industrial espionage, acquisition of trade secrets from business competitors. A by-product of the technological revolution, industrial espionage is a reaction to the efforts of many businessmen to keep secret their designs, formulas, manufacturing processes, research, and future plans in order to

Spiritism, belief system founded by French author and educator Allan Kardec in the middle of the 19th century that is based on the idea that, alongside physical reality, a spirit world exists, which followers believe can be accessed through mediums. Spiritism maintains that spirits exist separately

Vila Velha, coastal city, east-central Espírito Santo estado (state), eastern Brazil. It lies along Espírito Santo Bay just southeast of Vitória, the state capital, and forms part of the Greater Vitória metropolitan area. Vila Velha was settled in 1535 and was given city status in 1896. Chocolate

Espírito Santo, estado (state) on the east coast of Brazil. It is bounded to the north by the state of Bahia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the state of Rio de Janeiro, and to the west and north by the state of Minas Gerais. Its area includes the uninhabited offshore islands of

Barretos, city, north-central São Paulo estado (state), Brazil. It lies near the Pardo River at 1,713 feet (522 metres) above sea level. Known at various times as Amaral dos Barretos, Espírito Santo de Barreto, and Espírito Santo dos Barretos, the settlement was given town status and was made the

Barretos, city, north-central São Paulo estado (state), Brazil. It lies near the Pardo River at 1,713 feet (522 metres) above sea level. Known at various times as Amaral dos Barretos, Espírito Santo de Barreto, and Espírito Santo dos Barretos, the settlement was given town status and was made the

Hiram Bingham: …important sites of Vitcos and Espíritu Pampa, a larger ruin that was thoroughly excavated in 1964 by the American archaeologist Gene Savoy, who demonstrated it to be a more likely site for Vilcabamba. Bingham’s publications on South America include Inca Land (1922), Machu Picchu, a Citadel of the Incas (1930),…

Espiritu Santo, largest (1,420 square miles [3,677 square km]) and westernmost island of Vanuatu, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Volcanic in origin, it has a mountain range running along its west coast; Tabwémasana rises to 6,165 feet (1,879 meters), the highest point in Vanuatu. The island is

Limpopo River, river in southeast Africa that rises as the Krokodil (Crocodile) River in the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and flows on a semicircular course first northeast and then east for about 1,100 miles (1,800 km) to the Indian Ocean. From its source the river flows northward to the

Bordeaux: …down the quay is the Esplanade des Quinconces, one of the largest squares in Europe; it contains a monument to the Girondins and huge statues of Montesquieu and Michel de Montaigne (the latter’s tomb is at the university, founded 1441). Bordeaux’s ecclesiastical antiquities include two 15th-century bell towers: that of…

ESPN, Inc.: …leading to the formation of ESPN International five years later. ESPN International broadcast regional sports programs, including cricket in India and association football (soccer) in Latin America, as well as sporting events in the United States. In the 1990s ESPN founded a radio sports network; added cable networks, including ESPN2,…

ESPN, Inc., cable television sports-broadcasting network based in Bristol, Conn. It was launched in 1979 and is one of the largest cable networks in the United States. Its success engendered additional ESPN networks, including an international sports network. New England sports announcer William

André Malraux: Life: His novel L’Espoir (Man’s Hope), based on his experiences in Spain, was published in 1937. A motion-picture version of L’Espoir that Malraux produced and directed in Barcelona in 1938 was not shown in France until after the country’s liberation at the end of World War II.

Icelandic literature: The 18th century: Jón Espólín published Íslands árbækur (1822–55; “Annals of Iceland”), a history of Iceland from 1262.

El Greco: Middle years: …the sacristy of Toledo Cathedral—the El Espolio (1577–79; The Disrobing of Christ). In designing the composition vertically and compactly in the foreground he seems to have been motivated by the desire to show the oppression of Christ by his cruel tormentors. He chose a method of space elimination that is…

Espoo, city, southern Finland, just west of Helsinki, in a region of broad, flat valleys covered with low clay hills. It is located in an area that has been inhabited since 3500 bc. The city has railway connections to Helsinki and the remainder of Finland. It is a thriving technology centre where

Fred Armisen: Portlandia and other work: Armisen cocreated and costarred in Los Espookys (2018–22), a Spanish-language HBO horror comedy set in an unnamed Latin American country.

esports, online gaming competitions in which amateur and professional gamers participate individually or on teams through organized leagues, often with monetary prizes on the line. Competitive gaming gained prominence about the cusp of the 21st century and swiftly grew into an organized form of

Giancarlo Esposito is a Danish-born American actor and filmmaker best known for his portrayal of the character Gustavo (Gus) Fring, a fast-food restaurateur and drug kingpin, in the acclaimed television series Breaking Bad (2009–11) and Better Call Saul (2017–22). Esposito’s film credits include an

Crash: …police detective, Ria (played by Jennifer Esposito), with her African American partner, Detective Graham Waters (Don Cheadle), has just been rear-ended by a car driven by an Asian American driver, Kim Lee (Alexis Rhee). Waters approaches a crime scene involving a dead man while Ria and Kim exchange racial insults.…

Phil Esposito is a Canadian-born U.S. professional ice hockey centre (1963–81) in the National Hockey League (NHL), who was a leading scorer in his day. Esposito played hockey from his youth onward, and after a season (1962–63) on a Chicago Black Hawk (later Blackhawk) farm team he played as a

Phil Esposito is a Canadian-born U.S. professional ice hockey centre (1963–81) in the National Hockey League (NHL), who was a leading scorer in his day. Esposito played hockey from his youth onward, and after a season (1962–63) on a Chicago Black Hawk (later Blackhawk) farm team he played as a

Chicago Blackhawks: Renaissance in the 1960s: …the Black Hawks acquired goaltender Tony Esposito, who would go on to set the franchise record with 418 wins and be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Francisco Espoz y Mina was an outstanding guerrilla leader during the Peninsular War, or Spanish War of Independence (1808–14), against the French; he later embraced the Liberal cause and played a role in various uprisings and in the First Carlist War (1833–39). Espoz y Mina farmed a small family

espresso, a strong brew of coffee produced by forcing boiled water under pressure through finely ground coffee. The finely ground coffee beans means an increased amount of surface contact with the water, resulting in a highly flavoured and aromatic brew. The nuances of brewing and enjoying the

Étienne Gilson: Among these are L’Esprit de la philosophie médiévale (1932; The Spirit of Mediæval Philosophy), his exposition and defense of the idea of a Christian philosophy; The Unity of Philosophical Experience (1937) and Being and Some Philosophers (1949), perhaps the best examples of his use of the history of…

Louis de Saint-Just: Publication of Esprit de la révolution: In 1791 he finally published Esprit de la révolution et de la constitution de France (The Spirit of the Revolution and the Constitution of France). The exposition was bold, vigorous, and lofty. The brief, forceful, and elliptical formulations characterized the author. According to him, the constitution framed by the Assembly…

The Spirit of Laws, principal work of the French political philosopher Montesquieu (in full Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu) first published in 1748 as De L’Esprit des loix; ou, du rapport que les loix doivent avoir avec la constitution de chaque gouvernement, les

Le Corbusier: Education and early years: …founded a polemic avant-garde review, L’Esprit Nouveau. Open to the arts and humanities, with brilliant collaborators, it presented ideas in architecture and city planning already expressed by Adolf Loos and Henri van de Velde, fought against the “styles” of the past and against elaborate nonstructural decoration, and defended functionalism.

José de Espronceda y Delgado was a Romantic poet and revolutionary, often called the Spanish Lord Byron. He fled Spain in 1826 for revolutionary activities and in London began a tempestuous affair with Teresa Mancha (the subject of Canto a Teresa) that dominated the next 10 years of his life. He

leishmaniasis: …a complication referred to as mucocutaneous leishmaniasis, or espundia. Destruction of the lips, throat, palate, and larynx can ensue. Mucocutaneous leishmaniasis may not appear until years after an initial cutaneous lesion has healed.

James Pollard Espy was an American meteorologist who apparently gave the first essentially correct explanation of the thermodynamics of cloud formation and growth. He was also one of the first to use the telegraph for collecting meteorological observations. Espy served as a meteorologist with the

buccaneer: …Americaensche zee-rovers, by the Dutchman Alexander Esquemelin (or Exquemelin), whose work was a fecund source of tales of these men.

Catalonia: Renaixença, the Spanish Civil War, and the autonomous community of Catalonia: …coalition party in Catalonia, the Esquerra Republicana. The Esquerra won a sweeping victory in the municipal elections of 1931, and two days later its leader proclaimed a Catalan Republic. A compromise was worked out with the central government, and in September 1932 the statute of autonomy for Catalonia became law.…

ancient Rome: The regal period, 753–509 bc: Archaeology also shows that the Esquiline Hill was next inhabited, thus disproving the ancient account which maintained that the Quirinal Hill was settled after the Palatine. Around 670–660 bc the Palatine settlement expanded down into the valley of the later Forum Romanum and became a town of artisans living in…

metalwork: Early Christian and Byzantine: …and Secondus, part of the Esquiline treasure found at Rome, is decorated with pagan scenes; and only the inscription shows that it was made for a Christian marriage. Among the few pieces with Christian subjects are small Roman cruets (condiment bottles) from Taprain, Scotland, and a small pyx (casket for…

Esquimalt, district municipality and western suburb of metropolitan Victoria, southwestern British Columbia, Canada, at the southeastern end of Vancouver Island, on Juan de Fuca Strait. The name means “place of gradually shoaling waters” in the local Indian language. Its harbour was visited (1790)

Esquipulas, town, southeastern Guatemala, in the central highlands near the borders of Honduras and El Salvador at an elevation of 3,018 feet (920 metres). The town itself is not large; it derives its great importance from its magnificent colonial church, now Central America’s greatest pilgrimage

Central America: Modern Central America (c. 1945 to the present): …American peace plan, also called Esquipulas II, instigated by Pres. Oscar Arias Sánchez of Costa Rica. The last included plans for a Central American national parliament along lines similar to those that established the European Union. While state sovereignty and the strength of the individual city-state elites remain strongly rooted…

Esquire, American monthly magazine, founded in 1933 by Arnold Gingrich. It began production as an oversized magazine for men that featured a slick, sophisticated style and drawings of scantily clad young women. It later abandoned its titillating role but continued to cultivate the image of

esquire, originally, a knight’s shield bearer, who would probably himself in due course be dubbed a knight; the word is derived from the Old French esquier and earlier from the Latin scutarius. In England in the later Middle Ages, the term esquire (armiger) was used to denote holders of knights’

Jean-Étienne-Dominique Esquirol was an early French psychiatrist who was the first to combine precise clinical descriptions with the statistical analysis of mental illnesses. A student of Philippe Pinel, Esquirol succeeded his distinguished teacher as physician in chief at the Salpêtrière Hospital

Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet: …progrès de l’esprit humain (1794; Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind). Its fundamental idea is that of the continuous progress of the human race to an ultimate perfection. He represents humans as starting from the lowest stage of savagery with no superiority over the…

Jamaica: Early period: In 1509 Juan de Esquivel founded the first permanent European settlement, the town of Sevilla la Nueva (New Seville), on the north coast. In 1534 the capital was moved to Villa de la Vega (later Santiago de la Vega), now called Spanish Town. The Spanish enslaved many…

Like Water for Chocolate: …by Mexican author and screenwriter Laura Esquivel. First published in 1989, it became a bestseller in Mexico, and it was both filmed and published in English in 1992.

Belize: Independence of Belize: …in 1973 and led by Manuel Esquivel, won the general election in 1984, but in 1989 the PUP won the election and Price again became prime minister (as the office was now called). The UDP won in a close election in 1993, and Esquivel again assumed leadership. In 1998, however,…

blood analysis: Sedimentation and compatibility tests: The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) is the rate at which red blood cells settle in a column of blood in one hour. It is a nonspecific indicator of inflammatory disease that is also increased in anemia. When blood cells clump together, owing to the presence of…

electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), selective absorption of weak radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation (in the microwave region) by unpaired electrons in the atomic structure of certain materials that simultaneously are subjected to a constant, strong magnetic field. The unpaired electrons,

steel: Electroslag remelting (ESR): In this process, there is a slowly melting consumable electrode and a water-cooled mold for solidification, as in vacuum arc remelting, but the melting is conducted under normal atmosphere and is accomplished by a thick, superheated layer of slag on top of…

chemical analysis: Microwave absorptiometry: …for nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry, electron spin resonance spectrometry is used to study spinning electrons. The absorbed radiation falls in the microwave spectral region and induces transitions in the spin states of the electrons. An externally applied magnetic field is required. The technique is effective for studying structures and reactions…

diabetic nephropathy: …is a leading cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD), which is characterized by kidney failure, with the organ’s function reduced to less than one-tenth of normal capacity or lost completely.

Eşref Dynasty, Turkmen dynasty (c. 1290–c. 1326) that ruled in Beyşehir, west of Konya in central Anatolia. The dynasty traced its origins to a Turkmen tribe that was settled by the Seljuqs of Anatolia on the western frontier. The family’s founder, Eşref oğlu Sayfeddin Süleyman I, was a Seljuq emir

Eşref Dynasty: The family’s founder, Eşref oğlu Sayfeddin Süleyman I, was a Seljuq emir who played an important role in Seljuq dynastic struggles during the reign (1283–98) of the Seljuq sultan Masʿūd II. Süleyman was appointed regent to the sons of the deposed Seljuq sultan, Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Kay-Khusraw, by Masʿūd’s…

Turkish literature: Sufi poetry: …and the orthodox Sufism of Eşrefoğlu Rumi. Like Yunus Emre, Eşrefoğlu wrote verse in which the Sufi poet functions as a charismatic and sacred figure who writes poetry in order to communicate his sacerdotal authority to his disciples. By the early 16th century, this style of poetry, generally known as…

European Space Agency: …and data retrieval, (3) the European Space Research Institute (ESRIN), located in Frascati, Italy, which supports the ESA Information Retrieval Service and the Earthnet program, the system by which remote sensing images are retrieved and distributed, (4) the European Astronaut Centre (EAC), located in Cologne, Germany, which is a training…

aerospace industry: Internationalization: …for the establishment of the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), devoted to scientific space programs and the construction of satellites. In the summer of 1972 the French government proposed to other European countries a new and technologically simpler launcher. The 5th European Space Conference in December 1972 proved to be…

etrog, one of four species of plants used during the Jewish celebration of Sukkot (Feast of Booths), a festival of gratitude to God for the bounty of the earth that is celebrated in autumn at the end of the harvest festival. For ritual purposes, the etrog must be perfect in stem and body. It is

etrog, one of four species of plants used during the Jewish celebration of Sukkot (Feast of Booths), a festival of gratitude to God for the bounty of the earth that is celebrated in autumn at the end of the harvest festival. For ritual purposes, the etrog must be perfect in stem and body. It is

Lamar Alexander: He later wrote the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015), which revised No Child Left Behind (2001) to give states more control in issues relating to public education. Alexander also assumed a strong leadership position on energy issues. From 2008 to 2012 he was chair of the Senate Republican Conference,…

Essad Paşa (Toptani) was a political leader who played a prominent but often disruptive role in Albania’s affairs during the early years of the 20th century. Essad was the scion of a rich Albanian family. He joined the Young Turk movement in 1908 and became deputy for Albania in the new Turkish

Alexandre Brongniart: …early papers is the “Essai d’une classification naturelle des reptiles” (1800; “Essay on the Natural Classification of Reptiles”), in which he divided the class Reptilia into four orders: Batrachia (now a separate class, Amphibia), Chelonia, Ophidia, and Sauria. He made the first systematic study of trilobites, an extinct group…

Claude-Louis Berthollet: Chemical theory of Claude-Louis Berthollet: …he wrote the controversial “Essai de statique chimique” (1803; “Chemical Equilibria”), aimed at establishing the general laws of chemical reactions and a systematic approach to physical chemistry. The idea for this sprang from notions discussed with Lavoisier about the role of chemical affinities and Berthollet’s decade-long set of experiments…

Blaise Pascal: Pascal’s life to the Port-Royal years: …an essay on conic sections, Essai pour les coniques, based on his study of the now classical work of Girard Desargues on synthetic projective geometry. The young man’s work, which was highly successful in the world of mathematics, aroused the envy of no less a personage than the great French…

Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet: …la pluralité des voix (Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of Majority Decisions), a remarkable work that has a distinguished place in the history of the doctrine of probability. A second edition, greatly enlarged and completely recast, appeared in 1805 under the title of Éléments du…

Western architecture: Origins and development: …French Jesuit, Marc-Antoine Laugier, whose Essai sur l’architecture appeared in French in 1753 and in English in 1755. Advocating a return to rationalism and simplicity in building and taking the “primitive hut” as his example of the fundamental expression of human needs, Laugier was both reacting against the excesses of…

Edward Gibbon: Life: …l’étude de la littérature (1761; An Essay on the Study of Literature, 1764). Meanwhile, the main purpose of his exile had not been neglected. Not without weighty thought, Gibbon at last abjured his new faith and was publicly readmitted to the Protestant communion at Christmas 1754. “It was here,” Gibbon…

Félicité Lamennais: …the first volume of his Essai sur l’indifférence en matière de religion (“Essay on Indifference Toward Religion”), which won him immediate fame. In this book he argued for the necessity of religion, basing his appeals on the authority of tradition and the general reason of mankind rather than on the…

Arthur de Gobineau: (1853–55; Essay on the Inequality of Human Races), that was by far his most influential work.

Alexandre Brongniart: Summarizing this study in his Essai sur la géographie minéralogique des environs de Paris, avec une carte géognostique et des coupes de terrain (1811; “Essay on the Mineralogical Geography of the Environs of Paris, with a Geological Map and Profiles of the Terrain”), Brongniart helped introduce the principle of geologic…

Richard Cantillon: …which survived the blaze, his Essai sur la nature du commerce en général, written about 1730–34 and published by the Marquis de Mirabeau in 1755. Its treatment of population influenced Mirabeau and Adam Smith and, through the latter, Malthus. It contained a theory of relative wages which was used by…

ritual: Sacrificial: …is to be found in Essai sur la nature et le fonction du sacrifice (1899; Sacrifice: Its Nature and Functions), by the French sociologists Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss, who differentiated between sacrifice and rituals of oblation, offering, and consecration. This does not mean that sacrificial rituals do not at…

Henri de Boulainvilliers, count de Saint-Saire: …the French nobility in the Essai sur la noblesse de France (ed. 1732; “Treatise on the French Nobility”), in which he analyzed the decline of the French nobility, attacked the absolutism of Louis XIV, and examined the legitimacy of French political institutions.

Denis Diderot: Novels, dialogues, and plays of Denis Diderot: …won him posthumous fame; his Essai sur la peinture (written 1765, published 1796; “Essay on Painting”), especially, was admired by Goethe and later by the 19th-century poet and critic Charles Baudelaire.

anthropology: Anthropology in Europe: …Essai sur le don (1925; The Gift), an analysis of “the gift,” including an examination of the concepts of reciprocity and exchange. The long-term work on West African worldviews (Dieu d’eau: entretiens avec Ogotemmêli [1948]) by the group around Marcel Griaule has perhaps been more admired than really influential. For…

Henri Bergson: Early years: …immédiates de la conscience (1889; Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness), for which he received the doctorate the same year. This work was primarily an attempt to establish the notion of duration, or lived time, as opposed to what Bergson viewed as the spatialized…

Voltaire: Life with Mme du Châtelet: …and manners that became the Essai sur les moeurs, and plunged into biblical exegesis. Mme du Châtelet herself wrote an Examen, highly critical of the two Testaments. It was at Cirey that Voltaire, rounding out his scientific knowledge, acquired the encyclopaedic culture that was one of the outstanding facets of…

François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand: In London he began his Essai sur les révolutions (1797; “Essay on Revolutions”), an emotional survey of world history in which he drew parallels between ancient and modern revolutions in the context of France’s own recent upheavals.

Georges Seurat: …rest of his life: the Essai sur les signes inconditionnels de l’art (1827; “Essay on the Unmistakable Signs of Art”), by Humbert de Superville, a painter-engraver from Geneva; it dealt with the future course of aesthetics and with the relationship between lines and images. Seurat was also impressed with the…

Hippolyte Taine: Early life and career: …began an essay on Livy, Essai sur Tite-Live (1856), which, despite further criticism of his philosophical outlook, won a prize from the Académie Française. During this period he was also attending lectures in science and gathering the knowledge of physiology that he utilized later in his work on psychology. Reluctant…

Essays, work by the French writer and philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) that established a new literary form, the essay. The first two volumes of the Essais (Essays) were published in 1580; a third volume was published in 1588, along with enlarged editions of the first two. In his Essays,

Hippolyte Taine: Attack on eclecticism: …knowledge; a first collection of Essais de critique et d’histoire (1858; “Essays of Criticism and History”); and his notable Histoire de la littérature anglaise, 4 vol. (1863–64; History of English Literature).

Pierre Nicole: Nicole’s best-known work is the Essais de morale, 4 vol. (1671; “Essays on Morality”), eventually enlarged to 14 volumes, in which he discussed the problems raised for ethics by human nature, which he found seldom capable of virtue.

Ernest Renan: Early works: …Studies of Religious History) and Essais de morale et de critique (1859; “Moral and Critical Essays”), first written for the Revue des Deux Mondes and the Journal des Débats. The Études inculcated into a middle-class public the insight and sensitivity of the historical, humanistic approach to religion. Many of the…

Louis-Mathieu, Count Molé: …approval after his publication of Essais de morale et de politique (1806), a justification of monarchical government; Napoleon made him auditor to the Council of State in 1806, with successive promotions to minister of justice in 1813. A peer of France during the Second Restoration (1815), Molé was minister for…

Earth sciences: Pressure, temperature, and atmospheric circulation: …Bénédict de Saussure in his Essais sur l’hygrométrie (1783; “Essay on Hygrometry”). From experiments with changes of water vapour and pressure in air enclosed in a glass globe, Saussure concluded that changes in temperature must be immediately responsible for variations of the barometer and that these in turn must be…

Essaouira, Atlantic port city, western Morocco, midway between Safi and Agadir. The site was occupied by Phoenicians and then Carthaginians and was mentioned in the chronicles of the Carthaginian explorer Hanno (5th century bc). Medieval charts show it as Mogador, a corruption of an Amazigh

Esarhaddon was the king of Assyria from 680–669 bc, a descendant of Sargon II. He is best known for his conquest of Egypt in 671. Although he was a younger son, Esarhaddon had already been proclaimed successor to the throne by his father, Sennacherib, who had appointed him governor of Babylon some

essay, an analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usually much shorter and less systematic and formal than a dissertation or thesis and usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view. Some early treatises—such as those of Cicero on the

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, work by the English philosopher John Locke, published in 1689, that presents an elaborate and sophisticated empiricist account of the nature, origins, and extent of human knowledge. The influence of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding was enormous,

Increase Mather: Among his books is An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684), a compilation of stories showing the hand of Divine Providence in rescuing people from natural and supernatural disasters. Some historians suggest that this book conditioned the minds of the populace for the witchcraft hysteria of Salem…

Christianity: Apologetics: defending the faith: Catholic writers, John Henry Newman’s An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870) offered a major intellectual justification of the act of faith during what he viewed as a revolutionary, seismic period in the world of ideas. Modern Catholic scholars have made contemporary apologetics a component in the…

art criticism: The avant-garde problem: In “Essay on a New Method of Criticism” (1890–93), Aurier decreed that viewers must become “mystics” of the new art, for it was the “last plank of salvation.” Thus, the religion of avant-garde art was born. It remains influential to the present day—in a radical twist,…

Denis Diderot: The Encyclopédie: …Lettre sur les aveugles (An Essay on Blindness), remarkable for its proposal to teach the blind to read through the sense of touch, along lines that Louis Braille was to follow in the 19th century, and for the presentation of the first step in his evolutionary theory of survival…

Edmund Ruffin: …a highly influential book, An Essay on Calcareous Manures (1832)—in which he explained how applications of calcareous earths (marl) reduced soil acidity. Even more persuasive were Ruffin’s enhanced yields of corn and wheat on lands fertilized, plowed, planted, rotated, and drained according to his instructions.

George Meredith: Beginnings as poet and novelist.: …he later said in his “Essay on Comedy,” to purge and replace with sanity. Though not without faults, the novel nevertheless remains Meredith’s most moving and most widely read novel. But delicate readers found it prurient and had it banned by the influential lending libraries, scattering Meredith’s hopes of affluence.…

penology: …of Cesare Beccaria’s pamphlet on Crimes and Punishments in 1764. This represented a school of doctrine, born of the new humanitarian impulse of the 18th century, with which Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu in France and Jeremy Bentham in England were associated. This, which came afterwards to be known as…

An Essay on Criticism, didactic poem in heroic couplets by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in 1711 when the author was 22 years old. Although inspired by Horace’s Ars poetica, this work of literary criticism borrowed from the writers of the Augustan Age. In it Pope set out poetic rules,

An Essay on Man, philosophical essay written in heroic couplets of iambic pentameter by Alexander Pope, published in 1733–34. It was conceived as part of a larger work that Pope never completed. The poem consists of four epistles. The first epistle surveys relations between humans and the universe;

R.D. FitzGerald: …which includes a philosophical poem, “Essay on Memory,” that won a national prize. Between Two Tides (1952) is a long metaphorical narrative; and Forty Years Poems (1965) revealed the writer at the height of his powers. He also wrote a book of criticism, The Elements of Poetry (1963), and a…

R.G. Collingwood: …on Philosophical Method (1933) and An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), he proposed the historical nature of civilization’s presuppositions and urged that metaphysical study evaluate these presuppositions as historically defined conceptions rather than as eternal verities. His last book, The Idea of History (1946), proposed history as a discipline in which…