrasing of the motto, such as the banner of the Apalachicola Guard of Florida (In God is our trust) and "The Star-Spangled Cross and the Pure Field of White", a popular song in the Southern military whose refrain contains the following passage: "Our trust is in God, who can help us in fight, And defend those who ask Him in prayer." President Abraham Lincoln's Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, a lifelong evangelical Episcopalian who was known for his public shows of piety, acted swiftly on the proposal to include a motto referring to God and directed the then-Philadelphia Director of the Mint and member of the National Reform Association, James Pollock, to begin drawing up possible designs that would include the religious phrase. Chase chose his favorite designs and presented a proposal to the Congress for the new designs in late 1863. He then decided on the final version of the new motto, "In God We Trust," in December 1863. Walter H. Breen, a numismatist, wrote that Chase drew inspiration from the motto of Brown University of Providence, Rhode Island, In Deo speramus, which is Latin for a similarly sounding "In God we hope". President Lincoln's degree of involvement in the process of the motto's approval is unclear, though he was aware of such talks.[c] As Chase was preparing his recommendation to Congress, it was found that the federal legislature passed a bill on January 18, 1837, which determined the mottos and devices that should be stamped on U.S. coins. This meant that enactment of some additional legislation was necessary before "In God We Trust" could be engraved. Such bill was introduced and passed as the Coinage Act of 1864 on April 22, 1864, allowing the Secretary of the Treasury to authorize the inclusion of the phrase on one-cent and two-cent coins. On March 3, 1865, the U.S. Congress passed a bill, which Lincoln subsequently signed as the last act of Congress prior to his assassination, that allowed the Mint Director to place "In God We Trust" on all gold and silver coins that "shall admit the inscription thereon", subject to the Secretary's approval. In 1873, Congress passed another Coinage Act, granting the Secretary of the Treasury the right to "cause the motto IN GOD WE TRUST to be inscribed on such coins as shall admit of such motto". In God We Trust (or, rarely, its variation, God We Trust) first appeared on 2¢ coins, which were first minted in 1863 and went into mass circulation the following year. According to David W. Lange, a numismatist, the inclusion of the motto on a coin was a major driver for the popularisation of the slogan. Other coins, that is, nickels, quarter dollars, half dollars, half eagles and eagles, have had In God We Trust engraved from 1866 on. Dollar coins got the motto in 1873 for trade dollars and 1878 for common circulation Morgan dollars. However, there was no obligation for the motto to be used, so some denominations still didn't have it. Others, such as nickels, have seen the phrase disappear after a redesign, so that by the late 19th century, most of the coins did not bear the motto. Finally, in 1892, an oversight caused the Coinage Act to lose the language which mandated inclusion of the phrase. Banknotes did not have formal authorization, or mandate, to have "In God We Trust" engraved until 1955. However, a version of the motto (In God Is Our Trust) first made a brief appearance on the obverse side of the 1864 $20 interest-bearing and compound interest treasury notes, along with the motto "God and our Right". The initial reaction of the general populace was far from unanimous approval. On the one hand, Christian newspapers were generally happy with the phrase being included in coins, though some advocated for more religiously connoted mottos, such as "In God alone is our trust" or "God our Christ". On the other, non-religious press was less impressed by the developments. The New York Times editorial board asked to "let us try to carry our religion—such as it is—in our hearts, and not in our pockets" and criticized the Mint for including the motto only on golden and larger silver coins. New York Illustrated News ridiculed the new coins for marking "the first time that God has ever been recognized on any of our counters of Mammon," with a similar comparison made by the Detroit Free Press. The different opinions on its inclusion eventually grew into a dispute between secularists and faith congregations. Others still started to make jokes of "In God We Trust". The American Journal of Numismatics suggested that people would misread the motto as "In Gold we Trust", which they said was "much nearer the fact". Newspapers also started reporting on puns made of the slogan. Already in 1860s, newspapers reported signs reading "In God we Trust – terms cash," "In God we trust. All others are expected to pay cash" and the like. The phrase, however, gradually became a symbol of national pride. Just six years after it first appeared on coins, the San Francisco Chronicle called it "our nation's motto"; similarly, groups as diverse as prohibitionists and suffragists, pacifists and nativists, Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Jews all adopted the motto or endorsed its usage by the end of the 19th century. The motto stayed popular even as fewer denominations had "In God We Trust" embossed on coins. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt sought to beautify American coinage and decided to give the task to his friend, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who, after several delays and technical issues with his design, produced a new design for eagles and double eagles. Roosevelt specifically instructed Saint-Gaudens not to include "In God We Trust" on the coins, as the President feared that these coins would be used to further ungodly activities, such as gambling, and facilitate crime. Saint-Gaudens did not oppose the order, as he thought that the phrase would distract from the coin's design features. The coin, whose ultra-high relief version is now considered one of the most beautiful coins ever struck in the U.S., was indeed appreciated for its esthetics by art critics. However, a scandal immediately erupted over the lack of "In God We Trust" on the eagles and double eagles. Theodore Roosevelt insisted that while he was in favor of placing the motto on public buildings and monuments, doing so for money (or postage stamps and advertisements) would be "dangerously close to sacrilege": "My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does no good, but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege. ... Any use which tends to cheapen it, and, above all, any use which tends to secure its being treated in a spirit of levity, is from every standpoint profoundly to be regretted. ... it seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins ... In all my life I have never heard any human being speak reverently of this motto on the coins or show any signs of its having appealed to any high emotion in him, but I have literally, hundreds of times, heard it used as an occasion of and incitement to ... sneering ... Every one must remember the innumerable cartoons and articles based on phrases like 'In God we trust for the 8 cents,' ... Surely, I am well within bounds when I say that a use of the phrase which invites constant levity of this type is most undesirable." — President Theodore Roosevelt, 13 November 1907 Press response was largely negative. Most news outlets affiliated with Christian organisations, as well as The Wall Street Journal, The Philadelphia Press and other newspapers were critical of the decision, with accusations amounting to the President being guilty of premeditated assault on religion and disregard for Americans' religious sentiments. Atlanta Constitution wrote that people were to choose between "God and Roosevelt", while The New York Sun published a poem mocking Roosevelt's attitude. In contrast, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and some religious newspapers such as The Churchman, sided with the President, who was both stunned and irritated by people's opposition to excluding the motto. This prompted debate in Congress, which quickly decided to reinstate the motto on the coins in an act adopted in 1908. As a result of controversy, relevant design changes were subsequently introduced by the Mint Chief Engraver, Charles E. Barber. Other coins have also retained or renewed the usage of the motto. All gold coins and silver $1 coins, half dollars and quarters have had the motto engraved since July 1, 1908; pennies followed in 1909 and dimes in 1916. Since 1938, all U.S. coins have borne the "In God We Trust" inscription on them. It is generally thought that during the Cold War era, the government of the United States sought to distinguish itself from the Soviet Union, which promoted state atheism and thus implemented antireligious legislation, therefore, a debate for further usage of religious motto was started in Congress. Kevin M. Kruse offers an alternative explanation. In his book, he argues that conservative opposition to the New Deal, and those politicians' subsequent successful campaigns to expand the influence of religion, were the main factors that contributed to further adoption of "In God We Trust". The Eisenhower administration struck a deeply religious tone, which proved a fertile ground for lobbying for inclusion of the motto in more contexts. This is often attributed to the influence of Billy Graham, a prominent evangelist of the time. After intense public pressure for inclusion of the national motto, it appeared for the first time on some postage stamps of the 1954 Liberty Issue, though lobbying for universal inclusion by Michigan Senator Charles E. Potter and Representative Louis C. Rabaut failed. The following year, Democratic Representative Charles Edward Bennett of Florida cited the Cold War when he introduced H. R. 619, which obliged "In God we trust" to be printed on all banknotes and struck on all coins, in the House, arguing that "[in] these days when imperialistic and materialistic communism seeks to attack and destroy freedom, we should continually look for ways to strengthen the foundations of our freedom". The American Numismatic Association and the American Legion concurred and made resolutions urging to promote further usage of "In God We Trust". On July 11, 1955, the bill, having passed with bipartisan support of both chambers of Congress, was signed into law by President Eisenhower. Since all coins already complied with the law, the only changes were made to the paper currency. The motto first appeared on the $1 silver certificate in 1957, followed by other certificates. Federal Reserve Notes and United States Notes were circulated with the motto starting from 1964 to 1966, depending on the denomination.[d] Adoption and display by government institutions in the United States On July 30, 1956, the 84th Congress passed a joint resolution "declaring 'IN GOD WE TRUST' the national motto of the United States", which is codified under 36 U.S.C. § 302. The resolution passed both the House and the Senate unanimously and without debate.[e] E pluribus unum previously existed as a de facto official motto. The congressional resolution was reaffirmed in 2006, on the 50th anniversary of its adoption, by the Senate, and in 2011 by the House of Representatives, in a 396 to 9 vote. In 2000, the House additionally encouraged to publicly display the motto. In December 1962, the motto was carved above the rostrum of the Speaker of the House in response to the backlash against the Supreme Court's decision in Engel v. Vitale, which banned government-authored public school prayers. In Florida, HB 1145 provided for the adoption of "In God We Trust" as the official state motto, instead of fairly similar "In God Is Our Trust", effective July 1, 2006. The motto has also appeared on the state seal and the state flag, as the seal is one of its elements, since 1868. Georgia's flag features the motto since 2001, which was retained after a redesign two years later. In Mississippi, the state senate voted to add the words, "In God We Trust" to the state seal, justifying it as an effort to protect religious freedom. The change was made effective on July 1, 2014. Six years later, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed into law a bill requiring that the state's flag, which had contained the Confederate battle emblem, be replaced with a new one containing the phrase "In God We Trust." A new flag containing the motto was approved by voters in a referendum, and it became the official state flag in January 2021. On April 28, 2023, Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee signed a bill that would require him to submit a new state seal design which includes the national motto. The secretary of state should receive the proposal by July 1, 2025. Several local governments have introduced the display of the motto in government buildings and municipal cars. School boards have also seen voluntary introduction of the motto, particularly after the September 11 attacks, when the American Family Association supplied several 11-by-14-inch posters to school systems and vowed to defend any legal challenges to their display. Society and culture Multiple scholars have noted that "In God We Trust" motto is one of the main elements of civil religion in the United States. In Judaism and Christianity, the official motto "In God We Trust" is not found verbatim in any verses from the Bible, but the phrase is translated in similar terms in Psalm 91:2,[f] in the Old Testament ("I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust") and in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 1:10 ("Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us.") The concept is paraphrased in Psalm 118:8, Psalm 40:3, Psalm 73:28, and Proverbs 29:25. According to Philip Jenkins, a historian of religion, some Bible translations rendered Psalm 56:11 as "In God I trust; I will not fear", which could lead to substitution of the first "I" for "we". In Islam the word for the concept of reliance on God is called Tawakkul; "In God We Trust" is the verbatim translation of the phrase عَلَى ٱللَّهِ تَوَكَّلْنَا that appears in two places of the Quran, in surah Yunus (10:85), as well as surah Al-A'raf (7:89), and several other verses reinforce this concept. Melkote Ramaswamy, a Hindu American scholar, writes that the presence of the phrase "In God We Trust" on American currency is a reminder that "there is God everywhere, whether we are conscious or not." As of May 25, 2021, the following U.S. states currently offer an "In God We Trust" license plate (vanity and standard issues): Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Among the states that use the motto in standard issues, the Mississippi's standard plate will feature the motto as displayed on its state seal until the end of 2023, when it will change to the design that does not contain the motto. Utah offers a standard option license plate with a seal. Florida, which also offers a specialty plate, has an option to place "In God We Trust" instead of the official state nickname or county name; Georgia also provides for such an option, while North Carolina offers an option with North Carolina's state motto and "In God We Trust" instead of "First in Flight" or "First in Freedom". In Tennessee, the 2022 issue license plates have two versions: with and without the national motto. As of March 2023, about 60% of the state's license tags feature "In God We Trust", but this falls to 21% in Davidson County, which includes the state capital, Nashville. According to a 2003 joint poll by USA Today, CNN, and Gallup, 90% of Americans support the inscription "In God We Trust" on U.S. coins. MSNBC launched a similar live survey online that ran for several years in the late 2000s and yielded overwhelming opposition to the removal of the motto. Additionally, a 2024 poll by RealClearPolitics found that only 17% of Americans want "In God We Trust" removed from currency. However, a student poll in 2019 by College Pulse made for The College Fix showed that just over a half of students supports inclusion of the national motto in currency, with two-thirds of those who recognised themselves as Democrats opposing and 94% of Republicans in favor of the measure. Controversy "In God We Trust" has long been controversial as an official motto due to what opponents perceive as being a religious statement, and as such, violating the separation of church and state. Secular and atheist organizations, such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Freedom From Religion Foundation, as well as The Satanic Temple members, have all opposed inclusion of such motto. On the other hand, Project Blitz as well as conservative organizations and lawmakers have lobbied for its further adoption. Proponents have extensively argued for inclusion of the national motto in more settings, grounding it in the traditional invocations of God that they say have now become an element of a civil religion and should express the will of the founders, who believed in God. Opponents, on the other hand, argue that not only does the motto violate the secular character of the United States, but it also predefines the type and number of gods (if any) to be trusted. The constitutionality of the phrase "In God We Trust" has been repeatedly upheld according to the judicial interpretation of accommodationism, whose adherents state that this entrenched practice has not historically presented any constitutional difficulty, is not coercive, and does not prefer one religious denomination over another. In Zorach v. Clauson (1952), the Supreme Court also wrote that the nation's "institutions presuppose a Supreme Being" and that government recognition of God does not constitute the establishment of a state church as the U.S. constitution's authors intended to prohibit. The courts also rely on the notion of "ceremonial deism" (often as defined in Brennan's dissent in Lynch v. Donnelly, 1984), i.e. that there exist religious references that, through their repetitious and customary usage, have become secular and are thus constitutional. While opponents of such rulings argue that Jefferson's notion of a "wall of separation between church and state" prohibits any aid, direct or indirect, to any religious institution, and therefore any ruling to the contrary goes counter to Founders' intent, this separationist view has not gained significant ground in judicial settings. Even though not directly related to the motto, Engel v. Vitale (1962) elicited much speculation on the future of "In God We Trust" in public settings. In the ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a New York law that encouraged public schools to recite a prayer as written in state law on First Amendment grounds. The ruling sparked widespread outrage and was extremely unpopular at the time, even as the judges' decision was near-unanimous. Almost 4/5 of Americans disapproved of the ruling, according to a Gallup poll. Congressmen were afraid that "In God We Trust" would have to disappear from coins and banknotes, the feeling shared by the then president of the American Bar Association, John C. Salterfield. Senator Sam Ervin, a Democrat from North Carolina, went so far as to wonder if God was declared unconstitutional by that decision. Congressmen tried to direct federal funds to buy Bibles for the Supreme Court justices and to propose a constitutional amendment allowing school prayer (both measures failed). A similar ruling the following year in Abington Township v. Schempp prompted senators to attempt to force the Supreme Court to hang the national motto in the courtroom, which also did not succeed. Even though the Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the constitutionality of "In God We Trust", several appellate federal courts and some state courts have, and the Supreme Court itself did not seem to have any problem with the phrase being inscribed on coins and banknotes. Aronow v. United States (1970) was the first case to challenge the inclusion of "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency. The challenged statute ("the inscription 'In God we Trust'...shall appear on all United States currency and coins", 31 U.S.C. § 324a) stood, and the Ninth Circuit stated that "its [motto's] use is of patriotic or ceremonial character and bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise". In O'Hair v. Blumenthal (1978), the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas also upheld the law. The Fifth Circuit sustained the ruling in 1979 and found that the "primary purpose of the slogan was secular". The same decision was reached in Gaylor v. United States (1996) when it was appealed to the Tenth Circuit and in Doe v. United States (2018) in the Eighth Circuit. Michael Newdow then launched a series of lawsuits attempting to outlaw "In God We Trust", with support of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Newdow was known for his previous case Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (2004), in which the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling removing "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance (the ruling was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court). A federal judge in California rejected his reasoning in a June 2006 ruling, as did the Ninth Circuit. The appellate court wrote that the national motto is of a "patriotic or ceremonial character," has "no theological or ritualistic impact," and does not constitute "governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise". A lawsuit filed by Newdow and Freedom from Religion Foundation in 2013 in New York also failed, both on trial and on appeal to the Second Circuit; yet another one, filed in Ohio in 2016, was dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio and the Sixth Circuit. He also lost the lawsuit in Doe v. United States (2018). The Supreme Court denied certiorari on the Ninth and the Eighth Circuit lawsuits. In 2015, David F. Bauman, a New Jersey state judge, dismissed a case against the Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District brought by a student of the district and the American Humanist Association that argued that the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance created a climate of discrimination because it promoted religion, making non-believers "second-class citizens". Bauman noted that "as a matter of historical tradition, the words 'under God' can no more be expunged from the national consciousness than the words 'In God We Trust' from every coin in the land, than the words 'so help me God' from every presidential oath since 1789, or than the prayer that has opened every congressional session of legislative business since 1787." Additionally, several courts have agreed that "In God We Trust" on public buildings did not violate the Establishment Clause: the New Hampshire Supreme Court (1967) and the Fourth Circuit (2005) did so for public schools, and the same appellate federal court argued the same for a county government office (2005). Even though efforts to remove "In God We Trust" in most settings were largely fruitless, mandatory display of mottos in general on license plates drew some skepticism from the judiciary. In Wooley v. Maynard (1977), the Supreme Court struck down a New Hampshire law mandating that every person carry the state motto on their license plates. The Supreme Court noted in the case that the state can't force its citizens to "use their private property as a 'mobile billboard' for the State's ideological message". Applying Wooley in Griggs v. Graham (2023), a federal judge in Mississippi ruled that under the Free Speech Clause, the state may not force individuals to display "In God We Trust" as it appears on the state seal on their license plates (see above). The judge suggested that objectors to the statement may deface the part of the license tag containing it even though a Mississippi statute may arguably punish this behavior, but declined to order the state to issue religiously neutral license plates free of charge. In an unrelated development while the ruling was on appeal, Mississippi announced the winner of a design contest for the new standard plate, which did not include the motto. Atheist plaintiffs were satisfied and dropped the lawsuit in May that year. The Supreme Court never decided a case challenging the constitutionality of "In God we Trust" as a national/state motto on the merits. But in obiter dicta, the majority of the Supreme Court in Wooley indicated they would reject the line of argument that the plaintiffs used in that case to declare the presence of the national motto on currency unconstitutional. They argued that unlike license plates, currency was not something that was either associated directly with the owner or made to display. Usage in other countries The Spanish equivalent of "In God We Trust", En Dios Confiamos, is an unofficial motto of the Republic of Nicaragua. The phrase can be seen on most of Nicaragua's coins. In 2023, Shas, a Haredi religious political party in Israel, proposed a bill that would order inclusion of "In God we trust" motto on banknotes, but it died in the Knesset. Additionally, the phrase has been used in heraldic settings. In 1860, the phrase was included in the coat of arms of New Westminster, British Columbia, and it stayed there ever since. Until 1997 (though still traditionally remembered), the official heraldic motto of Brighton, England was the Latin equivalent of the phrase: In Deo Fidemus. See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8652] | [TOKENS: 155] |
Contents ISO/IEC 8652 ISO/IEC 8652 Information technology — Programming languages — Ada is the international standard for the computer programming language Ada. It was produced by the Ada Working Group, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG 9, of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The latest edition is ISO/IEC 8652:2023, published May 2023. The text of the earlier 1995 version of the standard, with Technical Corrigendum 1 and Amendment 1, is freely available for download and online reading. References External links This programming-language-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titular_see] | [TOKENS: 2799] |
Contents Titular see A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular metropolitan" (highest rank), "titular archbishop" (intermediary rank) or "titular bishop" (lowest rank), which normally goes by the status conferred on the titular see. Titular sees are dioceses that no longer functionally exist, often because the territory was conquered by Muslims or because it is schismatic. The Greek–Turkish population exchange of 1923 also contributed to titular sees. The see of Maximianoupolis along with the town that shared its name was destroyed by the Bulgarians under Emperor Kaloyan in 1207; the town and the see were under the control of the Latin Empire, which took Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Parthenia, in north Africa, was abandoned and swallowed by desert sand. Catholic Church During the Muslim conquests of the Middle East and North Africa, some bishops fled to Christian-ruled areas. Even if they did not return and the Christian population of their dioceses dispersed, were killed or abandoned the Catholic faith, they continued to be seen as the bishops of those dioceses, who could give rise, even after long interruption (exile and/or vacancy), to a 'restored' line of apostolic succession on each see.[citation needed] The Ordinary or hierarch of a Catholic titular see may be styled a "Titular Metropolitan" (highest rank), "Titular Archbishop" (intermediary rank) or "titular bishop" (lowest rank), which normally goes by the status conferred on the titular see (mostly corresponding to its historical rank), but exceptions ad hoc are currently made on a regular basis, either above or below the titular see's rank, while titular sees have repeatedly been promoted or demoted.[citation needed] There are practical advantages in certain circumstances in not establishing a permanent diocese in a given territory, for reasons of the limited size of the Catholic population, its lack of permanence, the likelihood of having to divide the jurisdiction in the near future, and so on. In these circumstances the Catholic Church establishes sometimes not a diocese but a canonical jurisdiction of another kind. This may be, for example, a Mission sui iuris, an Apostolic Administration (permanently constituted), an Ordinariate, a Prefecture Apostolic, a territorial Abbey, a Vicariate Apostolic, or a Prelature. The ecclesiastic placed in charge of one of these jurisdictions has a corresponding title, such as Superior of a Mission sui iuris, Apostolic Administrator, Ordinary, Prefect Apostolic, territorial Abbot, Vicar Apostolic, or Prelate. The ecclesiastic may be in priestly or episcopal orders. In recent practice an Apostolic Administrator, Vicar Apostolic, or Prelate (in this precise sense) is often appointed (and consecrated) a bishop. If that happens he is assigned a titular see, in addition to his status as head of the territorial jurisdiction. the appointment as bishop is less likely in the case of a Superior of a Mission sui iuris, or a Prefect Apostolic, but may happen, especially when a man who is already a bishop governing a particular jurisdiction is appointed cumulatively to govern one of these others. A particular territory may have its canonical status changed more than once, or may be united to a neighbouring territory or subdivided, according to developing circumstances. An example might be the uniting on November 30, 1987, of two Egyptian vicariates apostolic, Heliopolis of Egypt and Port Said, to become the single Vicariate Apostolic of Alexandria of Egypt–Heliopolis of Egypt–Port Said, governed by Egypt's only Latin Ordinary at present. A different example would be the division, on 6 July 6, 1992, of the Ghanaian diocese of Accra, to separate from its territory the new diocese of Koforidua. At the same date, the diocese of Accra became a Metropolitan Archdiocese. After a name change, an abandoned name may be 'restored' as a titular see, even though a residential successor see exist(ed). Furthermore, the Catholic Church may create more than one titular see named after a single city, by creating one or more lines of apostolic succession assigned to the Latin and/or one or more Eastern Catholic rites, which are not necessarily of the same rank. It was formerly the practice to add the term in partibus infidelium, often shortened to in partibus or i.p.i., meaning "in the lands of the unbelievers", to the name of the see conferred on titular (non-diocesan) Latin Church bishops. Formerly, when bishops fled from invading Muslims, they were welcomed by other churches, while preserving their titles and their rights to their own dioceses. They were entrusted with the administration of vacant sees of other dioceses, or with assisting in such government of a see which already had a residential bishop. In later days it was deemed fitting to preserve the memory of ancient Christian churches which no longer existed; this was done by giving their names to auxiliary bishops or bishops in missionary countries. These bishops did not reside in the sees whose titles they bore, nor could they exercise any power over them, and are not entrusted with their care. They are therefore called titular bishops, as opposed to diocesan bishops, and the sees themselves are called titular sees, as opposed to residential sees. The regular appointment of titular bishops is said to date back to the time of the Fifth Lateran Council, in 1514; cardinals alone were authorized to ask for titular bishops to be appointed to assist them in their dioceses. Pope Pius V extended the privilege to all sees in which it had become customary to have auxiliary bishops. Since then the practice has become more widespread. Although the normal constitution of the hierarchy has always been built on the idea of local jurisdiction of the bishops, there are indications, in the early history of the Church, of many who did not enjoy what is usually called ordinary jurisdiction. Besides those who were endowed with the episcopal character, in order to assist the local bishops there were those who had been driven from their dioceses by infidels or by heretics, or who for other reasons could not reside in the places to which they had been appointed. The spread of Islam through Muslim conquests in Asia and Africa was responsible for hundreds of abandoned sees. During the Crusades, the Latins, who established new Christian communities, composed of Europeans and belonging to the Latin Church, procured the erection of new dioceses for their benefit, and these in turn, during the growth of the Ottoman Empire, increased the number of abandoned sees. The final development of the list of sees, called in partibus infidelium, took shape, at first, from the attempt of the Holy See to keep up the succession of bishops in these dioceses, in the hope of reconquering their territory from the infidel. When all hope of such redemption was given up, these titles were still conferred on those who were chosen to assist the diocesan bishops in their labors. After the 14th century the large increase of population in the great centers rendered such assistance particularly necessary. In the 16th century the Holy See inaugurated the policy of consecrating nuncios and other prelates, delegated to represent the Pope in his relations with the different nations, so that they would be equals with the diocesan bishops of the countries in which they were ambassadors. The foundation of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, in 1622, gave a great impetus to the missionary work of the Church in China and Japan, and elsewhere a great increase in the number of bishops became necessary and those received their titles from the ancient abandoned sees. Only about 1850, was any attempt made to compile a list of such sees. Gaetano Moroni had already, in 1840, began publication of his 103 volume Dizionario di erudizione storico-ecclesiastica with a separate six volume index. Moroni acknowledged the great difficulties in compiling this work, even after he thoroughly examined all the sources available to him. In 1851, the Annuario Pontificio began to have such a list, but it did not purport to be complete. On the contrary, it contained only those that were in general use. Names of dioceses disappeared and were listed again when the titles were actually assigned. Until 1882, these titles were given as in partibus infidelium. According to Corrigan, the story goes that King George I of Greece (a Lutheran) complained to Pope Leo XIII that he and his (mostly Eastern Orthodox) people were injured by this appellation, saying to Leo XIII, "we are not infidels, we are Christians; we are Catholics." Leo XIII, through a Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith decree, in 1882, abolished the phrase in partibus infidelium and ordered that future appointments should be made as "titular bishops". The custom, when Boudinhon wrote his article, was to join to the name of the see that of the district to which it formerly belonged, or else merely to say "titular bishop". The Annuaire Pontifical Catholique published a very complete list of the titular sees and titular bishops. Although it did not claim to be perfect, it contained the names of the sees and the bishops who had held the titles as far back, in some cases, as the 14th century. Titular sees, according to Corrigan in 1920, were conferred on In the context of improved relations with the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodoxy after the Second Vatican Council, the Holy See, while continuing to appoint bishops to titular sees in North Africa, ceased to make such appointments to sees that were historically part of the Eastern patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. It began instead to treat as titular sees also those Catholic dioceses in any country no longer used as titles of diocesan bishops because of having been absorbed into other dioceses or having been renamed due to a change of the bishop's place of residence. For example, several of the sees added by this change of policy are in the western and central United States, such as Grass Valley, California, whose diocese was dissolved upon the erection of the Diocese of Sacramento. The change of practice is reflected in the inclusion from then on of such sees in the official lists of titular sees in editions of the Annuario Pontificio. Previously, titular sees were routinely (yet not always) assigned not only to auxiliary bishops, similar pseudo-diocesan offices and pre-diocesan apostolic vicars or (Eastern Catholic) apostolic exarchs (not apostolic prefects), but also to retired bishops by way of emeritate (sometimes with a 'promotion' from a suffragan see to an archiepiscopal titular see; however sometimes transferred to another during an incumbent emeritus bishop's life) and even to coadjutor bishops. That practice was largely replaced for the last categories by the present one of referring to a retired bishop as a bishop emeritus of the see that he held, and to a coadjutor bishop simply as coadjutor bishop of the see to which he has been appointed. This change too is reflected in editions of the Annuario Pontificio of the period, which include information on renunciation by retired and coadjutor bishops of titular sees to which they had been appointed. In 1995, when Jacques Gaillot, Bishop of the Diocese of Évreux, who was controversial for his positions on religious, political and social matters, refused to retire and become Bishop Emeritus of Évreux, he was transferred to the titular see of Partenia. The crusading William IV, Count of Nevers, dying in the Holy Land in 1168, left the building known as the Hospital of Panthenor in the town of Clamecy in Burgundy, together with some land, to the Bishops of Bethlehem, in case Bethlehem should fall under Muslim control. After Saladin took Bethlehem in 1187, the Bishop took up residence in 1223 in his property, which remained the seat of titular Bishops of Bethlehem for almost 600 years, until the French Revolution of 1789. The Roman Catholic Archbishopric of Nazareth first had two centuries of Metropolitan Archbishops of Nazareth in Barletta (southern Italy), and gave rise in the 19th century to two separately 'restored' titular successor sees: a Latin titular archbishopric of Nazareth and a Maronite (Antiochian Rite) titular (Arch)bishopric of Nazareth, both suppressed only in the early 20th century. Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy The granting of titular sees is occasionally practised in the Eastern and other Orthodox churches. Titular episcopal sees in the Aegean The Catholic Church lists several titular sees in the Aegean Islands. Ancient episcopal sees of the Roman province of Insulae (the Aegean Islands) listed in the Annuario Pontificio as titular sees : Ancient episcopal sees of the Roman province of Lesbos (the Aegean Islands) listed in the Annuario Pontificio as titular sees: See also References Literature External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_PAC] | [TOKENS: 2142] |
Contents America PAC The America PAC (AMERICA) is a super PAC (political action committee) created by Elon Musk with the backing of a number of prominent tech businessmen to support Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, and later used to support other conservative candidates and causes. The group's primary purpose is to finance canvassing operations. Musk is the primary donor, with his contributions making up 91% of the declared contributions as of December 2024. History America PAC was founded to support Donald Trump's campaign during the 2024 United States presidential election. Backers include Elon Musk, Douglas Leone, Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Tyler Winklevoss, Cameron Winklevoss, Ken Howery, Shaun Maguire of Sequoia Capital, and SpaceX board member Antonio Gracias. Musk told friends earlier in 2024 that he sought secrecy about his support for Trump; some of his backers initially "anchored" the PAC so that Musk's investment would be made after July 1 and thus would not be publicly disclosed until shortly before the election. Musk said in an interview with Jordan Peterson that he has "created a PAC or Super PAC or whatever you want to call it" called "America PAC". Musk was reported to have pledged to contribute $45 million a month to the PAC. However, Musk has subsequently stated that the $45 million per month commitment never took place, and that the press has misreported his intentions. He further clarified that he will be donating to America PAC, but in a much lower albeit unspecified amount. From its inception through September 2024, Musk was the sole donor to the PAC, totaling about $75 million, increasing to more than $118 million in October 2024. In the end stages of the 2024 election season the Trump campaign outsourced much of the on the ground campaigning in swing states to America PAC. In October, Musk seized the X handle @America to promote the group. In 2025, America PAC participated prominently in the Wisconsin Supreme Court elections offering $100 to voters who signed a petition against "activist judges". America PAC was the largest source of out of state money in the race. The PAC's spending in the Wisconsin election had topped $18 million by the end of March. In the Wisconsin Supreme Court the PAC has created a petition and giveaway program as well as engaged in door to door canvassing. In May 2025, Musk announced his intention to significantly reduce his political spending, leaving America PAC's future unclear. Leadership Following a series of transitions in July 2024, veteran political strategists Phil Cox, Generra Peck, and Dave Rexrode took guiding positions in the organization. Efforts The group has been engaged in voter information gathering efforts. These efforts have faced scrutiny from regulators and other groups in those states. The group has set a goal of registering 800,000 new voters in swing states for the 2024 election. The PAC provided funding to Republican candidates in key house races including Mike Lawler, Ken Calvert, Michelle Steel, Ken Coughlin, Marc Molinaro, Tom Kean Jr., Derrick Merrin, David Valadao, Austin Theriault, and Joe Kent. America PAC paid for ads on social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube and X, the latter of which received less investment than the other two. From July to October 2024, the company invested $3 million on Facebook and Instagram advertisements, with $1.5 million being spent on Google and $201,000 on X. The efforts are targeted at voters in swing states and have included provocative internet ads featuring the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Ads have been targeted at voters in Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. According to Wired, as of October 2024, the ads had amassed 32 million impressions. Social media content shared by America PAC have included a video which depicts a fighter with Kamala Harris' face being physically attacked by a sword-wielding Trump. Another post shared by the organization stated that "Harris is a 'C-word'"—an allusion to the word "cunt", a vulgar word used against women—before calling her a "communist". America PAC administers an "Election Integrity Community" on Twitter/X, in October 2024 Musk tweeted that his followers should report issues with the 2024 Election there. The PAC employed canvassers in key battleground states. Blitz Canvassing LLC contracted to work in Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan, and Nevada. It had previously contracted with the September Group in Arizona and Nevada but cancelled those contracts in September 2024. Blitz Canvassing LLC is a subsidiary of GP3 which is owned by the same political strategists who run America PAC, this has led to criticism from some within the Trump campaign. Patriot Grassroots LLC has been hired to do work in Georgia and Pennsylvania. The Synapse Group has been retained to work in Wisconsin. America PAC is the only Trump campaign affiliated group to hire canvassers in all seven battleground states. In Wisconsin, America PAC has also collaborated with Turning Point Action, combining their canvassing efforts. Despite these contracted and combined efforts America PAC struggled to meet their canvassing targets. The PAC was mailed partially prefilled absentee ballot applications to residents in Georgia during the 2024 presidential election. In February 2026, the Georgia State Election Board issued a letter of reprimand alleging that the PAC's activities had violated state law. In Michigan, canvassers contracted by America PAC were subjected to poor working conditions; they were transported in a U-Haul van with no rear seating or seatbelts, and threatened to meet unrealistic quotas under threat of being forced to pay for their hotel rooms and transportation home. After these poor working conditions were reported, the canvassers were fired for speaking to the press. On October 30, a class action lawsuit regarding California labor law violations was filed against multiple entities including America PAC. According to The Guardian, America PAC's internal data classified 20 to 25% of door-knocks in the states of Arizona and Nevada as being potentially fraudulent. Accusations of fraud against the PAC's canvassers have been further backed by nine Republican workers connected to the organization. According to NBC News, a video tutorial of how to spoof door-knocks and send the fake data to America PAC was leaked to the public. Other cases of potential fraud included canvassers submitting data from locations far away from the homes they were expected to have visited. October 6, 2024 In October 2024, the PAC launched a petition effort focused on the First and Second Amendments. They offered $47 per referral of swing state voter. Musk tweeted, "For every person you refer who is a swing state voter, you get $47! Easy money." He later increased the referral amount to $100, also stating that he'd give away $1 million to a swing state petition signer each day until election day. Petition signers must be registered voters and provide contact information, making it "a data mining tool" for the PAC to contact voters. Law professor Rick Hasen said that a $1 million giveaway limited to registered voters is a "clearly illegal" violation of section 52 of the United States Code, which concerns voting regulations. The Department of Justice subsequently warned the PAC that it might be breaking the law. On the same day that the warning was issued, the PAC did not announce any winner of the giveaway, with Musk offering no explanation as to why. On the day after, the organization resumed its activities and announced two more winners. On October 28, Larry Krasner, the district attorney for Philadelphia, filed suit against Musk and the PAC, alleging that it is an "illegal lottery scheme" and violated state law. Krasner further stated that the civil lawsuit does not preclude any potential criminal prosecution. Musk attempted to have the case moved to federal court, but a federal judge ruled against him, and returned the case to state court. At a court hearing, Musks's lawyers stated that although Musk had said that the money would be awarded "randomly" and by "chance", the winners weren't chosen at random but instead were evaluated to "feel out their personality, (and) make sure they were someone whose values aligned" with the PAC and were being paid to serve as spokespersons. The winners also had to sign nondisclosure agreements. A judge dismissed Krasner's suit on November 4. After Musk's lawyers stated that the awards were not random, two giveaway participants, one from Texas and another from Michigan, filed lawsuits against Musk and America PAC in federal courts alleging that they had been misled by the defendants. The plaintiff in the Texas case stated that she would never have signed the petition had she known that the giveaways were not random. The Michigan plaintiff, who supported Kamala Harris for president, said that "the selection not only is not random, but is a targeted process that eliminates anyone who is not a Republican or vocal supporter of Donald Trump". In 2025, America PAC conducted a petition/giveaway in Wisconsin asking voters to oppose "activist judges" in support of Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel. Despite the scheme Susan Crawford won. On March 27, the PAC announced that a petition signer had won a million dollars. The spending on the Wisconsin judicial election came as Tesla was suing the state to allow it to open dealerships. The petition and giveaway were challenged by Wisconsin's attorney general but the courts did not take any action against them. On March 30, two more winners were announced and presented with checks for a million dollars at an event hosted by Musk in Green Bay, Wisconsin. At the event Musk described the checks as a media gimmick. One winner said, "I did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do: sign a petition, refer friends and family, vote, and now I have a million dollars." she was reported to be an employee of a Green Bay area company whose owner has contributed significantly to the ongoing judicial campaign. The other winner was reported to be the chair of the Wisconsin College Republicans. On April 1, the PAC removed the video of the winners and replaced it with a reshoot which was almost identical except for excluding the word "vote". with the first winner now saying, "I did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do: sign the petition, refer friends and family, and now I have a million dollars." See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociological_theory] | [TOKENS: 4681] |
Contents Sociological theory 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias A sociological theory is a supposition that intends to consider, analyze, and/or explain objects of social reality from a sociological perspective,: 14 drawing connections between individual concepts in order to organize and substantiate sociological knowledge. Hence, such knowledge is composed of complex theoretical frameworks and methodology. These theories range in scope, from concise, yet thorough, descriptions of a single social process to broad, inconclusive paradigms for analysis and interpretation. Some sociological theories are designed to explain specific aspects of the social world and allow for predictions about future events, while others serve as broad theoretical frameworks that guide further sociological analysis. Dynamic social theory is the hypothesis that institutions and patterns of behaviour are the social science equivalent of theories in the natural sciences because they embody a great deal of knowledge of how society works and act as social models that are replicated or adapted to achieve predictable outcomes. Prominent sociological theorists include Talcott Parsons, Robert K. Merton, Randall Collins, James Samuel Coleman, Peter Blau, Niklas Luhmann, Immanuel Wallerstein, George Homans, Theda Skocpol, Gerhard Lenski, Pierre van den Berghe and Jonathan H. Turner. Sociological theory vs. social theory Kenneth Allan (2006) distinguishes sociological theory from social theory, in that the former consists of abstract and testable propositions about society, heavily relying on the scientific method which aims for objectivity and to avoid passing value judgments. In contrast, social theory, according to Allan, focuses less on explanation and more on commentary and critique of modern society. As such, social theory is generally closer to continental philosophy insofar as it is less concerned with objectivity and derivation of testable propositions, thus more likely to propose normative judgments. Sociologist Robert K. Merton (1949) argued that sociological theory deals with social mechanisms, which are essential in exemplifying the 'middle ground' between social law and description.: 43–4 Merton believed these social mechanisms to be "social processes having designated consequences for designated parts of the social structure." Prominent social theorists include: Jürgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, Dorothy Smith, Roberto Unger, Alfred Schütz, Jeffrey Alexander, and Jacques Derrida. There are also prominent scholars who could be seen as being in-between social and sociological theories, such as: Harold Garfinkel, Herbert Blumer, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pierre Bourdieu, and Erving Goffman. Classical theoretical traditions The field of sociology itself is a relatively new discipline and so, by extension, is the field of sociological theory. Both date back to the 18th and 19th centuries, periods of drastic social change, where societies would begin to see, for example, the emergence of industrialization, urbanization, democracy, and early capitalism, provoking (particularly Western) thinkers to start becoming considerably more aware of society. As such, the field of sociology initially dealt with broad historical processes relating to these changes. Through a well-cited survey of sociological theory, Randall Collins (1994) retroactively labels various theorists as belonging to four theoretical traditions: functionalism, conflict, symbolic interactionism, and utilitarianism. While modern sociological theory descends predominately from functionalist (Durkheim) and conflict-oriented (Marx and Weber) perspectives of social structure, it also takes great influence from the symbolic interactionist tradition, accounting for theories of pragmatism (Mead, Cooley) and micro-level structure (Simmel). Likewise, utilitarian theories of rational choice (equivalent here to "social exchange theory"), although often associated with either ethics or economics, is an established tradition within sociological theory. Lastly, as argued by Raewyn Connell (2007), a tradition that is often forgotten is that of social Darwinism, which applies the logic of biological evolution to the social world. This tradition often aligns with classical functionalism and is associated with several founders of sociology, primarily Herbert Spencer, Lester F. Ward and William Graham Sumner. Contemporary sociological theory retains traces of each of these traditions, which are by no means mutually exclusive. A broad historical paradigm in sociology, structural functionalism addresses social structures in its entirety and in terms of the necessary functions possessed by its constituent elements. A common parallel used by functionalists, known as the organic or biological analogy (popularized by Herbert Spencer), is to regard norms and institutions as 'organs' that work toward the proper-functioning of the entire 'body' of society. The perspective was implicit in the original sociological positivism of Auguste Comte, but was theorized in full by Durkheim, again with respect to observable, structural laws. Functionalism also has an anthropological basis in the work of theorists such as Marcel Mauss, Bronisław Malinowski, and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, the latter of whom, through explicit usage, introduced the "structural" prefix to the concept. Classical functionalist theory is generally united by its tendency towards the biological analogy and notions of social evolutionism. As Giddens states: "Functionalist thought, from Comte onwards, has looked particularly towards biology as the science providing the closest and most compatible model for social science. Biology has been taken to provide a guide to conceptualizing the structure and the function of social systems and to analyzing processes of evolution via mechanisms of adaptation…functionalism strongly emphasizes the pre-eminence of the social world over its individual parts (i.e. its constituent actors, human subjects)." Conflict theory is a method that attempts, in a scientific manner, to provide causal explanations to the existence of conflict in society. Thus, conflict theorists look at the ways in which conflict arises and is resolved in society, as well as how every conflict is unique. Such theories describe that the origins of conflict in societies are founded in the unequal distribution of resources and power. Though there is no universal definition of what "resources" necessarily includes, most theorists follow Max Weber's point of view. Weber viewed conflict as the result of class, status, and power being ways of defining individuals in any given society. In this sense, power defines standards, thus people abide by societal rules and expectation due to an inequality of power. Karl Marx is believed to be the father of social conflict theory, in which social conflict refers to the struggle between segments of society over valued resources. By the 19th century, a small population in the West had become capitalists: individuals who own and operate factories and other businesses in pursuit of profits, owning virtually all large-scale means of production. However, theorists believe that capitalism turned most other people into industrial workers, or, in Marx's terms, proletarians: individuals who, because of the structure of capitalist economies, must sell their labor for wages. It is through this notion that conflict theories challenge historically dominant ideologies, drawing attention to such power differentials as class, gender and race. Conflict theory is therefore a macrosociological approach, in which society is interpreted as an arena of inequality that generates conflict and social change.: 15 Other important sociologists associated with social conflict theory include Harriet Martineau, Jane Addams, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Rather than observing the ways in which social structures help societies to operate, this sociological approach looks at how "social patterns" cause certain individuals to become dominant in society, while causing others to be oppressed. Accordingly, some criticisms to this theory are that it disregards how shared values and the way in which people rely on each other help to unify society. Symbolic interaction—often associated with interactionism, phenomenological sociology, dramaturgy (sociology), and interpretivism—is a sociological approach that places emphasis on subjective meanings and, usually through analysis, on the empirical unfolding of social processes.: 16 Such processes are believed to rely on individuals and their actions, which is ultimately necessary for society to exists. This phenomenon was first theorized by George Herbert Mead who described it as the outcome of collaborative joint action. The approach focuses on creating a theoretical framework that observes society as the product of everyday interactions of individuals. In other words, society in its most basic form is nothing more than the shared reality constructed by individuals as they interact with one another. In this sense, individuals interact within countless situations through symbolic interpretations of their given reality, whereby society is a complex, ever-changing mosaic of subjective meanings.: 19 Some critics of this approach argue that it focuses only on ostensible characteristics of social situations while disregarding the effects of culture, race, or gender (i.e. social-historical structures). Important sociologists traditionally associated with this approach include George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer, and Erving Goffman. New contributions to the perspective, meanwhile, include those of Howard Becker, Gary Alan Fine, David Altheide, Robert Prus, Peter M. Hall, David R. Maines, as well as others. It is also in this tradition that the radical-empirical approach of ethnomethodology emerged from the work of Harold Garfinkel. Utilitarianism is often referred to as exchange theory or rational choice theory in the context of sociology. This tradition tends to privilege the agency of individual rational actors, assuming that, within interactions, individuals always seek to maximize their own self-interest. As argued by Josh Whitford (2002), rational actors can be characterized as possessing four basic elements: Exchange theory is specifically attributed to the work of George C. Homans, Peter Blau, and Richard Emerson. Organizational sociologists James G. March and Herbert A. Simon noted that an individual's rationality is bounded by the context or organizational setting. The utilitarian perspective in sociology was, most notably, revitalized in the late 20th century by the work of former ASA president James Samuel Coleman. Basic theory Overall, there is a strong consensus regarding the central theoretical questions and the key problems that emerge from explicating such questions in sociology. In general, sociological theory attempts to answer the following three questions: (1) What is action?; (2) What is social order?; and (3) What determines social change? In the myriad of attempts to answer these questions, three predominantly theoretical (i.e. not empirical) issues emerge, largely inherited from classical theoretical traditions. The consensus on the central theoretical problems is how to link, transcend or cope with the following "big three" dichotomies: Lastly, sociological theory often grapples with a subset of all three central problems through the problem of integrating or transcending the divide between micro-, meso- and macro-level social phenomena. These problems are not altogether empirical. Rather, they are epistemological: they arise from the conceptual imagery and analytical analogies that sociologists use to describe the complexity of social processes. The issue of subjectivity and objectivity can be divided into a concern over (a) the general possibilities of social actions; and (b) the specific problem of social scientific knowledge. In regard to the former, the subjective is often equated (though not necessarily) with "the individual" and the individual's intentions and interpretations of the "objective". The objective, on the other hand, is usually considered to be any public/external action or outcome, on up to society writ large. A primary question for social theorists is how knowledge reproduces along the chain of subjective-objective-subjective. That is to say, how is intersubjectivity achieved? While, historically, qualitative methods have attempted to tease out subjective interpretations, quantitative survey methods also attempt to capture individual subjectivities. Moreover, some qualitative methods take a radical approach to objective description in situ. Insofar as subjectivity & objectivity are concerned with (b) the specific problem of social scientific knowledge, such concern results from the fact that a sociologist is part of the very object they seek to explain, as expressed by Bourdieu: How can the sociologist effect in practice this radical doubting which is indispensable for bracketing all the presuppositions inherent in the fact that she is a social being, that she is therefore socialized and led to feel "like a fish in water" within that social world whose structures she has internalized? How can she prevent the social world itself from carrying out the construction of the object, in a sense, through her, through these unself-conscious operations or operations unaware of themselves of which she is the apparent subject — Pierre Bourdieu, "The Problem of Reflexive Sociology", An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (1992), p. 235 Structure and agency (or determinism and voluntarism) form an enduring ontological debate in social theory: "Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?" In this context, agency refers to the capacity of an individual to act independently and make free choices, whereas structure relates to factors that limit or affect the choices and actions of the individual (e.g. social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, etc.). Discussions over the primacy of either structure and agency relate to the core of sociological ontology, i.e. "what is the social world made of?", "what is a cause in the social world", and "what is an effect?". A perennial question within this debate is that of "social reproduction": how are structures (specifically structures that produce inequality) reproduced through the choices of individuals? Synchrony and diachrony (or statics and dynamics) within social theory are terms that refer to a distinction emerging out of the work of Levi-Strauss who inherited it from the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. The former slices moments of time for analysis, thus it is an analysis of static social reality. Diachrony, on the other hand, attempts to analyze dynamic sequences. Following Saussure, synchrony would describe social phenomena at a specific point of time, while diachrony would refer to unfolding processes in time. In Anthony Giddens' introduction to Central Problems in Social Theory, he states that, "in order to show the interdependence of action and structure...we must grasp the time space relations inherent in the constitution of all social interaction." And like structure and agency, time is integral to discussion of social reproduction. In terms of sociology, historical sociology is often better positioned to analyze social life as diachronic, while survey research takes a snapshot of social life and is thus better equipped to understand social life as synchronic. Some argue that the synchrony of social structure is a methodological perspective rather than an ontological claim. Nonetheless, the problem for theory is how to integrate the two manners of recording and thinking about social data. Contemporary theories The contemporary discipline of sociology is theoretically multi-paradigmatic, encompassing a greater range of subjects, including communities, organizations, and relationships, than when the discipline first began. Strain theory is a theoretical perspective that identifies anomie (i.e. normlessness) as the result of a society that provides little moral guidance to individuals.: 134 Emile Durkheim (1893) first described anomie as one of the results of an inequitable division of labour within a society, observing that social periods of disruption resulted in greater anomie and higher rates of suicide and crimes. In this sense, broadly speaking, during times of great upheaval, increasing numbers of individuals "cease to accept the moral legitimacy of society," as noted by sociologist Anthony R. Mawson (1970). Robert K. Merton would go on to theorize that anomie, as well as some forms of deviant behavior, derive largely from a disjunction between "culturally prescribed aspirations" of a society and "socially structured avenues for realizing those aspirations." Developed by Erving Goffman,[i] dramaturgy (aka dramaturgical perspective) is a particularized paradigm of symbolic interactionism that interprets life to be a performance (i.e. a drama). As "actors," we have a status, i.e. the part that we play, by which we are given various roles.: 16 These roles serve as a script, supplying dialogue and action for the characters (i.e. the people in reality).: 19 Roles also involve props and certain settings. For example, a doctor (the role), uses instruments like a heart monitor (the prop), all the while using medical terms (the script), while in their doctor's office (the setting).: 134 In addition, our performance is the "presentation of self," which is how people perceive us, based on the ways in which we portray ourselves.: 134 This process, known as impression management, begins with the idea of personal performance. Mathematical theory (aka formal theory) refers to the use of mathematics in constructing social theories. Mathematical sociology aims to sociological theory in formal terms, which such theories can be understood to lack. The benefits of this approach not only include increased clarity, but also, through mathematics, the ability to derive theoretical implications that could not be arrived at intuitively. As such, models typically used in mathematical sociology allow sociologists to understand how predictable local interactions are often able to elicit global patterns of social structure. Positivism is a philosophy, developed in the middle of the 19th century by Auguste Comte, that states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through a strict scientific method. Society operates according to laws just like the physical world, thus introspective or intuitional attempts to gain knowledge are rejected. The positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of western thought, from antiquity to the present day. Postmodernism, adhering to anti-theory and anti-method, believes that, due to human subjectivity, discovering objective truth is impossible or unachievable.: 10 In essence, the postmodernist perspective is one that exists as a counter to modernist thought, especially through its mistrust in grand theories and ideologies The objective truth that is touted by modernist theory is believed by postmodernists to be impossible due to the ever-changing nature of society, whereby truth is also constantly subject to change. A postmodernists purpose, therefore, is to achieve understanding through observation, rather than data collection, using both micro and macro level analyses.: 53 Questions that are asked by this approach include: "How do we understand societies or interpersonal relations, while rejecting the theories and methods of the social sciences, and our assumptions about human nature?" and "How does power permeate social relations or society, and change with the circumstances?": 19 One of the most prominent postmodernists in the approach's history is the French philosopher Michel Foucault.[ii] Theories of crime The general theory of crime refers to the proposition by Michael R. Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi (1990) that the main factor in criminal behaviour is the individual's lack of self-control. Theorists who do not distinguish the differences that exist between criminals and noncriminals are considered to be classical or control theorists. Such theorists believe that those who perform deviant acts do so out of enjoyment without care for consequences. Likewise, positivists view criminals actions as a result of the person themselves instead of the nature of the person. The essential notion of labeling theory is that deviance and conformity result not so much from what people do as from how others respond to these actions.: 203 It also states that a society's reaction to specific behaviors are a major determinant of how a person may come to adopt a "deviant" label.: 204 This theory stresses the relativity of deviance, the idea that people may define the same behavior in any number of ways. Thus the labelling theory is a micro-level analysis and is often classified in the social-interactionist approach. A hate crime can be defined as a criminal act against a person or a person's property by an offender motivated by racial, ethnic, religious or other bias. Hate crimes may refer to race, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation and physical disabilities. According to Statistics Canada, the "Jewish" community has been the most likely to be victim to hate crimes in Canada in 2001–2002. Overall, about 57% of hate crimes are motivated by ethnicity and race, targeting mainly Blacks and Asians, while 43% target religion, mainly Judaism and Islam. A relatively small 9% is motivated by sexual orientation, targets gays and lesbians.: 208–9 Physical traits do not distinguish criminals from non criminals, but genetic factors together with environmental factors are strong predictors of adult crime and violence.: 198–9 Most psychologists see deviance as the result of "unsuccessful" socialization and abnormality in an individual personality.: 198–9 A psychopath can be defined as a serious criminal who does not feel shame or guilt from their actions, as they have little (if any) sympathy for the people they harm, nor do they fear punishment.: 199 Individuals of such nature may also be known to have an antisocial personality disorder. Robert D. Hare, one of the world's leading experts on psychopathy, developed an important assessment device for psychopathy, known as the Psychopathy Checklist (revised). For many, this measure is the single, most important advancement to date toward what will hopefully become our ultimate understanding of psychopathy.: 641 Psychopaths exhibit a variety of maladaptive traits, such as rarity in experience of genuine affection for others. Moreover, they are skilled at faking affection; are irresponsible, impulsive, hardly tolerant of frustration; and they pursue immediate gratification.: 614 Likewise, containment theory suggests that those with a stronger conscience will be more tolerable to frustrations, thus less likely to be involved in criminal activities.: 198–9 Sutherland and Cressey (1978) define white-collar crime as crime committed by persons of high social position in the course of their occupation. The white-collar crime involves people making use of their occupational position to enrich themselves and others illegally, which often causes public harm. In white-collar crime, public harm wreaked by false advertising, marketing of unsafe products, embezzlement, and bribery of public officials is more extensive than most people think, most of which go unnoticed and unpunished.: 206 Likewise, corporate crime refers to the illegal actions of a corporation or people acting on its behalf. Corporate crime ranges from knowingly selling faulty or dangerous products to purposely polluting the environment. Like white-collar crime, most cases of corporate crime go unpunished, and many are not never even known to the public.: 206 See also References Introductory reading |
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Contents Programming language Page version status This is an accepted version of this page A programming language is an engineered language for expressing computer programs. Programming languages typically allow software to be written in a human readable manner. Execution of a program requires an implementation. There are two main approaches for implementing a programming language – compilation, where programs are compiled ahead-of-time to machine code, and interpretation, where programs are directly executed. In addition to these two extremes, some implementations use hybrid approaches such as just-in-time compilation and bytecode interpreters. The design of programming languages has been strongly influenced by computer architecture, with most imperative languages designed around the ubiquitous von Neumann architecture. While early programming languages were closely tied to the hardware, modern languages often hide hardware details via abstraction in an effort to enable better software with less effort.[citation needed] Related Programming languages have some similarity to natural languages in that they can allow communication of ideas between people. That is, programs are generally human-readable and can express complex ideas. However, the kinds of ideas that programming languages can express are ultimately limited to the domain of computation. The term computer language is sometimes used interchangeably with programming language but some contend they are different concepts. Some contend that programming languages are a subset of computer languages. Some use computer language to classify a language used in computing that is not considered a programming language.[citation needed] Some regard a programming language as a theoretical construct for programming an abstract machine, and a computer language as the subset thereof that runs on a physical computer, which has finite hardware resources. John C. Reynolds emphasizes that a formal specification language is as much a programming language as is a language intended for execution. He argues that textual and even graphical input formats that affect the behavior of a computer are programming languages, despite the fact they are commonly not Turing-complete, and remarks that ignorance of programming language concepts is the reason for many flaws in input formats. History The first programmable computers were invented during the 1940s, and with them, the first programming languages. The earliest computers were programmed in first-generation programming languages (1GLs), machine language (simple instructions that could be directly executed by the processor). This code was very difficult to debug and was not portable between different computer systems. In order to improve the ease of programming, assembly languages (or second-generation programming languages—2GLs) were invented, diverging from the machine language to make programs easier to understand for humans, although they did not increase portability. Initially, hardware resources were scarce and expensive, while human resources were cheaper. Therefore, cumbersome languages that were time-consuming to use, but were closer to the hardware for higher efficiency were favored. The introduction of high-level programming languages (third-generation programming languages—3GLs)—revolutionized programming. These languages abstracted away the details of the hardware, instead being designed to express algorithms that could be understood more easily by humans. For example, arithmetic expressions could now be written in symbolic notation and later translated into machine code that the hardware could execute. In 1957, Fortran (FORmula TRANslation) was invented. Often considered the first compiled high-level programming language, Fortran has remained in use into the twenty-first century. Around 1960, the first mainframes—general purpose computers—were developed, although they could only be operated by professionals and the cost was extreme. The data and instructions were input by punch cards, meaning that no input could be added while the program was running. The languages developed at this time therefore are designed for minimal interaction. After the invention of the microprocessor, computers in the 1970s became dramatically cheaper. New computers also allowed more user interaction, which was supported by newer programming languages. Lisp, implemented in 1958, was the first functional programming language. Unlike Fortran, it supported recursion and conditional expressions, and it also introduced dynamic memory management on a heap and automatic garbage collection. For the next decades, Lisp dominated artificial intelligence applications. In 1978, another functional language, ML, introduced inferred types and polymorphic parameters. After ALGOL (ALGOrithmic Language) was released in 1958 and 1960, it became the standard in computing literature for describing algorithms. Although its commercial success was limited, most popular imperative languages—including C, Pascal, Ada, C++, Java, and C#—are directly or indirectly descended from ALGOL 60. Among its innovations adopted by later programming languages included greater portability and the first use of context-free, BNF grammar. Simula, the first language to support object-oriented programming (including subtypes, dynamic dispatch, and inheritance), also descends from ALGOL and achieved commercial success. C, another ALGOL descendant, has sustained popularity into the twenty-first century. C allows access to lower-level machine operations more than other contemporary languages. Its power and efficiency, generated in part with flexible pointer operations, comes at the cost of making it more difficult to write correct code. Prolog, designed in 1972, was the first logic programming language, communicating with a computer using formal logic notation. With logic programming, the programmer specifies a desired result and allows the interpreter to decide how to achieve it. During the 1980s, the invention of the personal computer transformed the roles for which programming languages were used. New languages introduced in the 1980s included C++, a superset of C that can compile C programs but also supports classes and inheritance. Ada and other new languages introduced support for concurrency. The Japanese government invested heavily into the so-called fifth-generation languages that added support for concurrency to logic programming constructs, but these languages were outperformed by other concurrency-supporting languages. Due to the rapid growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web in the 1990s, new programming languages were introduced to support Web pages and networking. Java, based on C++ and designed for increased portability across systems and security, enjoyed large-scale success because these features are essential for many Internet applications. Another development was that of dynamically typed scripting languages—Python, JavaScript, PHP, and Ruby—designed to quickly produce small programs that coordinate existing applications. Due to their integration with HTML, they have also been used for building web pages hosted on servers. During the 2000s, there was a slowdown in the development of new programming languages that achieved widespread popularity. One innovation was service-oriented programming, designed to exploit distributed computing systems which components are connected by a network. Services are similar to objects in object-oriented programming, but run on a separate process. C# and F# cross-pollinated ideas between imperative and functional programming. After 2010, several new languages—Rust, Go, Swift, Zig, and Carbon —competed for the performance-critical software for which C had historically been used. Most of the new programming languages use static typing while a few numbers of new languages use dynamic typing like Julia. Some of the new programming languages are classified as visual programming languages like Scratch and LabVIEW. Also, some of these languages mix between textual and visual programming usage like Ballerina. Also, this trend lead to developing projects that help in developing new VPLs like Blockly by Google. Many game engines like Unreal and Unity added support for visual scripting too. Definition A language can be defined in terms of syntax (form) and semantics (meaning), and often is defined via a formal language specification. A programming language's surface form is known as its syntax. Most programming languages are purely textual; they use sequences of text including words, numbers, and punctuation, much like written natural languages. In contrast, some programming languages are graphical, using visual relationships between symbols to specify a program. The syntax of a language describes the possible combinations of symbols that form a syntactically correct program. The meaning given to a combination of symbols is handled by semantics (either formal or hard-coded in a reference implementation). Since most languages are textual, this article discusses textual syntax. The programming language syntax is usually defined using a combination of regular expressions (for lexical structure) and Backus–Naur form (for grammatical structure). Below is a simple grammar, based on Lisp: This grammar specifies the following: The following are examples of well-formed token sequences in this grammar: 12345, () and (a b c232 (1)). Not all syntactically correct programs are semantically correct. Many syntactically correct programs are nonetheless ill-formed, per the language's rules, and may (depending on the language specification and the soundness of the implementation) result in an error on translation or execution. In some cases, such programs may exhibit undefined behavior. Even when a program is well-defined within a language, it may still have a meaning that is not intended by the person who wrote it. Using natural language as an example, it may not be possible to assign a meaning to a grammatically correct sentence or the sentence may be false: The following C language fragment is syntactically correct, but performs operations that are not semantically defined (the operation *p >> 4 has no meaning for a value having a complex type and p->im is not defined because the value of p is the null pointer): If the type declaration on the first line were omitted, the program would trigger an error on the undefined variable p during compilation. However, the program would still be syntactically correct since type declarations provide only semantic information. The grammar needed to specify a programming language can be classified by its position in the Chomsky hierarchy. The syntax of most programming languages can be specified using a Type-2 grammar, i.e., they are context-free grammars. Some languages, including Perl and Lisp, contain constructs that allow execution during the parsing phase. Languages that have constructs that allow the programmer to alter the behavior of the parser make syntax analysis an undecidable problem, and generally blur the distinction between parsing and execution. In contrast to Lisp's macro system and Perl's BEGIN blocks, which may contain general computations, C macros are merely string replacements and do not require code execution. Semantics refers to the meaning of content that conforms to a language's syntax. Static semantics defines restrictions on the structure of valid texts that are hard or impossible to express in standard syntactic formalisms.[failed verification] For compiled languages, static semantics essentially include those semantic rules that can be checked at compile time. Examples include checking that every identifier is declared before it is used (in languages that require such declarations) or that the labels on the arms of a case statement are distinct. Many important restrictions of this type, like checking that identifiers are used in the appropriate context (e.g. not adding an integer to a function name), or that subroutine calls have the appropriate number and type of arguments, can be enforced by defining them as rules in a logic called a type system. Other forms of static analyses like data flow analysis may also be part of static semantics. Programming languages such as Java and C# have definite assignment analysis, a form of data flow analysis, as part of their respective static semantics. Once data has been specified, the machine must be instructed to perform operations on the data. For example, the semantics may define the strategy by which expressions are evaluated to values, or the manner in which control structures conditionally execute statements. The dynamic semantics (also known as execution semantics) of a language defines how and when the various constructs of a language should produce a program behavior. There are many ways of defining execution semantics. Natural language is often used to specify the execution semantics of languages commonly used in practice. A significant amount of academic research goes into formal semantics of programming languages, which allows execution semantics to be specified in a formal manner. Results from this field of research have seen limited application to programming language design and implementation outside academia. Features A language provides features for a programmer to develop software. Some notable features are described below. A data type is a set of allowable values and operations that can be performed on these values. Each programming language's type system defines which data types exist, the type of an expression, and how type equivalence and type compatibility function in the language. According to type theory, a language is fully typed if the specification of every operation defines types of data to which the operation is applicable. In contrast, an untyped language, such as most assembly languages, allows any operation to be performed on any data, generally sequences of bits of various lengths. In practice, while few languages are fully typed, most offer a degree of typing. Because different types (such as integers and floats) represent values differently, unexpected results will occur if one type is used when another is expected. Type checking will flag this error, usually at compile time (runtime type checking is more costly). With strong typing, type errors can always be detected unless variables are explicitly cast to a different type. Weak typing occurs when languages allow implicit casting—for example, to enable operations between variables of different types without the programmer making an explicit type conversion. The more cases in which this type coercion is allowed, the fewer type errors can be detected. Early programming languages often supported only built-in, numeric types such as the integer (signed and unsigned) and floating point (to support operations on real numbers that are not integers). Most programming languages support multiple sizes of floats (often called float and double) and integers depending on the size and precision required by the programmer. Storing an integer in a type that is too small to represent it leads to integer overflow. The most common way of representing negative numbers with signed types is twos complement, although ones complement is also used. Other common types include Boolean—which is either true or false—and character—traditionally one byte, sufficient to represent all ASCII characters. Arrays are a data type whose elements, in many languages, must consist of a single type of fixed length. Other languages define arrays as references to data stored elsewhere and support elements of varying types. Depending on the programming language, sequences of multiple characters, called strings, may be supported as arrays of characters or their own primitive type. Strings may be of fixed or variable length, which enables greater flexibility at the cost of increased storage space and more complexity. Other data types that may be supported include lists, associative (unordered) arrays accessed via keys, records in which data is mapped to names in an ordered structure, and tuples—similar to records but without names for data fields. Pointers store memory addresses, typically referencing locations on the heap where other data is stored. The simplest user-defined type is an ordinal type, often called an enumeration, whose values can be mapped onto the set of positive integers. Since the mid-1980s, most programming languages also support abstract data types, in which the representation of the data and operations are hidden from the user, who can only access an interface. The benefits of data abstraction can include increased reliability, reduced complexity, less potential for name collision, and allowing the underlying data structure to be changed without the client needing to alter its code. In static typing, all expressions have their types determined before a program executes, typically at compile-time. Most widely used, statically typed programming languages require the types of variables to be specified explicitly. In some languages, types are implicit; one form of this is when the compiler can infer types based on context. The downside of implicit typing is the potential for errors to go undetected. Complete type inference has traditionally been associated with functional languages such as Haskell and ML. With dynamic typing, the type is not attached to the variable but only the value encoded in it. A single variable can be reused for a value of a different type. Although this provides more flexibility to the programmer, it is at the cost of lower reliability and less ability for the programming language to check for errors. Some languages allow variables of a union type to which any type of value can be assigned, in an exception to their usual static typing rules. In computing, multiple instructions can be executed simultaneously. Many programming languages support instruction-level and subprogram-level concurrency. By the twenty-first century, additional processing power on computers was increasingly coming from the use of additional processors, which requires programmers to design software that makes use of multiple processors simultaneously to achieve improved performance. Interpreted languages such as Python and Ruby do not support the concurrent use of multiple processors. Other programming languages do support managing data shared between different threads by controlling the order of execution of key instructions via the use of semaphores, controlling access to shared data via monitor, or enabling message passing between threads. Many programming languages include exception handlers, a section of code triggered by runtime errors that can deal with them in two main ways: Some programming languages support dedicating a block of code to run regardless of whether an exception occurs before the code is reached; this is called finalization. There is a tradeoff between increased ability to handle exceptions and reduced performance. For example, even though array index errors are common C does not check them for performance reasons. Although programmers can write code to catch user-defined exceptions, this can clutter a program. Standard libraries in some languages, such as C, use their return values to indicate an exception. Some languages and their compilers have the option of turning on and off error handling capability, either temporarily or permanently. Design and implementation One of the most important influences on programming language design has been computer architecture. Imperative languages, the most commonly used type, were designed to perform well on von Neumann architecture, the most common digital computer architecture. In von Neumann architecture, the memory stores both data and instructions, while the CPU that performs instructions on data is separate, and data must be piped back and forth to the CPU. The central elements in these languages are variables, assignment, and iteration, which is more efficient than recursion on these machines. Many programming languages have been designed from scratch, altered to meet new needs, and combined with other languages. Many have eventually fallen into disuse.[citation needed] The birth of programming languages in the 1950s was stimulated by the desire to make a universal programming language suitable for all machines and uses, avoiding the need to write code for different computers. By the early 1960s, the idea of a universal language was rejected due to the differing requirements of the variety of purposes for which code was written. Desirable qualities of programming languages include readability, writability, and reliability. These features can reduce the cost of training programmers in a language, the amount of time needed to write and maintain programs in the language, the cost of compiling the code, and increase runtime performance. Programming language design often involves tradeoffs. For example, features to improve reliability typically come at the cost of performance. Increased expressivity due to a large number of operators makes writing code easier but comes at the cost of readability. Natural-language programming has been proposed as a way to eliminate the need for a specialized language for programming. However, this goal remains distant and its benefits are open to debate. Edsger W. Dijkstra took the position that the use of a formal language is essential to prevent the introduction of meaningless constructs. Alan Perlis was similarly dismissive of the idea. The specification of a programming language is an artifact that the language users and the implementors can use to agree upon whether a piece of source code is a valid program in that language, and if so what its behavior shall be. A programming language specification can take several forms, including the following: An implementation of a programming language is the conversion of a program into machine code that can be executed by the hardware. The machine code then can be executed with the help of the operating system. The most common form of interpretation in production code is by a compiler, which translates the source code via an intermediate-level language into machine code, known as an executable. Once the program is compiled, it will run more quickly than with other implementation methods. Some compilers are able to provide further optimization to reduce memory or computation usage when the executable runs, but increasing compilation time. Another implementation method is to run the program with an interpreter, which translates each line of software into machine code just before it executes. Although it can make debugging easier, the downside of interpretation is that it runs 10 to 100 times slower than a compiled executable. Hybrid interpretation methods provide some of the benefits of compilation and some of the benefits of interpretation via partial compilation. One form this takes is just-in-time compilation, in which the software is compiled ahead of time into an intermediate language, and then into machine code immediately before execution. Proprietary languages Although most of the most commonly used programming languages have fully open specifications and implementations, many programming languages exist only as proprietary programming languages with the implementation available only from a single vendor, which may claim that such a proprietary language is their intellectual property. Proprietary programming languages are commonly domain-specific languages or internal scripting languages for a single product; some proprietary languages are used only internally within a vendor, while others are available to external users.[citation needed] Some programming languages exist on the border between proprietary and open; for example, Oracle Corporation asserts proprietary rights to some aspects of the Java programming language, and Microsoft's C# programming language, which has open implementations of most parts of the system, also has Common Language Runtime (CLR) as a closed environment. Many proprietary languages are widely used, in spite of their proprietary nature; examples include MATLAB, VBScript, and Wolfram Language. Some languages may make the transition from closed to open; for example, Erlang was originally Ericsson's internal programming language. Open source programming languages are particularly helpful for open science applications, enhancing the capacity for replication and code sharing. Use Thousands of different programming languages have been created, mainly in the computing field. Individual software projects commonly use five programming languages or more. Programming languages differ from most other forms of human expression in that they require a greater degree of precision and completeness. When using a natural language to communicate with other people, human authors and speakers can be ambiguous and make small errors, and still expect their intent to be understood. However, figuratively speaking, computers "do exactly what they are told to do", and cannot "understand" what code the programmer intended to write. The combination of the language definition, a program, and the program's inputs must fully specify the external behavior that occurs when the program is executed, within the domain of control of that program. In contrast, ideas about an algorithm can be communicated to humans without the precision needed for execution by using pseudocode, which interleaves natural language with code written in a programming language. A programming language provides a structured mechanism for defining pieces of data, and the operations or transformations that may be carried out automatically on that data. A programmer uses the abstractions present in the language to represent the concepts involved in a computation. These concepts are represented as a collection of the simplest elements available (called primitives). Programming is the process by which programmers combine these primitives to compose new programs, or adapt existing ones to new uses or a changing environment. Programs for a computer might be executed in a batch process without any human interaction, or a user might type commands in an interactive session of an interpreter. In this case the "commands" are simply programs, whose execution is chained together. When a language can run its commands through an interpreter (such as a Unix shell or other command-line interface), without compiling, it is called a scripting language. Determining which is the most widely used programming language is difficult since the definition of usage varies by context. One language may occupy the greater number of programmer hours, a different one has more lines of code, and a third may consume the most CPU time. Some languages are very popular for particular kinds of applications. For example, COBOL is still strong in the corporate data center, often on large mainframes; Fortran in scientific and engineering applications; Ada in aerospace, transportation, military, real-time, and embedded applications; and C in embedded applications and operating systems. Other languages are regularly used to write many different kinds of applications. Various methods of measuring language popularity, each subject to a different bias over what is measured, have been proposed: Combining and averaging information from various internet sites, stackify.com reported the ten most popular programming languages (in descending order by overall popularity): Java, C, C++, Python, C#, JavaScript, VB .NET, R, PHP, and MATLAB. As of June 2024, the top five programming languages as measured by TIOBE index are Python, C++, C, Java and C#. TIOBE provides a list of top 100 programming languages according to popularity and update this list every month. According to IEEE Spectrum staff, today's most popular programming languages may remain dominant because of how AI works. As a result, new languages will have a harder time gaining popularity since coders will not write many programs in them. Dialects, flavors and implementations A dialect of a programming language or a data exchange language is a (relatively small) variation or extension of the language that does not change its intrinsic nature. With languages such as Scheme and Forth, standards may be considered insufficient, inadequate, or illegitimate by implementors, so often they will deviate from the standard, making a new dialect. In other cases, a dialect is created for use in a domain-specific language, often a subset. In the Lisp world, most languages that use basic S-expression syntax and Lisp-like semantics are considered Lisp dialects, although they vary wildly as do, say, Racket and Clojure. As it is common for one language to have several dialects, it can become quite difficult for an inexperienced programmer to find the right documentation. The BASIC language has many dialects. Classifications Programming languages can be described per the following high-level yet sometimes overlapping classifications: An imperative programming language supports implementing logic encoded as a sequence of ordered operations. Most popularly used languages are classified as imperative. A functional programming language supports successively applying functions to the given parameters. Although appreciated by many researchers for their simplicity and elegance, problems with efficiency have prevented them from being widely adopted. A logic programming language is designed so that the software, rather than the programmer, decides what order in which the instructions are executed. Object-oriented programming (OOP) is characterized by features such as data abstraction, inheritance, and dynamic dispatch. OOP is supported by most popular imperative languages and some functional languages. Although a markup language is not a programming language per se, it might support integration with a programming language. There are special-purpose languages that are not easily compared to other programming languages. See also References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cython] | [TOKENS: 1095] |
Contents Cython Cython (/ˈsaɪθɒn/) is a superset of the programming language Python, which allows developers to write Python code (with optional, C-inspired syntax extensions) that yields performance comparable to that of C. Cython is a compiled language that is typically used to generate CPython extension modules. Annotated Python-like code is compiled to C and then automatically wrapped in interface code, producing extension modules that can be loaded and used by regular Python code using the import statement, but with significantly less computational overhead at run time. Cython also facilitates wrapping independent C or C++ code into Python-importable modules. Cython is written in Python and C and works on Windows, macOS, and Linux, producing C source files compatible with CPython 2.6, 2.7, and 3.3 and later versions. The Cython source code that Cython compiles (to C) can use both Python 2 and Python 3 syntax, defaulting to Python 2 syntax in Cython 0.x and Python 3 syntax in Cython 3.x. The default can be overridden (e.g. in source code comment) to Python 3 (or 2) syntax. Since Python 3 syntax has changed in recent versions, Cython may not be up to date with the latest additions. Cython has "native support for most of the C++ language" and "compiles almost all existing Python code". Cython 3.0.0 was released on 17 July 2023. Design Cython works by producing a standard Python module. However, the behavior differs from standard Python in that the module code, originally written in Python, is translated into C. While the resulting code is fast, it makes many calls into the CPython interpreter and CPython standard libraries to perform actual work. Choosing this arrangement saved considerably on Cython's development time, but modules have a dependency on the Python interpreter and standard library. Although most of the code is C-based, a small stub loader written in interpreted Python is usually required (unless the goal is to create a loader written entirely in C, which may involve work with the undocumented internals of CPython). However, this is not a major problem due to the presence of the Python interpreter. Cython has a foreign function interface for invoking C/C++ routines and the ability to declare the static type of subroutine parameters and results, local variables, and class attributes. A Cython program that implements the same algorithm as a corresponding Python program may consume fewer computing resources such as core memory and processing cycles due to differences between the CPython and Cython execution models. A basic Python program is loaded and executed by the CPython virtual machine, so both the runtime and the program itself consume computing resources. A Cython program is compiled to C code, which is further compiled to machine code, so the virtual machine is used only briefly when the program is loaded. Cython employs: Performance depends both on what C code is generated by Cython and how that code is compiled by the C compiler. History Cython is a derivative of the Pyrex language, but it supports more features and optimizations than Pyrex. Cython was forked from Pyrex in 2007 by developers of the Sage computer algebra package, because they were unhappy with Pyrex's limitations and could not get patches accepted by Pyrex's maintainer Greg Ewing, who envisioned a much smaller scope for his tool than the Sage developers had in mind. They then forked Pyrex as SageX. When they found people were downloading Sage just to get SageX, and developers of other packages (including Stefan Behnel, who maintains the XML library LXML) were also maintaining forks of Pyrex, SageX was split off the Sage project and merged with cython-lxml to become Cython. Cython files have a .pyx extension. At its most basic, Cython code looks exactly like Python code. However, whereas standard Python is dynamically typed, in Cython, types can optionally be provided, allowing for improved performance, allowing loops to be converted into C loops where possible. For example: Examples A sample hello world program for Cython is more complex than in most languages because it interfaces with the Python C API and setuptools or other PEP517-compliant extension building facilities.[jargon] At least three files are required for a basic project: The following code listings demonstrate the build and launch process: These commands build and launch the program: Using in IPython/Jupyter notebook A more straightforward way to start with Cython is through command-line IPython (or through in-browser python console called Jupyter notebook): which gives a 95 times improvement over the pure-python version. More details on the subject in the official quickstart page. Uses of Cython Cython is particularly popular among scientific users of Python, where it has "the perfect audience" according to Python creator Guido van Rossum. Of particular note: Cython's domain is not limited to just numerical computing. For example, the lxml XML toolkit is written mostly in Cython, and like its predecessor Pyrex, Cython is used to provide Python bindings for many C and C++ libraries such as the messaging library ZeroMQ. Cython can also be used to develop parallel programs for multi-core processor machines; this feature makes use of the OpenMP library. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clade] | [TOKENS: 1402] |
Contents Clade In biology, a clade (/kleɪd/) (from Ancient Greek κλάδος (kládos) 'branch'), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach to taxonomy adopted by most biological fields. The common ancestor may be an individual, a population, or a species (extinct or extant). Clades are nested, one in another, as each branch in turn splits into smaller branches. These splits reflect evolutionary history as populations diverged and evolved independently. Clades are termed monophyletic (Greek: "one clan") groups. Over the last few decades, the cladistic approach has revolutionized biological classification and revealed surprising evolutionary relationships among organisms. Increasingly, taxonomists try to avoid naming taxa that are not clades; that is, taxa that are not monophyletic. Some of the relationships between organisms that the molecular biology arm of cladistics has revealed include that fungi are closer relatives to animals than they are to plants, archaea are now considered different from bacteria, and multicellular organisms may have evolved from archaea. The term clade is also used with a similar meaning in other fields besides biology, such as historical linguistics; see Cladistics § In disciplines other than biology. Naming and etymology The term clade was coined in 1957 by the biologist Julian Huxley to refer to the result of cladogenesis, the evolutionary splitting of a parent species into two distinct species, a concept Huxley borrowed from Bernhard Rensch. Many commonly named groups – rodents and insects, for example – are clades because, in each case, the group consists of a common ancestor with all its descendant branches. Rodents, for instance, are a branch of mammals that split off after the end of the period when the clade Dinosauria stopped being the dominant terrestrial vertebrates 66 million years ago. The original population and all its descendants are a clade. The rodent clade corresponds to the order Rodentia, and insects to the class Insecta. These clades include smaller clades, such as chipmunk or ant, respectively, each of which consists of even smaller clades. The clade "rodent" is in turn included in the mammal, vertebrate and animal clades. [citation needed] History of nomenclature and taxonomy The idea of a clade did not exist in pre-Darwinian Linnaean taxonomy, which was based by necessity only on internal or external morphological similarities between organisms. Many of the better known animal groups in Linnaeus's original Systema Naturae (mostly vertebrate groups) do represent clades. The phenomenon of convergent evolution is responsible for many cases of misleading similarities in the morphology of groups that evolved from different lineages. [citation needed] With the increasing realization in the first half of the 19th century that species had changed and split through the ages, classification increasingly came to be seen as branches on the evolutionary tree of life. The publication of Darwin's theory of evolution in 1859 gave this view increasing weight. In 1876 Thomas Henry Huxley, an early advocate of evolutionary theory, proposed a revised taxonomy based on a concept strongly resembling clades, although the term clade itself would not be coined until 1957 by his grandson, Julian Huxley. German biologist Emil Hans Willi Hennig (1913–1976) is considered to be the founder of cladistics. He proposed a classification system that represented repeated branchings of the family tree, as opposed to the previous systems, which put organisms on a "ladder", with supposedly more "advanced" organisms at the top. Taxonomists have increasingly worked to make the taxonomic system reflect evolution. When it comes to naming, this principle is not always compatible with the traditional rank-based nomenclature (in which only taxa associated with a rank can be named) because not enough ranks exist to name a long series of nested clades. For these and other reasons, phylogenetic nomenclature has been developed; it is still controversial. [citation needed] As an example, see the full current[when?] classification of Anas platyrhynchos (the mallard duck) with 40 clades from Eukaryota down by following this Wikispecies link and clicking on "Expand". The name of a clade is conventionally a plural, where the singular refers to each member individually. A unique exception is the reptile clade Dracohors, which was made by haplology from Latin "draco" and "cohors", i.e. "the dragon cohort"; its form with a suffix added should be e.g. "dracohortian". [citation needed] Definition A clade is by definition monophyletic, meaning that it contains one ancestor which can be an organism, a population, or a species and all its descendants.[note 1] The ancestor can be known or unknown; any and all members of a clade can be extant or extinct. Clades and phylogenetic trees The science that tries to reconstruct phylogenetic trees and thus discover clades is called phylogenetics or cladistics, the latter term coined by Ernst Mayr (1965), derived from "clade". The results of phylogenetic/cladistic analyses are tree-shaped diagrams called cladograms; they, and all their branches, are phylogenetic hypotheses. Three methods of defining clades are featured in phylogenetic nomenclature: node-, stem-, and apomorphy-based (see Phylogenetic nomenclature for detailed definitions). Terminology The relationship between clades can be described in several ways: The age of a clade can be described based on two different reference points, crown age and stem age. The crown age of a clade refers to the age of the most recent common ancestor of all of the species in the clade. The stem age of a clade refers to the time that the ancestral lineage of the clade diverged from its sister clade. A clade's stem age is either the same as or older than its crown age. Ages of clades cannot be directly observed. They are inferred, either from stratigraphy of fossils, or from molecular clock estimates. Viruses Viruses, and particularly RNA viruses form clades. These are useful in tracking the spread of viral infections. HIV, for example, has clades called subtypes, which vary in geographical prevalence. HIV subtype (clade) B, for example is predominant in Europe, the Americas and Japan, whereas subtype A is more common in east Africa. See also Notes References Bibliography External links |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/events/tc-disrupt-2026/?utm_source=tc&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=disrupt2026&utm_content=seb&promo=rightrail_seb&display=] | [TOKENS: 778] |
Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Disrupt is where you’ll find innovation for every stage of your startup journey. Whether you’re a budding founder with a revolutionary idea, a seasoned startup looking to scale, or an investor seeking the next big thing, Disrupt offers unparalleled resources, connections, and expert insights to propel your venture forward. Find innovation for every stage at Disrupt 2026 From idea to IPO, Disrupt 2026 will map out the path for startups to achieve their next major milestone. Looking to meet founders, connect with investors, seek advice, or land your next big role? Disrupt is the must-attend event to make it all happen in person. Disrupt is more than a startup launchpad — it’s a growth accelerator. Dive into sessions on scaling, sales, and leadership, and connect with the investors and tech experts who can help take your business to the next level. Tap into the wisdom of founders and tech titans at Disrupt. From actionable tips to hard-won lessons, they’ll share what works (and what doesn’t) to guide you as you build your own path forward. Past speakers Roelof Botha Managing Partner and Steward Sequoia Capital View Profile Managing Partner and Steward Sequoia Capital Mary Barra Chair and CEO General Motors View Profile Chair and CEO General Motors Denise Dresser Chief Executive Officer Slack from Salesforce View Profile Chief Executive Officer Slack from Salesforce Colin Kaepernick Founder and CEO Lumi and Super Bowl QB View Profile Founder and CEO Lumi and Super Bowl QB Vinod Khosla Founder Khosla Ventures View Profile Founder Khosla Ventures Matt Mullenweg Co-Founder / Founder and CEO WordPress / Automattic View Profile Co-Founder / Founder and CEO WordPress / Automattic Shaquille O'Neal NBA Superstar and Philanthropist Entrepreneur View Profile NBA Superstar and Philanthropist Entrepreneur Assaf Rappaport Co-Founder and CEO Wiz View Profile Co-Founder and CEO Wiz Serena Williams Founding & Managing Partner Serena Ventures View Profile Founding & Managing Partner Serena Ventures Reasons not to miss Disrupt Find your ticket match Save up to $680 on your ticket until February 27. Disrupt 2026 news and updates Platinum Partners Partnership Opportunities TechCrunch offers many ways for partners to engage directly with our attendees before, during, and after the event. If you’re interested in learning more about how your company can be part of the event, get in touch with our sales team below. Location 800 Howard St.San Francisco, CA 94103United States of America Upcoming TechCrunch Events Be the first to know when StrictlyVC events go live Save up to $300 with Super Early Bird rates Join 1,000+ founders and investors in Boston: REGISTER NOW In 2025, StrictlyVC sparked candid conversations on deep tech, real-world VC insights, startups, and scaling, while bringing together thousands of meaningful connections from the Bay Area to London and Athens. Join the 2026 waitlist to be the first to know when tickets go live at the lowest rate and to receive key event details. Seating is limited. JOIN WAITLIST Get the latest event announcements, special discounts and other event offers. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. Partner with TechCrunch TechCrunch offers many ways for partners to engage directly with our attendees before, during, and after the event. Get in touch with us to learn more. © 2024 Yahoo. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States#cite_note-1] | [TOKENS: 17273] |
Contents United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the semi-exclave of Alaska in the northwest and the archipelago of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands in Oceania and the Caribbean.[j] It is a megadiverse country, with the world's third-largest land area[c] and third-largest population, exceeding 341 million.[k] Paleo-Indians first migrated from North Asia to North America at least 15,000 years ago, and formed various civilizations. Spanish colonization established Spanish Florida in 1513, the first European colony in what is now the continental United States. British colonization followed with the 1607 settlement of Virginia, the first of the Thirteen Colonies. Enslavement of Africans was practiced in all colonies by 1770 and supplied most of the labor for the Southern Colonies' plantation economy. Clashes with the British Crown began as a civil protest over the illegality of taxation without representation in Parliament and the denial of other English rights. They evolved into the American Revolution, which led to the Declaration of Independence and a society based on universal rights. Victory in the 1775–1783 Revolutionary War brought international recognition of U.S. sovereignty and fueled westward expansion, further dispossessing native inhabitants. As more states were admitted, a North–South division over slavery led the Confederate States of America to declare secession and fight the Union in the 1861–1865 American Civil War. With the United States' victory and reunification, slavery was abolished nationally. By the late 19th century, the U.S. economy outpaced the French, German and British economies combined. As of 1900, the country had established itself as a great power, a status solidified after its involvement in World War I. Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. Its aftermath left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as rival superpowers, competing for ideological dominance and international influence during the Cold War. The Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 ended the Cold War, leaving the U.S. as the world's sole superpower. The U.S. federal government is a representative democracy with a president and a constitution that grants separation of powers under three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. The United States Congress is a bicameral national legislature composed of the House of Representatives (a lower house based on population) and the Senate (an upper house based on equal representation for each state). Federalism grants substantial autonomy to the 50 states. In addition, 574 Native American tribes have sovereignty rights, and there are 326 Native American reservations. Since the 1850s, the Democratic and Republican parties have dominated American politics. American ideals and values are based on a democratic tradition inspired by the American Enlightenment movement. A developed country, the U.S. ranks high in economic competitiveness, innovation, and higher education. Accounting for over a quarter of nominal global GDP, its economy has been the world's largest since about 1890. It is the wealthiest country, with the highest disposable household income per capita among OECD members, though its wealth inequality is highly pronounced. Shaped by centuries of immigration, the culture of the U.S. is diverse and globally influential. Making up more than a third of global military spending, the country has one of the strongest armed forces and is a designated nuclear state. A member of numerous international organizations, the U.S. plays a major role in global political, cultural, economic, and military affairs. Etymology Documented use of the phrase "United States of America" dates back to January 2, 1776. On that day, Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George Washington, wrote a letter to Joseph Reed, Washington's aide-de-camp, seeking to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort. The first known public usage is an anonymous essay published in the Williamsburg newspaper The Virginia Gazette on April 6, 1776. Sometime on or after June 11, 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote "United States of America" in a rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, which was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The term "United States" and its initialism "U.S.", used as nouns or as adjectives in English, are common short names for the country. The initialism "USA", a noun, is also common. "United States" and "U.S." are the established terms throughout the U.S. federal government, with prescribed rules.[l] "The States" is an established colloquial shortening of the name, used particularly from abroad; "stateside" is the corresponding adjective or adverb. "America" is the feminine form of the first word of Americus Vesputius, the Latinized name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512);[m] it was first used as a place name by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann in 1507.[n] Vespucci first proposed that the West Indies discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 were part of a previously unknown landmass and not among the Indies at the eastern limit of Asia. In English, the term "America" usually does not refer to topics unrelated to the United States, despite the usage of "the Americas" to describe the totality of the continents of North and South America. History The first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia approximately 15,000 years ago, either across the Bering land bridge or along the now-submerged Ice Age coastline. Small isolated groups of hunter-gatherers are said to have migrated alongside herds of large herbivores far into Alaska, with ice-free corridors developing along the Pacific coast and valleys of North America in c. 16,500 – c. 13,500 BCE (c. 18,500 – c. 15,500 BP). The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BCE, is believed to be the first widespread culture in the Americas. Over time, Indigenous North American cultures grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the Mississippian culture, developed agriculture, architecture, and complex societies. In the post-archaic period, the Mississippian cultures were located in the midwestern, eastern, and southern regions, and the Algonquian in the Great Lakes region and along the Eastern Seaboard, while the Hohokam culture and Ancestral Puebloans inhabited the Southwest. Native population estimates of what is now the United States before the arrival of European colonizers range from around 500,000 to nearly 10 million. Christopher Columbus began exploring the Caribbean for Spain in 1492, leading to Spanish-speaking settlements and missions from what are now Puerto Rico and Florida to New Mexico and California. The first Spanish colony in the present-day continental United States was Spanish Florida, chartered in 1513. After several settlements failed there due to starvation and disease, Spain's first permanent town, Saint Augustine, was founded in 1565. France established its own settlements in French Florida in 1562, but they were either abandoned (Charlesfort, 1578) or destroyed by Spanish raids (Fort Caroline, 1565). Permanent French settlements were founded much later along the Great Lakes (Fort Detroit, 1701), the Mississippi River (Saint Louis, 1764) and especially the Gulf of Mexico (New Orleans, 1718). Early European colonies also included the thriving Dutch colony of New Nederland (settled 1626, present-day New York) and the small Swedish colony of New Sweden (settled 1638 in what became Delaware). British colonization of the East Coast began with the Virginia Colony (1607) and the Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts, 1620). The Mayflower Compact in Massachusetts and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for local representative self-governance and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies. While European settlers in what is now the United States experienced conflicts with Native Americans, they also engaged in trade, exchanging European tools for food and animal pelts.[o] Relations ranged from close cooperation to warfare and massacres. The colonial authorities often pursued policies that forced Native Americans to adopt European lifestyles, including conversion to Christianity. Along the eastern seaboard, settlers trafficked Africans through the Atlantic slave trade, largely to provide manual labor on plantations. The original Thirteen Colonies[p] that would later found the United States were administered as possessions of the British Empire by Crown-appointed governors, though local governments held elections open to most white male property owners. The colonial population grew rapidly from Maine to Georgia, eclipsing Native American populations; by the 1770s, the natural increase of the population was such that only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas. The colonies' distance from Britain facilitated the entrenchment of self-governance, and the First Great Awakening, a series of Christian revivals, fueled colonial interest in guaranteed religious liberty. Following its victory in the French and Indian War, Britain began to assert greater control over local affairs in the Thirteen Colonies, resulting in growing political resistance. One of the primary grievances of the colonists was the denial of their rights as Englishmen, particularly the right to representation in the British government that taxed them. To demonstrate their dissatisfaction and resolve, the First Continental Congress met in 1774 and passed the Continental Association, a colonial boycott of British goods enforced by local "committees of safety" that proved effective. The British attempt to then disarm the colonists resulted in the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord, igniting the American Revolutionary War. At the Second Continental Congress, the colonies appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and created a committee that named Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence. Two days after the Second Continental Congress passed the Lee Resolution to create an independent, sovereign nation, the Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776. The political values of the American Revolution evolved from an armed rebellion demanding reform within an empire to a revolution that created a new social and governing system founded on the defense of liberty and the protection of inalienable natural rights; sovereignty of the people; republicanism over monarchy, aristocracy, and other hereditary political power; civic virtue; and an intolerance of political corruption. The Founding Fathers of the United States, who included Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and many others, were inspired by Classical, Renaissance, and Enlightenment philosophies and ideas. Though in practical effect since its drafting in 1777, the Articles of Confederation was ratified in 1781 and formally established a decentralized government that operated until 1789. After the British surrender at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, American sovereignty was internationally recognized by the Treaty of Paris (1783), through which the U.S. gained territory stretching west to the Mississippi River, north to present-day Canada, and south to Spanish Florida. The Northwest Ordinance (1787) established the precedent by which the country's territory would expand with the admission of new states, rather than the expansion of existing states. The U.S. Constitution was drafted at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to overcome the limitations of the Articles. It went into effect in 1789, creating a federal republic governed by three separate branches that together formed a system of checks and balances. George Washington was elected the country's first president under the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 to allay skeptics' concerns about the power of the more centralized government. His resignation as commander-in-chief after the Revolutionary War and his later refusal to run for a third term as the country's first president established a precedent for the supremacy of civil authority in the United States and the peaceful transfer of power. In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand westward in larger numbers, many with a sense of manifest destiny. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 from France nearly doubled the territory of the United States. Lingering issues with Britain remained, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a draw. Spain ceded Florida and its Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, attempted to balance the desire of northern states to prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories with that of southern states to extend it there. Primarily, the compromise prohibited slavery in all other lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel. As Americans expanded further into territory inhabited by Native Americans, the federal government implemented policies of Indian removal or assimilation. The most significant such legislation was the Indian Removal Act of 1830, a key policy of President Andrew Jackson. It resulted in the Trail of Tears (1830–1850), in which an estimated 60,000 Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River were forcibly removed and displaced to lands far to the west, causing 13,200 to 16,700 deaths along the forced march. Settler expansion as well as this influx of Indigenous peoples from the East resulted in the American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi. During the colonial period, slavery became legal in all the Thirteen colonies, but by 1770 it provided the main labor force in the large-scale, agriculture-dependent economies of the Southern Colonies from Maryland to Georgia. The practice began to be significantly questioned during the American Revolution, and spurred by an active abolitionist movement that had reemerged in the 1830s, states in the North enacted laws to prohibit slavery within their boundaries. At the same time, support for slavery had strengthened in Southern states, with widespread use of inventions such as the cotton gin (1793) having made slavery immensely profitable for Southern elites. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, and the 1846 Oregon Treaty led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. Dispute with Mexico over Texas led to the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). After the victory of the U.S., Mexico recognized U.S. sovereignty over Texas, New Mexico, and California in the 1848 Mexican Cession; the cession's lands also included the future states of Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The California gold rush of 1848–1849 spurred a huge migration of white settlers to the Pacific coast, leading to even more confrontations with Native populations. One of the most violent, the California genocide of thousands of Native inhabitants, lasted into the mid-1870s. Additional western territories and states were created. Throughout the 1850s, the sectional conflict regarding slavery was further inflamed by national legislation in the U.S. Congress and decisions of the Supreme Court. In Congress, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 mandated the forcible return to their owners in the South of slaves taking refuge in non-slave states, while the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 effectively gutted the anti-slavery requirements of the Missouri Compromise. In its Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Supreme Court ruled against a slave brought into non-slave territory, simultaneously declaring the entire Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional. These and other events exacerbated tensions between North and South that would culminate in the American Civil War (1861–1865). Beginning with South Carolina, 11 slave-state governments voted to secede from the United States in 1861, joining to create the Confederate States of America. All other state governments remained loyal to the Union.[q] War broke out in April 1861 after the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter. Following the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, many freed slaves joined the Union army. The war began to turn in the Union's favor following the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg and Battle of Gettysburg, and the Confederates surrendered in 1865 after the Union's victory in the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Efforts toward reconstruction in the secessionist South had begun as early as 1862, but it was only after President Lincoln's assassination that the three Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution were ratified to protect civil rights. The amendments codified nationally the abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crimes, promised equal protection under the law for all persons, and prohibited discrimination on the basis of race or previous enslavement. As a result, African Americans took an active political role in ex-Confederate states in the decade following the Civil War. The former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union, beginning with Tennessee in 1866 and ending with Georgia in 1870. National infrastructure, including transcontinental telegraph and railroads, spurred growth in the American frontier. This was accelerated by the Homestead Acts, through which nearly 10 percent of the total land area of the United States was given away free to some 1.6 million homesteaders. From 1865 through 1917, an unprecedented stream of immigrants arrived in the United States, including 24.4 million from Europe. Most came through the Port of New York, as New York City and other large cities on the East Coast became home to large Jewish, Irish, and Italian populations. Many Northern Europeans as well as significant numbers of Germans and other Central Europeans moved to the Midwest. At the same time, about one million French Canadians migrated from Quebec to New England. During the Great Migration, millions of African Americans left the rural South for urban areas in the North. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. The Compromise of 1877 is generally considered the end of the Reconstruction era, as it resolved the electoral crisis following the 1876 presidential election and led President Rutherford B. Hayes to reduce the role of federal troops in the South. Immediately, the Redeemers began evicting the Carpetbaggers and quickly regained local control of Southern politics in the name of white supremacy. African Americans endured a period of heightened, overt racism following Reconstruction, a time often considered the nadir of American race relations. A series of Supreme Court decisions, including Plessy v. Ferguson, emptied the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of their force, allowing Jim Crow laws in the South to remain unchecked, sundown towns in the Midwest, and segregation in communities across the country, which would be reinforced in part by the policy of redlining later adopted by the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation. An explosion of technological advancement, accompanied by the exploitation of cheap immigrant labor, led to rapid economic expansion during the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. It continued into the early 20th, when the United States already outpaced the economies of Britain, France, and Germany combined. This fostered the amassing of power by a few prominent industrialists, largely by their formation of trusts and monopolies to prevent competition. Tycoons led the nation's expansion in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. The United States emerged as a pioneer of the automotive industry. These changes resulted in significant increases in economic inequality, slum conditions, and social unrest, creating the environment for labor unions and socialist movements to begin to flourish. This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which was characterized by significant economic and social reforms. Pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy; the islands were annexed in 1898. That same year, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam were ceded to the U.S. by Spain after the latter's defeat in the Spanish–American War. (The Philippines was granted full independence from the U.S. on July 4, 1946, following World War II. Puerto Rico and Guam have remained U.S. territories.) American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the Second Samoan Civil War. The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917. The United States entered World War I alongside the Allies in 1917 helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. In 1920, a constitutional amendment granted nationwide women's suffrage. During the 1920s and 1930s, radio for mass communication and early television transformed communications nationwide. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression, to which President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal plan of "reform, recovery and relief", a series of unprecedented and sweeping recovery programs and employment relief projects combined with financial reforms and regulations. Initially neutral during World War II, the U.S. began supplying war materiel to the Allies of World War II in March 1941 and entered the war in December after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Agreeing to a "Europe first" policy, the U.S. concentrated its wartime efforts on Japan's allies Italy and Germany until their final defeat in May 1945. The U.S. developed the first nuclear weapons and used them against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, ending the war. The United States was one of the "Four Policemen" who met to plan the post-war world, alongside the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. The U.S. emerged relatively unscathed from the war, with even greater economic power and international political influence. The end of World War II in 1945 left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as superpowers, each with its own political, military, and economic sphere of influence. Geopolitical tensions between the two superpowers soon led to the Cold War. The U.S. implemented a policy of containment intended to limit the Soviet Union's sphere of influence; engaged in regime change against governments perceived to be aligned with the Soviets; and prevailed in the Space Race, which culminated with the first crewed Moon landing in 1969. Domestically, the U.S. experienced economic growth, urbanization, and population growth following World War II. The civil rights movement emerged, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader in the early 1960s. The Great Society plan of President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration resulted in groundbreaking and broad-reaching laws, policies and a constitutional amendment to counteract some of the worst effects of lingering institutional racism. The counterculture movement in the U.S. brought significant social changes, including the liberalization of attitudes toward recreational drug use and sexuality. It also encouraged open defiance of the military draft (leading to the end of conscription in 1973) and wide opposition to U.S. intervention in Vietnam, with the U.S. totally withdrawing in 1975. A societal shift in the roles of women was significantly responsible for the large increase in female paid labor participation starting in the 1970s, and by 1985 the majority of American women aged 16 and older were employed. The Fall of Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991 marked the end of the Cold War and left the United States as the world's sole superpower. This cemented the United States' global influence, reinforcing the concept of the "American Century" as the U.S. dominated international political, cultural, economic, and military affairs. The 1990s saw the longest recorded economic expansion in American history, a dramatic decline in U.S. crime rates, and advances in technology. Throughout this decade, technological innovations such as the World Wide Web, the evolution of the Pentium microprocessor in accordance with Moore's law, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, the first gene therapy trial, and cloning either emerged in the U.S. or were improved upon there. The Human Genome Project was formally launched in 1990, while Nasdaq became the first stock market in the United States to trade online in 1998. In the Gulf War of 1991, an American-led international coalition of states expelled an Iraqi invasion force that had occupied neighboring Kuwait. The September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 by the pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda led to the war on terror and subsequent military interventions in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The U.S. housing bubble culminated in 2007 with the Great Recession, the largest economic contraction since the Great Depression. In the 2010s and early 2020s, the United States has experienced increased political polarization and democratic backsliding. The country's polarization was violently reflected in the January 2021 Capitol attack, when a mob of insurrectionists entered the U.S. Capitol and sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in an attempted self-coup d'état. Geography The United States is the world's third-largest country by total area behind Russia and Canada.[c] The 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia have a combined area of 3,119,885 square miles (8,080,470 km2). In 2021, the United States had 8% of the Earth's permanent meadows and pastures and 10% of its cropland. Starting in the east, the coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way to inland forests and rolling hills in the Piedmont plateau region. The Appalachian Mountains and the Adirondack Massif separate the East Coast from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi River System, the world's fourth-longest river system, runs predominantly north–south through the center of the country. The flat and fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking at over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rocky Mountains, the Yellowstone Caldera, is the continent's largest volcanic feature. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, and Mojave deserts. In the northwest corner of Arizona, carved by the Colorado River, is the Grand Canyon, a steep-sided canyon and popular tourist destination known for its overwhelming visual size and intricate, colorful landscape. The Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast. The lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States are in the State of California, about 84 miles (135 km) apart. At an elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m), Alaska's Denali (also called Mount McKinley) is the highest peak in the country and on the continent. Active volcanoes in the U.S. are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands. Located entirely outside North America, the archipelago of Hawaii consists of volcanic islands, physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. In addition to its total land area, the United States has one of the world's largest marine exclusive economic zones spanning approximately 4.5 million square miles (11.7 million km2) of ocean. With its large size and geographic variety, the United States includes most climate types. East of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The western Great Plains are semi-arid. Many mountainous areas of the American West have an alpine climate. The climate is arid in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon, Washington, and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Hawaii, the southern tip of Florida and U.S. territories in the Caribbean and Pacific are tropical. The United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country. States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur in the country, mainly in Tornado Alley. Due to climate change in the country, extreme weather has become more frequent in the U.S. in the 21st century, with three times the number of reported heat waves compared to the 1960s. Since the 1990s, droughts in the American Southwest have become more persistent and more severe. The regions considered as the most attractive to the population are the most vulnerable. The U.S. is one of 17 megadiverse countries containing large numbers of endemic species: about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland. The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 birds, 311 reptiles, 295 amphibians, and around 91,000 insect species. There are 63 national parks, and hundreds of other federally managed monuments, forests, and wilderness areas, administered by the National Park Service and other agencies. About 28% of the country's land is publicly owned and federally managed, primarily in the Western States. Most of this land is protected, though some is leased for commercial use, and less than one percent is used for military purposes. Environmental issues in the United States include debates on non-renewable resources and nuclear energy, air and water pollution, biodiversity, logging and deforestation, and climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the federal agency charged with addressing most environmental-related issues. The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 provides a way to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service implements and enforces the Act. In 2024, the U.S. ranked 35th among 180 countries in the Environmental Performance Index. Government and politics The United States is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The U.S. asserts sovereignty over five unincorporated territories and several uninhabited island possessions. It is the world's oldest surviving federation, and its presidential system of federal government has been adopted, in whole or in part, by many newly independent states worldwide following their decolonization. The Constitution of the United States serves as the country's supreme legal document. Most scholars describe the United States as a liberal democracy.[r] Composed of three branches, all headquartered in Washington, D.C., the federal government is the national government of the United States. The U.S. Constitution establishes a separation of powers intended to provide a system of checks and balances to prevent any of the three branches from becoming supreme. The three-branch system is known as the presidential system, in contrast to the parliamentary system where the executive is part of the legislative body. Many countries around the world adopted this aspect of the 1789 Constitution of the United States, especially in the postcolonial Americas. In the U.S. federal system, sovereign powers are shared between three levels of government specified in the Constitution: the federal government, the states, and Indian tribes. The U.S. also asserts sovereignty over five permanently inhabited territories: American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Residents of the 50 states are governed by their elected state government, under state constitutions compatible with the national constitution, and by elected local governments that are administrative divisions of a state. States are subdivided into counties or county equivalents, and (except for Hawaii) further divided into municipalities, each administered by elected representatives. The District of Columbia is a federal district containing the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C. The federal district is an administrative division of the federal government. Indian country is made up of 574 federally recognized tribes and 326 Indian reservations. They hold a government-to-government relationship with the U.S. federal government in Washington and are legally defined as domestic dependent nations with inherent tribal sovereignty rights. In addition to the five major territories, the U.S. also asserts sovereignty over the United States Minor Outlying Islands in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean. The seven undisputed islands without permanent populations are Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, and Palmyra Atoll. U.S. sovereignty over the unpopulated Bajo Nuevo Bank, Navassa Island, Serranilla Bank, and Wake Island is disputed. The Constitution is silent on political parties. However, they developed independently in the 18th century with the Federalist and Anti-Federalist parties. Since then, the United States has operated as a de facto two-party system, though the parties have changed over time. Since the mid-19th century, the two main national parties have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The former is perceived as relatively liberal in its political platform while the latter is perceived as relatively conservative in its platform. The United States has an established structure of foreign relations, with the world's second-largest diplomatic corps as of 2024[update]. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and home to the United Nations headquarters. The United States is a member of the G7, G20, and OECD intergovernmental organizations. Almost all countries have embassies and many have consulates (official representatives) in the country. Likewise, nearly all countries host formal diplomatic missions with the United States, except Iran, North Korea, and Bhutan. Though Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic relations with the U.S., it maintains close unofficial relations. The United States regularly supplies Taiwan with military equipment to deter potential Chinese aggression. Its geopolitical attention also turned to the Indo-Pacific when the United States joined the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan. The United States has a "Special Relationship" with the United Kingdom and strong ties with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Israel, and several European Union countries such as France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Poland. The U.S. works closely with its NATO allies on military and national security issues, and with countries in the Americas through the Organization of American States and the United States–Mexico–Canada Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau through the Compact of Free Association. It has increasingly conducted strategic cooperation with India, while its ties with China have steadily deteriorated. Beginning in 2014, the U.S. had become a key ally of Ukraine. After Donald Trump was elected U.S. president in 2024, he sought to negotiate an end to the Russo-Ukrainian War. He paused all military aid to Ukraine in March 2025, although the aid resumed later. Trump also ended U.S. intelligence sharing with the country, but this too was eventually restored. The president is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Department of Defense, headquartered at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., administers five of the six service branches, which are made up of the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force. The Coast Guard is administered by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and can be transferred to the Department of the Navy in wartime. Total strength of the entire military is about 1.3 million active duty with an additional 400,000 in reserve. The United States spent $997 billion on its military in 2024, which is by far the largest amount of any country, making up 37% of global military spending and accounting for 3.4% of the country's GDP. The U.S. possesses 42% of the world's nuclear weapons—the second-largest stockpile after that of Russia. The U.S. military is widely regarded as the most powerful and advanced in the world. The United States has the third-largest combined armed forces in the world, behind the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Indian Armed Forces. The U.S. military operates about 800 bases and facilities abroad, and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries. The United States has engaged in over 400 military interventions since its founding in 1776, with over half of these occurring between 1950 and 2019 and 25% occurring in the post-Cold War era. State defense forces (SDFs) are military units that operate under the sole authority of a state government. SDFs are authorized by state and federal law but are under the command of the state's governor. By contrast, the 54 U.S. National Guard organizations[t] fall under the dual control of state or territorial governments and the federal government; their units can also become federalized entities, but SDFs cannot be federalized. The National Guard personnel of a state or territory can be federalized by the president under the National Defense Act Amendments of 1933; this legislation created the Guard and provides for the integration of Army National Guard and Air National Guard units and personnel into the U.S. Army and (since 1947) the U.S. Air Force. The total number of National Guard members is about 430,000, while the estimated combined strength of SDFs is less than 10,000. There are about 18,000 U.S. police agencies from local to national level in the United States. Law in the United States is mainly enforced by local police departments and sheriff departments in their municipal or county jurisdictions. The state police departments have authority in their respective state, and federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have national jurisdiction and specialized duties, such as protecting civil rights, national security, enforcing U.S. federal courts' rulings and federal laws, and interstate criminal activity. State courts conduct almost all civil and criminal trials, while federal courts adjudicate the much smaller number of civil and criminal cases that relate to federal law. There is no unified "criminal justice system" in the United States. The American prison system is largely heterogenous, with thousands of relatively independent systems operating across federal, state, local, and tribal levels. In 2025, "these systems hold nearly 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,277 juvenile correctional facilities, 133 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories." Despite disparate systems of confinement, four main institutions dominate: federal prisons, state prisons, local jails, and juvenile correctional facilities. Federal prisons are run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and hold pretrial detainees as well as people who have been convicted of federal crimes. State prisons, run by the department of corrections of each state, hold people sentenced and serving prison time (usually longer than one year) for felony offenses. Local jails are county or municipal facilities that incarcerate defendants prior to trial; they also hold those serving short sentences (typically under a year). Juvenile correctional facilities are operated by local or state governments and serve as longer-term placements for any minor adjudicated as delinquent and ordered by a judge to be confined. In January 2023, the United States had the sixth-highest per capita incarceration rate in the world—531 people per 100,000 inhabitants—and the largest prison and jail population in the world, with more than 1.9 million people incarcerated. An analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database from 2010 showed U.S. homicide rates "were 7 times higher than in other high-income countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25 times higher". Economy The U.S. has a highly developed mixed economy that has been the world's largest nominally since about 1890. Its 2024 gross domestic product (GDP)[e] of more than $29 trillion constituted over 25% of nominal global economic output, or 15% at purchasing power parity (PPP). From 1983 to 2008, U.S. real compounded annual GDP growth was 3.3%, compared to a 2.3% weighted average for the rest of the G7. The country ranks first in the world by nominal GDP, second when adjusted for purchasing power parities (PPP), and ninth by PPP-adjusted GDP per capita. In February 2024, the total U.S. federal government debt was $34.4 trillion. Of the world's 500 largest companies by revenue, 138 were headquartered in the U.S. in 2025, the highest number of any country. The U.S. dollar is the currency most used in international transactions and the world's foremost reserve currency, backed by the country's dominant economy, its military, the petrodollar system, its large U.S. treasuries market, and its linked eurodollar. Several countries use it as their official currency, and in others it is the de facto currency. The U.S. has free trade agreements with several countries, including the USMCA. Although the United States has reached a post-industrial level of economic development and is often described as having a service economy, it remains a major industrial power; in 2024, the U.S. manufacturing sector was the world's second-largest by value output after China's. New York City is the world's principal financial center, and its metropolitan area is the world's largest metropolitan economy. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, both located in New York City, are the world's two largest stock exchanges by market capitalization and trade volume. The United States is at the forefront of technological advancement and innovation in many economic fields, especially in artificial intelligence; electronics and computers; pharmaceuticals; and medical, aerospace and military equipment. The country's economy is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity. The largest trading partners of the United States are the European Union, Mexico, Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, India, and Taiwan. The United States is the world's largest importer and second-largest exporter.[u] It is by far the world's largest exporter of services. Americans have the highest average household and employee income among OECD member states, and the fourth-highest median household income in 2023, up from sixth-highest in 2013. With personal consumption expenditures of over $18.5 trillion in 2023, the U.S. has a heavily consumer-driven economy and is the world's largest consumer market. The U.S. ranked first in the number of dollar billionaires and millionaires in 2023, with 735 billionaires and nearly 22 million millionaires. Wealth in the United States is highly concentrated; in 2011, the richest 10% of the adult population owned 72% of the country's household wealth, while the bottom 50% owned just 2%. U.S. wealth inequality increased substantially since the late 1980s, and income inequality in the U.S. reached a record high in 2019. In 2024, the country had some of the highest wealth and income inequality levels among OECD countries. Since the 1970s, there has been a decoupling of U.S. wage gains from worker productivity. In 2016, the top fifth of earners took home more than half of all income, giving the U.S. one of the widest income distributions among OECD countries. There were about 771,480 homeless persons in the U.S. in 2024. In 2022, 6.4 million children experienced food insecurity. Feeding America estimates that around one in five, or approximately 13 million, children experience hunger in the U.S. and do not know where or when they will get their next meal. Also in 2022, about 37.9 million people, or 11.5% of the U.S. population, were living in poverty. The United States has a smaller welfare state and redistributes less income through government action than most other high-income countries. It is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation nationally and one of a few countries in the world without federal paid family leave as a legal right. The United States has a higher percentage of low-income workers than almost any other developed country, largely because of a weak collective bargaining system and lack of government support for at-risk workers. The United States has been a leader in technological innovation since the late 19th century and scientific research since the mid-20th century. Methods for producing interchangeable parts and the establishment of a machine tool industry enabled the large-scale manufacturing of U.S. consumer products in the late 19th century. By the early 20th century, factory electrification, the introduction of the assembly line, and other labor-saving techniques created the system of mass production. In the 21st century, the United States continues to be one of the world's foremost scientific powers, though China has emerged as a major competitor in many fields. The U.S. has the highest research and development expenditures of any country and ranks ninth as a percentage of GDP. In 2022, the United States was (after China) the country with the second-highest number of published scientific papers. In 2021, the U.S. ranked second (also after China) by the number of patent applications, and third by trademark and industrial design applications (after China and Germany), according to World Intellectual Property Indicators. In 2025 the United States ranked third (after Switzerland and Sweden) in the Global Innovation Index. The United States is considered to be a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence technology. In 2023, the United States was ranked the second most technologically advanced country in the world (after South Korea) by Global Finance magazine. The United States has maintained a space program since the late 1950s, beginning with the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958. NASA's Apollo program (1961–1972) achieved the first crewed Moon landing with the 1969 Apollo 11 mission; it remains one of the agency's most significant milestones. Other major endeavors by NASA include the Space Shuttle program (1981–2011), the Voyager program (1972–present), the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes (launched in 1990 and 2021, respectively), and the multi-mission Mars Exploration Program (Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance). NASA is one of five agencies collaborating on the International Space Station (ISS); U.S. contributions to the ISS include several modules, including Destiny (2001), Harmony (2007), and Tranquility (2010), as well as ongoing logistical and operational support. The United States private sector dominates the global commercial spaceflight industry. Prominent American spaceflight contractors include Blue Origin, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceX. NASA programs such as the Commercial Crew Program, Commercial Resupply Services, Commercial Lunar Payload Services, and NextSTEP have facilitated growing private-sector involvement in American spaceflight. In 2023, the United States received approximately 84% of its energy from fossil fuel, and its largest source of energy was petroleum (38%), followed by natural gas (36%), renewable sources (9%), coal (9%), and nuclear power (9%). In 2022, the United States constituted about 4% of the world's population, but consumed around 16% of the world's energy. The U.S. ranks as the second-highest emitter of greenhouse gases behind China. The U.S. is the world's largest producer of nuclear power, generating around 30% of the world's nuclear electricity. It also has the highest number of nuclear power reactors of any country. From 2024, the U.S. plans to triple its nuclear power capacity by 2050. The United States' 4 million miles (6.4 million kilometers) of road network, owned almost entirely by state and local governments, is the longest in the world. The extensive Interstate Highway System that connects all major U.S. cities is funded mostly by the federal government but maintained by state departments of transportation. The system is further extended by state highways and some private toll roads. The U.S. is among the top ten countries with the highest vehicle ownership per capita (850 vehicles per 1,000 people) in 2022. A 2022 study found that 76% of U.S. commuters drive alone and 14% ride a bicycle, including bike owners and users of bike-sharing networks. About 11% use some form of public transportation. Public transportation in the United States is well developed in the largest urban areas, notably New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco; otherwise, coverage is generally less extensive than in most other developed countries. The U.S. also has many relatively car-dependent localities. Long-distance intercity travel is provided primarily by airlines, but travel by rail is more common along the Northeast Corridor, the only high-speed rail in the U.S. that meets international standards. Amtrak, the country's government-sponsored national passenger rail company, has a relatively sparse network compared to that of Western European countries. Service is concentrated in the Northeast, California, the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, and Virginia/Southeast. The United States has an extensive air transportation network. U.S. civilian airlines are all privately owned. The three largest airlines in the world, by total number of passengers carried, are U.S.-based; American Airlines became the global leader after its 2013 merger with US Airways. Of the 50 busiest airports in the world, 16 are in the United States, as well as five of the top 10. The world's busiest airport by passenger volume is Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2022, most of the 19,969 U.S. airports were owned and operated by local government authorities, and there are also some private airports. Some 5,193 are designated as "public use", including for general aviation. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has provided security at most major airports since 2001. The country's rail transport network, the longest in the world at 182,412.3 mi (293,564.2 km), handles mostly freight (in contrast to more passenger-centered rail in Europe). Because they are often privately owned operations, U.S. railroads lag behind those of the rest of the world in terms of electrification. The country's inland waterways are the world's fifth-longest, totaling 25,482 mi (41,009 km). They are used extensively for freight, recreation, and a small amount of passenger traffic. Of the world's 50 busiest container ports, four are located in the United States, with the busiest in the country being the Port of Los Angeles. Demographics The U.S. Census Bureau reported 331,449,281 residents on April 1, 2020,[v] making the United States the third-most-populous country in the world, after India and China. The Census Bureau's official 2025 population estimate was 341,784,857, an increase of 3.1% since the 2020 census. According to the Bureau's U.S. Population Clock, on July 1, 2024, the U.S. population had a net gain of one person every 16 seconds, or about 5400 people per day. In 2023, 51% of Americans age 15 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 34% had never been married. In 2023, the total fertility rate for the U.S. stood at 1.6 children per woman, and, at 23%, it had the world's highest rate of children living in single-parent households in 2019. Most Americans live in the suburbs of major metropolitan areas. The United States has a diverse population; 37 ancestry groups have more than one million members. White Americans with ancestry from Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa form the largest racial and ethnic group at 57.8% of the United States population. Hispanic and Latino Americans form the second-largest group and are 18.7% of the United States population. African Americans constitute the country's third-largest ancestry group and are 12.1% of the total U.S. population. Asian Americans are the country's fourth-largest group, composing 5.9% of the United States population. The country's 3.7 million Native Americans account for about 1%, and some 574 native tribes are recognized by the federal government. In 2024, the median age of the United States population was 39.1 years. While many languages and dialects are spoken in the United States, English is by far the most commonly spoken and written. De facto, English is the official language of the United States, and in 2025, Executive Order 14224 declared English official. However, the U.S. has never had a de jure official language, as Congress has never passed a law to designate English as official for all three federal branches. Some laws, such as U.S. naturalization requirements, nonetheless standardize English. Twenty-eight states and the United States Virgin Islands have laws that designate English as the sole official language; 19 states and the District of Columbia have no official language. Three states and four U.S. territories have recognized local or indigenous languages in addition to English: Hawaii (Hawaiian), Alaska (twenty Native languages),[w] South Dakota (Sioux), American Samoa (Samoan), Puerto Rico (Spanish), Guam (Chamorro), and the Northern Mariana Islands (Carolinian and Chamorro). In total, 169 Native American languages are spoken in the United States. In Puerto Rico, Spanish is more widely spoken than English. According to the American Community Survey (2020), some 245.4 million people in the U.S. age five and older spoke only English at home. About 41.2 million spoke Spanish at home, making it the second most commonly used language. Other languages spoken at home by one million people or more include Chinese (3.40 million), Tagalog (1.71 million), Vietnamese (1.52 million), Arabic (1.39 million), French (1.18 million), Korean (1.07 million), and Russian (1.04 million). German, spoken by 1 million people at home in 2010, fell to 857,000 total speakers in 2020. America's immigrant population is by far the world's largest in absolute terms. In 2022, there were 87.7 million immigrants and U.S.-born children of immigrants in the United States, accounting for nearly 27% of the overall U.S. population. In 2017, out of the U.S. foreign-born population, some 45% (20.7 million) were naturalized citizens, 27% (12.3 million) were lawful permanent residents, 6% (2.2 million) were temporary lawful residents, and 23% (10.5 million) were unauthorized immigrants. In 2019, the top countries of origin for immigrants were Mexico (24% of immigrants), India (6%), China (5%), the Philippines (4.5%), and El Salvador (3%). In fiscal year 2022, over one million immigrants (most of whom entered through family reunification) were granted legal residence. The undocumented immigrant population in the U.S. reached a record high of 14 million in 2023. The First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion in the country and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its establishment. Religious practice is widespread, among the most diverse in the world, and profoundly vibrant. The country has the world's largest Christian population, which includes the fourth-largest population of Catholics. Other notable faiths include Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, New Age, and Native American religions. Religious practice varies significantly by region. "Ceremonial deism" is common in American culture. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in a higher power or spiritual force, engage in spiritual practices such as prayer, and consider themselves religious or spiritual. In the Southern United States' "Bible Belt", evangelical Protestantism plays a significant role culturally; New England and the Western United States tend to be more secular. Mormonism, a Restorationist movement founded in the U.S. in 1847, is the predominant religion in Utah and a major religion in Idaho. About 82% of Americans live in metropolitan areas, particularly in suburbs; about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000. In 2022, 333 incorporated municipalities had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than one million residents, and four cities—New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston—had populations exceeding two million. Many U.S. metropolitan populations are growing rapidly, particularly in the South and West. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), average U.S. life expectancy at birth reached 79.0 years in 2024, its highest recorded level. This was an increase of 0.6 years over 2023. The CDC attributed the improvement to a significant fall in the number of fatal drug overdoses in the country, noting that "heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States, followed by cancer and unintentional injuries." In 2024, life expectancy at birth for American men rose to 76.5 years (+0.7 years compared to 2023), while life expectancy for women was 81.4 years (+0.3 years). Starting in 1998, life expectancy in the U.S. fell behind that of other wealthy industrialized countries, and Americans' "health disadvantage" gap has been increasing ever since. The Commonwealth Fund reported in 2020 that the U.S. had the highest suicide rate among high-income countries. Approximately one-third of the U.S. adult population is obese and another third is overweight. The U.S. healthcare system far outspends that of any other country, measured both in per capita spending and as a percentage of GDP, but attains worse healthcare outcomes when compared to peer countries for reasons that are debated. The United States is the only developed country without a system of universal healthcare, and a significant proportion of the population that does not carry health insurance. Government-funded healthcare coverage for the poor (Medicaid) and for those age 65 and older (Medicare) is available to Americans who meet the programs' income or age qualifications. In 2010, then-President Obama passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.[x] Abortion in the United States is not federally protected, and is illegal or restricted in 17 states. American primary and secondary education, known in the U.S. as K–12 ("kindergarten through 12th grade"), is decentralized. School systems are operated by state, territorial, and sometimes municipal governments and regulated by the U.S. Department of Education. In general, children are required to attend school or an approved homeschool from the age of five or six (kindergarten or first grade) until they are 18 years old. This often brings students through the 12th grade, the final year of a U.S. high school, but some states and territories allow them to leave school earlier, at age 16 or 17. The U.S. spends more on education per student than any other country, an average of $18,614 per year per public elementary and secondary school student in 2020–2021. Among Americans age 25 and older, 92.2% graduated from high school, 62.7% attended some college, 37.7% earned a bachelor's degree, and 14.2% earned a graduate degree. The U.S. literacy rate is near-universal. The U.S. has produced the most Nobel Prize winners of any country, with 411 (having won 413 awards). U.S. tertiary or higher education has earned a global reputation. Many of the world's top universities, as listed by various ranking organizations, are in the United States, including 19 of the top 25. American higher education is dominated by state university systems, although the country's many private universities and colleges enroll about 20% of all American students. Local community colleges generally offer open admissions, lower tuition, and coursework leading to a two-year associate degree or a non-degree certificate. As for public expenditures on higher education, the U.S. spends more per student than the OECD average, and Americans spend more than all nations in combined public and private spending. Colleges and universities directly funded by the federal government do not charge tuition and are limited to military personnel and government employees, including: the U.S. service academies, the Naval Postgraduate School, and military staff colleges. Despite some student loan forgiveness programs in place, student loan debt increased by 102% between 2010 and 2020, and exceeded $1.7 trillion in 2022. Culture and society The United States is home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and customs. The country has been described as having the values of individualism and personal autonomy, as well as a strong work ethic and competitiveness. Voluntary altruism towards others also plays a major role; according to a 2016 study by the Charities Aid Foundation, Americans donated 1.44% of total GDP to charity—the highest rate in the world by a large margin. Americans have traditionally been characterized by a unifying political belief in an "American Creed" emphasizing consent of the governed, liberty, equality under the law, democracy, social equality, property rights, and a preference for limited government. The U.S. has acquired significant hard and soft power through its diplomatic influence, economic power, military alliances, and cultural exports such as American movies, music, video games, sports, and food. The influence that the United States exerts on other countries through soft power is referred to as Americanization. Nearly all present Americans or their ancestors came from Europe, Africa, or Asia (the "Old World") within the past five centuries. Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as a homogenizing melting pot, and a heterogeneous salad bowl, with immigrants contributing to, and often assimilating into, mainstream American culture. Under the First Amendment to the Constitution, the United States is considered to have the strongest protections of free speech of any country. Flag desecration, hate speech, blasphemy, and lese majesty are all forms of protected expression. A 2016 Pew Research Center poll found that Americans were the most supportive of free expression of any polity measured. Additionally, they are the "most supportive of freedom of the press and the right to use the Internet without government censorship". The U.S. is a socially progressive country with permissive attitudes surrounding human sexuality. LGBTQ rights in the United States are among the most advanced by global standards. The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high levels of social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants. Whether this perception is accurate has been a topic of debate. While mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society, scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values. Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomic achievement, but being ordinary or average is promoted by some as a noble condition as well. The National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities is an agency of the United States federal government that was established in 1965 with the purpose to "develop and promote a broadly conceived national policy of support for the humanities and the arts in the United States, and for institutions which preserve the cultural heritage of the United States." It is composed of four sub-agencies: Colonial American authors were influenced by John Locke and other Enlightenment philosophers. The American Revolutionary Period (1765–1783) is notable for the political writings of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. Shortly before and after the Revolutionary War, the newspaper rose to prominence, filling a demand for anti-British national literature. An early novel is William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, published in 1791. Writer and critic John Neal in the early- to mid-19th century helped advance America toward a unique literature and culture by criticizing predecessors such as Washington Irving for imitating their British counterparts, and by influencing writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, who took American poetry and short fiction in new directions. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller pioneered the influential Transcendentalism movement; Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden, was influenced by this movement. The conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired writers, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, and authors of slave narratives, such as Frederick Douglass. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) explored the dark side of American history, as did Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851). Major American poets of the 19th century American Renaissance include Walt Whitman, Melville, and Emily Dickinson. Mark Twain was the first major American writer to be born in the West. Henry James achieved international recognition with novels like The Portrait of a Lady (1881). As literacy rates rose, periodicals published more stories centered around industrial workers, women, and the rural poor. Naturalism, regionalism, and realism were the major literary movements of the period. While modernism generally took on an international character, modernist authors working within the United States more often rooted their work in specific regions, peoples, and cultures. Following the Great Migration to northern cities, African-American and black West Indian authors of the Harlem Renaissance developed an independent tradition of literature that rebuked a history of inequality and celebrated black culture. An important cultural export during the Jazz Age, these writings were a key influence on Négritude, a philosophy emerging in the 1930s among francophone writers of the African diaspora. In the 1950s, an ideal of homogeneity led many authors to attempt to write the Great American Novel, while the Beat Generation rejected this conformity, using styles that elevated the impact of the spoken word over mechanics to describe drug use, sexuality, and the failings of society. Contemporary literature is more pluralistic than in previous eras, with the closest thing to a unifying feature being a trend toward self-conscious experiments with language. Twelve American laureates have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Media in the United States is broadly uncensored, with the First Amendment providing significant protections, as reiterated in New York Times Co. v. United States. The four major broadcasters in the U.S. are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and Fox Broadcasting Company (Fox). The four major broadcast television networks are all commercial entities. The U.S. cable television system offers hundreds of channels catering to a variety of niches. In 2021, about 83% of Americans over age 12 listened to broadcast radio, while about 40% listened to podcasts. In the prior year, there were 15,460 licensed full-power radio stations in the U.S. according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Much of the public radio broadcasting is supplied by National Public Radio (NPR), incorporated in February 1970 under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. U.S. newspapers with a global reach and reputation include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. About 800 publications are produced in Spanish. With few exceptions, newspapers are privately owned, either by large chains such as Gannett or McClatchy, which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers; by small chains that own a handful of papers; or, in an increasingly rare situation, by individuals or families. Major cities often have alternative newspapers to complement the mainstream daily papers, such as The Village Voice in New York City and LA Weekly in Los Angeles. The five most-visited websites in the world are Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and ChatGPT—all of them American-owned. Other popular platforms used include X (formerly Twitter) and Amazon. In 2025, the U.S. was the world's second-largest video game market by revenue (after China). In 2015, the U.S. video game industry consisted of 2,457 companies that employed around 220,000 jobs and generated $30.4 billion in revenue. There are 444 game publishers, developers, and hardware companies in California alone. According to the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the U.S. is the top location for video game development, with 58% of the world's game developers based there in 2025. The United States is well known for its theater. Mainstream theater in the United States derives from the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the British theater. By the middle of the 19th century, America had created new distinct dramatic forms in the Tom Shows, the showboat theater and the minstrel show. The central hub of the American theater scene is the Theater District in Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway. Many movie and television celebrities have gotten their big break working in New York productions. Outside New York City, many cities have professional regional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons. The biggest-budget theatrical productions are musicals. U.S. theater has an active community theater culture. The Tony Awards recognizes excellence in live Broadway theater and are presented at an annual ceremony in Manhattan. The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances. One is also given for regional theater. Several discretionary non-competitive awards are given as well, including a Special Tony Award, the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, and the Isabelle Stevenson Award. Folk art in colonial America grew out of artisanal craftsmanship in communities that allowed commonly trained people to individually express themselves. It was distinct from Europe's tradition of high art, which was less accessible and generally less relevant to early American settlers. Cultural movements in art and craftsmanship in colonial America generally lagged behind those of Western Europe. For example, the prevailing medieval style of woodworking and primitive sculpture became integral to early American folk art, despite the emergence of Renaissance styles in England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The new English styles would have been early enough to make a considerable impact on American folk art, but American styles and forms had already been firmly adopted. Not only did styles change slowly in early America, but there was a tendency for rural artisans there to continue their traditional forms longer than their urban counterparts did—and far longer than those in Western Europe. The Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century movement in the visual arts tradition of European naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene. American Realism and American Regionalism sought to reflect and give America new ways of looking at itself. Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new and individualistic styles, which would become known as American modernism. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein developed largely in the United States. Major photographers include Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, James Van Der Zee, Ansel Adams, and Gordon Parks. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has brought global fame to American architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan is the largest art museum in the United States and the fourth-largest in the world. American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, mainland Europe, or Africa. The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African-American music in particular have influenced American music. Banjos were brought to America through the slave trade. Minstrel shows incorporating the instrument into their acts led to its increased popularity and widespread production in the 19th century. The electric guitar, first invented in the 1930s, and mass-produced by the 1940s, had an enormous influence on popular music, in particular due to the development of rock and roll. The synthesizer, turntablism, and electronic music were also largely developed in the U.S. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz grew from blues and ragtime in the early 20th century, developing from the innovations and recordings of composers such as W.C. Handy and Jelly Roll Morton. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington increased its popularity early in the 20th century. Country music developed in the 1920s, bluegrass and rhythm and blues in the 1940s, and rock and roll in the 1950s. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of the country's most celebrated songwriters. The musical forms of punk and hip hop both originated in the United States in the 1970s. The United States has the world's largest music market, with a total retail value of $15.9 billion in 2022. Most of the world's major record companies are based in the U.S.; they are represented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Mid-20th-century American pop stars, such as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, became global celebrities and best-selling music artists, as have artists of the late 20th century, such as Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey, and of the early 21st century, such as Eminem, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. The United States has the world's largest apparel market by revenue. Apart from professional business attire, American fashion is eclectic and predominantly informal. Americans' diverse cultural roots are reflected in their clothing; however, sneakers, jeans, T-shirts, and baseball caps are emblematic of American styles. New York, with its Fashion Week, is considered to be one of the "Big Four" global fashion capitals, along with Paris, Milan, and London. A study demonstrated that general proximity to Manhattan's Garment District has been synonymous with American fashion since its inception in the early 20th century. A number of well-known designer labels, among them Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Tom Ford and Calvin Klein, are headquartered in Manhattan. Labels cater to niche markets, such as preteens. New York Fashion Week is one of the most influential fashion shows in the world, and is held twice each year in Manhattan; the annual Met Gala, also in Manhattan, has been called the fashion world's "biggest night". The U.S. film industry has a worldwide influence and following. Hollywood, a district in central Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city, is also metonymous for the American filmmaking industry. The major film studios of the United States are the primary source of the most commercially successful movies selling the most tickets in the world. Largely centered in the New York City region from its beginnings in the late 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, the U.S. film industry has since been primarily based in and around Hollywood. Nonetheless, American film companies have been subject to the forces of globalization in the 21st century, and an increasing number of films are made elsewhere. The Academy Awards, popularly known as "the Oscars", have been held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929, and the Golden Globe Awards have been held annually since January 1944. The industry peaked in what is commonly referred to as the "Golden Age of Hollywood", from the early sound period until the early 1960s, with screen actors such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe becoming iconic figures. In the 1970s, "New Hollywood", or the "Hollywood Renaissance", was defined by grittier films influenced by French and Italian realist pictures of the post-war period. The 21st century has been marked by the rise of American streaming platforms, which came to rival traditional cinema. Early settlers were introduced by Native Americans to foods such as turkey, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup. Of the most enduring and pervasive examples are variations of the native dish called succotash. Early settlers and later immigrants combined these with foods they were familiar with, such as wheat flour, beef, and milk, to create a distinctive American cuisine. New World crops, especially pumpkin, corn, potatoes, and turkey as the main course are part of a shared national menu on Thanksgiving, when many Americans prepare or purchase traditional dishes to celebrate the occasion. Characteristic American dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, doughnuts, french fries, macaroni and cheese, ice cream, hamburgers, hot dogs, and American pizza derive from the recipes of various immigrant groups. Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos preexisted the United States in areas later annexed from Mexico, and adaptations of Chinese cuisine as well as pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are all widely consumed. American chefs have had a significant impact on society both domestically and internationally. In 1946, the Culinary Institute of America was founded by Katharine Angell and Frances Roth. This would become the United States' most prestigious culinary school, where many of the most talented American chefs would study prior to successful careers. The United States restaurant industry was projected at $899 billion in sales for 2020, and employed more than 15 million people, representing 10% of the nation's workforce directly. It is the country's second-largest private employer and the third-largest employer overall. The United States is home to over 220 Michelin star-rated restaurants, 70 of which are in New York City. Wine has been produced in what is now the United States since the 1500s, with the first widespread production beginning in what is now New Mexico in 1628. In the modern U.S., wine production is undertaken in all fifty states, with California producing 84 percent of all U.S. wine. With more than 1,100,000 acres (4,500 km2) under vine, the United States is the fourth-largest wine-producing country in the world, after Italy, Spain, and France. The classic American diner, a casual restaurant type originally intended for the working class, emerged during the 19th century from converted railroad dining cars made stationary. The diner soon evolved into purpose-built structures whose number expanded greatly in the 20th century. The American fast-food industry developed alongside the nation's car culture. American restaurants developed the drive-in format in the 1920s, which they began to replace with the drive-through format by the 1940s. American fast-food restaurant chains, such as McDonald's, Burger King, Chick-fil-A, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dunkin' Donuts and many others, have numerous outlets around the world. The most popular spectator sports in the U.S. are American football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and ice hockey. Their premier leagues are, respectively, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, and the National Hockey League, All these leagues enjoy wide-ranging domestic media coverage and, except for the MLS, all are considered the preeminent leagues in their respective sports in the world. While most major U.S. sports such as baseball and American football have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, and snowboarding are American inventions, many of which have become popular worldwide. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate European contact. The market for professional sports in the United States was approximately $69 billion in July 2013, roughly 50% larger than that of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined. American football is by several measures the most popular spectator sport in the United States. Although American football does not have a substantial following in other nations, the NFL does have the highest average attendance (67,254) of any professional sports league in the world. In the year 2024, the NFL generated over $23 billion, making them the most valued professional sports league in the United States and the world. Baseball has been regarded as the U.S. "national sport" since the late 19th century. The most-watched individual sports in the U.S. are golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR and IndyCar. On the collegiate level, earnings for the member institutions exceed $1 billion annually, and college football and basketball attract large audiences, as the NCAA March Madness tournament and the College Football Playoff are some of the most watched national sporting events. In the U.S., the intercollegiate sports level serves as the main feeder system for professional and Olympic sports, with significant exceptions such as Minor League Baseball. This differs greatly from practices in nearly all other countries, where publicly and privately funded sports organizations serve this function. Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, were the first-ever Olympic Games held outside of Europe. The Olympic Games will be held in the U.S. for a ninth time when Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics. U.S. athletes have won a total of 2,968 medals (1,179 gold) at the Olympic Games, the most of any country. In other international competition, the United States is the home of a number of prestigious events, including the America's Cup, World Baseball Classic, the U.S. Open, and the Masters Tournament. The U.S. men's national soccer team has qualified for eleven World Cups, while the women's national team has won the FIFA Women's World Cup and Olympic soccer tournament four and five times, respectively. The 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup was hosted by the United States. Its final match was attended by 90,185, setting the world record for largest women's sporting event crowd at the time. The United States hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup and will co-host, along with Canada and Mexico, the 2026 FIFA World Cup. See also Notes References This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA IGO 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from World Food and Agriculture – Statistical Yearbook 2023, FAO, FAO. External links 40°N 100°W / 40°N 100°W / 40; -100 (United States of America) |
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Contents Minecraft Minecraft is a sandbox game developed and published by Mojang Studios. Following its initial public alpha release in 2009, it was formally released in 2011 for personal computers. The game has since been ported to numerous platforms, including mobile devices and various video game consoles. In Minecraft, players explore a procedurally generated world with virtually infinite terrain made up of voxels (cubes). They can discover and extract raw materials, craft tools and items, build structures, fight hostile mobs, and cooperate with or compete against other players in multiplayer. The game's large community offers a wide variety of user-generated content, such as modifications, servers, player skins, texture packs, and custom maps, which add new game mechanics and possibilities. Originally created by Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java programming language, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten was handed control over the game's development following its full release. In 2014, Mojang and the Minecraft intellectual property were purchased by Microsoft for US$2.5 billion; Xbox Game Studios hold the publishing rights for the Bedrock Edition, the unified cross-platform version which evolved from the Pocket Edition codebase[i] and replaced the legacy console versions. Bedrock is updated concurrently with Mojang's original Java Edition, although with numerous, generally small, differences. Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history with over 350 million copies sold. It has received critical acclaim, winning several awards and being cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Social media, parodies, adaptations, merchandise, and the annual Minecon conventions have played prominent roles in popularizing it. The wider Minecraft franchise includes several spin-off games, such as Minecraft: Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Legends. A film adaptation, titled A Minecraft Movie, was released in 2025 and became the second highest-grossing video game film of all time. Gameplay Minecraft is a 3D sandbox video game that has no required goals to accomplish, giving players a large amount of freedom in choosing how to play the game. The game features an optional achievement system. Gameplay is in the first-person perspective by default, but players have the option of third-person perspectives. The game world is composed of rough 3D objects—mainly cubes, referred to as blocks—representing various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava. The core gameplay revolves around picking up and placing these objects. These blocks are arranged in a voxel grid, while players can move freely around the world. Players can break, or mine, blocks and then place them elsewhere, enabling them to build things. Very few blocks are affected by gravity, instead maintaining their voxel position in the air. Players can also craft a wide variety of items, such as armor, which mitigates damage from attacks; weapons (such as swords or bows and arrows), which allow monsters and animals to be killed more easily; and tools (such as pickaxes or shovels), which break certain types of blocks more quickly. Some items have multiple tiers depending on the material used to craft them, with higher-tier items being more effective and durable. They may also freely craft helpful blocks—such as furnaces which can cook food and smelt ores, and torches that produce light—or exchange items with villagers (NPC) through trading emeralds for different goods and vice versa. The game has an inventory system, allowing players to carry a limited number of items. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting for 20 real-time minutes. The game also contains a material called redstone, which can be used to make primitive mechanical devices, electrical circuits, and logic gates, allowing for the construction of many complex systems. New players are given a randomly selected default character skin out of nine possibilities, including Steve or Alex, but are able to create and upload their own skins. Players encounter various mobs (short for mobile entities) including animals, villagers, and hostile creatures. Passive mobs, such as cows, pigs, and chickens, spawn during the daytime and can be hunted for food and crafting materials, while hostile mobs—including large spiders, witches, skeletons, and zombies—spawn during nighttime or in dark places such as caves. Some hostile mobs, such as zombies and skeletons, burn under the sun if they have no headgear and are not standing in water. Other creatures unique to Minecraft include the creeper (an exploding creature that sneaks up on the player) and the enderman (a creature with the ability to teleport as well as pick up and place blocks). There are also variants of mobs that spawn in different conditions; for example, zombies have husk and drowned variants that spawn in deserts and oceans, respectively. The Minecraft environment is procedurally generated as players explore it using a map seed that is randomly chosen at the time of world creation (or manually specified by the player). Divided into biomes representing different environments with unique resources and structures, worlds are designed to be effectively infinite in traditional gameplay, though technical limits on the player have existed throughout development, both intentionally and not. Implementation of horizontally infinite generation initially resulted in a glitch termed the "Far Lands" at over 12 million blocks away from the world center, where terrain generated as wall-like, fissured patterns. The Far Lands and associated glitches were considered the effective edge of the world until they were resolved, with the current horizontal limit instead being a special impassable barrier called the world border, located 30 million blocks away. Vertical space is comparatively limited, with an unbreakable bedrock layer at the bottom and a building limit several hundred blocks into the sky. Minecraft features three independent dimensions accessible through portals and providing alternate game environments. The Overworld is the starting dimension and represents the real world, with a terrestrial surface setting including plains, mountains, forests, oceans, caves, and small sources of lava. The Nether is a hell-like underworld dimension accessed via an obsidian portal and composed mainly of lava. Mobs that populate the Nether include shrieking, fireball-shooting ghasts, alongside anthropomorphic pigs called piglins and their zombified counterparts. Piglins in particular have a bartering system, where players can give them gold ingots and receive items in return. Structures known as Nether Fortresses generate in the Nether, containing mobs such as wither skeletons and blazes, which can drop blaze rods needed to access the End dimension. The player can also choose to build an optional boss mob known as the Wither, using skulls obtained from wither skeletons and soul sand. The End can be reached through an end portal, consisting of twelve end portal frames. End portals are found in underground structures in the Overworld known as strongholds. To find strongholds, players must craft eyes of ender using an ender pearl and blaze powder. Eyes of ender can then be thrown, traveling in the direction of the stronghold. Once the player reaches the stronghold, they can place eyes of ender into each portal frame to activate the end portal. The dimension consists of islands floating in a dark, bottomless void. A boss enemy called the Ender Dragon guards the largest, central island. Killing the dragon opens access to an exit portal, which, when entered, cues the game's ending credits and the End Poem, a roughly 1,500-word work written by Irish novelist Julian Gough, which takes about nine minutes to scroll past, is the game's only narrative text, and the only text of significant length directed at the player.: 10–12 At the conclusion of the credits, the player is teleported back to their respawn point and may continue the game indefinitely. In Survival mode, players have to gather natural resources such as wood and stone found in the environment in order to craft certain blocks and items. Depending on the difficulty, monsters spawn in darker areas outside a certain radius of the character, requiring players to build a shelter in order to survive at night. The mode also has a health bar which is depleted by attacks from mobs, falls, drowning, falling into lava, suffocation, starvation, and other events. Players also have a hunger bar, which must be periodically refilled by eating food in-game unless the player is playing on peaceful difficulty. If the hunger bar is empty, the player starves. Health replenishes when players have a full hunger bar or continuously on peaceful. Upon losing all health, players die. The items in the players' inventories are dropped unless the game is reconfigured not to do so. Players then re-spawn at their spawn point, which by default is where players first spawn in the game and can be changed by sleeping in a bed or using a respawn anchor. Dropped items can be recovered if players can reach them before they despawn after 5 minutes. Players may acquire experience points (commonly referred to as "xp" or "exp") by killing mobs and other players, mining, smelting ores, animal breeding, and cooking food. Experience can then be spent on enchanting tools, armor and weapons. Enchanted items are generally more powerful, last longer, or have other special effects. The game features two more game modes based on Survival, known as Hardcore mode and Adventure mode. Hardcore mode plays identically to Survival mode, but with the game's difficulty setting locked to "Hard" and with permadeath, forcing them to delete the world or explore it as a spectator after dying. Adventure mode was added to the game in a post-launch update, and prevents the player from directly modifying the game's world. It was designed primarily for use in custom maps, allowing map designers to let players experience it as intended. In Creative mode, players have access to an infinite number of all resources and items in the game through the inventory menu and can place or mine them instantly. Players can toggle the ability to fly freely around the game world at will, and their characters usually do not take any damage nor are affected by hunger. The game mode helps players focus on building and creating projects of any size without disturbance. Multiplayer in Minecraft enables multiple players to interact and communicate with each other on a single world. It is available through direct game-to-game multiplayer, local area network (LAN) play, local split screen (console-only), and servers (player-hosted and business-hosted). Players can run their own server by making a realm, using a host provider, hosting one themselves or connect directly to another player's game via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Nintendo Switch Online. Single-player worlds have LAN support, allowing players to join a world on locally interconnected computers without a server setup. Minecraft multiplayer servers are guided by server operators, who have access to server commands such as setting the time of day and teleporting players. Operators can also set up restrictions concerning which usernames or IP addresses are allowed or disallowed to enter the server. Multiplayer servers have a wide range of activities, with some servers having their own unique rules and customs. The largest and most popular server is Hypixel, which has been visited by over 14 million unique players. Player versus player combat (PvP) can be enabled to allow fighting between players. In 2013, Mojang announced Minecraft Realms, a server hosting service intended to enable players to run server multiplayer games easily and safely without having to set up their own. Unlike a standard server, only invited players can join Realms servers, and these servers do not use server addresses. Minecraft: Java Edition Realms server owners can invite up to twenty people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at a time. Minecraft Realms server owners can invite up to 3,000 people to play on their server, with up to ten players online at one time. The Minecraft: Java Edition Realms servers do not support user-made plugins, but players can play custom Minecraft maps. Minecraft Bedrock Realms servers support user-made add-ons, resource packs, behavior packs, and custom Minecraft maps. At Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, support for cross-platform play between Windows 10, iOS, and Android platforms was added through Realms starting in June 2016, with Xbox One and Nintendo Switch support to come later in 2017, and support for virtual reality devices. On 31 July 2017, Mojang released the beta version of the update allowing cross-platform play. Nintendo Switch support for Realms was released in July 2018. The modding community consists of fans, users and third-party programmers. Using a variety of application program interfaces that have arisen over time, they have produced a wide variety of downloadable content for Minecraft, such as modifications, texture packs and custom maps. Modifications of the Minecraft code, called mods, add a variety of gameplay changes, ranging from new blocks, items, and mobs to entire arrays of mechanisms. The modding community is responsible for a substantial supply of mods from ones that enhance gameplay, such as mini-maps, waypoints, and durability counters, to ones that add to the game elements from other video games and media. While a variety of mod frameworks were independently developed by reverse engineering the code, Mojang has also enhanced vanilla Minecraft with official frameworks for modification, allowing the production of community-created resource packs, which alter certain game elements including textures and sounds. Players can also create their own "maps" (custom world save files) that often contain specific rules, challenges, puzzles and quests, and share them for others to play. Mojang added an adventure mode in August 2012 and "command blocks" in October 2012, which were created specially for custom maps in Java Edition. Data packs, introduced in version 1.13 of the Java Edition, allow further customization, including the ability to add new achievements, dimensions, functions, loot tables, predicates, recipes, structures, tags, and world generation. The Xbox 360 Edition supported downloadable content, which was available to purchase via the Xbox Games Store; these content packs usually contained additional character skins. It later received support for texture packs in its twelfth title update while introducing "mash-up packs", which combined texture packs with skin packs and changes to the game's sounds, music and user interface. The first mash-up pack (and by extension, the first texture pack) for the Xbox 360 Edition was released on 4 September 2013, and was themed after the Mass Effect franchise. Unlike Java Edition, however, the Xbox 360 Edition did not support player-made mods or custom maps. A cross-promotional resource pack based on the Super Mario franchise by Nintendo was released exclusively for the Wii U Edition worldwide on 17 May 2016, and later bundled free with the Nintendo Switch Edition at launch. Another based on Fallout was released on consoles that December, and for Windows and Mobile in April 2017. In April 2018, malware was discovered in several downloadable user-made Minecraft skins for use with the Java Edition of the game. Avast stated that nearly 50,000 accounts were infected, and when activated, the malware would attempt to reformat the user's hard drive. Mojang promptly patched the issue, and released a statement stating that "the code would not be run or read by the game itself", and would run only when the image containing the skin itself was opened. In June 2017, Mojang released the "1.1 Discovery Update" to the Pocket Edition of the game, which later became the Bedrock Edition. The update introduced the "Marketplace", a catalogue of purchasable user-generated content intended to give Minecraft creators "another way to make a living from the game". Various skins, maps, texture packs and add-ons from different creators can be bought with "Minecoins", a digital currency that is purchased with real money. Additionally, users can access specific content with a subscription service titled "Marketplace Pass". Alongside content from independent creators, the Marketplace also houses items published by Mojang and Microsoft themselves, as well as official collaborations between Minecraft and other intellectual properties. By 2022, the Marketplace had over 1.7 billion content downloads, generating over $500 million in revenue. Development Before creating Minecraft, Markus "Notch" Persson was a game developer at King, where he worked until March 2009. At King, he primarily developed browser games and learned several programming languages. During his free time, he prototyped his own games, often drawing inspiration from other titles, and was an active participant on the TIGSource forums for independent developers. One such project was "RubyDung", a base-building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress, but with an isometric, three-dimensional perspective similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon. Among the features in RubyDung that he explored was a first-person view similar to Dungeon Keeper, though he ultimately discarded this idea, feeling the graphics were too pixelated at the time. Around March 2009, Persson left King and joined jAlbum, while continuing to work on his prototypes. Infiniminer, a block-based open-ended mining game first released in April 2009, inspired Persson's vision for RubyDung's future direction. Infiniminer heavily influenced the visual style of gameplay, including bringing back the first-person mode, the "blocky" visual style and the block-building fundamentals. However, unlike Infiniminer, Persson wanted Minecraft to have RPG elements. The first public alpha build of Minecraft was released on 17 May 2009 on TIGSource. Over the years, Persson regularly released test builds that added new features, including tools, mobs, and entire new dimensions. In 2011, partly due to the game's rising popularity, Persson decided to release a full 1.0 version—a second part of the "Adventure Update"—on 18 November 2011. Shortly after, Persson stepped down from development, handing the project's lead to Jens "Jeb" Bergensten. On 15 September 2014, Microsoft, the developer behind the Microsoft Windows operating system and Xbox video game console, announced a $2.5 billion acquisition of Mojang, which included the Minecraft intellectual property. Persson had suggested the deal on Twitter, asking a corporation to buy his stake in the game after receiving criticism for enforcing terms in the game's end-user license agreement (EULA), which had been in place for the past three years. According to Persson, Mojang CEO Carl Manneh received a call from a Microsoft executive shortly after the tweet, asking if Persson was serious about a deal. Mojang was also approached by other companies including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts. The deal with Microsoft was arbitrated on 6 November 2014 and led to Persson becoming one of Forbes' "World's Billionaires". After 2014, Minecraft's primary versions received usually annual major updates—free to players who have purchased the game— each primarily centered around a specific theme. For instance, version 1.13, the Update Aquatic, focused on ocean-related features, while version 1.16, the Nether Update, introduced significant changes to the Nether dimension. However, in late 2024, Mojang announced a shift in their update strategy; rather than releasing large updates annually, they opted for a more frequent release schedule with smaller, incremental updates, stating, "We know that you want new Minecraft content more often." The Bedrock Edition has also received regular updates, now matching the themes of the Java Edition updates. Other versions of the game, such as various console editions and the Pocket Edition, were either merged into Bedrock or discontinued and have not received further updates. On 7 May 2019, coinciding with Minecraft's 10th anniversary, a JavaScript recreation of an old 2009 Java Edition build named Minecraft Classic was made available to play online for free. On 16 April 2020, a Bedrock Edition-exclusive beta version of Minecraft, called Minecraft RTX, was released by Nvidia. It introduced physically-based rendering, real-time path tracing, and DLSS for RTX-enabled GPUs. The public release was made available on 8 December 2020. Path tracing can only be enabled in supported worlds, which can be downloaded for free via the in-game Minecraft Marketplace, with a texture pack from Nvidia's website, or with compatible third-party texture packs. It cannot be enabled by default with any texture pack on any world. Initially, Minecraft RTX was affected by many bugs, display errors, and instability issues. On 22 March 2025, a new visual mode called Vibrant Visuals, an optional graphical overhaul similar to Minecraft RTX, was announced. It promises modern rendering features—such as dynamic shadows, screen space reflections, volumetric fog, and bloom—without the need of RTX-capable hardware. Vibrant Visuals was released as a part of the Chase the Skies update on 17 June 2025 for Bedrock Edition and is planned to release on Java Edition at a later date. Development began for the original edition of Minecraft—then known as Cave Game, and now known as the Java Edition—in May 2009,[k] and ended on 13 May, when Persson released a test video on YouTube of an early version of the game, dubbed the "Cave game tech test" or the "Cave game tech demo". The game was named Minecraft: Order of the Stone the next day, after a suggestion made by a player. "Order of the Stone" came from the webcomic The Order of the Stick, and "Minecraft" was chosen "because it's a good name". The title was later shortened to just Minecraft, omitting the subtitle. Persson completed the game's base programming over a weekend in May 2009, and private testing began on TigIRC on 16 May. The first public release followed on 17 May 2009 as a developmental version shared on the TIGSource forums. Based on feedback from forum users, Persson continued updating the game. This initial public build later became known as Classic. Further developmental phases—dubbed Survival Test, Indev, and Infdev—were released throughout 2009 and 2010. The first major update, known as Alpha, was released on 30 June 2010. At the time, Persson was still working a day job at jAlbum but later resigned to focus on Minecraft full-time as sales of the alpha version surged. Updates were distributed automatically, introducing new blocks, items, mobs, and changes to game mechanics such as water flow. With revenue generated from the game, Persson founded Mojang, a video game studio, alongside former colleagues Jakob Porser and Carl Manneh. On 11 December 2010, Persson announced that Minecraft would enter its beta phase on 20 December. He assured players that bug fixes and all pre-release updates would remain free. As development progressed, Mojang expanded, hiring additional employees to work on the project. The game officially exited beta and launched in full on 18 November 2011. On 1 December 2011, Jens "Jeb" Bergensten took full creative control over Minecraft, replacing Persson as lead designer. On 28 February 2012, Mojang announced the hiring of the developers behind Bukkit, a popular developer API for Minecraft servers, to improve Minecraft's support of server modifications. This move included Mojang taking apparent ownership of the CraftBukkit server mod, though this apparent acquisition later became controversial, and its legitimacy was questioned due to CraftBukkit's open-source nature and licensing under the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public License. In August 2011, Minecraft: Pocket Edition was released as an early alpha for the Xperia Play via the Android Market, later expanding to other Android devices on 8 October 2011. The iOS version followed on 17 November 2011. A port was made available for Windows Phones shortly after Microsoft acquired Mojang. Unlike Java Edition, Pocket Edition initially focused on Minecraft's creative building and basic survival elements but lacked many features of the PC version. Bergensten confirmed on Twitter that the Pocket Edition was written in C++ rather than Java, as iOS does not support Java. On 10 December 2014, a port of Pocket Edition was released for Windows Phone 8.1. In July 2015, a port of the Pocket Edition to Windows 10 was released as the Windows 10 Edition, with full crossplay to other Pocket versions. In January 2017, Microsoft announced that it would no longer maintain the Windows Phone versions of Pocket Edition. On 20 September 2017, with the "Better Together Update", the Pocket Edition was ported to the Xbox One, and was renamed to the Bedrock Edition. The console versions of Minecraft debuted with the Xbox 360 edition, developed by 4J Studios and released on 9 May 2012. Announced as part of the Xbox Live Arcade NEXT promotion, this version introduced a redesigned crafting system, a new control interface, in-game tutorials, split-screen multiplayer, and online play via Xbox Live. Unlike the PC version, its worlds were finite, bordered by invisible walls. Initially, the Xbox 360 version resembled outdated PC versions but received updates to bring it closer to Java Edition before eventually being discontinued. The Xbox One version launched on 5 September 2014, featuring larger worlds and support for more players. Minecraft expanded to PlayStation platforms with PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 editions released on 17 December 2013 and 4 September 2014, respectively. Originally planned as a PS4 launch title, it was delayed before its eventual release. A PlayStation Vita version followed in October 2014. Like the Xbox versions, the PlayStation editions were developed by 4J Studios. Nintendo platforms received Minecraft: Wii U Edition on 17 December 2015, with a physical release in North America on 17 June 2016 and in Europe on 30 June. The Nintendo Switch version launched via the eShop on 11 May 2017. During a Nintendo Direct presentation on 13 September 2017, Nintendo announced that Minecraft: New Nintendo 3DS Edition, based on the Pocket Edition, would be available for download immediately after the livestream, and a physical copy available on a later date. The game is compatible only with the New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 2DS XL systems and does not work with the original 3DS or 2DS systems. On 20 September 2017, the Better Together Update introduced Bedrock Edition across Xbox One, Windows 10, VR, and mobile platforms, enabling cross-play between these versions. Bedrock Edition later expanded to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, with the latter receiving the update in December 2019, allowing cross-platform play for users with a free Xbox Live account. The Bedrock Edition released a native version for PlayStation 5 on 22 October 2024, while the Xbox Series X/S version launched on 17 June 2025. On 18 December 2018, the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Wii U versions of Minecraft received their final update and would later become known as "Legacy Console Editions". On 15 January 2019, the New Nintendo 3DS version of Minecraft received its final update, effectively becoming discontinued as well. An educational version of Minecraft, designed for use in schools, launched on 1 November 2016. It is available on Android, ChromeOS, iPadOS, iOS, MacOS, and Windows. On 20 August 2018, Mojang announced that it would bring Education Edition to iPadOS in Autumn 2018. It was released to the App Store on 6 September 2018. On 27 March 2019, it was announced that it would be operated by JD.com in China. On 26 June 2020, a public beta for the Education Edition was made available to Google Play Store compatible Chromebooks. The full game was released to the Google Play Store for Chromebooks on 7 August 2020. On 20 May 2016, China Edition (also known as My World) was announced as a localized edition for China, where it was released under a licensing agreement between NetEase and Mojang. The PC edition was released for public testing on 8 August 2017. The iOS version was released on 15 September 2017, and the Android version was released on 12 October 2017. The PC edition is based on the original Java Edition, while the iOS and Android mobile versions are based on the Bedrock Edition. The edition is free-to-play and had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. This version of Bedrock Edition is exclusive to Microsoft's Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The beta release for Windows 10 launched on the Windows Store on 29 July 2015. After nearly a year and a half in beta, Microsoft fully released the version on 19 December 2016. Called the "Ender Update", this release implemented new features to this version of Minecraft like world templates and add-on packs. On 7 June 2022, the Java and Bedrock Editions of Minecraft were merged into a single bundle for purchase on Windows; those who owned one version would automatically gain access to the other version. Both game versions would otherwise remain separate. Around 2011, prior to Minecraft's full release, Mojang collaborated with The Lego Group to create a Lego brick-based Minecraft game called Brickcraft. This would have modified the base Minecraft game to use Lego bricks, which meant adapting the basic 1×1 block to account for larger pieces typically used in Lego sets. Persson worked on an early version called "Project Rex Kwon Do", named after the character of the same name from the film Napoleon Dynamite. Although Lego approved the project and Mojang assigned two developers for six months, it was canceled due to the Lego Group's demands, according to Mojang's Daniel Kaplan. Lego considered buying Mojang to complete the game, but when Microsoft offered over $2 billion for the company, Lego stepped back, unsure of Minecraft's potential. On 26 June 2025, a build of Brickcraft dated 28 June 2012 was published on a community archive website Omniarchive. Initially, Markus Persson planned to support the Oculus Rift with a Minecraft port. However, after Facebook acquired Oculus in 2013, he abruptly canceled the plans, stating, "Facebook creeps me out." In 2016, a community-made mod, Minecraft VR, added VR support for Java Edition, followed by Vivecraft for HTC Vive. Later that year, Microsoft introduced official Oculus Rift support for Windows 10 Edition, leading to the discontinuation of the Minecraft VR mod due to trademark complaints. Vivecraft was endorsed by Minecraft VR contributors for its Rift support. Also available is a Gear VR version, titled Minecraft: Gear VR Edition. Windows Mixed Reality support was added in 2017. On 7 September 2020, Mojang Studios announced that the PlayStation 4 Bedrock version would receive PlayStation VR support later that month. In September 2024, the Minecraft team announced they would no longer support PlayStation VR, which received its final update in March 2025. Music and sound design Minecraft's music and sound effects were produced by German musician Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418. To create the sound effects for the game, Rosenfeld made extensive use of Foley techniques. On learning the processes for the game, he remarked, "Foley's an interesting thing, and I had to learn its subtleties. Early on, I wasn't that knowledgeable about it. It's a whole trial-and-error process. You just make a sound and eventually you go, 'Oh my God, that's it! Get the microphone!' There's no set way of doing anything at all." He reminisced on creating the in-game sound for grass blocks, stating "It turns out that to make grass sounds you don't actually walk on grass and record it, because grass sounds like nothing. What you want to do is get a VHS, break it apart, and just lightly touch the tape." According to Rosenfeld, his favorite sound to design for the game was the hisses of spiders. He elaborates, "I like the spiders. Recording that was a whole day of me researching what a spider sounds like. Turns out, there are spiders that make little screeching sounds, so I think I got this recording of a fire hose, put it in a sampler, and just pitched it around until it sounded like a weird spider was talking to you." Many of the sound design decisions by Rosenfeld were done accidentally or spontaneously. The creeper notably lacks any specific noises apart from a loud fuse-like sound when about to explode; Rosenfeld later recalled "That was just a complete accident by Markus and me [sic]. We just put in a placeholder sound of burning a matchstick. It seemed to work hilariously well, so we kept it." On other sounds, such as those of the zombie, Rosenfeld remarked, "I actually never wanted the zombies so scary. I intentionally made them sound comical. It's nice to hear that they work so well [...]." Rosenfeld remarked that the sound engine was "terrible" to work with, remembering "If you had two song files at once, it [the game engine] would actually crash. There were so many more weird glitches like that the guys never really fixed because they were too busy with the actual game and not the sound engine." The background music in Minecraft consists of instrumental ambient music. To compose the music of Minecraft, Rosenfeld used the package from Ableton Live, along with several additional plug-ins. Speaking on them, Rosenfeld said "They can be pretty much everything from an effect to an entire orchestra. Additionally, I've got some synthesizers that are attached to the computer. Like a Moog Voyager, Dave Smith Prophet 08 and a Virus TI." On 4 March 2011, Rosenfeld released a soundtrack titled Minecraft – Volume Alpha; it includes most of the tracks featured in Minecraft, as well as other music not featured in the game. Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku chose the music in Minecraft as one of the best video game soundtracks of 2011. On 9 November 2013, Rosenfeld released the second official soundtrack, titled Minecraft – Volume Beta, which included the music that was added in a 2013 "Music Update" for the game. A physical release of Volume Alpha, consisting of CDs, black vinyl, and limited-edition transparent green vinyl LPs, was issued by indie electronic label Ghostly International on 21 August 2015. On 14 August 2020, Ghostly released Volume Beta on CD and vinyl, with alternate color LPs and lenticular cover pressings released in limited quantities. The final update Rosenfeld worked on was 2018's 1.13 Update Aquatic. His music remained the only music in the game until 2020's "Nether Update", introducing pieces from Lena Raine. Since then, other composers have made contributions, including Kumi Tanioka, Samuel Åberg, Aaron Cherof, and Amos Roddy, with Raine remaining as the new primary composer. Ownership of all music besides Rosenfeld's independently released albums has been retained by Microsoft, with their label publishing all of the other artists' releases. Gareth Coker also composed some of the music for the game's mini games from the Legacy Console editions. Rosenfeld had stated his intent to create a third album of music for the game in a 2015 interview with Fact, and confirmed its existence in a 2017 tweet, stating that his work on the record as of then had tallied up to be longer than the previous two albums combined, which in total clocks in at over 3 hours and 18 minutes. However, due to licensing issues with Microsoft, the third volume has since not seen release. On 8 January 2021, Rosenfeld was asked in an interview with Anthony Fantano whether or not there was still a third volume of his music intended for release. Rosenfeld responded, saying, "I have something—I consider it finished—but things have become complicated, especially as Minecraft is now a big property, so I don't know." Reception Minecraft has received critical acclaim, with praise for the creative freedom it grants players in-game, as well as the ease of enabling emergent gameplay. Critics have expressed enjoyment in Minecraft's complex crafting system, commenting that it is an important aspect of the game's open-ended gameplay. Most publications were impressed by the game's "blocky" graphics, with IGN describing them as "instantly memorable". Reviewers also liked the game's adventure elements, noting that the game creates a good balance between exploring and building. The game's multiplayer feature has been generally received favorably, with IGN commenting that "adventuring is always better with friends". Jaz McDougall of PC Gamer said Minecraft is "intuitively interesting and contagiously fun, with an unparalleled scope for creativity and memorable experiences". It has been regarded as having introduced millions of children to the digital world, insofar as its basic game mechanics are logically analogous to computer commands. IGN was disappointed about the troublesome steps needed to set up multiplayer servers, calling it a "hassle". Critics also said that visual glitches occur periodically. Despite its release out of beta in 2011, GameSpot said the game had an "unfinished feel", adding that some game elements seem "incomplete or thrown together in haste". A review of the alpha version, by Scott Munro of the Daily Record, called it "already something special" and urged readers to buy it. Jim Rossignol of Rock Paper Shotgun also recommended the alpha of the game, calling it "a kind of generative 8-bit Lego Stalker". On 17 September 2010, gaming webcomic Penny Arcade began a series of comics and news posts about the addictiveness of the game. The Xbox 360 version was generally received positively by critics, but did not receive as much praise as the PC version. Although reviewers were disappointed by the lack of features such as mod support and content from the PC version, they acclaimed the port's addition of a tutorial and in-game tips and crafting recipes, saying that they make the game more user-friendly. The Xbox One Edition was one of the best received ports, being praised for its relatively large worlds. The PlayStation 3 Edition also received generally favorable reviews, being compared to the Xbox 360 Edition and praised for its well-adapted controls. The PlayStation 4 edition was the best received port to date, being praised for having 36 times larger worlds than the PlayStation 3 edition and described as nearly identical to the Xbox One edition. The PlayStation Vita Edition received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for its technical limitations. The Wii U version received generally positive reviews from critics but was noted for a lack of GamePad integration. The 3DS version received mixed reviews, being criticized for its high price, technical issues, and lack of cross-platform play. The Nintendo Switch Edition received fairly positive reviews from critics, being praised, like other modern ports, for its relatively larger worlds. Minecraft: Pocket Edition initially received mixed reviews from critics. Although reviewers appreciated the game's intuitive controls, they were disappointed by the lack of content. The inability to collect resources and craft items, as well as the limited types of blocks and lack of hostile mobs, were especially criticized. After updates added more content, Pocket Edition started receiving more positive reviews. Reviewers complimented the controls and the graphics, but still noted a lack of content. Minecraft surpassed over a million purchases less than a month after entering its beta phase in early 2011. At the same time, the game had no publisher backing and has never been commercially advertised except through word of mouth, and various unpaid references in popular media such as the Penny Arcade webcomic. By April 2011, Persson estimated that Minecraft had made €23 million (US$33 million) in revenue, with 800,000 sales of the alpha version of the game, and over 1 million sales of the beta version. In November 2011, prior to the game's full release, Minecraft beta surpassed 16 million registered users and 4 million purchases. By March 2012, Minecraft had become the 6th best-selling PC game of all time. As of 10 October 2014[update], the game had sold 17 million copies on PC, becoming the best-selling PC game of all time. On 25 February 2014, the game reached 100 million registered users. By May 2019, 180 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the single best-selling video game of all time. The free-to-play Minecraft China version had over 700 million registered accounts by September 2023. By 2023, the game had sold over 300 million copies. As of April 2025, Minecraft has sold over 350 million copies. The Xbox 360 version of Minecraft became profitable within the first day of the game's release in 2012, when the game broke the Xbox Live sales records with 400,000 players online. Within a week of being on the Xbox Live Marketplace, Minecraft sold a million copies. GameSpot announced in December 2012 that Minecraft sold over 4.48 million copies since the game debuted on Xbox Live Arcade in May 2012. In 2012, Minecraft was the most purchased title on Xbox Live Arcade; it was also the fourth most played title on Xbox Live based on average unique users per day. As of 4 April 2014[update], the Xbox 360 version has sold 12 million copies. In addition, Minecraft: Pocket Edition has reached a figure of 21 million in sales. The PlayStation 3 Edition sold one million copies in five weeks. The release of the game's PlayStation Vita version boosted Minecraft sales by 79%, outselling both PS3 and PS4 debut releases and becoming the largest Minecraft launch on a PlayStation console. The PS Vita version sold 100,000 digital copies in Japan within the first two months of release, according to an announcement by SCE Japan Asia. By January 2015, 500,000 digital copies of Minecraft were sold in Japan across all PlayStation platforms, with a surge in primary school children purchasing the PS Vita version. As of 2022, the Vita version has sold over 1.65 million physical copies in Japan, making it the best-selling Vita game in the country. Minecraft helped improve Microsoft's total first-party revenue by $63 million for the 2015 second quarter. The game, including all of its versions, had over 112 million monthly active players by September 2019. On its 11th anniversary in May 2020, the company announced that Minecraft had reached over 200 million copies sold across platforms with over 126 million monthly active players. By April 2021, the number of active monthly users had climbed to 140 million. In July 2010, PC Gamer listed Minecraft as the fourth-best game to play at work. In December of that year, Good Game selected Minecraft as their choice for Best Downloadable Game of 2010, Gamasutra named it the eighth best game of the year as well as the eighth best indie game of the year, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun named it the "game of the year". Indie DB awarded the game the 2010 Indie of the Year award as chosen by voters, in addition to two out of five Editor's Choice awards for Most Innovative and Best Singleplayer Indie. It was also awarded Game of the Year by PC Gamer UK. The game was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Technical Excellence, and Excellence in Design awards at the March 2011 Independent Games Festival and won the Grand Prize and the community-voted Audience Award. At Game Developers Choice Awards 2011, Minecraft won awards in the categories for Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game and Innovation Award, winning every award for which it was nominated. It also won GameCity's video game arts award. On 5 May 2011, Minecraft was selected as one of the 80 games that would be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of The Art of Video Games exhibit that opened on 16 March 2012. At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, Minecraft won the award for Best Independent Game and was nominated in the Best PC Game category. In 2012, at the British Academy Video Games Awards, Minecraft was nominated in the GAME Award of 2011 category and Persson received The Special Award. In 2012, Minecraft XBLA was awarded a Golden Joystick Award in the Best Downloadable Game category, and a TIGA Games Industry Award in the Best Arcade Game category. In 2013, it was nominated as the family game of the year at the British Academy Video Games Awards. During the 16th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft for "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year". Minecraft Console Edition won the award for TIGA Game Of The Year in 2014. In 2015, the game placed 6th on USgamer's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. In 2016, Minecraft placed 6th on Time's The 50 Best Video Games of All Time list. Minecraft was nominated for the 2013 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite App, but lost to Temple Run. It was nominated for the 2014 Kids' Choice Awards for Favorite Video Game, but lost to Just Dance 2014. The game later won the award for the Most Addicting Game at the 2015 Kids' Choice Awards. In addition, the Java Edition was nominated for "Favorite Video Game" at the 2018 Kids' Choice Awards, while the game itself won the "Still Playing" award at the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards, as well as the "Favorite Video Game" award at the 2020 Kids' Choice Awards. Minecraft also won "Stream Game of the Year" at inaugural Streamer Awards in 2021. The game later garnered a Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award nomination for Favorite Video Game in 2021, and won the same category in 2022 and 2023. At the Golden Joystick Awards 2025, it won the Still Playing Award - PC and Console. Minecraft has been subject to several notable controversies. In June 2014, Mojang announced that it would begin enforcing the portion of Minecraft's end-user license agreement (EULA) which prohibits servers from giving in-game advantages to players in exchange for donations or payments. Spokesperson Owen Hill stated that servers could still require players to pay a fee to access the server and could sell in-game cosmetic items. The change was supported by Persson, citing emails he received from parents of children who had spent hundreds of dollars on servers. The Minecraft community and server owners protested, arguing that the EULA's terms were more broad than Mojang was claiming, that the crackdown would force smaller servers to shut down for financial reasons, and that Mojang was suppressing competition for its own Minecraft Realms subscription service. The controversy contributed to Notch's decision to sell Mojang. In 2020, Mojang announced an eventual change to the Java Edition to require a login from a Microsoft account rather than a Mojang account, the latter of which would be sunsetted. This also required Java Edition players to create Xbox network Gamertags. Mojang defended the move to Microsoft accounts by saying that improved security could be offered, including two-factor authentication, blocking cyberbullies in chat, and improved parental controls. The community responded with intense backlash, citing various technical difficulties encountered in the process and how account migration would be mandatory, even for those who do not play on servers. As of 10 March 2022, Microsoft required that all players migrate in order to maintain access the Java Edition of Minecraft. Mojang announced a deadline of 19 September 2023 for account migration, after which all legacy Mojang accounts became inaccessible and unable to be migrated. In June 2022, Mojang added a player-reporting feature in Java Edition. Players could report other players on multiplayer servers for sending messages prohibited by the Xbox Live Code of Conduct; report categories included profane language,[l] substance abuse, hate speech, threats of violence, and nudity. If a player was found to be in violation of Xbox Community Standards, they would be banned from all servers for a specific period of time or permanently. The update containing the report feature (1.19.1) was released on 27 July 2022. Mojang received substantial backlash and protest from community members, one of the most common complaints being that banned players would be forbidden from joining any server, even private ones. Others took issue to what they saw as Microsoft increasing control over its player base and exercising censorship, leading some to start a hashtag #saveminecraft and dub the version "1.19.84", a reference to the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The "Mob Vote" was an online event organized by Mojang in which the Minecraft community voted between three original mob concepts; initially, the winning mob was to be implemented in a future update, while the losing mobs were scrapped, though after the first mob vote this was changed, and losing mobs would now have a chance to come to the game in the future. The first Mob Vote was held during Minecon Earth 2017 and became an annual event starting with Minecraft Live 2020. The Mob Vote was often criticized for forcing players to choose one mob instead of implementing all three, causing divisions and flaming within the community, and potentially allowing internet bots and Minecraft content creators with large fanbases to conduct vote brigading. The Mob Vote was also blamed for a perceived lack of new content added to Minecraft since Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang in 2014. The 2023 Mob Vote featured three passive mobs—the crab, the penguin, and the armadillo—with voting scheduled to start on 13 October. In response, a Change.org petition was created on 6 October, demanding that Mojang eliminate the Mob Vote and instead implement all three mobs going forward. The petition received approximately 445,000 signatures by 13 October and was joined by calls to boycott the Mob Vote, as well as a partially tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" propaganda campaign in which sympathizers created anti-Mojang and pro-boycott posters in the vein of real 20th century propaganda posters. Mojang did not release an official response to the boycott, and the Mob Vote otherwise proceeded normally, with the armadillo winning the vote. In September 2024, as part of a blog post detailing their future plans for Minecraft's development, Mojang announced the Mob Vote would be retired. Cultural impact In September 2019, The Guardian classified Minecraft as the best video game of the 21st century to date, and in November 2019, Polygon called it the "most important game of the decade" in its 2010s "decade in review". In June 2020, Minecraft was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. Minecraft is recognized as one of the first successful games to use an early access model to draw in sales prior to its full release version to help fund development. As Minecraft helped to bolster indie game development in the early 2010s, it also helped to popularize the use of the early access model in indie game development. Social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit have played a significant role in popularizing Minecraft. Research conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania showed that one-third of Minecraft players learned about the game via Internet videos. In 2010, Minecraft-related videos began to gain influence on YouTube, often made by commentators. The videos usually contain screen-capture footage of the game and voice-overs. Common coverage in the videos includes creations made by players, walkthroughs of various tasks, and parodies of works in popular culture. By May 2012, over four million Minecraft-related YouTube videos had been uploaded. The game would go on to be a prominent fixture within YouTube's gaming scene during the entire 2010s; in 2014, it was the second-most searched term on the entire platform. By 2018, it was still YouTube's biggest game globally. Some popular commentators have received employment at Machinima, a now-defunct gaming video company that owned a highly watched entertainment channel on YouTube. The Yogscast is a British company that regularly produces Minecraft videos; their YouTube channel has attained billions of views, and their panel at Minecon 2011 had the highest attendance. Another well-known YouTube personality is Jordan Maron, known online as CaptainSparklez, who has also created many Minecraft music parodies, including "Revenge", a parody of Usher's "DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love". Minecraft's popularity on YouTube was described by Polygon as quietly dominant, although in 2019, thanks in part to PewDiePie's playthroughs of the game, Minecraft experienced a visible uptick in popularity on the platform. Longer-running series include Far Lands or Bust, dedicated to reaching the obsolete "Far Lands" glitch by foot on an older version of the game. YouTube announced that on 14 December 2021 that the total amount of Minecraft-related views on the website had exceeded one trillion. Minecraft has been referenced by other video games, such as Torchlight II, Team Fortress 2, Borderlands 2, Choplifter HD, Super Meat Boy, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The Binding of Isaac, The Stanley Parable, and FTL: Faster Than Light. Minecraft is officially represented in downloadable content for the crossover fighter Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with Steve as a playable character with a moveset including references to building, crafting, and redstone, alongside an Overworld-themed stage. It was also referenced by electronic music artist Deadmau5 in his performances. The game is also referenced heavily in "Informative Murder Porn", the second episode of the seventeenth season of the animated television series South Park. In 2025, A Minecraft Movie was released. It made $313 million in the box office in the first week, a record-breaking opening for a video game adaptation. Minecraft has been noted as a cultural touchstone for Generation Z, as many of the generation's members played the game at a young age. The possible applications of Minecraft have been discussed extensively, especially in the fields of computer-aided design (CAD) and education. In a panel at Minecon 2011, a Swedish developer discussed the possibility of using the game to redesign public buildings and parks, stating that rendering using Minecraft was much more user-friendly for the community, making it easier to envision the functionality of new buildings and parks. In 2012, a member of the Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab, Cody Sumter, said: "Notch hasn't just built a game. He's tricked 40 million people into learning to use a CAD program." Various software has been developed to allow virtual designs to be printed using professional 3D printers or personal printers such as MakerBot and RepRap. In September 2012, Mojang began the Block by Block project in cooperation with UN Habitat to create real-world environments in Minecraft. The project allows young people who live in those environments to participate in designing the changes they would like to see. Using Minecraft, the community has helped reconstruct the areas of concern, and citizens are invited to enter the Minecraft servers and modify their own neighborhood. Carl Manneh, Mojang's managing director, called the game "the perfect tool to facilitate this process", adding "The three-year partnership will support UN-Habitat's Sustainable Urban Development Network to upgrade 300 public spaces by 2016." Mojang signed Minecraft building community, FyreUK, to help render the environments into Minecraft. The first pilot project began in Kibera, one of Nairobi's informal settlements and is in the planning phase. The Block by Block project is based on an earlier initiative started in October 2011, Mina Kvarter (My Block), which gave young people in Swedish communities a tool to visualize how they wanted to change their part of town. According to Manneh, the project was a helpful way to visualize urban planning ideas without necessarily having a training in architecture. The ideas presented by the citizens were a template for political decisions. In April 2014, the Danish Geodata Agency generated all of Denmark in fullscale in Minecraft based on their own geodata. This is possible because Denmark is one of the flattest countries with the highest point at 171 meters (ranking as the country with the 30th smallest elevation span), where the limit in default Minecraft was around 192 meters above in-game sea level when the project was completed. Taking advantage of the game's accessibility where other websites are censored, the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders has used an open Minecraft server to create the Uncensored Library, a repository within the game of journalism by authors from countries (including Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam) who have been censored and arrested, such as Jamal Khashoggi. The neoclassical virtual building was created over about 250 hours by an international team of 24 people. Despite its unpredictable nature, Minecraft speedrunning, where players time themselves from spawning into a new world to reaching The End and defeating the Ender Dragon boss, is popular. Some speedrunners use a combination of mods, external programs, and debug menus, while other runners play the game in a more vanilla or more consistency-oriented way. Minecraft has been used in educational settings through initiatives such as MinecraftEdu, founded in 2011 to make the game affordable and accessible for schools in collaboration with Mojang. MinecraftEdu provided features allowing teachers to monitor student progress, including screenshot submissions as evidence of lesson completion, and by 2012 reported that approximately 250,000 students worldwide had access to the platform. Mojang also developed Minecraft: Education Edition with pre-built lesson plans for up to 30 students in a closed environment. Educators have used Minecraft to teach subjects such as history, language arts, and science through custom-built environments, including reconstructions of historical landmarks and large-scale models of biological structures such as animal cells. The introduction of redstone blocks enabled the construction of functional virtual machines such as a hard drive and an 8-bit computer. Mods have been created to use these mechanics for teaching programming. In 2014, the British Museum announced a project to reproduce its building and exhibits in Minecraft in collaboration with the public. Microsoft and Code.org have offered Minecraft-based tutorials and activities designed to teach programming, reporting by 2018 that more than 85 million children had used their resources. In 2025, the Musée de Minéralogie in Paris held a temporary exhibition titled "Minerals in Minecraft." Following the initial surge in popularity of Minecraft in 2010, other video games were criticised for having various similarities to Minecraft, and some were described as being "clones", often due to a direct inspiration from Minecraft, or a superficial similarity. Examples include Ace of Spades, CastleMiner, CraftWorld, FortressCraft, Terraria, BlockWorld 3D, Total Miner, and Luanti (formerly Minetest). David Frampton, designer of The Blockheads, reported that one failure of his 2D game was the "low resolution pixel art" that too closely resembled the art in Minecraft, which resulted in "some resistance" from fans. A homebrew adaptation of the alpha version of Minecraft for the Nintendo DS, titled DScraft, has been released; it has been noted for its similarity to the original game considering the technical limitations of the system. In response to Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang and their Minecraft IP, various developers announced further clone titles developed specifically for Nintendo's consoles, as they were the only major platforms not to officially receive Minecraft at the time. These clone titles include UCraft (Nexis Games), Cube Life: Island Survival (Cypronia), Discovery (Noowanda), Battleminer (Wobbly Tooth Games), Cube Creator 3D (Big John Games), and Stone Shire (Finger Gun Games). Despite this, the fears of fans were unfounded, with official Minecraft releases on Nintendo consoles eventually resuming. Markus Persson made another similar game, Minicraft, for a Ludum Dare competition in 2011. In 2025, Persson announced through a poll on his X account that he was considering developing a spiritual successor to Minecraft. He later clarified that he was "100% serious", and that he had "basically announced Minecraft 2". Within days, however, Persson cancelled the plans after speaking to his team. In November 2024, artificial intelligence companies Decart and Etched released Oasis, an artificially generated version of Minecraft, as a proof of concept. Every in-game element is completely AI-generated in real time and the model does not store world data, leading to "hallucinations" such as items and blocks appearing that were not there before. In January 2026, indie game developer Unomelon announced that their voxel sandbox game Allumeria would be playable in Steam Next Fest that year. On 10 February, Mojang issued a DMCA takedown of Allumeria on Steam through Valve, alleging the game was infringing on Minecraft's copyright. Some reports suggested that the takedown may have used an automatic AI copyright claiming service. The DMCA was later withdrawn. Minecon was an annual official fan convention dedicated to Minecraft. The first full Minecon was held in November 2011 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The event included the official launch of Minecraft; keynote speeches, including one by Persson; building and costume contests; Minecraft-themed breakout classes; exhibits by leading gaming and Minecraft-related companies; commemorative merchandise; and autograph and picture times with Mojang employees and well-known contributors from the Minecraft community. In 2016, Minecon was held in-person for the last time, with the following years featuring annual "Minecon Earth" livestreams on minecraft.net and YouTube instead. These livestreams, later rebranded to "Minecraft Live", included the mob/biome votes, and announcements of new game updates. In 2025, "Minecraft Live" became a biannual event as part of Minecraft's changing update schedule.[citation needed] Notes References External links |
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Contents Building America's Future Building America's Future is a political non-profit organization funded by Elon Musk actively supporting Donald Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 United States elections. History Building America's Future ran an ad during the 2024 Republican Party presidential debate in Miami which claimed that an “E-ZPass lane for whales in the Gulf” implemented by Joe Biden was responsible for high gas prices. During the early stages of the 2024 election, Building America's Future targeted black voters in South Carolina with mailers encouraging them not to vote for Joe Biden. In April 2024, Building America's Future took out ads in Kansas, Mississippi, and Missouri which promoted the immigration policies of Glenn Youngkin. In October 2024, the group hosted an event in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania headlined by Donald Trump and Mike Huckabee. In 2025 Building America's Future became involved in the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, spending more than $1.6 million on messaging backing Brad Schimel. Operations Progress 2028 was a disinformation campaign which presented itself as a progressive Kamala Harris–backed alternative to Project 2025 when it was actually fully controlled by Building America's Future. An entity called Progress 2028 was registered by Building America's Future on September 26, 2024. An associated website and ad campaign were rolled out days later. The Future Coalition PAC is entirely funded by Building America's Future. In 2024, the Future Coalition PAC ran contradictory ads: they ran ads in Michigan which accused Kamala Harris of being pro-Israel, and ads in Pennsylvania accusing her of being pro-Palestinian. The ads were criticized as antisemitic, particularly in their portrayal of her husband Doug Emhoff. The Stand for US PAC is primarily funded by Building America's Future. Stand for US PAC has gotten involved in Missouri backing Jay Ashcroft in the Governor's race there, with a series of ads attacking his opponent Mike Kehoe. Leadership In 2023, the group's president was Chris Jankowski and its executive director was Katherine Neal. Funding The group had $11 million in revenue in 2021 and $53 million in revenue in 2022. Elon Musk began contributing to the group in 2022. See also References External links |
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Contents Servilia (mother of Brutus) Servilia (c. 100 BC – after 42 BC) was a Roman matron from a distinguished family, the Servilii Caepiones. She was the daughter of Quintus Servilius Caepio and Livia, thus the maternal half-sister of Cato the Younger. She married Marcus Junius Brutus, with whom she had a son, the Brutus who, along with others in the Senate, assassinated Julius Caesar. After her first husband's death in 77 BC, she married Decimus Junius Silanus, and with him had a son and three daughters. She gained fame as the mistress of Julius Caesar, whom her son Brutus and son-in-law Gaius Cassius Longinus would assassinate in 44 BC. Her affair with Caesar seems to have been publicly known in Rome at the time. Plutarch stated that she in turn was madly in love with Caesar. The relationship between the two probably started in 59 BC, after the death of Servilia's second husband although Plutarch implied it began when they were teenagers. Biography Servilia was a patrician who could trace her line back to Gaius Servilius Ahala, and was the eldest child of Livia and Quintus Servilius Caepio. Her parents had two other children, a younger Servilia and a Gnaeus Servilius Caepio; her father also likely had another son named Quintus Servilius Caepio from an earlier marriage. They divorced when she was three or four, and her mother then married Marcus Porcius Cato. From this union, Servilia's half-brother, Cato the Younger, and half-sister, Porcia, were born. However, her mother and stepfather both died before 91 BC. As a result, Servilia, her younger siblings, and her half-siblings were all brought up in the house of their maternal uncle, Marcus Livius Drusus. He was assassinated during his tribunate in 91 BC, in his own atrium, when Servilia was nine. Her father was ambushed and killed in the immediately ensuing Social War, a war triggered by Drusus' assassination, mere months after her uncle's murder. After this she was probably brought up either by her other maternal uncle Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus Livianus, her maternal grandmother Cornelia or her paternal aunt Servilia. At adulthood, Servilia became legally independent and gained a considerable estate.[page needed][dubious – discuss] Servilia truly had great influence on her half-brother Cato the Younger. He was considered to be tough and wild as a child, which frames Servilia as his equal in those respects. As a young girl belonging to Roman ruling class, Servilia would have been well educated. She likely would have been taught to read, write, sing, dance, and play an instrument. She would have read poetry, epics, and histories. At the age of 13 or 14, she married Marcus Junius Brutus in the early 80s, who later was tribune of the plebs (83 BC) and founder of a colony at Capua. They had one child, the future tyrannicide Marcus Junius Brutus, born around 85 BC. This was a profitable marriage for Brutus, who would gain fortune, stability, and political traction through Servilia. Although the elder Brutus survived Sulla's proscriptions, he was treacherously killed by Pompey after surrendering at Mutina in 77 BC. After the death of the elder Brutus, Servilia's bond with her son grew. She also arranged for her son to be adopted into her family, allowing for the name of the Servilii Caepiones to be preserved. Servilia subsequently married Decimus Junius Silanus, by whom she had three daughters. Her daughters were all married into prominent and politically active families,[page needed] Her first daughter married Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus;[page needed] her second married Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (later triumvir);[page needed] and her third daughter married Gaius Cassius Longinus.[page needed] Servilia was well connected and facilitated these advantageous marriages herself.[page needed] It is speculated that either soon after she married Silanus, or after the births of her daughters, Servilia's notorious affair with Caesar began.[page needed] Silanus is not depicted to have been against the affair.[page needed] Servilia did not remarry after the death of Silanus around 59 BC, and remained unmarried for the rest of her life.[page needed] She was able to live independently as a widow, owning various estates due to inheritances from various wealthy relatives. Caesar had numerous affairs with women married and unmarried, but none lasted as long, nor were they as passionate as his affair with Servilia.[page needed] An intimate relationship between the two probably started in 59, after the death of Servilia's second husband. The affair was well known and Servilia suffered no damage to her reputation because of this relationship.[page needed] Unlike most other aristocratic affairs, this one seemed also to have lasted over many years. The relationship broadly is first recorded in extant sources in 63, when Servilia apparently was caught sneaking a love note to Caesar in the senate by her brother Cato. Cato was greatly displeased to find out about Caesar's correspondence with his half-sister. Modern scholars have made use of this incident to indicate the passion between Servilia and Caesar, noting that Servilia maintained long-distance contact while Caesar was away.[page needed] Servilia's loyalties were torn during the Civil War,[citation needed] as both Cato and Brutus espoused the side of Pompey, despite the latter's role in the death of her former husband. Plutarch only emphasized Servilia's devotion for Caesar, claiming that she was madly in love with him, but it is widely accepted that Caesar held a deep affection for Servilia. Scholars[who?] speculate that it was Caesar's affections which allowed the affair to continue for as long as it did.[page needed] During his consulship in 59, Caesar supposedly presented Servilia with an outrageously expensive pearl worth some six million sesterces. Another popular rumor was that Servilia was prostituting her daughter Tertia to Caesar in 47 BC. At an estate auction where Caesar received several properties at a low rate to give to Servilia, Cicero remarked, "It's a better bargain than you think, for there is one-third deducted;" the Latin phrase, tertia deducta, is a pun, meaning both "a third off" and "with Tertia seduced". Some ancient sources refer to the possibility of Caesar being Brutus' real father, despite Caesar being only fifteen years old when Brutus was born. Ancient historians were sceptical of this possibility and "on the whole, scholars have rejected the possibility that Brutus was the love-child of Servilia and Caesar on the grounds of chronology". Perhaps out of a desire to avoid offending Servilia, Caesar gave orders that Brutus should not be harmed if encountered after the Pompeian defeat at Pharsalus. When her son – Marcus Junius Brutus – divorced his wife Claudia to marry Cato's daughter Porcia in 45, she disapproved, having been instrumental in arranging the match and also disagreeing with the anti-Caesarian stance taken by her half-brother Cato. Servilia may also have been jealous of the affection that Brutus showed his new bride. Later that year, Caesar appointed her son urban praetor for 44. After Caesar's assassination by a conspiracy which included Servilia's son – Brutus – and son-in-law – Gaius Cassius Longinus – on the Ides of March of 44 BC, the conspirators met at Servilia's house[citation needed]. It is unlikely she knew anything of the conspiracy, having been on good terms with Caesar until his death; regardless, she worked to protect her relatives from the ensuing political storm. Apart from Servilia, the only women in attendance were Porcia and Junia Tertia. Servilia worked extensively in 44 BC to ensure the safety of her family both by attending senate meetings[dubious – discuss], and by contributing greatly to the discourses during their meetings. Cicero's letters detail other meetings of the senate that Servilia had called to discuss what actions should be taken which would protect her son and sons-in-law. Cicero described her as a 'nervous lady', which could be understood as politically cautious.[page needed] Servilia's opinions were often held in higher esteem than those of Cicero during meetings of the liberatores. Due to women being unable to hold office or vote, Servilia focused her political efforts on strategic marriages for her daughters and helping create her political career for her son Brutus.[page needed] Due to life-threatening unrest in the city, her son Brutus was able to get a special dispensation to leave the capital for more than 10 days, and he withdrew to one of his estates in Lanuvium, 20 miles south-east of Rome. By mid-May, Antony proposed reassigning Brutus and Cassius from their provinces to instead purchase grain in Asia and Sicily. There was a meeting at Brutus' house attended by Cicero, Brutus and Cassius (and wives), and Brutus' mother, in which Cassius announced his intention to go to Syria while Brutus wanted to return to Rome, but ended up going to Greece. His initial plan to go to Rome, however, was to put on games in early July commemorating his ancestor Lucius Junius Brutus and promoting his cause; he instead delegated the games to a friend. Servilia assisted in organising Brutus' games, in charge of decisions concerning the ceremony, finances, and senatorial contacts.[page needed] Antony's proposed reassignment also was dropped by the senate; Cicero claims that it was because of some action by Servilia.[page needed] Servilia led a council meeting in July 43 to discuss the possible return of Brutus and Cassius from exile, which serves as the most explicit depiction of a woman overseeing a meeting in this period.[page needed] Despite her connections with the conspirators, Servilia escaped the purges of the Second Triumvirate unscathed due to the protection of her long-time friend Titus Pomponius Atticus. After Brutus' death, her son's ashes were sent to her by Antony from Philippi. Very little is known about Servilia's life after the death of Brutus. She is suspected to have died a natural death between 27 and 23 BC.[page needed] Her youngest daughter, Junia Tertia, out-lived Augustus and was noticed by Tacitus to have had a splendid funeral which kept the memory of Brutus and Cassius alive. Marriages and issue Cultural depictions Servilia is the subject of a poem by John Dryden. A fictionalized Servilia appears in the Emperor series of novels by Conn Iggulden, who has portrayed her as a courtesan. Servilia is a character in Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series. A fictionalised version of Servilia was among the principal characters in the 2005 HBO television series Rome, played by Lindsay Duncan. The Servilia of HBO's Rome was depicted as instigating actor in the plot against Caesar's life; there is no historical evidence thereof. A similarly fictionalised Servilia makes an appearance in the 2005 six-part mini series Empire, played by Trudie Styler. Natalie Medlock portrays Servilia in the 2018 Netflix television docudrama series Roman Empire. See also References Modern sources Ancient sources External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pluribus_unum] | [TOKENS: 1468] |
Contents E pluribus unum E pluribus unum (/iː ˈplʊrɪbəs ˈuːnəm/ ee PLUURR-ih-bəs OO-nəm, Classical Latin: [eː ˈpluːrɪbʊs ˈuːnʊ̃], Latin: [e ˈpluribus ˈunum]) (Latin for 'out of many, one', or 'one out of many') is a traditional motto of the United States, appearing on the Great Seal along with Annuit cœptis (Latin for [He] favors [our] undertakings) and Novus ordo seclorum (Latin for new order of the ages) which appear on the reverse of the Great Seal; its inclusion on the seal was suggested by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere and approved in an act of the Congress of the Confederation in 1782. While its status as national motto was for many years unofficial, E pluribus unum was still considered the de facto motto of the United States from its early history. Eventually, the U.S. Congress passed an act in 1956 (H. J. Resolution 396), adopting "In God We Trust" as the official motto. That the phrase E pluribus unum has thirteen letters makes its use symbolic of the original Thirteen Colonies which rebelled against the rule of the Kingdom of Great Britain and became the first thirteen states, represented today as the thirteen stripes on the American flag. The meaning of the phrase originated from the concept that out of the union of the original Thirteen Colonies emerged a new single nation. It is emblazoned across the scroll and clenched in the eagle's beak on the Great Seal of the United States. Origin The 13-letter motto was suggested in 1776 by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere to the committee responsible for developing the seal. At the time of the American Revolution, the phrase appeared regularly on the title page of the London-based Gentleman's Magazine, founded in 1731, which collected articles from many sources into one periodical. This usage in turn can be traced back to the London-based Huguenot Peter Anthony Motteux, who had employed the adage for his The Gentleman's Journal, or the Monthly Miscellany (1692–1694). The phrase is similar to a Latin translation of a variation of Heraclitus's tenth fragment, "The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one" (ἐκ πάντων ἓν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντα). A variant of the phrase was used in "Moretum", a poem belonging to the Appendix Virgiliana, describing (on the surface at least) the making of moretum, a kind of herb and cheese spread related to modern pesto. In the poem text, color est e pluribus unus describes the blending of colors into one. St Augustine used a variant of the phrase, ex pluribus unum facere (make one out of many), in his Confessions. Cicero would use a variant of the phrase in a paraphrase of Pythagoras in his De Officiis, as part of his discussion of basic family and social bonds as the origin of societies, stating "When each person loves the other as much as himself, it makes one out of many (unum fiat ex pluribus), as Pythagoras wishes things to be in friendship." While Annuit cœptis and Novus ordo seclorum appear on the reverse side of the Great Seal, E pluribus unum appears on the obverse side of the seal (designed by Charles Thomson), the image of which is used as the national emblem of the United States, and appears on official documents such as passports. It also appears on the seal of the president, the vice president, the United States Congress, the United States House of Representatives, the United States Senate, and the United States Supreme Court. Usage on coins The first coins with E pluribus unum were dated 1786 and struck under the authorization of New Jersey by Thomas Goadsby and Albion Cox in Rahway, New Jersey. The motto had no New Jersey linkage but was likely an available die that had been created by Walter Mould the previous year for a failed federal coinage proposal. Mould was also authorized by New Jersey to strike state coppers with this motto and did so beginning in early 1787 in Morristown, New Jersey. Lt. Col. Seth Read of Uxbridge, Massachusetts was said to have been instrumental in having E pluribus unum placed on U.S. coins.[failed verification] Seth Read and his brother Joseph Read had been authorized by the Massachusetts General Court to mint coppers in 1786. In March 1786, Seth Read petitioned the Massachusetts General Court, both the House and the Senate, for a franchise to mint coins, both copper and silver, and "it was concurred". E pluribus unum, written in capital letters, is included on most U.S. currency, with some exceptions to the letter spacing (such as the reverse of the dime). It is also embossed on the edge of the dollar coin. (See United States coinage and paper bills in circulation). According to the U.S. Treasury, the motto E pluribus unum was first used on U.S. coinage in 1795, when the reverse of the half-eagle ($5 gold) coin presented the main features of the Great Seal of the United States. E pluribus unum is inscribed on the Great Seal's scroll. The motto was added to certain silver coins in 1798, and soon appeared on all of the coins made out of precious metals (gold and silver). In 1834, it was dropped from most of the gold coins to mark the change in the standard fineness of the coins. In 1837, it was dropped from the silver coins, marking the era of the Revised Mint Code. The Coinage Act of 1873 made the inscription a requirement of law upon the coins of the United States. E pluribus unum appears on all U.S. coins currently being manufactured, including presidential dollar coins whose production started in 2007, where it is inscribed on the edge along with "In God We Trust" and the year and mint mark. After the revolution, Rahway, New Jersey became the home of the first national mint to create a coin bearing the inscription E pluribus unum. In a quality control error in early 2007, the Philadelphia Mint issued some one-dollar coins without E pluribus unum on the rim; these coins have since become collectibles. The 2009 and 2010 pennies feature a new design on the back, which displays the phrase E pluribus unum in larger letters than in previous years. Other usages See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/19/fbi-says-atm-jackpotting-attacks-are-on-the-rise-and-netting-hackers-millions-in-stolen-cash/] | [TOKENS: 767] |
Save up to $680 on your pass with Super Early Bird rates. REGISTER NOW. Save up to $680 on your Disrupt 2026 pass. Ends February 27. REGISTER NOW. Latest AI Amazon Apps Biotech & Health Climate Cloud Computing Commerce Crypto Enterprise EVs Fintech Fundraising Gadgets Gaming Google Government & Policy Hardware Instagram Layoffs Media & Entertainment Meta Microsoft Privacy Robotics Security Social Space Startups TikTok Transportation Venture Staff Events Startup Battlefield StrictlyVC Newsletters Podcasts Videos Partner Content TechCrunch Brand Studio Crunchboard Contact Us FBI says ATM ‘jackpotting’ attacks are on the rise, and netting hackers millions in stolen cash In 2010, the famed security researcher Barnaby Jack spectacularly hacked into an ATM cash machine onstage at the Black Hat security conference, forcing it to spit out reams of bank notes in front of an awestruck audience. More than a decade later, ATM jackpotting — as it’s called — has broken free from the realms of theoretical security research into big business in the criminal world. According to a new security bulletin issued by the FBI, hackers have rapidly ramped up their attacks in recent years, with more than 700 attacks on cash dispensers during 2025 alone, netting hackers at least $20 million in stolen cash. Per the bulletin, the FBI says hackers are using a mix of physical access to ATM machines, such as generic keys for unlocking front panels and accessing hard drives, and digital tools, like planting malware that can force ATMs to rapidly dispense cash in a flash. The FBI warned that one particular malware, known as Ploutus, affects a variety of ATM manufacturers and cash dispensers by targeting the underlying Windows operating system that powers many ATMs. Ploutus grants the hackers full control over a compromised ATM, allowing them to issue instructions capable of tricking the dispenser into disbursing notes without drawing funds from customer accounts. Ploutus takes advantage of extensions for financial services, or XFS software, which ATMs rely on to communicate with its various other hardware components, such as the PIN keypad, the card reader, and the all-important cash dispensing unit. “Ploutus attacks the ATM itself rather than customer accounts, enabling fast cash-out operations that can occur in minutes and are often difficult to detect until after the money is withdrawn,” per the FBI bulletin. Security researchers previously found issues with XFS software that can allow hackers to trick ATMs into dispensing cash. Updated the lede paragraph to amend date. Topics Security Editor Zack Whittaker is the security editor at TechCrunch. He also authors the weekly cybersecurity newsletter, this week in security. He can be reached via encrypted message at zackwhittaker.1337 on Signal. You can also contact him by email, or to verify outreach, at zack.whittaker@techcrunch.com. Save up to $680 on your pass before February 27.Meet investors. Discover your next portfolio company. Hear from 250+ tech leaders, dive into 200+ sessions, and explore 300+ startups building what’s next. Don’t miss these one-time savings. Most Popular FBI says ATM ‘jackpotting’ attacks are on the rise, and netting hackers millions in stolen cash Meta’s own research found parental supervision doesn’t really help curb teens’ compulsive social media use How Ricursive Intelligence raised $335M at a $4B valuation in 4 months After all the hype, some AI experts don’t think OpenClaw is all that exciting OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI Hollywood isn’t happy about the new Seedance 2.0 video generator The great computer science exodus (and where students are going instead) © 2025 TechCrunch Media LLC. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_functionalism] | [TOKENS: 6779] |
Contents Structural functionalism 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is "a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability". This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole, and believes that society has evolved like organisms. This approach looks at both social structure and social functions. Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements; namely norms, customs, traditions, and institutions. A common analogy called the organic or biological analogy, popularized by Herbert Spencer, presents these parts of society as human body "organs" that work toward the proper functioning of the "body" as a whole. In the most basic terms, it simply emphasizes "the effort to impute, as rigorously as possible, to each feature, custom, or practice, its effect on the functioning of a supposedly stable, cohesive system". For Talcott Parsons, "structural-functionalism" came to describe a particular stage in the methodological development of social science, rather than a specific school of thought. Theory In sociology, classical theories are defined by a tendency towards biological analogy and notions of social evolutionism: Functionalist thought, from Comte onwards, has looked particularly towards biology as the science providing the closest and most compatible model for social science. Biology has been taken to provide a guide to conceptualizing the structure and function of social systems and analyzing evolution processes via mechanisms of adaptation ... functionalism strongly emphasises the pre-eminence of the social world over its individual parts (i.e. its constituent actors, human subjects). — Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration While one may regard functionalism as a logical extension of the organic analogies for societies presented by political philosophers such as Rousseau, sociology draws firmer attention to those institutions unique to industrialized capitalist society (or modernity). Auguste Comte believed that society constitutes a separate "level" of reality, distinct from both biological and inorganic matter. Explanations of social phenomena had therefore to be constructed within this level, individuals being merely transient occupants of comparatively stable social roles. In this view, Comte was followed by Émile Durkheim. A central concern for Durkheim was the question of how certain societies maintain internal stability and survive over time. He proposed that such societies tend to be segmented, with equivalent parts held together by shared values, common symbols or (as his nephew Marcel Mauss held), systems of exchanges. Durkheim used the term mechanical solidarity to refer to these types of "social bonds, based on common sentiments and shared moral values, that are strong among members of pre-industrial societies". In modern, complex societies, members perform very different and highly specialized tasks, resulting in a strong interdependence. Based on the metaphor above of an organism in which many parts function together to sustain the whole, Durkheim argued that complex societies are held together by "organic solidarity", i.e. "social bonds, based on specialization and interdependence, that are strong among members of industrial societies". The central concern of structural functionalism may be regarded as a continuation of the Durkheimian task of explaining the apparent stability and internal cohesion needed by societies to endure over time. Societies are seen as coherent, bounded and fundamentally relational constructs that function like organisms, with their various (or social institutions) working together in an unconscious, quasi-automatic fashion toward achieving an overall social equilibrium. All social and cultural phenomena are therefore seen as functional in the sense of working together, and are effectively deemed to have "lives" of their own. They are primarily analyzed in terms of this function. The individual is significant not in and of themselves, but rather in terms of their status, their position in patterns of social relations, and the behaviours associated with their status. Therefore, the social structure is the network of statuses connected by associated roles. Functionalism also has an anthropological basis in the work of theorists such as Marcel Mauss, Bronisław Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. The prefix 'structural' emerged in Radcliffe-Brown's specific usage. Radcliffe-Brown proposed that most stateless, "primitive" societies, lacking strong centralized institutions, are based on an association of corporate-descent groups, i.e. the respective society's recognised kinship groups. Structural functionalism also took on Malinowski's argument that the basic building block of society is the nuclear family, and that the clan is an outgrowth, not vice versa. It is simplistic to equate the perspective directly with political conservatism. The tendency to emphasize "cohesive systems", however, leads functionalist theories to be contrasted with "conflict theories" which instead emphasize social problems and inequalities. Prominent theorists Auguste Comte, the "Father of Positivism", pointed out the need to keep society unified as many traditions were diminishing. He was the first person to coin the term sociology. Comte suggests that sociology is the product of a three-stage development: Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) was a British philosopher famous for applying the theory of natural selection to society. He was in many ways the first true sociological functionalist. In fact, while Durkheim is widely considered the most important functionalist among positivist theorists, it is known that much of his analysis was culled from reading Spencer's work, especially his Principles of Sociology (1874–96).[citation needed] In describing society, Spencer alludes to the analogy of a human body. Just as the structural parts of the human body—the skeleton, muscles, and various internal organs—function independently to help the entire organism survive, social structures work together to preserve society. While reading Spencer's massive volumes can be tedious (long passages explicating the organic analogy, with reference to cells, simple organisms, animals, humans and society), there are some important insights that have quietly influenced many contemporary theorists, including Talcott Parsons, in his early work The Structure of Social Action (1937). Cultural anthropology also consistently uses functionalism. This evolutionary model, unlike most 19th century evolutionary theories, is cyclical, beginning with the differentiation and increasing complication of an organic or "super-organic" (Spencer's term for a social system) body, followed by a fluctuating state of equilibrium and disequilibrium (or a state of adjustment and adaptation), and, finally, the stage of disintegration or dissolution. Following Thomas Malthus' population principles, Spencer concluded that society is constantly facing selection pressures (internal and external) that force it to adapt its internal structure through differentiation. Every solution, however, causes a new set of selection pressures that threaten society's viability. Spencer was not a determinist in the sense that he never said that In fact, he was in many ways a political sociologist, and recognized that the degree of centralized and consolidated authority in a given polity could make or break its ability to adapt. In other words, he saw a general trend towards the centralization of power as leading to stagnation and ultimately, pressures to decentralize. More specifically, Spencer recognized three functional needs or prerequisites that produce selection pressures: they are regulatory, operative (production) and distributive. He argued that all societies need to solve problems of control and coordination, production of goods, services and ideas, and, finally, to find ways of distributing these resources. Initially, in tribal societies, these three needs are inseparable, and the kinship system is the dominant structure that satisfies them. As many scholars have noted, all institutions are subsumed under kinship organization, but, with increasing population (both in terms of sheer numbers and density), problems emerge with regard to feeding individuals, creating new forms of organization—consider the emergent division of labour—coordinating and controlling various differentiated social units, and developing systems of resource distribution. The solution, as Spencer sees it, is to differentiate structures to fulfill more specialized functions; thus, a chief or "big man" emerges, soon followed by a group of lieutenants, and later kings and administrators. The structural parts of society (e.g. families, work) function interdependently to help society function. Therefore, social structures work together to preserve society. Talcott Parsons began writing in the 1930s and contributed to sociology, political science, anthropology, and psychology. Structural functionalism and Parsons have received much criticism. Numerous critics have pointed out Parsons' underemphasis of political and monetary struggle, the basics of social change, and the by and large "manipulative" conduct unregulated by qualities and standards. Structural functionalism, and a large portion of Parsons' works, appear to be insufficient in their definitions concerning the connections amongst institutionalized and non-institutionalized conduct, and the procedures by which institutionalization happens.[citation needed] Parsons was heavily influenced by Durkheim and Max Weber, synthesizing much of their work into his action theory, which he based on the system-theoretical concept and the methodological principle of voluntary action. He held that "the social system is made up of the actions of individuals". His starting point, accordingly, is the interaction between two individuals faced with a variety of choices about how they might act, choices that are influenced and constrained by a number of physical and social factors. Parsons determined that each individual has expectations of the other's action and reaction to their own behavior, and that these expectations would (if successful) be "derived" from the accepted norms and values of the society they inhabit. As Parsons himself emphasized, in a general context there would never exist any perfect "fit" between behaviors and norms, so such a relation is never complete or "perfect". Social norms were always problematic for Parsons, who never claimed (as has often been alleged)[citation needed] that social norms were generally accepted and agreed upon, should this prevent some kind of universal law. Whether social norms were accepted or not was for Parsons simply a historical question. As behaviors are repeated in more interactions, and these expectations are entrenched or institutionalized, a role is created. Parsons defines a "role" as the normatively-regulated participation "of a person in a concrete process of social interaction with specific, concrete role-partners". Although any individual, theoretically, can fulfill any role, the individual is expected to conform to the norms governing the nature of the role they fulfill. Furthermore, one person can and does fulfill many different roles at the same time. In one sense, an individual can be seen to be a "composition" of the roles he inhabits. Certainly, today, when asked to describe themselves, most people would answer with reference to their societal roles. Parsons later developed the idea of roles into collectivities of roles that complement each other in fulfilling functions for society. Some roles are bound up in institutions and social structures (economic, educational, legal and even gender-based). These are functional in the sense that they assist society in operating and fulfilling its functional needs so that society runs smoothly. Contrary to prevailing myth, Parsons never spoke about a society where there was no conflict or some kind of "perfect" equilibrium. A society's cultural value-system was in the typical case never completely integrated, never static and most of the time, like in the case of the American society, in a complex state of transformation relative to its historical point of departure. To reach a "perfect" equilibrium was not any serious theoretical question in Parsons analysis of social systems, indeed, the most dynamic societies had generally cultural systems with important inner tensions like the US and India. These tensions were a source of their strength according to Parsons rather than the opposite. Parsons never thought about system-institutionalization and the level of strains (tensions, conflict) in the system as opposite forces per se.[citation needed] The key processes for Parsons for system reproduction are socialization and social control. Socialization is important because it is the mechanism for transferring the accepted norms and values of society to the individuals within the system. Parsons never spoke about "perfect socialization"—in any society socialization was only partial and "incomplete" from an integral point of view. Parsons states that "this point ... is independent of the sense in which [the] individual is concretely autonomous or creative rather than 'passive' or 'conforming', for individuality and creativity, are to a considerable extent, phenomena of the institutionalization of expectations"; they are culturally constructed. Socialization is supported by the positive and negative sanctioning of role behaviours that do or do not meet these expectations. A punishment could be informal, like a snigger or gossip, or more formalized, through institutions such as prisons and mental homes. If these two processes were perfect, society would become static and unchanging, but in reality, this is unlikely to occur for long. Parsons recognizes this, stating that he treats "the structure of the system as problematic and subject to change", and that his concept of the tendency towards equilibrium "does not imply the empirical dominance of stability over change". He does, however, believe that these changes occur in a relatively smooth way. Individuals in interaction with changing situations adapt through a process of "role bargaining". Once the roles are established, they create norms that guide further action and are thus institutionalized, creating stability across social interactions. Where the adaptation process cannot adjust, due to sharp shocks or immediate radical change, structural dissolution occurs and either new structures (or therefore a new system) are formed, or society dies. This model of social change has been described as a "moving equilibrium", and emphasizes a desire for social order. Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore (1945) gave an argument for social stratification based on the idea of "functional necessity" (also known as the Davis-Moore hypothesis). They argue that the most difficult jobs in any society have the highest incomes in order to motivate individuals to fill the roles needed by the division of labour. Thus, inequality serves social stability. This argument has been criticized as fallacious from a number of different angles: the argument is both that the individuals who are the most deserving are the highest rewarded, and that a system of unequal rewards is necessary, otherwise no individuals would perform as needed for the society to function. The problem is that these rewards are supposed to be based upon objective merit, rather than subjective "motivations." The argument also does not clearly establish why some positions are worth more than others, even when they benefit more people in society, e.g., teachers compared to athletes and movie stars. Critics have suggested that structural inequality (inherited wealth, family power, etc.) is itself a cause of individual success or failure, not a consequence of it. Robert K. Merton made important refinements to functionalist thought. He fundamentally agreed with Parsons' theory but acknowledged that Parsons' theory could be questioned, believing that it was over generalized. Merton tended to emphasize middle range theory rather than a grand theory, meaning that he was able to deal specifically with some of the limitations in Parsons' thinking. Merton believed that any social structure probably has many functions, some more obvious than others. He identified three main limitations: functional unity, universal functionalism and indispensability. He also developed the concept of deviance and made the distinction between manifest and latent functions. Manifest functions referred to the recognized and intended consequences of any social pattern. Latent functions referred to unrecognized and unintended consequences of any social pattern. Merton criticized functional unity, saying that not all parts of a modern complex society work for the functional unity of society. Consequently, there is a social dysfunction referred to as any social pattern that may disrupt the operation of society. Some institutions and structures may have other functions, and some may even be generally dysfunctional, or be functional for some while being dysfunctional for others. This is because not all structures are functional for society as a whole. Some practices are only functional for a dominant individual or a group. There are two types of functions that Merton discusses the "manifest functions" in that a social pattern can trigger a recognized and intended consequence. The manifest function of education includes preparing for a career by getting good grades, graduation and finding good job. The second type of function is "latent functions", where a social pattern results in an unrecognized or unintended consequence. The latent functions of education include meeting new people, extra-curricular activities, school trips. Another type of social function is "social dysfunction" which is any undesirable consequences that disrupts the operation of society. The social dysfunction of education includes not getting good grades, a job. Merton states that by recognizing and examining the dysfunctional aspects of society we can explain the development and persistence of alternatives. Thus, as Holmwood states, "Merton explicitly made power and conflict central issues for research within a functionalist paradigm." Merton also noted that there may be functional alternatives to the institutions and structures currently fulfilling the functions of society. This means that the institutions that currently exist are not indispensable to society. Merton states "just as the same item may have multiple functions, so may the same function be diversely fulfilled by alternative items." This notion of functional alternatives is important because it reduces the tendency of functionalism to imply approval of the status quo. Merton's theory of deviance is derived from Durkheim's idea of anomie. It is central in explaining how internal changes can occur in a system. For Merton, anomie means a discontinuity between cultural goals and the accepted methods available for reaching them. Merton believes that there are 5 situations facing an actor. Thus it can be seen that change can occur internally in society through either innovation or rebellion. It is true that society will attempt to control these individuals and negate the changes, but as the innovation or rebellion builds momentum, society will eventually adapt or face dissolution. In the 1970s, political scientists Gabriel Almond and Bingham Powell introduced a structural-functionalist approach to comparing political systems. They argued that, in order to understand a political system, it is necessary to understand not only its institutions (or structures) but also their respective functions. They also insisted that these institutions, to be properly understood, must be placed in a meaningful and dynamic historical context. This idea stood in marked contrast to prevalent approaches in the field of comparative politics—the state-society theory and the dependency theory. These were the descendants of David Easton's system theory in international relations, a mechanistic view that saw all political systems as essentially the same, subject to the same laws of "stimulus and response"—or inputs and outputs—while paying little attention to unique characteristics. The structural-functional approach is based on the view that a political system is made up of several key components, including interest groups, political parties and branches of government. In addition to structures, Almond and Powell showed that a political system consists of various functions, chief among them political socialization, recruitment and communication: socialization refers to the way in which societies pass along their values and beliefs to succeeding generations, and in political terms describe the process by which a society inculcates civic virtues, or the habits of effective citizenship; recruitment denotes the process by which a political system generates interest, engagement and participation from citizens; and communication refers to the way that a system promulgates its values and information. Unilineal descent In their attempt to explain the social stability of African "primitive" stateless societies where they undertook their fieldwork, Evans-Pritchard (1940) and Meyer Fortes (1945) argued that the Tallensi and the Nuer were primarily organized around unilineal descent groups. Such groups are characterized by common purposes, such as administering property or defending against attacks; they form a permanent social structure that persists well beyond the lifespan of their members. In the case of the Tallensi and the Nuer, these corporate groups were based on kinship which in turn fitted into the larger structures of unilineal descent; consequently Evans-Pritchard's and Fortes' model is called "descent theory". Moreover, in this African context territorial divisions were aligned with lineages; descent theory therefore synthesized both blood and soil as the same. Affinal ties with the parent through whom descent is not reckoned, however, are considered to be merely complementary or secondary (Fortes created the concept of "complementary filiation"), with the reckoning of kinship through descent being considered the primary organizing force of social systems. Because of its strong emphasis on unilineal descent, this new kinship theory came to be called "descent theory". With no delay, descent theory had found its critics. Many African tribal societies seemed to fit this neat model rather well, although Africanists, such as Paul Richards, also argued that Fortes and Evans-Pritchard had deliberately downplayed internal contradictions and overemphasized the stability of the local lineage systems and their significance for the organization of society. However, in many Asian settings the problems were even more obvious. In Papua New Guinea, the local patrilineal descent groups were fragmented and contained large amounts of non-agnates. Status distinctions did not depend on descent, and genealogies were too short to account for social solidarity through identification with a common ancestor. In particular, the phenomenon of cognatic (or bilateral) kinship posed a serious problem to the proposition that descent groups are the primary element behind the social structures of "primitive" societies. Leach's (1966) critique came in the form of the classical Malinowskian argument, pointing out that "in Evans-Pritchard's studies of the Nuer and also in Fortes's studies of the Tallensi unilineal descent turns out to be largely an ideal concept to which the empirical facts are only adapted by means of fictions". People's self-interest, manoeuvring, manipulation and competition had been ignored. Moreover, descent theory neglected the significance of marriage and affinal ties, which were emphasized by Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology, at the expense of overemphasizing the role of descent. To quote Leach: "The evident importance attached to matrilateral and affinal kinship connections is not so much explained as explained away." Biological Biological functionalism is an anthropological paradigm, asserting that all social institutions, beliefs, values and practices serve to address pragmatic concerns. In many ways, the theorem derives from the longer-established structural functionalism, yet the two theorems diverge from one another significantly. While both maintain the fundamental belief that a social structure is composed of many interdependent frames of reference, biological functionalists criticise the structural view that a social solidarity and collective conscience is required in a functioning system. By that fact, biological functionalism maintains that our individual survival and health is the driving provocation of actions, and that the importance of social rigidity is negligible. Although the actions of humans without doubt do not always engender positive results for the individual, a biological functionalist would argue that the intention was still self-preservation, albeit unsuccessful. An example of this is the belief in luck as an entity; while a disproportionately strong belief in good luck may lead to undesirable results, such as a huge loss in money from gambling, biological functionalism maintains that the newly created ability of the gambler to condemn luck will allow them to be free of individual blame, thus serving a practical and individual purpose. In this sense, biological functionalism maintains that while bad results often occur in life, which do not serve any pragmatic concerns, an entrenched cognitive psychological motivation was attempting to create a positive result, in spite of its eventual failure. Decline Structural functionalism reached the peak of its influence in the 1940s and 1950s, and by the 1960s was in rapid decline. By the 1980s, its place was taken in Europe by more conflict-oriented approaches, and more recently by structuralism. While some of the critical approaches also gained popularity in the United States, the mainstream of the discipline has instead shifted to a myriad of empirically oriented middle-range theories with no overarching theoretical orientation. To most sociologists, functionalism is now "as dead as a dodo". As the influence of functionalism in the 1960s began to wane, the linguistic and cultural turns led to a myriad of new movements in the social sciences: "According to Giddens, the orthodox consensus terminated in the late 1960s and 1970s as the middle ground shared by otherwise competing perspectives gave way and was replaced by a baffling variety of competing perspectives. This third generation of social theory includes phenomenologically inspired approaches, critical theory, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and theories written in the tradition of hermeneutics and ordinary language philosophy." While absent from empirical sociology, functionalist themes remained detectable in sociological theory, most notably in the works of Luhmann and Giddens. There are, however, signs of an incipient revival, as functionalist claims have recently been bolstered by developments in multilevel selection theory and in empirical research on how groups solve social dilemmas. Recent developments in evolutionary theory—especially by biologist David Sloan Wilson and anthropologists Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson—have provided strong support for structural functionalism in the form of multilevel selection theory. In this theory, culture and social structure are seen as a Darwinian (biological or cultural) adaptation at the group level. Criticisms In the 1960s, functionalism was criticized for being unable to account for social change, or for structural contradictions and conflict (and thus was often called "consensus theory"). Also, it ignores inequalities including race, gender, class, which cause tension and conflict. The refutation of the second criticism of functionalism, that it is static and has no concept of change, has already been articulated above, concluding that while Parsons' theory allows for change, it is an orderly process of change [Parsons, 1961:38], a moving equilibrium. Therefore, referring to Parsons' theory of society as static is inaccurate. It is true that it does place emphasis on equilibrium and the maintenance or quick return to social order, but this is a product of the time in which Parsons was writing (post-World War II, and the start of the cold war). Society was in upheaval and fear abounded. At the time social order was crucial, and this is reflected in Parsons' tendency to promote equilibrium and social order rather than social change. Furthermore, Durkheim favoured a radical form of guild socialism along with functionalist explanations. Also, Marxism, while acknowledging social contradictions, still uses functionalist explanations. Parsons' evolutionary theory describes the differentiation and reintegration systems and subsystems and thus at least temporary conflict before reintegration (ibid). "The fact that functional analysis can be seen by some as inherently conservative and by others as inherently radical suggests that it may be inherently neither one nor the other." Stronger criticisms include the epistemological argument that functionalism is tautologous, that is, it attempts to account for the development of social institutions solely through recourse to the effects that are attributed to them, and thereby explains the two circularly. However, Parsons drew directly on many of Durkheim's concepts in creating his theory. Certainly Durkheim was one of the first theorists to explain a phenomenon with reference to the function it served for society. He said, "the determination of function is…necessary for the complete explanation of the phenomena." However Durkheim made a clear distinction between historical and functional analysis, saying, "When ... the explanation of a social phenomenon is undertaken, we must seek separately the efficient cause which produces it and the function it fulfills." If Durkheim made this distinction, then it is unlikely that Parsons did not. However Merton does explicitly state that functional analysis does not seek to explain why the action happened in the first instance, but why it continues or is reproduced. By this particular logic, it can be argued that functionalists do not necessarily explain the original cause of a phenomenon with reference to its effect. Yet the logic stated in reverse, that social phenomena are (re)produced because they serve ends, is unoriginal to functionalist thought. Thus functionalism is either undefinable or it can be defined by the teleological arguments which functionalist theorists normatively produced before Merton. Another criticism describes the ontological argument that society cannot have "needs" as a human being does, and even if society does have needs they need not be met. Anthony Giddens argues that functionalist explanations may all be rewritten as historical accounts of individual human actions and consequences (see Structuration). A further criticism directed at functionalism is that it contains no sense of agency, that individuals are seen as puppets, acting as their role requires. Yet Holmwood states that the most sophisticated forms of functionalism are based on "a highly developed concept of action," and as was explained above, Parsons took as his starting point the individual and their actions. His theory did not however articulate how these actors exercise their agency in opposition to the socialization and inculcation of accepted norms. As has been shown above, Merton addressed this limitation through his concept of deviance, and so it can be seen that functionalism allows for agency. It cannot, however, explain why individuals choose to accept or reject the accepted norms, why and in what circumstances they choose to exercise their agency, and this does remain a considerable limitation of the theory. Further criticisms have been levelled at functionalism by proponents of other social theories, particularly conflict theorists, Marxists, feminists and postmodernists. Conflict theorists criticized functionalism's concept of systems as giving far too much weight to integration and consensus, and neglecting independence and conflict. Lockwood, in line with conflict theory, suggested that Parsons' theory missed the concept of system contradiction. He did not account for those parts of the system that might have tendencies to mal-integration. According to Lockwood, it was these tendencies that come to the surface as opposition and conflict among actors. However Parsons thought that the issues of conflict and cooperation were very much intertwined and sought to account for both in his model. In this however he was limited by his analysis of an ‘ideal type' of society which was characterized by consensus. Merton, through his critique of functional unity, introduced into functionalism an explicit analysis of tension and conflict. Yet Merton's functionalist explanations of social phenomena continued to rest on the idea that society is primarily co-operative rather than conflicted, which differentiates Merton from conflict theorists. Marxism, which was revived soon after the emergence of conflict theory, criticized professional sociology (functionalism and conflict theory alike) for being partisan to advanced welfare capitalism. Gouldner thought that Parsons' theory specifically was an expression of the dominant interests of welfare capitalism, that it justified institutions with reference to the function they fulfill for society. It may be that Parsons' work implied or articulated that certain institutions were necessary to fulfill the functional prerequisites of society, but whether or not this is the case, Merton explicitly states that institutions are not indispensable and that there are functional alternatives. That he does not identify any alternatives to the current institutions does reflect a conservative bias, which as has been stated before is a product of the specific time that he was writing in. As functionalism's prominence was ending, feminism was on the rise, and it attempted a radical criticism of functionalism. It believed that functionalism neglected the suppression of women within the family structure. Holmwood shows, however, that Parsons did in fact describe the situations where tensions and conflict existed or were about to take place, even if he did not articulate those conflicts. Some feminists agree, suggesting that Parsons provided accurate descriptions of these situations. On the other hand, Parsons recognized that he had oversimplified his functional analysis of women in relation to work and the family, and focused on the positive functions of the family for society and not on its dysfunctions for women. Merton, too, although addressing situations where function and dysfunction occurred simultaneously, lacked a "feminist sensibility". Postmodernism, as a theory, is critical of claims of objectivity. Therefore, the idea of grand theory and grand narrative that can explain society in all its forms is treated with skepticism. This critique focuses on exposing the danger that grand theory can pose when not seen as a limited perspective, as one way of understanding society.[citation needed] Jeffrey Alexander (1985) sees functionalism as a broad school rather than a specific method or system, such as Parsons, who is capable of taking equilibrium (stability) as a reference-point rather than assumption and treats structural differentiation as a major form of social change. The name 'functionalism' implies a difference of method or interpretation that does not exist. This removes the determinism criticized above. Cohen argues that rather than needs a society has dispositional facts: features of the social environment that support the existence of particular social institutions but do not cause them. Influential theorists See also Notes References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(constellation)#cite_note-boundary-2] | [TOKENS: 4993] |
Contents Orion (constellation) Orion is a prominent set of stars visible during winter in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is one of the 88 modern constellations; it was among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century AD/CE astronomer Ptolemy. It is named after a hunter in Greek mythology. Orion is most prominent during winter evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, as are five other constellations that have stars in the Winter Hexagon asterism. Orion's two brightest stars, Rigel (β) and Betelgeuse (α), are both among the brightest stars in the night sky; both are supergiants and slightly variable. There are a further six stars brighter than magnitude 3.0, including three making the short straight line of the Orion's Belt asterism. Orion also hosts the radiant of the annual Orionids, the strongest meteor shower associated with Halley's Comet, and the Orion Nebula, one of the brightest nebulae in the sky. Characteristics Orion is bordered by Taurus to the northwest, Eridanus to the southwest, Lepus to the south, Monoceros to the east, and Gemini to the northeast. Covering 594 square degrees, Orion ranks 26th of the 88 constellations in size. The constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 26 sides. In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between 04h 43.3m and 06h 25.5m , while the declination coordinates are between 22.87° and −10.97°. The constellation's three-letter abbreviation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Ori". Orion is most visible in the evening sky from January to April, winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and summer in the Southern Hemisphere. In the tropics (less than about 8° from the equator), the constellation transits at the zenith. From May to July (summer in the Northern Hemisphere, winter in the Southern Hemisphere), Orion is in the daytime sky and thus invisible at most latitudes. However, for much of Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere's winter months, the Sun is below the horizon even at midday. Stars (and thus Orion, but only the brightest stars) are then visible at twilight for a few hours around local noon, just in the brightest section of the sky low in the North where the Sun is just below the horizon. At the same time of day at the South Pole itself (Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station), Rigel is only 8° above the horizon, and the Belt sweeps just along it. In the Southern Hemisphere's summer months, when Orion is normally visible in the night sky, the constellation is actually not visible in Antarctica because the Sun does not set at that time of year south of the Antarctic Circle. In countries close to the equator (e.g. Kenya, Indonesia, Colombia, Ecuador), Orion appears overhead in December around midnight and in the February evening sky. Navigational aid Orion is very useful as an aid to locating other stars. By extending the line of the Belt southeastward, Sirius (α CMa) can be found; northwestward, Aldebaran (α Tau). A line eastward across the two shoulders indicates the direction of Procyon (α CMi). A line from Rigel through Betelgeuse points to Castor and Pollux (α Gem and β Gem). Additionally, Rigel is part of the Winter Circle asterism. Sirius and Procyon, which may be located from Orion by following imaginary lines (see map), also are points in both the Winter Triangle and the Circle. Features Orion's seven brightest stars form a distinctive hourglass-shaped asterism, or pattern, in the night sky. Four stars—Rigel, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, and Saiph—form a large roughly rectangular shape, at the center of which lie the three stars of Orion's Belt—Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. His head is marked by an additional eighth star called Meissa, which is fairly bright to the observer. Descending from the Belt is a smaller line of three stars, Orion's Sword (the middle of which is in fact not a star but the Orion Nebula), also known as the hunter's sword. Many of the stars are luminous hot blue supergiants, with the stars of the Belt and Sword forming the Orion OB1 association. Standing out by its red hue, Betelgeuse may nevertheless be a runaway member of the same group. Orion's Belt, or The Belt of Orion, is an asterism within the constellation. It consists of three bright stars: Alnitak (Zeta Orionis), Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis), and Mintaka (Delta Orionis). Alnitak is around 800 light-years away from Earth, 100,000 times more luminous than the Sun, and shines with a magnitude of 1.8; much of its radiation is in the ultraviolet range, which the human eye cannot see. Alnilam is approximately 2,000 light-years from Earth, shines with a magnitude of 1.70, and with an ultraviolet light that is 375,000 times more luminous than the Sun. Mintaka is 915 light-years away and shines with a magnitude of 2.21. It is 90,000 times more luminous than the Sun and is a double star: the two orbit each other every 5.73 days. In the Northern Hemisphere, Orion's Belt is best visible in the night sky during the month of January at around 9:00 pm, when it is approximately around the local meridian. Just southwest of Alnitak lies Sigma Orionis, a multiple star system composed of five stars that have a combined apparent magnitude of 3.7 and lying at a distance of 1150 light-years. Southwest of Mintaka lies the quadruple star Eta Orionis. Orion's Sword contains the Orion Nebula, the Messier 43 nebula, Sh 2-279 (also known as the Running Man Nebula), and the stars Theta Orionis, Iota Orionis, and 42 Orionis. Three stars comprise a small triangle that marks the head. The apex is marked by Meissa (Lambda Orionis), a hot blue giant of spectral type O8 III and apparent magnitude 3.54, which lies some 1100 light-years distant. Phi-1 and Phi-2 Orionis make up the base. Also nearby is the young star FU Orionis. Stretching north from Betelgeuse are the stars that make up Orion's club. Mu Orionis marks the elbow, Nu and Xi mark the handle of the club, and Chi1 and Chi2 mark the end of the club. Just east of Chi1 is the Mira-type variable red giant star U Orionis. West from Bellatrix lie six stars all designated Pi Orionis (π1 Ori, π2 Ori, π3 Ori, π4 Ori, π5 Ori, and π6 Ori) which make up Orion's shield. Around 20 October each year, the Orionid meteor shower (Orionids) reaches its peak. Coming from the border with the constellation Gemini, as many as 20 meteors per hour can be seen. The shower's parent body is Halley's Comet. Hanging from Orion's Belt is his sword, consisting of the multiple stars θ1 and θ2 Orionis, called the Trapezium and the Orion Nebula (M42). This is a spectacular object that can be clearly identified with the naked eye as something other than a star. Using binoculars, its clouds of nascent stars, luminous gas, and dust can be observed. The Trapezium cluster has many newborn stars, including several brown dwarfs, all of which are at an approximate distance of 1,500 light-years. Named for the four bright stars that form a trapezoid, it is largely illuminated by the brightest stars, which are only a few hundred thousand years old. Observations by the Chandra X-ray Observatory show both the extreme temperatures of the main stars—up to 60,000 kelvins—and the star forming regions still extant in the surrounding nebula. M78 (NGC 2068) is a nebula in Orion. With an overall magnitude of 8.0, it is significantly dimmer than the Great Orion Nebula that lies to its south; however, it is at approximately the same distance, at 1600 light-years from Earth. It can easily be mistaken for a comet in the eyepiece of a telescope. M78 is associated with the variable star V351 Orionis, whose magnitude changes are visible in very short periods of time. Another fairly bright nebula in Orion is NGC 1999, also close to the Great Orion Nebula. It has an integrated magnitude of 10.5 and is 1500 light-years from Earth. The variable star V380 Orionis is embedded in NGC 1999. Another famous nebula is IC 434, the Horsehead Nebula, near Alnitak (Zeta Orionis). It contains a dark dust cloud whose shape gives the nebula its name. NGC 2174 is an emission nebula located 6400 light-years from Earth. Besides these nebulae, surveying Orion with a small telescope will reveal a wealth of interesting deep-sky objects, including M43, M78, and multiple stars including Iota Orionis and Sigma Orionis. A larger telescope may reveal objects such as the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024), as well as fainter and tighter multiple stars and nebulae. Barnard's Loop can be seen on very dark nights or using long-exposure photography. All of these nebulae are part of the larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which is located approximately 1,500 light-years away and is hundreds of light-years across. Due to its proximity, it is one of the most intense regions of stellar formation visible from Earth. The Orion molecular cloud complex forms the eastern part of an even larger structure, the Orion–Eridanus Superbubble, which is visible in X-rays and in hydrogen emissions. History and mythology The distinctive pattern of Orion is recognized in numerous cultures around the world, and many myths are associated with it. Orion is used as a symbol in the modern world. In Siberia, the Chukchi people see Orion as a hunter; an arrow he has shot is represented by Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri), with the same figure as other Western depictions. In Greek mythology, Orion was a gigantic, supernaturally strong hunter, born to Euryale, a Gorgon, and Poseidon (Neptune), god of the sea. One myth recounts Gaia's rage at Orion, who dared to say that he would kill every animal on Earth. The angry goddess tried to dispatch Orion with a scorpion. This is given as the reason that the constellations of Scorpius and Orion are never in the sky at the same time. However, Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, revived Orion with an antidote. This is said to be the reason that the constellation of Ophiuchus stands midway between the Scorpion and the Hunter in the sky. The constellation is mentioned in Horace's Odes (Ode 3.27.18), Homer's Odyssey (Book 5, line 283) and Iliad, and Virgil's Aeneid (Book 1, line 535). In old Hungarian tradition, Orion is known as "Archer" (Íjász), or "Reaper" (Kaszás). In recently rediscovered myths, he is called Nimrod (Hungarian: Nimród), the greatest hunter, father of the twins Hunor and Magor. The π and o stars (on upper right) form together the reflex bow or the lifted scythe. In other Hungarian traditions, Orion's Belt is known as "Judge's stick" (Bírópálca). In Ireland and Scotland, Orion was called An Bodach, a figure from Irish folklore whose name literally means "the one with a penis [bod]" and was the husband of the Cailleach (hag). In Scandinavian tradition, Orion's Belt was known as "Frigg's Distaff" (friggerock) or "Freyja's distaff". The Finns call Orion's Belt and the stars below it "Väinämöinen's scythe" (Väinämöisen viikate). Another name for the asterism of Alnilam, Alnitak, and Mintaka is "Väinämöinen's Belt" (Väinämöisen vyö) and the stars "hanging" from the Belt as "Kaleva's sword" (Kalevanmiekka). There are claims in popular media that the Adorant from the Geißenklösterle cave, an ivory carving estimated to be 35,000 to 40,000 years old, is the first known depiction of the constellation. Scholars dismiss such interpretations, saying that perceived details such as a belt and sword derive from preexisting features in the grain structure of the ivory. The Babylonian star catalogues of the Late Bronze Age name Orion MULSIPA.ZI.AN.NA,[note 1] "The Heavenly Shepherd" or "True Shepherd of Anu" – Anu being the chief god of the heavenly realms. The Babylonian constellation is sacred to Papshukal and Ninshubur, both minor gods fulfilling the role of "messenger to the gods". Papshukal is closely associated with the figure of a walking bird on Babylonian boundary stones, and on the star map the figure of the Rooster is located below and behind the figure of the True Shepherd—both constellations represent the herald of the gods, in his bird and human forms respectively. In ancient Egypt, the stars of Orion were regarded as a god, called Sah. Because Orion rises before Sirius, the star whose heliacal rising was the basis for the Solar Egyptian calendar, Sah was closely linked with Sopdet, the goddess who personified Sirius. The god Sopdu is said to be the son of Sah and Sopdet. Sah is syncretized with Osiris, while Sopdet is syncretized with Osiris' mythological wife, Isis. In the Pyramid Texts, from the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, Sah is one of many gods whose form the dead pharaoh is said to take in the afterlife. The Armenians identified their legendary patriarch and founder Hayk with Orion. Hayk is also the name of the Orion constellation in the Armenian translation of the Bible. The Bible mentions Orion three times, naming it "Kesil" (כסיל, literally – fool). Though, this name perhaps is etymologically connected with "Kislev", the name for the ninth month of the Hebrew calendar (i.e. November–December), which, in turn, may derive from the Hebrew root K-S-L as in the words "kesel, kisla" (כֵּסֶל, כִּסְלָה, hope, positiveness), i.e. hope for winter rains.: Job 9:9 ("He is the maker of the Bear and Orion"), Job 38:31 ("Can you loosen Orion's belt?"), and Amos 5:8 ("He who made the Pleiades and Orion"). In ancient Aram, the constellation was known as Nephîlā′, the Nephilim are said to be Orion's descendants. In medieval Muslim astronomy, Orion was known as al-jabbar, "the giant". Orion's sixth brightest star, Saiph, is named from the Arabic, saif al-jabbar, meaning "sword of the giant". In China, Orion was one of the 28 lunar mansions Sieu (Xiù) (宿). It is known as Shen (參), literally meaning "three", for the stars of Orion's Belt. The Chinese character 參 (pinyin shēn) originally meant the constellation Orion (Chinese: 參宿; pinyin: shēnxiù); its Shang dynasty version, over three millennia old, contains at the top a representation of the three stars of Orion's Belt atop a man's head (the bottom portion representing the sound of the word was added later). The Rigveda refers to the constellation as Mriga (the Deer). Nataraja, "the cosmic dancer", is often interpreted as the representation of Orion. Rudra, the Rigvedic form of Shiva, is the presiding deity of Ardra nakshatra (Betelgeuse) of Hindu astrology. The Jain Symbol carved in the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves, India in 1st century BCE has a striking resemblance with Orion. Bugis sailors identified the three stars in Orion's Belt as tanra tellué, meaning "sign of three". The Seri people of northwestern Mexico call the three stars in Orion's Belt Hapj (a name denoting a hunter) which consists of three stars: Hap (mule deer), Haamoja (pronghorn), and Mojet (bighorn sheep). Hap is in the middle and has been shot by the hunter; its blood has dripped onto Tiburón Island. The same three stars are known in Spain and most of Latin America as "Las tres Marías" (Spanish for "The Three Marys"). In Puerto Rico, the three stars are known as the "Los Tres Reyes Magos" (Spanish for The Three Wise Men). The Ojibwa/Chippewa Native Americans call this constellation Mesabi for Big Man. To the Lakota Native Americans, Tayamnicankhu (Orion's Belt) is the spine of a bison. The great rectangle of Orion is the bison's ribs; the Pleiades star cluster in nearby Taurus is the bison's head; and Sirius in Canis Major, known as Tayamnisinte, is its tail. Another Lakota myth mentions that the bottom half of Orion, the Constellation of the Hand, represented the arm of a chief that was ripped off by the Thunder People as a punishment from the gods for his selfishness. His daughter offered to marry the person who can retrieve his arm from the sky, so the young warrior Fallen Star (whose father was a star and whose mother was human) returned his arm and married his daughter, symbolizing harmony between the gods and humanity with the help of the younger generation. The index finger is represented by Rigel; the Orion Nebula is the thumb; the Belt of Orion is the wrist; and the star Beta Eridani is the pinky finger. The seven primary stars of Orion make up the Polynesian constellation Heiheionakeiki which represents a child's string figure similar to a cat's cradle. Several precolonial Filipinos referred to the belt region in particular as "balatik" (ballista) as it resembles a trap of the same name which fires arrows by itself and is usually used for catching pigs from the bush. Spanish colonization later led to some ethnic groups referring to Orion's Belt as "Tres Marias" or "Tatlong Maria." In Māori tradition, the star Rigel (known as Puanga or Puaka) is closely connected with the celebration of Matariki. The rising of Matariki (the Pleiades) and Rigel before sunrise in midwinter marks the start of the Māori year. In Javanese culture, the constellation is often called Lintang Waluku or Bintang Bajak, referring to the shape of a paddy field plow. The imagery of the Belt and Sword has found its way into popular Western culture, for example in the form of the shoulder insignia of the 27th Infantry Division of the United States Army during both World Wars, probably owing to a pun on the name of the division's first commander, Major General John F. O'Ryan. The film distribution company Orion Pictures used the constellation as its logo. In artistic renderings, the surrounding constellations are sometimes related to Orion: he is depicted standing next to the river Eridanus with his two hunting dogs Canis Major and Canis Minor, fighting Taurus. He is sometimes depicted hunting Lepus the hare. He sometimes is depicted to have a lion's hide in his hand. There are alternative ways to visualise Orion. From the Southern Hemisphere, Orion is oriented south-upward, and the Belt and Sword are sometimes called the saucepan or pot in Australia and New Zealand. Orion's Belt is called Drie Konings (Three Kings) or the Drie Susters (Three Sisters) by Afrikaans speakers in South Africa and are referred to as les Trois Rois (the Three Kings) in Daudet's Lettres de Mon Moulin (1866). The appellation Driekoningen (the Three Kings) is also often found in 17th and 18th-century Dutch star charts and seaman's guides. The same three stars are known in Spain, Latin America, and the Philippines as "Las Tres Marías" (The Three Marys), and as "Los Tres Reyes Magos" (The Three Wise Men) in Puerto Rico. Even traditional depictions of Orion have varied greatly. Cicero drew Orion in a similar fashion to the modern depiction. The Hunter held an unidentified animal skin aloft in his right hand; his hand was represented by Omicron2 Orionis and the skin was represented by the five stars designated Pi Orionis. Saiph and Rigel represented his left and right knees, while Eta Orionis and Lambda Leporis were his left and right feet, respectively. As in the modern depiction, Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak represented his Belt. His left shoulder was represented by Betelgeuse, and Mu Orionis made up his left arm. Meissa was his head, and Bellatrix his right shoulder. The depiction of Hyginus was similar to that of Cicero, though the two differed in a few important areas. Cicero's animal skin became Hyginus's shield (Omicron and Pi Orionis), and instead of an arm marked out by Mu Orionis, he holds a club (Chi Orionis). His right leg is represented by Theta Orionis and his left leg is represented by Lambda, Mu, and Epsilon Leporis. Further Western European and Arabic depictions have followed these two models. Future Orion is located on the celestial equator, but it will not always be so located due to the effects of precession of the Earth's axis. Orion lies well south of the ecliptic, and it only happens to lie on the celestial equator because the point on the ecliptic that corresponds to the June solstice is close to the border of Gemini and Taurus, to the north of Orion. Precession will eventually carry Orion further south, and by AD 14000, Orion will be far enough south that it will no longer be visible from the latitude of Great Britain. Further in the future, Orion's stars will gradually move away from the constellation due to proper motion. However, Orion's brightest stars all lie at a large distance from Earth on an astronomical scale—much farther away than Sirius, for example. Orion will still be recognizable long after most of the other constellations—composed of relatively nearby stars—have distorted into new configurations, with the exception of a few of its stars eventually exploding as supernovae, for example Betelgeuse, which is predicted to explode sometime in the next million years. See also References External links |
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Contents Latin Latin (lingua Latina or Latinum[I]) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. It has greatly influenced many languages, including English, having contributed many words to the English lexicon, particularly after the Christianisation of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest. Latin roots appear frequently in the technical vocabulary used by fields such as theology, the sciences, medicine, and law. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had evolved into standardised Classical Latin. Vulgar Latin refers to the less prestigious colloquial registers, attested in inscriptions and some literary works such as those of the comic playwrights Plautus and Terence and the author Petronius. While often called a "dead language", Latin did not undergo language death. Between the 6th and 9th centuries, natural language change in the vernacular Latin of different regions evolved into distinct Romance languages. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe into the early 19th century, by which time modern languages had supplanted it in common academic and political usage. Late Latin is the literary form of the language from the 3rd century AD onward. No longer spoken as a native language, Medieval Latin was used across Western and Catholic Europe during the Middle Ages as a working and literary language from the 9th century to the Renaissance, which then developed a classicising form, called Renaissance Latin. This was the basis for Neo-Latin, which evolved during the early modern period. Latin was taught to be written and spoken at least until the late seventeenth century, when spoken skills began to erode; Contemporary Latin is generally studied to be read rather than spoken. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the official language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Latin grammar is highly fusional, with classes of inflections for case, number, person, gender, tense, mood, voice, and aspect. The Latin alphabet is directly derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. History A number of phases of the language have been recognised, each distinguished by subtle differences in vocabulary, usage, spelling, and syntax. There are no hard and fast rules of classification; different scholars emphasise different features. As a result, the list has variants, as well as alternative names. In addition to the historical phases, Ecclesiastical Latin refers to the styles used by the writers of the Roman Catholic Church from late antiquity onward, as well as by Protestant scholars. The earliest known form of Latin is Old Latin, also called Archaic or Early Latin, which was spoken from the Roman Kingdom, traditionally founded in 753 BC, through the later part of the Roman Republic, up to 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin. It is attested both in inscriptions and in some of the earliest extant Latin literary works, such as the comedies of Plautus and Terence. The Latin alphabet was devised from the Etruscan alphabet. The writing later changed from what was initially either a right-to-left or a boustrophedon script to what ultimately became a strictly left-to-right script. During the late republic and into the first years of the empire, from about 75 BC to AD 200, a new Classical Latin arose, a conscious creation of the orators, poets, historians and other literate men, who wrote the great works of classical literature, which were taught in grammar and rhetoric schools. Today's instructional grammars trace their roots to such schools, which served as a sort of informal language academy dedicated to maintaining and perpetuating educated speech. Philological analysis of Archaic Latin works, such as those of Plautus, which contain fragments of everyday speech, gives evidence of an informal register of the language, Vulgar Latin (termed sermo vulgi 'the speech of the masses', by Cicero). Some linguists, particularly in the nineteenth century, believed this to be a separate language, existing more or less in parallel with the literary or educated Latin, but this is now widely dismissed. The term 'Vulgar Latin' remains difficult to define, referring both to informal speech at any time within the history of Latin, and the kind of informal Latin that had begun to move away from the written language significantly in the post-Imperial period, that led ultimately to the Romance languages. During the Classical period, informal language was rarely written, so philologists have been left with only individual words and phrases cited by classical authors, inscriptions such as Curse tablets and those found as graffiti. In the Late Latin period, language changes reflecting spoken (non-classical) norms tend to be found in greater quantities in texts. As it was free to develop on its own, there is no reason to suppose that the speech was uniform either diachronically or geographically. On the contrary, Romanised European populations developed their own dialects of the language, which eventually led to the differentiation of Romance languages. Late Latin is a kind of written Latin used in the 3rd to 6th centuries. This began to diverge from Classical forms at a faster pace. It is characterised by greater use of prepositions, and word order that is closer to modern Romance languages, for example, while grammatically retaining more or less the same formal rules as Classical Latin. Ultimately, Latin diverged into a distinct written form, where the commonly spoken form was perceived as a separate language, for instance early French or Italian dialects, that could be transcribed differently. It took some time for these to be viewed as wholly different from Latin however. After the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 and Germanic kingdoms took its place, the Germanic people adopted Latin as a language more suitable for legal and other, more formal uses. Initially Latin was also retained by the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) as the language of the government and legislation, even though the vast majority of its population spoke Greek and other Eastern languages such as Syriac and Coptic. It even enjoyed a brief flowering as the language of the great codification of laws, the Corpus Iuris Civilis under Justinian I, himself a native Latin speaker. After Justinian I's death, the gradual territorial retreat of the Empire and its near collapse in the wake of the Muslim conquests led to the near extinction of Latin as a spoken and official language. The surviving rump Roman state replaced Latin with the Greek language. Latin was retained on coinage and in some court ceremonies until the 11th century, albeit often in a ritual and fossilised form. In a surviving letter from the late 9th century, the Carolingian emperor Louis II invoked the fact that the Byzantine imperial chancery struggled to write in proper Latin as an argument in his ideological dispute over who was the rightful Roman emperor. While the written form of Latin was increasingly standardised into a fixed form, the spoken forms began to diverge more greatly. Currently, the six most widely spoken Romance languages by number of native speakers are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian and Catalan. Despite dialectal variation, which is found in any widespread language, the languages currently existing in Spain, France, Portugal, and Italy have retained a remarkable unity in phonological forms and developments, bolstered by the stabilising influence of their common Christian (Roman Catholic) culture. It was not until the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711, cutting off communications between the major Romance regions, that the languages began to diverge seriously. The spoken Latin that would later become Romanian diverged somewhat more from the other varieties, as it was largely separated from the unifying influences in the western part of the Empire. Spoken Latin began to diverge into distinct languages by the 9th century at the latest, when the earliest extant Romance writings begin to appear. They were, throughout the period, confined to everyday speech, as Medieval Latin was used for writing. For many Italians using Latin, though, there was no complete separation between Italian and Latin, even into the beginning of the Renaissance. Petrarch for example saw Latin as a literary version of the spoken language. Medieval Latin is the written Latin in use during that portion of the post-classical period when no corresponding Latin vernacular existed, that is from around 700 to 1500 AD. The spoken language had developed into the various Romance languages; however, in the educated and official world, Latin continued without its natural spoken base. Moreover, this Latin spread into lands that had never spoken Latin, such as the Germanic and Slavic nations. It became useful for international communication between the member states of the Holy Roman Empire and its allies. Without the institutions of the Roman Empire that had supported its uniformity, Medieval Latin was much more liberal in its linguistic cohesion: for example, in classical Latin sum and eram are used as auxiliary verbs in the perfect and pluperfect passive, which are compound tenses. Medieval Latin might use fui and fueram instead. Furthermore, the meanings of many words were changed and new words were introduced, often under influence from the vernacular. Identifiable individual styles of classically incorrect Latin prevail. Renaissance Latin, in use from around 1300 to 1500, and the classicised Latin that followed through to the present are often grouped together as Neo-Latin, or New Latin, which have in recent decades become a focus of renewed study, given their importance for the development of European culture, religion and science. The vast majority of written Latin belongs to this period, but its full extent is unknown. The Renaissance reinforced the position of Latin as a spoken and written language by the scholarship by the Renaissance humanists. Petrarch and others began to change their usage of Latin as they explored the texts of the Classical Latin world. Skills of textual criticism evolved to create much more accurate versions of extant texts through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and some important texts were rediscovered. Comprehensive versions of authors' works were published by Isaac Casaubon, Joseph Scaliger and others. Nevertheless, despite the careful work of Petrarch, Politian and others, first the demand for manuscripts, and then the rush to bring works into print, led to the circulation of inaccurate copies for several centuries following. Neo-Latin literature was extensive and prolific, but less well known or understood today. Works covered poetry, prose stories and early novels, occasional pieces and collections of letters, to name a few. Famous and well regarded writers included Petrarch, Erasmus, Salutati, Celtis, George Buchanan and Thomas More. Non fiction works were long produced in many subjects, including the sciences, law, philosophy, historiography and theology. Famous examples include Isaac Newton's Principia. Latin was also used as a convenient medium for translations of important works first written in a vernacular, such as those of Descartes. Latin education underwent a process of reform to classicise written and spoken Latin. Schooling remained largely Latin medium until approximately 1700. Until the end of the 17th century, the majority of books and almost all diplomatic documents were written in Latin. Afterwards, most diplomatic documents were written in French (a Romance language) and later native or other languages. Education methods gradually shifted towards written Latin, and eventually concentrating solely on reading skills. The decline of Latin education took several centuries and proceeded much more slowly than the decline in written Latin output. Despite having no native speakers, Latin is still used for a variety of purposes in the contemporary world. The largest organisation that retains Latin in official and quasi-official contexts is the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church required that Mass be carried out in Latin until the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965, which permitted the use of the vernacular. Latin remains the language of the Roman Rite. The Tridentine Mass (also known as the Extraordinary Form or Traditional Latin Mass) is celebrated in Latin. Although the Mass of Paul VI (also known as the Ordinary Form or the Novus Ordo) is usually celebrated in the local vernacular language, it can be and often is said in Latin, in part or in whole, especially at multilingual gatherings. It is the official language of the Holy See, the primary language of its public journal, the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, and the working language of the Roman Rota. Vatican City is also home to the world's only automatic teller machine that gives instructions in Latin. In the pontifical universities postgraduate courses of Canon law are taught in Latin, and papers are written in the same language. There are a small number of Latin services held in the Anglican church. These include an annual service in Oxford, delivered with a Latin sermon; a relic from the period when Latin was the normal spoken language of the university. In the Western world, many organisations, governments and schools use Latin for their mottos due to its association with formality, tradition, and the roots of Western culture. Canada's motto A mari usque ad mare ("from sea to sea") and most provincial mottos are also in Latin. The Canadian Victoria Cross is modelled after the British Victoria Cross which has the inscription "For Valour". Because Canada is officially bilingual, the Canadian medal has replaced the English inscription with the Latin Pro Valore. Spain's motto Plus ultra 'even further', or figuratively "Further!", is also Latin in origin. It is taken from the personal motto of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain (as Charles I), and is a reversal of the original phrase Non terrae plus ultra ("No land further beyond", "No further!"). According to legend, this phrase was inscribed as a warning on the Pillars of Hercules, the rocks on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar and the western end of the known Mediterranean world. Charles adopted the motto following the discovery of the New World by Columbus, and it also has metaphorical suggestions of taking risks and striving for excellence. In the United States the unofficial national motto until 1956 was E pluribus unum meaning "Out of many, one". The motto continues to be featured on the Great Seal. It also appears on the flags and seals of both houses of congress and the flags of the states of Michigan, North Dakota, New York, and Wisconsin. The motto's 13 letters symbolically represent the original Thirteen Colonies which revolted from the British Crown. The motto is featured on all presently minted coinage and has been featured in most coinage throughout the nation's history. Several states of the United States have Latin mottos, such as: Many military organisations today have Latin mottos, such as: Some law governing bodies in the Philippines have Latin mottos, such as: Some colleges and universities have adopted Latin mottos, for example Harvard University's motto is Veritas ("truth"). Veritas was the goddess of truth, a daughter of Saturn, and the mother of Virtue. Switzerland has adopted the country's Latin short name Helvetia on coins and stamps, since there is no room to use all of the nation's four official languages. For a similar reason, it adopted the international vehicle code CH and the Internet top-level domain ch, for Confoederatio Helvetica, the country's full Latin name. Some film and television in ancient settings, such as Sebastiane, The Passion of the Christ and Barbarians (2020 TV series), have been made with dialogue in Latin. Occasionally, Latin dialogue is used because of its association with religion or philosophy, in such film/television series as The Exorcist and Lost ("Jughead"). Subtitles are usually shown for the benefit of those who do not understand Latin. There are also songs written with Latin lyrics. The libretto for the opera-oratorio Oedipus rex by Igor Stravinsky is in Latin. The continued instruction of Latin is seen by some as a highly valuable component of a liberal arts education. Latin is taught at many high schools, especially in Europe and the Americas. It is most common in British public schools and grammar schools, the Italian liceo classico and liceo scientifico, the German Humanistisches Gymnasium and the Dutch gymnasium. Occasionally, some media outlets, targeting enthusiasts, broadcast in Latin. Notable examples include Radio Bremen in Germany, YLE radio in Finland (the Nuntii Latini broadcast from 1989 until it was shut down in June 2019), and Vatican Radio & Television, all of which broadcast news segments and other material in Latin. A variety of organisations, as well as informal Latin circuli, 'circles', have been founded in more recent times to support the use of spoken Latin. Moreover, a number of university classics departments have begun incorporating communicative pedagogies in their Latin courses. These include the University of Kentucky, the University of Oxford and Princeton University. There are many websites and forums maintained in Latin by enthusiasts. The Latin Wikipedia has more than 140,000 articles. Legacy Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Catalan, Romansh, Sardinian and other Romance languages are direct descendants of Latin. There are also many Latin loanwords in English and Albanian, as well as a few in German, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish. Latin is still spoken in Vatican City, a city-state situated in Rome that is the seat of the Catholic Church. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part, in substantial works or in fragments to be analysed in philology. They are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. Their works were published in manuscript form before the invention of printing and are now published in carefully annotated printed editions, such as the Loeb Classical Library, published by Harvard University Press, or the Oxford Classical Texts, published by Oxford University Press.[citation needed] Latin translations of modern literature such as: The Hobbit, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, The Adventures of Tintin, Asterix, Harry Potter, Le Petit Prince, Max and Moritz, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, fabulae mirabiles, are intended to garner popular interest in the language. Additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissner's Latin Phrasebook. Some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same: volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance and relevant information. The reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. About 270,000 inscriptions are known. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. In the Middle Ages, borrowing from Latin occurred from ecclesiastical usage established by Saint Augustine of Canterbury in the 6th century or indirectly after the Norman Conquest, through the Anglo-Norman language.[citation needed] From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed "inkhorn terms", as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, but some useful ones survived, such as imbibe and extrapolate. Many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make up 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and Dutch vocabularies, respectively. Those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. The influence of Roman governance and Roman technology on the less-developed nations under Roman dominion led to the adoption of Latin phraseology in some specialised areas, such as science, technology, medicine, and law. For example, the Linnaean system of plant and animal classification was heavily influenced by Historia Naturalis, an encyclopaedia of people, places, plants, animals, and things published by Pliny the Elder. Roman medicine, recorded in the works of such physicians as Galen, established that today's medical terminology would be primarily derived from Latin and Greek words, the Greek being filtered through the Latin. Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole. Latin law principles have survived partly in a long list of Latin legal terms. The Logudorese dialect of the Sardinian language and Standard Italian are the two closest contemporary languages to Latin. Throughout European history, an education in the classics was considered crucial for those who wished to join literate circles. The prominence of Latin in classical education rested not only on tradition but also on its reputation for clarity, logical structure, and intellectual rigor, a view expressed by the mathematics educator Theodor Haagaas, who remarked that "Latin, it is mathematics, language mathematics." This also was true in the United States where many of the nation's founders obtained a classically based education in grammar schools or from tutors. Admission to Harvard in the Colonial era required that the applicant "Can readily make and speak or write true Latin prose and has skill in making verse" Latin Study and the classics were emphasised in American secondary schools and colleges well into the Antebellum era. Instruction in Latin is an essential aspect. In today's world, a large number of Latin students in the United States learn from Wheelock's Latin: The Classic Introductory Latin Course, Based on Ancient Authors. This book, first published in 1956, was written by Frederic M. Wheelock. Wheelock's Latin has become the standard text for many American introductory Latin courses. The numbers of people studying Latin varies significantly by country. In the United Kingdom, Latin is available in around 2.3% of state primary schools, representing a significant increase in availability. In Germany, over 500,000 students study Latin each year, representing a decrease from over 800,000 in 2008. Latin is still required for some University courses, but this has become less frequent. The Living Latin movement attempts to teach Latin in the same way that living languages are taught, as a means of both spoken and written communication. It is available in Vatican City and at some institutions in the US, such as the University of Kentucky and Iowa State University. The British Cambridge University Press is a major supplier of Latin textbooks for all levels, such as the Cambridge Latin Course series. It has also published a subseries of children's texts in Latin by Bell & Forte, which recounts the adventures of a mouse called Minimus. In the United Kingdom, the Classical Association encourages the study of antiquity through various means, such as publications and grants. The University of Cambridge, the Open University, a number of independent schools, for example Eton, Harrow, Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, Merchant Taylors' School, and Rugby, and The Latin Programme/Via Facilis, a London-based charity, run Latin courses. In the United States and in Canada, the American Classical League supports every effort to further the study of classics. Its subsidiaries include the National Junior Classical League (with more than 50,000 members), which encourages high school students to pursue the study of Latin, and the National Senior Classical League, which encourages students to continue their study of the classics into college. The league also sponsors the National Latin Exam. Classicist Mary Beard wrote in The Times Literary Supplement in 2006 that the reason for learning Latin is because of what was written in it. Latin was or is the official language of several European states. It had official status in the Kingdom of Hungary from the 11th to mid-19th centuries, when Hungarian became the exclusive official language in 1844. The best known Latin language poet of Hungarian origin was Janus Pannonius. Similarly, in the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Latin was officially recognised and widely used between the 10th and 18th centuries, commonly used in foreign relations and popular as a second language among some of the nobility. Latin was also the official language of the Croatian Parliament from the 13th to the 19th century (1847). The oldest preserved records of the parliamentary sessions (Congregatio Regni totius Sclavonie generalis)—held in Zagreb (Zagabria), Croatia—date from 19 April 1273. An extensive Croatian Latin literature exists. Latin was used on Croatian coins on even years until 1 January 2023, when Croatia adopted the Euro as its official currency. Phonology The ancient pronunciation of Latin has been reconstructed; among the data used for reconstruction are explicit statements about pronunciation by ancient authors, misspellings, puns, ancient etymologies, the spelling of Latin loanwords in other languages, and the historical development of Romance languages. The consonant phonemes of Classical Latin are as follows: /z/ was not native to Classical Latin. It appeared in Greek loanwords starting c. the 1st century BC, when it was probably pronounced (at least by educated speakers) [z] initially and doubled [zz] between vowels, in accordance with its pronunciation in Koine Greek. In Classical Latin poetry, the letter ⟨z⟩ between vowels always counts as two consonants for metrical purposes. The consonant ⟨b⟩ usually sounds as [b]; however, when ⟨t⟩ or ⟨s⟩ follows ⟨b⟩ then it is pronounced as in [pt] or [ps]. In Latin, ⟨q⟩ is always followed by the vowel ⟨u⟩. Together they make a [kʷ] sound. In Old and Classical Latin, the Latin alphabet had no distinction between uppercase and lowercase, and the letters ⟨J U W⟩ did not exist. In place of ⟨J U⟩, ⟨I V⟩ were used, respectively; ⟨I V⟩ represented both vowels and consonants. Most of the letter forms were similar to modern uppercase, as can be seen in the inscription from the Colosseum shown at the top of the article. The spelling systems used in Latin dictionaries and modern editions of Latin texts, however, normally use ⟨j u⟩ in place of Classical-era ⟨i v⟩. Some systems use ⟨j v⟩ for the consonant sounds /j w/ except in the combinations ⟨gu su qu⟩ for which ⟨v⟩ is never used. Some notes concerning the mapping of Latin phonemes to English graphemes are given below: In Classical Latin, as in modern Italian, double consonant letters were pronounced as long consonant sounds distinct from short versions of the same consonants. Thus the nn in Classical Latin annus 'year' (and in Italian anno) is pronounced as a doubled /nn/ as in English unnamed. (In English, distinctive consonant length or doubling occurs only at the boundary between two words or morphemes, as in that example.) In Classical Latin, ⟨U⟩ did not exist as a letter distinct from ⟨V⟩; the written form ⟨V⟩ was used to represent both a vowel and a consonant. ⟨Y⟩ was adopted to represent upsilon in loanwords from Greek, but it was pronounced like ⟨u⟩ and ⟨i⟩ by some speakers. It was also used in native Latin words by confusion with Greek words of similar meaning, such as sylva and ὕλη hū́lē. Classical Latin distinguished between long and short vowels. Then, long vowels, except for ⟨i⟩, were frequently marked using the apex, which was sometimes similar to an acute accent ⟨Á É Ó V́ Ý⟩. Long /iː/ was written using a taller version of ⟨I⟩, called i longa 'long I': ⟨ꟾ⟩. In modern texts, long vowels are often indicated by a macron ⟨ā ē ī ō ū⟩, and short vowels are usually unmarked except when it is necessary to distinguish between words, when they are marked with a breve ⟨ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ⟩. However, they would also signify a long vowel by writing the vowel larger than other letters in a word or by repeating the vowel twice in a row. The acute accent, when it is used in modern Latin texts, indicates stress, as in Spanish, rather than length. Although called long vowels, their exact quality in Classical Latin is different from short vowels. The difference is described in the table below: This difference in quality is posited by W. Sidney Allen in his book Vox Latina. However, Andrea Calabrese has disputed this assertion, based in part upon the observation that in Sardinian and some Lucanian dialects, each long and short vowel pair merged, as opposed to in Italo-Western languages in which short /i/ and /u/ merged with long /eː/ and /o:/ (cf. Latin siccus, Italian secco, and Sardinian siccu). A vowel letter followed by ⟨m⟩ at the end of a word, or a vowel letter followed by ⟨n⟩ before ⟨s⟩ or ⟨f⟩, represented a short nasal vowel, as in monstrum [mõːstrũ]. Classical Latin had several diphthongs. The two most common were ⟨ae au⟩. The former is pronounced like the i in mine, and the latter like the ow in power. ⟨oe⟩ was fairly rare, and ⟨ui eu ei⟩ were very rare, at least in native Latin words. There has also been debate over whether ⟨ui⟩ is truly a diphthong in Classical Latin, due to its rarity, absence in works of Roman grammarians, and the roots of Classical Latin words (e.g. hui ce to huic, quoi to cui) not matching or being similar to the pronunciation of classical words if ⟨ui⟩ were to be considered a diphthong. The sequences sometimes did not represent diphthongs. ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ also represented a sequence of two vowels in different syllables in aēnus [aˈeː.nʊs] 'bronze' and coēpit [kɔˈeː.pɪt] 'began', and ⟨au ui eu ei ou⟩ represented sequences of two vowels or of a vowel and one of the semivowels /j w/, in cavē [ˈka.weː] 'beware!', cuius [ˈkʊj.jʊs] 'whose', monuī [ˈmɔn.ʊ.iː] 'I warned', solvī [ˈsɔɫ.wiː] 'I released', dēlēvī [deːˈleː.wiː] 'I destroyed', eius [ˈɛj.jʊs] 'his', and novus [ˈnɔ.wʊs] 'new'. Old Latin had more diphthongs, but most of them changed into long vowels in Classical Latin. The Old Latin diphthong ⟨ai⟩ and the sequence ⟨āī⟩ became Classical ⟨ae⟩. Old Latin ⟨oi⟩ and ⟨ou⟩ changed to Classical ⟨ū⟩, except in a few words whose ⟨oi⟩ became Classical ⟨oe⟩. These two developments sometimes occurred in different words from the same root: for instance, Classical poena "punishment" and pūnīre "to punish". Early Old Latin ⟨ei⟩ usually monophthongised to a later Old Latin ⟨ē⟩, to Classical ⟨ī⟩. By the late Roman Empire, ⟨ae oe⟩ had merged with ⟨e ē⟩. During the Classical period this sound change was present in some rural dialects, but deliberately avoided by well-educated speakers. Syllables in Latin are signified by the presence of diphthongs and vowels. The number of syllables is the same as the number of vowel sounds. Further, if a consonant separates two vowels, it will go into the syllable of the second vowel. When there are two consonants between vowels, the last consonant will go with the second vowel. An exception occurs when a phonetic stop and liquid come together. In this situation, they are thought to be a single consonant, and as such, they will go into the syllable of the second vowel. Syllables in Latin are considered either long or short (less often called "heavy" and "light" respectively). Within a word, a syllable may either be long by nature or long by position. A syllable is long by nature if it has a diphthong or a long vowel. On the other hand, a syllable is long by position if the vowel is followed by more than one consonant. There are two rules that define which syllable is stressed in Classical Latin. Orthography Latin was written in the Latin alphabet (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X), derived from the Etruscan alphabet, which was in turn drawn from the Greek alphabet and ultimately the Phoenician alphabet. This alphabet has continued to be used over the centuries as the script for the Romance, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Finnic and many Slavic languages (Polish, Slovak, Slovene, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Czech); and it has been adopted by many languages around the world, including Vietnamese, the Austronesian languages, many Turkic languages, and most languages in sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas and Oceania, making it by far the world's single most widely used writing system. The number of letters in the Latin alphabet has varied. When it was first derived from the Etruscan alphabet, it contained only 21 letters. Later, G was added to represent /ɡ/, which had previously been spelled C, and Z ceased to be included in the alphabet, as the language then had no voiced alveolar fricative. The letters K, Y, and Z were later added to represent Greek letters kappa, upsilon, and zeta respectively, in Greek loanwords. W was created in the 11th century from VV in some areas and UU in others. It represented /w/ in Germanic languages, not Latin, which still uses V for the purpose. J was distinguished from the original I only during the late Middle Ages, as was the letter U from V. Although some Latin dictionaries use J, it is rarely used for Latin text, as it was not used in classical times, but many other languages use it. Classical Latin did not contain sentence punctuation, letter case, or interword spacing, but apices were sometimes used to distinguish length in vowels and the interpunct was used at times to separate words. The first line of Catullus 3 ("Mourn, O Venuses and Cupids") was originally written as: It would be rendered in a modern edition as: The Roman cursive script is commonly found on the many wax tablets excavated at sites such as forts, an especially extensive set having been discovered at Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall in Britain. Most notable is the fact that while most of the Vindolanda tablets show spaces between words, spaces were avoided in monumental inscriptions from that era. Occasionally, Latin has been written in other scripts: Grammar Latin is a synthetic, fusional language in the terminology of linguistic typology. Words involve an objective semantic element and markers (usually suffixes) specifying the grammatical use of the word, expressing gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns (declension) and verbs to denote person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect (conjugation). Some words are uninflected and undergo neither process, such as adverbs, prepositions, and interjections. Latin inflection can result in words with much ambiguity: For example, amābit 'he/she/it will love', is formed from amā-, a future tense morpheme -bi- and a third person singular morpheme, -t, the last of which -t does not express masculine, feminine, or neuter gender. A major task in understanding Latin phrases and clauses is to clarify such ambiguities by an analysis of context. Latin word order is relatively free because inflections disambiguate semantic connections, but different word orders can indicate different nuances of meaning. A regular Latin noun belongs to one of five main declensions, a group of nouns with similar inflected forms. The declensions are identified by the genitive singular form of the noun. There are seven Latin noun cases, which also apply to adjectives and pronouns and mark a noun's syntactic role in the sentence by means of inflections. Thus, word order in Latin is not as important as it is in English, which is less inflected. The general structure and word order of a Latin sentence can therefore vary. The cases are as follows: Latin lacks both definite and indefinite articles, so puer currit can mean either 'the boy is running' or 'a boy is running'. There are two types of regular Latin adjectives: first- and second-declension and third-declension. They are so-called because their forms are similar or identical to first- and second-declension and third-declension nouns, respectively. Latin adjectives also have comparative and superlative forms. There are also a number of Latin participles. Latin numbers are sometimes declined as adjectives; see § Numbers. First- and second-declension adjectives are declined like first-declension nouns for the feminine forms and like second-declension nouns for the masculine and neuter forms. For example, for mortuus, mortua, mortuum 'dead', mortua is declined like a regular first-declension noun (such as puella 'girl', mortuus is declined like a regular second-declension masculine noun (such as dominus 'lord, master', and mortuum is declined like a regular second-declension neuter noun (such as auxilium 'help'. Third-declension adjectives are mostly declined like normal third-declension nouns, with a few exceptions. In the plural nominative neuter, for example, the ending is -ia (omnia 'all, everything', and for third-declension nouns, the plural nominative neuter ending is -a or -ia (capita 'heads', animalia 'animals'. They can have one, two or three forms for the masculine, feminine, and neuter nominative singular. Latin participles, like English participles, are formed from a verb. There are a few main types of participles: Present Active Participles, Perfect Passive Participles, Future Active Participles, and Future Passive Participles. Latin sometimes uses prepositions, depending on the type of prepositional phrase being used. Most prepositions are followed by a noun in either the accusative or ablative case: apud puerum 'with the boy', with puerum being the accusative form of puer 'boy', and sine puero 'without the boy' – puero being the ablative form. A few adpositions, however, govern a noun in the genitive, such as gratia and tenus. A regular verb in Latin belongs to one of four main conjugations. A conjugation is "a class of verbs with similar inflected forms". The conjugations are identified by the last letter of the verb's present stem. The present stem can be found by omitting the -re (-rī in deponent verbs) ending from the present infinitive form. The infinitive of the first conjugation ends in -ā-re or -ā-rī (active and passive respectively): amāre 'to love', hortārī 'to exhort'; of the second conjugation by -ē-re or -ē-rī: monēre 'to warn', verērī 'to fear', of the third conjugation by -ere, -ī: dūcere 'to lead', ūtī 'to use'; of the fourth by -ī-re, -ī-rī: audīre 'to hear', experīrī 'to attempt'. The stem categories descend from Indo-European and can therefore be compared to similar conjugations in other Indo-European languages. Irregular verbs are verbs that do not follow the regular conjugations in the formation of the inflected form. Irregular verbs in Latin are esse 'to be'; velle 'to want'; ferre 'to carry'; edere 'to eat'; dare 'to give'; īre 'to go'; posse 'to be able'; fieri 'to happen'; and their compounds. There are six simple tenses in Latin (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect and future perfect), three moods (indicative, imperative and subjunctive, in addition to the infinitive, participle, gerund, gerundive and supine), three persons (first, second and third), two numbers (singular and plural), two voices (active and passive) and two aspects (perfective and imperfective). Verbs are described by four principal parts: The six simple tenses of Latin are divided into two systems: the present system, which is made up of the present, imperfect and future forms, and the perfect system, which is made up of the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect forms. Each simple tense has a set of endings corresponding to the person, number, and voice of the subject. Subject (nominative) pronouns are generally omitted for the first (I, we) and second (you) persons except for emphasis. The table below displays the common inflected endings for the indicative mood in the active voice in all six tenses. For the future tense, the first listed endings are for the first and second conjugations, and the second listed endings are for the third and fourth conjugations: Some Latin verbs are deponent, causing their forms to be in the passive voice but retain an active meaning: hortor, hortārī, hortātus sum 'to urge'. Vocabulary As Latin is an Italic language, most of its vocabulary is likewise Italic, ultimately from the ancestral Proto-Indo-European language. However, because of close cultural interaction, the Romans not only adapted the Etruscan alphabet to form the Latin alphabet but also borrowed some Etruscan words into their language, including persona 'mask' and histrio 'actor'. Latin also included vocabulary borrowed from Oscan, another Italic language. After the Fall of Tarentum in 272 BC, the Romans began Hellenising, or adopting features of Greek culture, including the borrowing of Greek words, such as camera 'vaulted roof', sumbolum 'symbol', and balineum 'bath'. This Hellenisation led to the addition of Y and Z to the alphabet to represent Greek sounds. Subsequently, the Romans transplanted Greek art, medicine, science and philosophy to Italy, paying almost any price to entice Greek skilled and educated persons to Rome and sending their youth to be educated in Greece. Thus, many Latin scientific and philosophical words were Greek loanwords or had their meanings expanded by association with Greek words, as ars 'craft' and tekhne 'art'. Because of the Roman Empire's expansion and subsequent trade with outlying European tribes, the Romans borrowed some northern and central European words, such as beber 'beaver', of Germanic origin, and bracae 'breeches', of Celtic origin. The specific dialects of Latin across Latin-speaking regions of the former Roman Empire after its fall were influenced by languages specific to the regions. The dialects of Latin evolved into different Romance languages. During and after the adoption of Christianity into Roman society, Christian vocabulary became a part of the language, either from Greek or Hebrew borrowings or as Latin neologisms. Into the Middle Ages, Latin incorporated many more words from surrounding languages, including Old English and other Germanic languages. Over the ages, Latin-speaking populations produced new adjectives, nouns, and verbs by affixing or compounding meaningful segments. For example, the compound adjective, omnipotens 'all-powerful', was produced from the adjectives omnis 'all', and potens 'powerful', by dropping the final s of omnis and concatenating. Often, the concatenation changed the part of speech, and nouns were produced from verb segments or verbs from nouns and adjectives. Numbers In ancient times, numbers in Latin were written only with letters. Today, the numbers can be written with the Arabic numbers as well as with Roman numerals. The numbers 1, 2 and 3 and every whole hundred from 200 to 900 are declined as nouns and adjectives, with some differences. The numbers from 4 to 100 do not change their endings. As in modern descendants such as Spanish, the gender for naming a number in isolation is masculine, so that "1, 2, 3" is counted as ūnus, duo, trēs. Example text Commentarii de Bello Gallico, also called De Bello Gallico (The Gallic War), written by Gaius Julius Caesar, begins with the following passage: Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt. Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen, a Belgis Matrona et Sequana dividit. Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt, minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque ea quae ad effeminandos animos pertinent important, proximique sunt Germanis, qui trans Rhenum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt. Qua de causa Helvetii quoque reliquos Gallos virtute praecedunt, quod fere cotidianis proeliis cum Germanis contendunt, cum aut suis finibus eos prohibent aut ipsi in eorum finibus bellum gerunt. Eorum una pars, quam Gallos obtinere dictum est, initium capit a flumine Rhodano, continetur Garumna flumine, Oceano, finibus Belgarum; attingit etiam ab Sequanis et Helvetiis flumen Rhenum; vergit ad septentriones. Belgae ab extremis Galliae finibus oriuntur; pertinent ad inferiorem partem fluminis Rheni; spectant in septentrionem et orientem solem. Aquitania a Garumna flumine ad Pyrenaeos montes et eam partem Oceani quae est ad Hispaniam pertinet; spectat inter occasum solis et septentriones. The same text may be marked for all long vowels (before any possible elisions at word boundary) with apices over vowel letters, including customarily before nf and ns where a long vowel is automatically produced: Gallia est omnis dívísa in partés trés, quárum únam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquítání, tertiam quí ipsórum linguá Celtae, nostrá Gallí appellantur. Hí omnés linguá, ínstitútís, légibus inter sé differunt. Gallós ab Aquítánís Garumna flúmen, á Belgís Mátrona et Séquana dívidit. Hórum omnium fortissimí sunt Belgae, proptereá quod á cultú atque húmánitáte próvinciae longissimé absunt, miniméque ad eós mercátórés saepe commeant atque ea quae ad efféminandós animós pertinent important, proximíque sunt Germánís, quí tráns Rhénum incolunt, quibuscum continenter bellum gerunt. Quá dé causá Helvétií quoque reliquós Gallós virtúte praecédunt, quod feré cotídiánís proeliís cum Germánís contendunt, cum aut suís fínibus eós prohibent aut ipsí in eórum fínibus bellum gerunt. Eórum úna pars, quam Gallós obtinére dictum est, initium capit á flúmine Rhodanó, continétur Garumná flúmine, Óceanó, fínibus Belgárum; attingit etiam ab Séquanís et Helvétiís flúmen Rhénum; vergit ad septentriónés. Belgae ab extrémís Galliae fínibus oriuntur; pertinent ad ínferiórem partem flúminis Rhéní; spectant in septentriónem et orientem sólem. Aquítánia á Garumná flúmine ad Pýrénaeós montés et eam partem Óceaní quae est ad Hispániam pertinet; spectat inter occásum sólis et septentriónés. An example of Late Latin is the Latin Vulgate by Saint Jerome. Below is Psalm One (Psalmum Unum) from the Clementine Vulgate. 1 Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum, et in via peccatorum non stetit, et in cathedra pestilentiae non sedit; 2 sed in lege Domini voluntas ejus, et in lege ejus meditabitur die ac nocte. 3 Et erit tamquam lignum quod plantatum est secus decursus aquarum, quod fructum suum dabit in tempore suo : et folium ejus non defluet; et omnia quaecumque faciet prosperabuntur. 4 Non sic impii, non sic; sed tamquam pulvis quem projicit ventus a facie terrae. 5 Ideo non resurgent impii in judicio, neque peccatores in concilio justorum, See also Notes References Bibliography External links until 75 BCOld Latin 75 BC – 200 ADClassical Latin 200–700Late Latin 700–1500Medieval Latin 1300–1500Renaissance Latin 1300–presentNeo-Latin 1900–presentContemporary Latin |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language] | [TOKENS: 8294] |
Contents Persian language Russia Persian,[a] also known by its endonym Farsi,[b] is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as Persian), Dari Persian (officially known as Dari since 1964), and Tajiki Persian (officially known as Tajik since 1999). It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivative of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a derivative of the Cyrillic script. Modern Persian is a continuation of Middle Persian, an official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian, which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). It originated in the region of Fars (Persia) in southwestern Iran. Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages. Throughout history, Persian was considered prestigious by various empires centered in West Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia. Old Persian is attested in Old Persian cuneiform on inscriptions from between the 6th and 4th century BC. Middle Persian is attested in Aramaic-derived scripts (Pahlavi and Manichaean) on inscriptions and in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the third to the tenth centuries (see Middle Persian literature). New Persian literature was first recorded in the ninth century, after the Muslim conquest of Persia, since then adopting the Perso-Arabic script. Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world, with Persian poetry becoming a tradition in many eastern courts. It was used officially as a language of bureaucracy even by non-native speakers, such as the Ottomans in Anatolia, the Mughals in South Asia, and the Pashtuns in Afghanistan. It influenced languages spoken in neighboring regions and beyond, including other Iranian languages, the Turkic, Armenian, Georgian, Greek and Indo-Aryan languages. It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing a lot of vocabulary from it in the Middle Ages. Some of the world's most famous pieces of literature from the Middle Ages, such as the Shahnameh by Ferdowsi, the works of Rumi, the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Panj Ganj of Nizami Ganjavi, The Divān of Hafez, The Conference of the Birds by Attar of Nishapur, and the miscellanea of Gulistan and Bustan by Saadi Shirazi, are written in Persian. Some of the prominent modern Persian poets were Nima Yooshij, Ahmad Shamlou, Simin Behbahani, Sohrab Sepehri, Rahi Mo'ayyeri, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, and Forugh Farrokhzad. There are approximately 130 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians, Lurs, Tajiks, Hazaras, Iranian Azeris, Iranian Kurds, Baloches, Tats, Afghan Pashtuns, and Aimaqs. The term Persophone might also be used to refer to a speaker of Persian. Classification Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages, which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision. The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish and Balochi are the most widely spoken. Name The term Persian is an English derivation of Latin Persiānus, the adjectival form of Persia, itself deriving from Greek Persís (Περσίς), a Hellenized form of Old Persian Pārsa (𐎱𐎠𐎼𐎿), which means "Persia" (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day Fars). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Farsi, which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more often to refer to Iran's standard Persian. However, the name Persian is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has maintained that the endonym Farsi is to be avoided in foreign languages, and that Persian is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater, founder of the Encyclopædia Iranica and Columbia University's Center for Iranian Studies, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology, rejecting the use of Farsi in foreign languages. Etymologically, the term Farsi derives from its earlier form Pārsi (Pārsik in Middle Persian), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term Persian. In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym Pārs ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars. The phonemic shift from /p/ to /f/ is due to the influence of Arabic in the Middle Ages, from the lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The standard Persian of Iran has been called, apart from Persian and Farsi, by names such as Iranian Persian and Western Persian, exclusively. The official language of Iran is designated simply as Persian (فارسی, fārsi). The standard Persian of Afghanistan has been officially named Dari (دری, dari) since 1958. Also referred to as Afghan Persian in English, it is one of Afghanistan's two official languages, together with Pashto. The term Dari, meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon, which spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia (Parthian). Tajik Persian (форси́и тоҷикӣ́, forsi-i tojikī), the standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as Tajik (тоҷикӣ, tojikī) since the time of the Soviet Union. It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia in general. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa for the Persian language, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the code fas for the dialects spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari (prs) and Iranian Persian (pes). It uses tgk for Tajik, separately. History In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods: namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being the next period most officially around the Sasanian Empire, and New era being the period afterward down to present day. According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian. Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian. Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian." The known history of the Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods: As a written language, Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription, dating to the time of King Darius I (reigned 522–486 BC).[citation not found] Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran, Romania (Gherla), Armenia, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey, and Egypt. Old Persian is one of the earliest attested Indo-European languages. According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in Southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash, who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province. Their language, Old Persian, became the official language of the Achaemenid kings. Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai, presumably Medians) are first mentioned in the area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III. The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word *pārćwa. Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median, according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before the formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Xenophon, a Greek general serving in some of the Persian expeditions, describes many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality in around 401 BCE, which is when Old Persian was still spoken and extensively used. He relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan, the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts. The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed the ezāfe construction, expressed through ī (modern e/ye), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system. Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with the middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism. Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was Parsig or Parsik, after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars", Old Persian Parsa, New Persian Fars. This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following the collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic script. From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi, which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by the Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Persian (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date. "New Persian" (also referred to as Modern Persian) is conventionally divided into three stages: Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable. New Persian texts written in the Arabic script first appear in the 9th-century. The language is a direct descendant of Middle Persian, the official, religious, and literary language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651). However, it is not descended from the literary form of Middle Persian (known as pārsīg, commonly called Pahlavi), which was spoken by the people of Fars and used in Zoroastrian religious writings. Instead, it is descended from the dialect spoken by the court of the Sasanian capital Ctesiphon and the northeastern Iranian region of Khorasan, known as Dari. The region, which comprised the present territories of northwestern Afghanistan as well as parts of Central Asia, played a leading role in the rise of New Persian. Khorasan, which was the homeland of the Parthians, was Persianized under the Sasanians. Dari Persian thus supplanted Parthian language (pahlavānīg), which by the end of the Sasanian era had fallen out of use. New Persian has incorporated many foreign words, including from eastern northern and northern Iranian languages such as Sogdian and especially Parthian. The transition to New Persian was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903), and Samanid Empire (874–999). Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the New Persian tongue and after him the poems of Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time. The first significant Persian poet was Rudaki. He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works are versified fables collected in the Kalila wa Dimna. The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which, among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca, a task aided due to its relatively simple morphology, and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on the Persian model: Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai Turkic, Dobhashi Bengali, and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian. "Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry. This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under the "Persianized" Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries. Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent. It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids, Tahirids, Ziyarids, the Mughal Empire, Timurids, Ghaznavids, Karakhanids, Seljuqs, Khwarazmians, the Sultanate of Rum, Turkmen beyliks of Anatolia, Delhi Sultanate, the Shirvanshahs, Safavids, Afsharids, Zands, Qajars, Khanate of Bukhara, Khanate of Kokand, Emirate of Bukhara, Khanate of Khiva, Ottomans, and also many Mughal successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad. Persian was the only non-European language known and used by Marco Polo at the court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China. A branch of the Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum, took Persian language, art, and letters to Anatolia. They adopted the Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans, who can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, inherited this tradition. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of the Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I, despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam. It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi's Hasht Bihisht, which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the Salim-Namah, a glorification of Selim I. After a period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed toward a fully accepted language of literature, and which was even able to lexically satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%. In the Ottoman Empire, Persian was used at the royal court, for diplomacy, poetry, historiographical works, literary works, and was taught in state schools, and was also offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas. Persian learning was also widespread in the Ottoman-held Balkans (Rumelia), with a range of cities being famed for their long-standing traditions in the study of Persian and its classics, amongst them Saraybosna (modern Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Mostar (also in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Vardar Yenicesi (or Yenice-i Vardar, now Giannitsa, in northern Greece). Vardar Yenicesi differed from other localities in the Balkans insofar as that it was a town where Persian was also widely spoken. However, the Persian of Vardar Yenicesi and of the rest of the Ottoman-held Balkans was different from formal Persian both in accent and vocabulary. The difference was apparent to such a degree that the Ottomans referred to it as "Rumelian Persian" (Rumili Farsisi). As learned people such as students, scholars and literati often frequented Vardar Yenicesi, it soon became the site of a flourishing Persianate linguistic and literary culture. The 16th-century Ottoman Aşık Çelebi (died 1572), who hailed from Prizren in modern-day Kosovo, was galvanized by the abundant Persian-speaking and Persian-writing communities of Vardar Yenicesi, and he referred to the city as a "hotbed of Persian". Many Ottoman Persianists who established a career in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) pursued early Persian training in Saraybosna, amongst them Ahmed Sudi. The Persian language influenced the formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia, Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to the British colonization, Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent. It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors. The Bengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers, and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of the reign of Sultan Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet Hafez; a poem which can be found in the Divan of Hafez today. A Bengali dialect emerged among the common Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as Dobhashi; meaning mixed language. Dobhashi Bengali was patronised and given official status under the Sultans of Bengal, and was a popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion. Following the defeat of the Hindu Shahi dynasty, classical Persian was established as a courtly language in the region during the late 10th century under Ghaznavid rule over the northwestern frontier of the subcontinent. Employed by Punjabis in literature, Persian achieved prominence in the region during the following centuries. Persian continued to act as a courtly language for various empires in Punjab through the early 19th century serving finally as the official state language of the Sikh Empire, preceding British conquest and the decline of Persian in South Asia. Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in the extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Hindi-Urdu (also historically known as Hindustani), Punjabi, Kashmiri, and Sindhi. There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious persecution in Qajar Iran and speak a Dari dialect. In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty, the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule, numerous Russian, French, and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology. The first official attentions to the necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization of Persian orthography, were under the reign of Naser ed Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1871.[citation needed] After Naser ed Din Shah, Mozaffar ed Din Shah ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903. This association officially declared that it used Persian and Arabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as rāh-āhan (راهآهن) for "railway", were printed in Soltani Newspaper; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention.[citation needed] A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in a dictionary called Words of Scientific Association (لغت انجمن علمی), which was completed later and renamed Katouzian Dictionary (فرهنگ کاتوزیان). The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name Academy of Iran. It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi, and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi, all prominent names in the nationalist movement of the time. The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic, Russian, French, and Greek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created a literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time.[citation needed] This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian". Varieties There are three standard varieties of modern Persian: All three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from the standard Persian. The Hazaragi dialect (in Afghanistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Basseri (in Southern Iran), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility. Nevertheless, the Encyclopædia Iranica notes that the Iranian, Afghan, and Tajiki varieties comprise distinct branches of the Persian language, and within each branch a wide variety of local dialects exist. The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects: More distantly related branches of the Iranian language family include Kurdish and Balochi. The Glottolog database proposes the following phylogenetic classification: Phonology Iranian Persian and Tajik have six vowels; Dari has eight. Iranian Persian has twenty-three consonants, but both Dari and Tajiki have twenty-four consonants, due to the phonemic merger of /q/ and /ɣ/ in Iranian Persian. Historically, Persian distinguished length. Early New Persian had a series of five long vowels (/iː/, /uː/, /ɑː/, /oː/, and /eː/) along with three short vowels /æ/, /i/, and /u/. At some point prior to the 16th century in the general area now modern Iran, /eː/ and /iː/ merged into /iː/, and /oː/ and /uː/ merged into /uː/. Thus, older contrasts such as شیر shēr "lion" vs. شیر shīr "milk", and زود zūd "quick" vs زور zōr "strength" were lost. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and in some words, ē and ō are merged into the diphthongs [eɪ] and [oʊ] (which are descendants of the diphthongs [æɪ] and [æʊ] in Early New Persian), instead of merging into /iː/ and /uː/. Examples of the exception can be found in words such as روشن [roʊʃæn] (bright). Numerous other instances exist. However, in Dari, the archaic distinction of /eː/ and /iː/ (respectively known as یای مجهول Yā-ye majhūl and یای معروف Yā-ye ma'rūf) is still preserved as well as the distinction of /oː/ and /uː/ (known as واو مجهول Wāw-e majhūl and واو معروف Wāw-e ma'rūf). On the other hand, in standard Tajik, the length distinction has disappeared, and /iː/ merged with /i/ and /uː/ with /u/. Therefore, contemporary Afghan Dari dialects are the closest to the vowel inventory of Early New Persian. According to most studies on the subject, the three vowels traditionally considered long (/i/, /u/, /ɒ/) are currently distinguished from their short counterparts (/e/, /o/, /æ/) by position of articulation rather than by length. However, there are studies that consider vowel length to be the active feature of the system, with /ɒ/, /i/, and /u/ phonologically long or bimoraic and /æ/, /e/, and /o/ phonologically short or monomoraic. There are also some studies that consider quality and quantity to be both active in the Iranian system. That offers a synthetic analysis including both quality and quantity, which often suggests that Modern Persian vowels are in a transition state between the quantitative system of Classical Persian and a hypothetical future Iranian language, which will eliminate all traces of quantity and retain quality as the only active feature. The length distinction is still strictly observed by careful reciters of classic-style poetry. Notes: Grammar Suffixes predominate Persian morphology, though there are a small number of prefixes. Verbs can express tense and aspect, and they agree with the subject in person and number. There is no grammatical gender in modern Persian, and pronouns are not marked for natural gender. In other words, in Persian, pronouns are gender-neutral. When referring to a masculine or a feminine subject, the same pronoun او is used (pronounced "ou", ū). Persian adheres mainly to subject–object–verb (SOV) word order. But case endings (e.g. for subject, object, etc.) expressed via suffixes may allow users to vary word order. Verbs agree with the subject in person and number. Normal declarative sentences are structured as (S) (PP) (O) V: sentences have optional subjects, prepositional phrases, and objects followed by a compulsory verb. If the object is specific, the object is followed by the word rā and precedes prepositional phrases: (S) (O + rā) (PP) V. Vocabulary Persian makes extensive use of word building and combining affixes, stems, nouns, and adjectives. Persian frequently uses derivational agglutination to form new words from nouns, adjectives, and verbal stems. New words are extensively formed by compounding – two existing words combining into a new one. While having a lesser influence from Arabic and other languages of Mesopotamia and its core vocabulary being of Middle Persian origin, New Persian contains a considerable number of Arabic lexical items, which were Persianized and often took a different meaning and usage than the Arabic original. Persian loanwords of Arabic origin especially include Islamic terms. The Arabic vocabulary in other Iranian, Turkic, and Indic languages is generally understood to have been copied from New Persian, not from Arabic itself. John R. Perry, in his article "Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic", estimates that about 20 percent of everyday vocabulary in current Persian, and around 25 percent of the vocabulary of classical and modern Persian literature, are of Arabic origin. The text frequency of these loan words is generally lower and varies by style and topic area. It may approach 25 percent of a text in literature. According to another source, about 40% of everyday Persian literary vocabulary is of Arabic origin. Among the Arabic loan words, relatively few (14 percent) are from the semantic domain of material culture, while a larger number are from domains of intellectual and spiritual life. Most of the Arabic words used in Persian are either synonyms of native terms or could be glossed in Persian. The inclusion of Mongolic and Turkic elements in the Persian language should also be mentioned, not only because of the political role a succession of Turkic dynasties played in Iranian history, but also because of the immense prestige Persian language and literature enjoyed in the wider (non-Arab) Islamic world, which was often ruled by sultans and emirs with a Turkic background. The Turkish and Mongolian vocabulary in Persian is minor in comparison to that of Arabic and these words were mainly confined to military, pastoral terms and political sector (titles, administration, etc.). New military and political titles were coined based partially on Middle Persian (e.g. ارتش arteš for "army", instead of the Uzbek قؤشین qoʻshin; سرلشکر sarlaškar; دریابان daryābān; etc.) in the 20th century. Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially other Indo-European languages such as Armenian, Urdu, Bengali, and Hindi; the latter three through conquests of Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan invaders; Turkic languages such as Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Azeri, Uzbek, and Karachay-Balkar; Caucasian languages such as Georgian, and, to a lesser extent, Avar and Lezgin; Afro-Asiatic languages like Assyrian (List of loanwords in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic) and Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic; and even Dravidian languages indirectly especially Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Brahui; as well as Austronesian languages such as Indonesian and Malaysian Malay. Persian has also had a significant lexical influence, via Turkish, on Albanian and Serbo-Croatian, particularly as spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Use of occasional foreign synonyms instead of Persian words can be a common practice in everyday communications as an alternative expression. In some instances in addition to the Persian vocabulary, the equivalent synonyms from multiple foreign languages can be used. For example, in Iranian colloquial Persian (not in Afghanistan or Tajikistan), the phrase "thank you" may be expressed using the French word مرسی merci (stressed, however, on the first syllable), the hybrid Persian-Arabic phrase متشکّرَم motešakkeram (متشکّر motešakker being "thankful" in Arabic, commonly pronounced moččakker in Persian, and the verb ـَم am meaning "I am" in Persian), or by the pure Persian phrase سپاسگزارم sepās-gozāram. Orthography The vast majority of modern Iranian Persian and Dari text is written with the Arabic script. Tajiki, which is considered by some linguists to be a Persian dialect influenced by Russian and the Turkic languages of Central Asia, is written with the Cyrillic script in Tajikistan (see Tajik alphabet). There also exist several romanization systems for Persian. Modern Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian are written using the Persian alphabet, which is a modified variant of the Arabic alphabet, using different pronunciation and additional letters not found in the Arabic language. After the Arab conquest of Persia, it took approximately 200 years before Persians adopted the Arabic script in place of the older alphabet. Previously, two different scripts were used, Pahlavi, used for Middle Persian, and the Avestan alphabet (in Persian, Dīndapirak, or Din Dabire—literally: religion script), used for religious purposes, primarily for the Avestan but sometimes for Middle Persian. In the modern Persian script, historically short vowels are usually not written, only the historically long ones are represented in the text, so words distinguished from each other only by short vowels are ambiguous in writing: Iranian Persian kerm "worm", karam "generosity", kerem "cream", and krom "chrome" are all spelled krm (کرم) in Persian. The reader must determine the word from context. The Arabic system of vocalization marks known as harakat is also used in Persian, although some of the symbols have different pronunciations. For example, a ḍammah is pronounced [ʊ~u], while in Iranian Persian it is pronounced [o]. This system is not used in mainstream Persian literature; it is primarily used for teaching and in some (but not all) dictionaries. There are several letters generally only used in Arabic loanwords. These letters are pronounced the same as similar Persian letters. For example, there are four functionally identical letters for /z/ (ز ذ ض ظ), three letters for /s/ (س ص ث), two letters for /t/ (ط ت), two letters for /h/ (ح ه). On the other hand, there are four letters that do not exist in Arabic پ چ ژ گ. The Persian alphabet adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet: Historically, there was also a special letter for the sound /β/. This letter is no longer used, as the /β/-sound changed to /b/, e.g. archaic زڤان /zaβaːn/ > زبان /zæbɒn/ 'language' The Persian alphabet also modifies some letters of the Arabic alphabet. For example, alef with hamza below ( إ ) changes to alef ( ا ); words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that مسؤول becomes مسئول) even though the latter has been accepted in Arabic since the 1980s; and teh marbuta ( ة ) changes to heh ( ه ) or teh ( ت ). The letters different in shape are: However, ی in shape and form is the traditional Arabic style that continues in the Nile Valley, namely, Egypt, Sudan, and South Sudan. The International Organization for Standardization has published a standard for simplified transliteration of Persian into Latin, ISO 233-3, titled "Information and documentation – Transliteration of Arabic characters into Latin characters – Part 3: Persian language – Simplified transliteration" but the transliteration scheme is not in widespread use. Another Latin alphabet, based on the New Turkic Alphabet, was used in Tajikistan in the 1920s and 1930s. The alphabet was phased out in favor of Cyrillic in the late 1930s. Fingilish is Persian using ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used in chat, emails, and SMS applications. The orthography is not standardized, and varies among writers and even media (for example, typing 'aa' for the [ɒ] phoneme is easier on computer keyboards than on cellphone keyboards, resulting in smaller usage of the combination on cellphones). The Cyrillic script was introduced for writing the Tajik language under the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in the late 1930s, replacing the Latin alphabet that had been used since the October Revolution and the Persian script that had been used earlier. After 1939, materials published in Persian in the Persian script were banned in the country. Examples The following text is from Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. See also Citations Notes Works cited General references Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPython] | [TOKENS: 1052] |
Contents PyPy PyPy (/ˈpaɪpaɪ/) is an implementation of the Python programming language. PyPy frequently runs much faster than the standard implementation CPython because PyPy uses a just-in-time compiler. Most Python code runs well on PyPy except for code that depends on CPython extensions, which either does not work or incurs some overhead when run in PyPy. PyPy itself is built using a technique known as meta-tracing, which is a mostly automatic transformation that takes an interpreter as input and produces a tracing just-in-time compiler as output. Since interpreters are usually easier to write than compilers, but run slower, this technique can make it easier to produce efficient implementations of programming languages. PyPy's meta-tracing toolchain is called RPython. PyPy officially supports Python 2.7 and 3.11 and has a few differences in implementations compared to CPython. Details and motivation PyPy aims to provide a common translation and support framework for producing implementations of dynamic languages, emphasizing a clean separation between language specification and implementation aspects. It also aims to provide a compliant, flexible and fast implementation of the Python programming language using the above framework to enable new advanced features without having to encode low-level details into it. The PyPy interpreter itself is written in a restricted subset of Python called RPython (Restricted Python). RPython puts some constraints on the Python language such that a variable's type can be inferred at compile time. The PyPy project has developed a toolchain that analyzes RPython code and translates it into a form of byte code, which can be lowered into C. There used to be other backends in addition to C (Java, C#, and JavaScript), but those suffered from bitrot and have been removed. Thus, the recursive logo of PyPy is a snake swallowing itself since the RPython is translated by a Python interpreter. The code can also be run untranslated for testing and analysis, which provides a nice test-bed for research into dynamic languages. It allows for pluggable garbage collectors, as well as optionally enabling Stackless Python features. Finally, it includes a just-in-time (JIT) generator that builds a just-in-time compiler into the interpreter, given a few annotations in the interpreter source code. The generated JIT compiler is a tracing JIT. RPython is now also used to write non-Python language implementations, such as Pixie. Project status PyPy as of version 7.3.17 is compatible with two CPython versions: 2.7 and 3.10. The first PyPy version compatible with CPython v3 is PyPy v2.3.1 (2014). The PyPy interpreter compatible with CPython v3 is also known as PyPy3. PyPy has JIT compilation support on 32-bit/64-bit x86 and 32-bit/64-bit ARM processors. It is tested nightly on Windows, Linux, OpenBSD and Mac OS X. PyPy is able to run pure Python software that does not rely on implementation-specific features. There is a compatibility layer for CPython C API extensions called CPyExt, but it is incomplete and experimental. The preferred way of interfacing with C shared libraries is through the built-in C foreign function interface (CFFI) or ctypes libraries. History PyPy is a followup to the Psyco project, a just-in-time specializing compiler for Python, developed by Armin Rigo between 2002 and 2010. PyPy's aim is to have a just-in-time specializing compiler with scope, which was not available for Psyco.[clarification needed] Initially, the RPython could also be compiled into Java bytecode, CIL and JavaScript, but these backends were removed due to lack of interest. PyPy was initially a research and development-oriented project. Reaching a mature state of development and an official 1.0 release in mid-2007, its next focus was on releasing a production-ready version with more CPython compatibility. Many of PyPy's changes have been made during coding sprints. PyPy was funded by the European Union being a Specific Targeted Research Project between December 2004 and March 2007. In June 2008, PyPy announced funding being part of the Google Open Source programs and has agreed to focus on making PyPy more compatible with CPython. In 2009 Eurostars, a European Union funding agency specially focused on SMEs, accepted a proposal from PyPy project members titled "PYJIT – a fast and flexible toolkit for dynamic programming languages based on PyPy". Eurostars funding lasted until August 2011. At PyCon US 2011, the Python Software Foundation provided a $10,000 grant for PyPy to continue work on performance and compatibility with newer versions of the language. The port to ARM architecture was sponsored in part by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The PyPy project also accepts donations through its status blog pages. As of 2013, a variety of sub-projects had funding: Python 3 version compatibility, built-in optimized NumPy support for numerical calculations and software transactional memory support to allow better parallelism. See also Notes References External links |
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