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Variability   Listen
noun
Variability  n.  
1.
The quality or state of being variable; variableness.
2.
(Biol.) The power possessed by living organisms, both animal and vegetable, of adapting themselves to modifications or changes in their environment, thus possibly giving rise to ultimate variation of structure or function.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Variability" Quotes from Famous Books



... accepted, the difficulty disappears. If music, taking for its raw material the various modifications of voice which are the physiological results of excited feelings, intensifies, combines, and complicates them—if it exaggerates the loudness, the resonance, the pitch, the intervals, and the variability, which, in virtue of an organic law, are the characteristics of passionate speech—if, by carrying out these further, more consistently, more unitedly, and more sustainedly, it produces an idealised language of emotion; then its power over ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... different places, and it is difficult for the grape-grower in Maine to make allowance in season for varieties, the time of ripening of which is given for Maryland. There are also other causes than the seasonal differences in grape regions for variability in ripening time; thus, some soils are warmer and quicker than others, and on these grapes ripen earlier. Application of nitrogenous fertilizers may delay the period of ripening somewhat. Grapes ripen perceptibly ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... a point of view, to become a spectator, while the only way to fit into the century was simply to keep moving in whirls of unintelligent unison; never to meditate, never to reason upon one's course; but to sweep onward, somewhere, anywhere as long as it was in a new direction. Elasticity, variability—were not these the indispensable qualities of the modern mind? The power to make quick decisions and the inability to cling to convictions; the nervous high pitch and the failure to sustain the triumphant note; energy without direction; success without stability; ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... the bright star of Algol pulsated backward and forward in the visual direction in a period corresponding to the known variation of its light. The explanation which had been suggested for the star's variability, that it was partially eclipsed at regular intervals of 68.8 hours by a dark companion large enough to cut off nearly five-sixths of its light, was, therefore, the true one. The dark companion, no longer able to hide itself by its obscureness, was brought out into the light of direct observation ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... book—as I apprehend it, I say, it is, that all the phenomena of organic nature, past and present, result from, or are caused by, the inter-action of those properties of organic matter, which we have called ATAVISM and VARIABILITY, with the CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE; or, in other words,—given the existence of organic matter, its tendency to transmit its properties, and its tendency occasionally to vary; and, lastly, given the conditions of existence by which organic matter is surrounded—that these put together are the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... renovated brilliancy; and her face was lighted with smiles so fascinating, that Frances, who, in compliance with her earnest entreaties, had accompanied her to the sick chamber, sat gazing on a countenance that possessed so wonderful variability, impelled by a charm that was beyond her control. The youth had thrown an earnest look at Frances, as soon as his sister raised herself from his arms, and perhaps it was the first glance at the lovely lineaments of our heroine, when the gazer turned ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... the a priori consideration that, if on independent grounds we believe in the theory of evolution at all, it becomes obvious that natural selection must have had some part in the process. For no one can deny the potent facts of heredity, variability, the struggle for existence, and survival of the fittest. But to admit these facts is to admit natural selection as a principle which must be, at any rate, one of the factors of organic evolution, supposing such evolution to have taken ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... not intended for commerce but wholly for consumption on the producer's farm. Sustaining this extension of the act, the Court pointed out that the effect of the statute was to support the market. It said: "It can hardly be denied that a factor of such volume and variability as home-consumed wheat would have a substantial influence on price and market conditions. This may arise because being in marketable condition such wheat overhangs the market and, if induced by rising prices, tends to ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... was that they should be confined to home waters, where regular hours and systematized instruction in "doing things" would suffer little interference from weather; the other was to make long voyages, preferably to Europe, leaving to the normal variability of the ocean and the watchful improvement of occasions the burden of initiating a youth into practical acquaintance with the exigencies of his intended profession. Personally I have always favored the latter, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... meteorological proverb is frequently repeated in Devonshire, to denote the variability of the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various

... Probably the Coon does the same; the enormous rise in 1867 from an average of 3,500 per annum. to 24,000 was most likely a result of accidental accumulation and not representative of any special abundance. Finally, each and every line manifests extraordinary variability in the '30's. It is not to be supposed that the population fluctuated so enormously from one year to another, but rather that the facilities for ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the intensity of the sexual impulse in women, as compared to men, more liable to vary from day to day, or from week to week, but the same greater variability is marked when we compare the whole cycle of life in women to that of men. The stress of early womanhood, when the reproductive functions are in fullest activity, and of late womanhood, when they are ceasing, produces a profound organic fermentation, psychic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Rambi. Whether these are distinct species, however, or whether they are mere races, and how far any of them are identical with the Sumatran Orang, as Mr. Wallace thinks the Mias Pappan to be, are problems which are at present undecided; and the variability of these great apes is so extensive that the settlement of the question is a matter of great difficulty. Of the form called "Mias Pappan," Mr. Wallace observes: "It is known by its large size, and by the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... anything, or seeing only what one wishes. By the very act, as it were, of capturing one's self, the personage we believe we have seized escapes, disappears. Nor is it only the complexity of our inner being which obstructs our examination, but its exceeding variability. The investigator's regard should embrace all the sides of the subject, and perseveringly pursue all ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in January, 1864, in calm weather, the report of an eighteen-pounder, with three pounds of powder, was faint at four miles. Still, in the Trinity House experiments of 1865, made in light weather with a light gun, the report was clearly heard seven miles away. Dr. Gladstone records great variability in the range of gun-sound in the Holyhead experiments. Prof. Henry says that a twenty-four-pounder was used at Point Boneta, San Francisco Bay, Cal., in 1856-57, and that, by the help of it alone, vessels came into the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... the various domestic races but the most distinct genera and orders within the same great class—for instance, mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes—are all the descendants of one common progenitor, and the whole vast amount of difference between these forms has primarily arisen from simple variability. Darwin recognized that he who for the first time should consider the subject under this point of view would be struck dumb with amazement. He submits, however, that the amazement ought to be lessened when we reflect that beings almost infinite in number during ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... prevailing winds of the whole continent embraced within the limits of the United States are uniformly from the west, still, over this eastern division, counter-winds of a lower character disturb, modify, and elevate the course of this great westerly current, giving rise to the exceeding variability of the surface winds, which, as is well known, may blow within the brief space of twenty-four hours from all directions of the compass, at almost any time ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill

... of fear and terror, the variety and variability of the aspect of comets ought rather to indicate to us the harmlessness ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... made. It can also be relied upon to measure differences due to the location of trees of the same variety, variation of the same variety from year to year in the same and in different locations and differences of a similar nature. In ranking varieties which have scores within the limits of variability, it will be necessary to use judgment as to small differences of appearance. No scoring schedule can be expected to entirely eliminate the judgment of experts. Also it must be realized that characters other than the nuts, such ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... development and the arching of the petiole could have been gradually acquired, if they were beneficial to the seedlings by favouring their emergence; for with A. candelabrum, spinosus, and latifolius there was a great variability in the inequality between the two first leaves and in the arching of their petioles. In one seedling of A. candelabrum the first leaf was arched and nine times as long as the second, which latter consisted of a mere little, yellowish-white, straight, hairy style. In other seedlings ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... speculative movement to anticipate these changes and arbitrarily to mark some prices up and some prices down. But as this is guesswork, and will be subject to frequent revision, one of the striking phenomena will doubtless be an increase in the variability of prices. The general level of prices will tend to rise. The rise will probably be greatest in little countries like Belgium, which are in the war zone and largely dependent on foreign trade. The rise will be less in England and in the United States than on the Continent. In fact, it is ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... Standard. He shows, very easily and truly, that it is absurd to suppose that the value of the monetary gold standard is invariable. Thereby he is only beating a dead horse, for no such argument is nowadays put forward. The variability of the gold standard of value is acknowledged, whenever a fluctuation in the general level of commodity prices is recorded. But gold is the basis of our credit system, and of those of all the economically civilised countries of the world, not because its value is believed ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers

... be well to state here however that owing to variability in behavior with variation in conditions it is dangerous to draw too general conclusions and until a given source has actually been investigated under specific cooking conditions one should not rely too strongly on analogies ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy

... the framework of the organic systems and for the progressive element in the development. The other is the struggle for existence and natural selection, which approaches the organisms purely from without like individual variability, must as a whole appear a necessity, but in each single case in the concrete mixture of coinciding circumstances, would seem a work of chance for the individual which ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... managers, secondly, the observations of skilled psychologists in the industrial concerns, thirdly, psychological and experimental investigations with successful and unsuccessful laborers, and, fourthly, experimental studies of the normal variability. If such a programme is to be realized in detail, it will be necessary to discriminate carefully, between those mental traits of the personality which must be accredited to a lasting inherited disposition and such as have been developed under the ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... WAGES, it asks thereby that we DETERMINE VALUE. Now that is precisely what the gentlemen of the Academy deny: they are unwilling to admit that, if value is variable, it is for that very reason determinable; that variability is the sign and condition of determinability. They pretend that value, ever varying, can never be determined. This is like maintaining that, given the number of oscillations of a pendulum per second, their amplitude, and the latitude and elevation of the spot ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... group of stars in the Milky Way, in one of which his chief had seen or fancied a remarkable colour variability. It was not a part of the regular work for which the establishment existed, and for that reason perhaps Woodhouse was deeply interested. He must have forgotten things terrestrial. All his attention was concentrated upon the great blue circle of the telescope field—a circle powdered, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... variability she drew a low stool near an old spinning-wheel, placed her foot on the slender treadle and twisted the golden flax in imitation of the way Aunt Maria had ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... the moment. They are like the leaves which a tempest whirls up and scatters in every direction and then allows to fall. When studying later on certain revolutionary crowds we shall give some examples of the variability of their sentiments. ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... racial type varies somewhat and with it the national life and thought. Compare England, Germany, France, and Spain as to the variability in characteristics of literature and art, in moral ideals, in ethical practice, in religious motive, and in social order. Their differences are evident, but they tend to disappear under the influence of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... also to be great variability in the degree and manner in which chloroform renders the glands insensible to the subsequent action of meat. In the plant last referred to, which had been exposed for 2 m. to three drops of chloroform, some few tentacles curved ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin

... thinking. "Even in God I discover defects," was the remark of one of them to his youthful listener—to whom he had been communicating his views on the world in general. In the company of these elders, with such or kindred opinions, Goethe was early familiarised with the variability of human judgments on fundamental questions. And he laid the experience to heart, for on no point in the conduct of life does he insist with greater emphasis than the folly of expecting others to think ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown

... and colour and that enchanting variability was the look of intelligence, which at the same time seemed complementary to and one with the all-seeing, all-hearing alertness appearing in her face; the alertness one remarks in a wild creature, even when in repose and fearing nothing; but seldom in man, never ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... temperaments of parents blend and revivify in their children. As Stephanie grew up she had repeated in her very differing body some of her father's and mother's characteristics—an interesting variability of soul. She was tall, dark, sallow, lithe, with a strange moodiness of heart and a recessive, fulgurous gleam in her chestnut-brown, almost brownish-black eyes. She had a full, sensuous, Cupid's mouth, a dreamy and even languishing expression, a graceful neck, and a heavy, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... been a primitive black race in Micronesia and Polynesia; in his opinion we have here to do with a single race. The color of the Polynesians may be out and out from natural causes different, "their entire physical appearance indicates the greatest variability." Herein the whole question of the domain of variation is sprung with imperfect satisfaction on the part of those travelers who give their attention more to transitions than to types. Among these are not a few who have returned from the South Sea with the conviction that all criteria ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... to the relative duration of the redundant measure the subjective reports indicate a large variability. The dactylic form appears to be slightly longer than the trochaics among which it appears; but not infrequently it is shorter.[9] These variations are probably connected with differences in stress due to the relation which the ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... will build a very elaborate structure of their own; then, again, they take up with an old crow's nest or the summer nest of a squirrel, and with very little patching up make this answer their purpose. Because of this variability on their part, it is not an easy matter ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various

... and laughed. She had charming white teeth—small and sharp and with enough irregularity to carry out her general suggestion of variability. "Yes, I shall like that, when it comes," she said; "But the chances are ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... accompanying excitement was so intense that when he came to see his father in Baltimore the latter had him committed to the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital.[3] He remained there for one year and eight months, during which time his mood showed great variability. At times he would be elated, again depressed or anxious, often silly with irrelevant laughter. Towards the end of his admission he had quite long intervals when he appeared normal. Eight months after his discharge he began to have monthly attacks lasting from one to two ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... Given variability, which is natural and to be expected, and given the absence of detail about the "residential portion" of other houses than that of Odysseus in the poems, it does not seem to us that this house is conspicuously "late," still less that it is the house of historical Greece. Manifestly, in ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... foresight, reason and imagination, with exactly similar actions instinctively performed by the lower animals; in this latter case the capacity of performing such actions has been gained, step by step, through the variability of the mental organs and natural selection, without any conscious intelligence on the part of the animal during each successive generation. No doubt, as Mr. Wallace has argued, much of the intelligent ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... represents really a tricellular Phragmidium, linking the present with the latter genus. In Puccinia the number of species is by far the most numerous; in this genus the spores are uniseptate, and, as in all the Pucciniaei, the peduncles are permanent. There is great variability in the compactness of the spores in the sori, or pulvinules. In some species, the sori are so pulverulent that the spores are as readily dispersed as in the Uredines, in others they are so compact as to be separated from each other with ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... to extreme fairness in Holland—and a vast mental and physical diversity. Were the Jews to discontinue all intermarriage with "other races" henceforth for ever, it would depend upon quite unknown laws of fecundity, prepotency, and variability, what their final type would be, or, indeed, whether any particular type would ever prevail over diversity. And, without going beyond the natives of the British Isles, one can discover an enormous range of types, tall and short, straight-haired and curly, fair and dark, supremely intelligent ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... his instincts, perhaps very far back in animal life, that has in the end made him a warlike creature. Man does seem to be a creature of feelings rather than of instincts as far back as we find much account of him, and to be characterized rather by the weakness and variability of his instincts than by their definiteness. It is quite likely, too, that man never was at any stage a herd animal; in fact it seems certain that he was not, and that his instincts were formed long before he began to live in large groups at all. So he never ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... cannot gain entrance into them; pigeons, for example, cannot be poisoned by morphia. Individual variations play an important part also; thus, shellfish are poisonous for certain individuals and not so for others. Owing to the variability of living structures a substance may be poisonous at one time and not at another, as the following example shows. A man, very fond of crab meat, was once violently poisoned after eating crabs, being at that time seemingly in his usual state of health, and no illness resulted ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... to me the weak point in the theory. How can we reconcile the mutation and the variability of the germ plasm, with its immortality ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... In variability of degree of completeness, these lesions of the globe corresponded exactly with those produced in other parts of the nervous system by bullets striking the bones in their vicinity, and they were no doubt the result of a similar transmission ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... N14, Cl35.5 occupy in the free state one volume, but in the combination, CNCl, two volumes; their specific gravity is, therefore, by chemical action reduced to one half. The fact thus elicited of the variability and variation of the specific gravity is of fundamental importance and involves the irrelevancy of the mathematical demonstration of the hypothesis. In this demonstration the specific gravity is assumed to be constant, and this assumption not holding good, and the number of molecules in unit ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various

... an illustration of the variability of the progeny of a nut in this collection of chestnuts by Mr. Riehl out in Illinois. This is a parent nut, the Rochester, and these others are seedlings from the Rochester, except where marked otherwise, some showing a tendency to revert to the parent, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... distinguish between c and t; and hence in mediaeval times, and even later, such forms as fatio, loto, pecieris, licterae are not infrequently found for facio, loco, petieris, litterae. An extreme example of the confusion which this variability must have caused is in the case of the fourteenth-century annalist, Nicholas Trivet, whose surname sometimes ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... Democrat, and the Bishop, who was gazing at him with a look of blank horror on his venerable countenance. 'Why, it is preposterous, it is inconceivable that we should stop at four!—fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals! Where is the fifth! Cannot Natural Selection, Struggle for Existence, Variability and Survival of the Fittest, between them, furnish a fifth class of vertebrates? I demand it in the name of Science and of Evolution. We have been human long enough. There we are, ever since the Age of Stone, pinned down to one particular tribe of mammals. ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... Blooded Animals.—By numerous observations upon men and animals, John Hunter showed that the essential difference between the so-called warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals lies in the constancy of the temperature of the former, and the variability of the temperature of the latter. Those animals high in the scale of evolution, as birds and mammals, have a high temperature almost constant and independent of that of the surrounding air, whereas among the lower animals there is much variation ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... of the ultimate psychological basis of speech and gives only enough of the actual descriptive or historical facts of particular languages to illustrate principles. Its main purpose is to show what I conceive language to be, what is its variability in place and time, and what are its relations to other fundamental human interests—the problem of thought, the nature of the historical ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... concentration and the dosage are important factors in the amount of harm alcohol may do to the individual. The concern of evolutionists, therefore, is with the man who is so constituted that the mental effects of alcohol acting directly on the brain are pleasing, and we must show that there is a congenital variability in this mental quality, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... feet meant mere wading, though there was some variability among the sand ridges of the bottom; but the water, at its deepest, never reached their shoulders. Their small accident now began to take on the character of a ceremonial—an immersion incident to some religious ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... we can persuade or induce the mighty beings who control it to deflect, for our benefit, the current of events from the channel in which they would otherwise flow. Now this implied elasticity or variability of nature is directly opposed to the principles of magic as well as of science, both of which assume that the processes of nature are rigid and invariable in their operation, and that they can as little be turned from their ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... reason: every one admits this, and we shall explain it further in a future book. But let us proclaim at once, that in regard to moral action, as in regard to health, no exact rules can be laid down. Amidst perpetual variability, each agent must in the last resort be guided by the circumstances of the case. Still, however, something may be done to help him. Here Aristotle proceeds to introduce the famous doctrine of the MEAN. We may err, as regards health, both by too much and by too little of exercise, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails now that the law of Natural Selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of Natural Selection, than in the course which the wind blows." There again Darwin fell into a mistake, because he confused an intermediate with a final cause. Even if Natural Selection were ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... that in any case the gemination cannot be a work of permanent character, it being certain that in a given instance it may change its appearance and dimensions from one season to another. If we should assume such a work, a certain variability would not be excluded from it; for example, extensive agricultural labor and irrigation upon a large scale. Let us add, further, that the intervention of intelligent beings might explain the geometrical appearance of the gemination, but it is not at all necessary for such a purpose. The ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... and botanists are not only more at a loss than ever how to define a species, but even to determine whether it has any real existence in nature, or is a mere abstraction of the human intellect, some contending that it is constant within certain narrow and impassable limits of variability, others that it is capable of indefinite and ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell

... know what to do with Roy: how to treat him; how to bring him up. He may improve as he grows older. Perhaps to his unfortunate infirmity may be ascribed his uncertainty and his variability of temper and disposition. It is possible that he cannot hear even when he wants to hear. It is not impossible that he is making-believe all the time. One great, good thing can be said for Roy: he is never really cross; he never snaps; he never snarls; he never ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton

... wore a cotton dress of a forget-me-not blue which suits her pale colouring. She looked quite pretty. When I told her so she blushed like a girl. I was glad to see her in gay humour again. Of late months she has been subject to moodiness, emotional variability, which has somewhat ruffled the smooth surface of our companionship. But to-day there has been no trace of "temperament." She has shown herself the pleasant, witty Judith she knows I like her to be, with ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... sufficient for my purpose to have secured the admission that the peasants of Europe do not as a whole use their mental powers in a much more logical or abstract manner than do primitive people. I maintain that such superiority as they have is due to differences (1) of environment and (2) of variability. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... likeness; but the attempt to explain the meaning of those words ends in nothing but repeating them. One result is the curious combination of the absolute and the indefinitely variable. We get absolute statements because the ultimate constituents are taken to be absolutely constant. We have indefinite variability because they may be collocated in any conceivable or inconceivable way. This becomes evident when we have to do with organisms of any kind: with characters or societies an organism varies, but varies along definite lines. But, on Mill's showing, the organic relations correspond to the indefinitely ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... diameter with bright but not very lofty walls, situated among the mountains near the S.W. side of the Mare Serenitatis. It is surrounded by a region remarkable for its great variability in brightness. There is a large bright ring-plain on the W., with a less conspicuous companion on ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger

... and the common desire for tangible investments of a popularly sanctioned sort. All staple producers were engaged in a venturesome business. Crops were highly uncertain, and staple prices even more so. The variability of earnings inured men to the taking of risks and spurred them to borrow money and buy more of both lands and slaves even at inflated prices in the hope of striking it rich with a few years' crops. On the other hand when profits actually accrued, there was nothing available ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... centuries, are far less valuable than those for which his observations furnished the material. He discovered the third and fourth inequalities of the moon in longitude, called respectively the variation and the annual equation, also the variability of the motion of the moon's nodes and the inclination of its orbit to the ecliptic. He obtained an improved value of the constant of precession, and did good service by rejecting the idea that it ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant

... individual, it is either in the case of miscellaneous aggregations, such as atmospheric air or rock, composed of heterogeneous substances, and not constituting or belonging to any real Kind,(191) or it is in the case of organic beings. In them, indeed, there is variability in a high degree. Animals of the same species and race, human beings of the same age, sex, and country, will be most different, for example, in face and figure. But organized beings (from the extreme complication of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... repeated in each test, even though no error be made. The most that can be accomplished is to find average values, the amount of variation above and below, and the laws which govern the variation. On account of the great variability in strength of different specimens of wood even from the same stick and appearing to be alike, it is important to eliminate as far as possible all extraneous factors liable to influence the ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record

... accepted, as long as they display an intelligent conception of the spirit of the style as a whole. Because of this lack of finality, however, it is impossible to analyze each of the letter forms as we were able to do with the Roman alphabet in Chapter I; yet this very variability and variety constitute at once the peculiar beauty of Gothic and the great difficulty of so drawing it as to preserve its ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown

... maintain that all variation is due to such exposure, though the manner in which the environment acts is as yet quite unknown. At the present time there is hardly any question in biology of more importance than this of the nature and causes of variability; and the reader will find in the present work an able discussion on the whole subject, which will probably lead him to pause before he admits the existence of an innate tendency to perfectibility"—or towards ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... become elongated under proper conditions of life. Most of the species of Phaseolus are twiners; but certain varieties of the P. multiflorus produce (Leon, p. 681) two kinds of shoots, some upright and thick, and others thin and twining. I have seen striking instances of this curious case of variability in "Fulmer's dwarf forcing-bean," which occasionally produced a single long ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin

... bent and external impulse, all animals of the same species resemble each other; thus, the hunter who knows the red-deer in his father's forest, may know in every forest on earth how the stag will behave in any given case. The better a genus is fitted for variability in the conformation of its individuals, the higher is the rank it is entitled to hold in the graduated series of creatures capable of development; and it is precisely that wonderful many-sidedness of his inner life, and of its outward manifestation, which assigns ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... this year has fixed itself very firmly in my mind, and I hope that it has done so from my conscience having been afterwards sorely troubled by it; it is curious as showing that apparently I was interested at this early age in the variability of plants! I told another little boy (I believe it was Leighton, who afterwards became a well-known lichenologist and botanist), that I could produce variously coloured polyanthuses and primroses by watering them with certain coloured fluids, which was of course a monstrous ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin

... senses, physiognomy, and intellectual and moral manifestations), the authors arrived at the conclusion that the physical, anatomical, physiological, functional, and sensory characters of the female show a lower degree of variability than those ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... Frankfort-on-the-Main; studied medicine at Goettingen; devoted himself to the study of zoology, the first-fruit of which was a treatise on the "Development of Diptera," and at length to the variability in organisms on which the theory of descent, with modifications, is based, the fruit of which was a series of papers published in 1882 under the title of "Studies on the Theory of Descent"; but it is with the discussions on the question of heredity that his name is most ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Spohr, may be interesting: "Spohr is of colossal stature, and looks more like an ancient Roman than a Brunswicker; Sivori is the antithesis of Spohr in stature. Spohr has the severe phlegmatic Teutonic aspect; Sivori has the flashing Italian eye and variability of feature. Spohr stands firm and still; Sivori's body is all on the swing, he tears the notes, as it were, from his instrument. Spohr's refinement and polish have been the characteristics of his playing; in Sivori it is wild energy—the soul in arms—the determination ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... wide in specimens from the Mancos River Valley. The generally darker color of the specimens from the Mancos Valley as compared with that of specimens from on the Mesa was noticed in the field, and is another example of the local variability of pocket gophers. The nine specimens listed by Youngman (1958:372) as from "Mesa Verde National Park," Mancos River, 6200 ft., are not here listed among "specimens examined" because possibly some, or all, of the nine were trapped on the east side ...
— Mammals of Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado • Sydney Anderson

... think, we entirely agree, except perhaps that I use too forcible language about selection. I entirely agree, indeed would almost go further than you when you say that climate (i.e. variability from all unknown causes) is "an active handmaid, influencing its mistress most materially." Indeed, I have never hinted that Natural Selection is "the efficient cause to the exclusion of the other," i.e. variability from Climate, etc. The very term SELECTION implies something, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... enough work to do, his spirits were light. He had a normal contempt for the temperament that is known as artistic, despised the variability of mood, ridiculed its April uncertainty. This is the man who hews his way through Life, making no wide passage perhaps, no definite pathway for the thousands who are looking for the broad and simple track; but cuts down, ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... important pre-requisite of a prevailing nation is that it should have passed out of the first stage of civilisation into the second stage—out of the stage where permanence is most wanted into that where variability is most wanted; and you cannot comprehend why progress is so slow till you see how hard the most obstinate tendencies of human nature make ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... change somewhat in purchasing power; and how to remedy this has been the great problem with the greatest minds among financiers—with all financiers, in fact, who are more anxious for justice than greedy of gain. But surely there should not be added to an innate variability that much greater variability due to the mischievous interference of interested parties, through the power of the government. And herein is made manifest the reckless folly of the gold men in fighting ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter

... "sporting plants" in the vegetable kingdom, is still shrouded in mystery, and the question whether this is not precisely the ground on which Darwin and Nietzsche will meet, is an interesting one. The former says in his "Origin of Species", concerning the causes of variability: "...there are two factors, namely, the nature of the organism, and the nature of the conditions. THE FORMER SEEMS TO BE MUCH THE MORE IMPORTANT (The italics are mine.), for nearly similar variations sometimes arise under, as far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... commonplace, are full of suggestions of abnormality, of disaster, and of death. Young people suffer much from the want of comprehension and intelligent sympathy of their elders, much also from their own ignorance and too fervid imagination. The instability of the bodily tissues and the variability of their functions find a counterpart in the instability of the mental and moral natures and in the variability of their phenomena. Adolescents indeed "never continue in one stay;" left to themselves they will begin many pursuits, but persevere ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly

... here a distinct enough conception, though in an exceedingly undigested shape, first, of incessant Variability in organisms as an actual circumstance, which we may see exemplified in its extreme form in the monstrous deviations of structure that occur from time to time before our own eyes; second, of Adaptation to environment as the determining condition of Survival among the forms that ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... of his weapons and ornaments: often persevering for immense periods in carving stones, &c. Emotionally, too, he shows persistence not only in the motives prompting these small industries, but also in certain of his passions—especially in that of revenge. Hence, in studying the degrees of mental variability shown us in the daily lives of the different races, we must ask how far variability characterizes the whole mind, and how far it holds only of parts of ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... sunt, subjects only as centers of relation, as the scene or foundation of a representative content, cui subjecta sunt: outside my thoughts body does not exist as body, nor I myself as soul). (2) The variability of the objects of perception. (3) Sensationalism—all specific differences in consciousness must be conceived as differences in degree, all higher mental processes and states, including thought, as the perceptions and experiences, transformed according ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... remarkable anticipations of modern science were made by Cardan. He believed that inorganic matter was animated, and that all nature was a progressive evolution. Thus his statement that all animals were originally worms implies the indefinite variability of species, just as his remark that inferior metals were unsuccessful attempts of nature to produce gold, might seem to foreshadow the idea of the transmutation of metals under the influence of radioactivity. It must be remembered that such guesses had ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... eyes were, not without reason, her dearest bit of vanity. The tint of the clear iris suggested sea shallows on a day of light cloud—more green than blue; yet with just enough of the sky's own colour to lend the charm of a constant variability, that harmonised admirably with her iridescent changes ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... to him in April, 1861, when the North seemed to rise as one man, had undergone a reaction. Eight months without a single striking military success, together with the startling defeat at Bull Run, had had their inevitable effect. Democracies are mercurial; variability seems to be part of the price of freedom. With childlike faith in their cause, the Northern people, in midsummer, were crying, "On to Richmond!" In the autumn, stung by defeat, they were ready to cry, "Down ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... ore." One advantage of this is obvious:—The dry ore has a constant composition, and the results of all assays of it will be the same, no matter when made; the moisture, however, may vary from day to day, and would be influenced by a passing shower of rain. It is well to limit this variability to the moisture by considering it apart, and thus avoid having the percentage, say, of copper rising and falling under the influence of ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... mother-in-law, Manfredina Doria, and her two daughters. Astronomers were treading for the first time in the right track after two thousand years, since the days of Pythagoras, as may be seen by the hypothesis of Domenico Maria, about the variability of the axis of the globe, and by the labours of Mueller, better known by the Latin name derived from his native town of Koenigsberg, Regiomontanus, who almost anticipated Copernicus in discovering the true system of the universe. Few before or since have so excelled in mathematics and ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... in chronological order after Bacon, follows him in no other respect than that of time. He is entirely original in arriving at the doctrine of the variability of organic types, and in enouncing it after long hesitation, during which one can watch the labour of a great intelligence freeing itself little by little from the yoke ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... most disquieting aspects of the advance was its variability and unpredictability. To the west, it had hardly gone five blocks from the Dinkman house, while southward it had crossed Santa Monica Boulevard and was nosing toward Melrose. Its growth had been measured and checked, over and over ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... of a slight degree of variability. It is evidently a star of enormous actual magnitude, for its parallax escapes trustworthy measurement. It can only be ranked among the very first of the light-givers of the visible universe. Spectroscopically ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... immense membrane of the toes can be for the purpose of swimming only, and the account of the Chinaman, that it flew down from the tree, becomes more credible. This is, I believe, the first instance known of a "flying frog," and it is very interesting to Darwinians as showing that the variability of the toes which have been already modified for purposes of swimming and adhesive climbing, have been taken advantage of to enable an allied species to pass through the air like the flying lizard. It would appear to be a new species of the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... of our domestic races of animals and plants leads to the following conclusions. Changed conditions of life are of the highest possible importance in causing variability, both by acting directly on the organisation, and indirectly by affecting the reproductive system. Spontaneous variation of unknown origin plays its part. Some, perhaps a great, effect may be attributed to the increased use or ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... perfection, comme de bonte ou de maturite dans la nature: celui qui le sent et qui l'aime, a le gout parfait; celui qui ne le sent pas, et qui aime au deca ou au dela, a le gout defectueux. Il y a donc un bon et un mauvais gout, et l'on dispute des gouts avec fondement." Delicacy and variability or variety were appended as attributes of taste. This French definition of the Italian word was speedily adopted in England, where it became "good taste," and we find it used in this sense in Italian and German writers of ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... no insight nor variability of charity; her mind, bounded by the municipal republic of Baltimore, which esteems itself the world, particularly among its mercantile aristocracy, who live like the old Venetian nobility among their flat lagoons, and do commerce ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... been a good deal of divergence in the opinion of explorers as to the temperature of Tierra del Fuego. Weddell attributes this to the different seasons of their visits, and the variability of the winds. When he was there and the wind was in the south the thermometer was never more than two or three degrees above zero, whereas when the wind came from the north it was as hot as July in England. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... or purgative function regulates irritability, which may otherwise be drained or vented in wrong directions, exactly as Breuer[24] shows psychic traumata may, if overtense, result in "hysterical convulsions." It is also the best form of self-expression; and its advantage is variability, following the impulsion of the idle, perhaps hyperemic, and overnourished centers most ready to act. It involves play illusion and is the great agent of unity and totalization of body and soul, while its social function develops solidarity and unison of action between ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... people and their feelings, less given to pursuing, capturing and maltreating living things, and more given to nursing, comforting and relieving them than is the male. H. Ellis considers the chief differences to be the less tendency to variability, the greater affectability, and the greater primitiveness of the female mind, and the less ability shown by women in dealing with the more remote and abstract interests in life. All the authors emphasize the smallness of the differences; ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... be given by any number of tabular statements or cases of extreme individual variation, but we obtain a basis of fact by which to test the statements and objections usually put forth on the subject of specific variability; and it will be found that, throughout the work, I have frequently to appeal to these diagrams and the facts they illustrate, just as Darwin was accustomed to appeal to the facts of variation among dogs ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... orthography have been definitely established, especially with regard to the older Latin, which will guide future editors. And the labours of Ritschl, Corssen, and many others, cannot fail to bring to light the most important laws of variability which have affected the spelling of Latin words, so far as the variation has not depended on mere ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... your variability: but I stick to my opinion about your veracity," says Jurgen, for all that he was upon the verge of hysteria. "Yes, if lies could choke people that shaggy throat ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... point of view, and not, as with Meredith, man's and woman's at once. He sees all that is irresponsible for good and evil in a woman's character, all that is unreliable in her brain and will, all that is alluring in her variability. He is her apologist, but always with a certain reserve of private judgment. No one has created more attractive women, women whom a man would have been more likely to love, or more likely to regret loving. Jude the Obscure is perhaps the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... illustration of the simple and effectual means by which animals are brought into harmony with the rest of nature. That slight amount of variability in every species, which we often look upon as something accidental or abnormal, or so insignificant as to be hardly worthy of notice, is yet the foundation of all those wonderful and harmonious resemblances which play such ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... the extreme variability of the sheep under culture, it is generally supposed that the innumerable domestic breeds have all been derived from the few wild species; but the whole question is involved in obscurity. According to Darwin, sheep have been domesticated ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... made myself master of the central idea of the 'Origin,' was, "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" I suppose that Columbus' companions said much the same when he made the egg stand on end. The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley

... of the South African plateau, whether river, spruit, sluit, or donga, have, in addition to their extreme variability, another marked and almost universal peculiarity. Running in deep beds, of which the banks are usually level with the surrounding country, and the sides terraced from the highest to the lowest water-mark, they constitute natural entrenchments which are generally ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... port of Palos, first for the Canary Islands. These he left on the 6th September, and steered due west. On the 13th of that month, Columbus observed that the needle of the compass pointed due north, and thus drew attention to the variability of the compass. By the 21st September his men became mutinous and tried to force him to return. He induced them to continue, and four days afterwards the cry of "Land! land!" was heard, which kept up their spirits for several days, till, on the 1st October, large numbers of birds were ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... discussion of the endogamous and exogamous types of society. Whatever may have been the origin of exogamy, the survival of the exogamous type in progressive societies may easily be explained on the ground of superior adaptability, variability and plasticity, which enables such societies to survive a change of environment while the more rigid structure of the endogamous clan brings ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner

... five months, and then reappears, and during the ensuing three months it regains by degrees its former brilliancy. Mira completes a cycle of its changes in 334 days, and, during that time, oscillates between a star of the second and tenth magnitude. The variability of Mira Ceti was first observed by David Fabricius ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... such endless and well-nigh insensible gradations that even our great special student of the Compositae pronounces the accurate and final classification of this particular genus a labor beyond his powers. What shall we say of this habit of variability? Is it a mark of strength or of weakness? Which is nobler,—to be true to one's ideal in spite of circumstances, or to conquer circumstances by suiting one's self to them? Who shall decide? Enough that the twin-flower and the star-flower each obeys its ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... wrought in human life. Here a new element comes in that entirely changes the economy of nature in this regard. The individuality of every human soul is this new factor, and because of it, of its infinite variability—because no two atoms that are cast into the crucible of life are ever the same, or can be wrought into character by the same means—because of this, no fixed rules can ever be laid down for evolving a definite result, in the realm of soul, by ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... variable thickness of those structures (muscular and osseous, &c.,) which invest the thoracic walls. Uniformity of sound must, owing to these facts, be as materially interrupted, as it certainly is, in consequence of the variable contents of the cavity. The variability of the healthy thoracic sounds will, therefore, be too often likely to be mistaken for that of disease, if we forget to admit these facts, as instanced in the former state. Considering the form of the ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise

... women have a maternal instinct does not nullify the fact that a small number have none whatever. One of the facts of life, not taken into account with a fraction of its true significance and importance, is the variability of the race, the wide range of abilities, instincts, emotions, aspirations, and tastes. A quality is said to be normal when the majority of the group possess it, but it may be utterly lacking in a smaller number who are ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... the unity of the Negritos and the Papuans they recognized that the Papuans were diversified and presented a variety of types, but Meyer regards this not as pointing to a crossing of different elements but as revealing simply the variability of the race. He continues (p. 80): "As the external habitus of the Negritos must be declared as almost identical with that of the Papuans, differences in form of the skull, the size of the body, and such like have the less weight in opposition ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed

... love; but might she not by judicious diplomacy, she sometimes asked herself, manage to enjoy this, without taking the last irrevocable step? Her position was not enviable, the state of feeling embodied in the words "she would and she wouldn't" always betokening in the subject a wearing variability of mind posture; but compared with the anguish of Balzac, whom she was slowly killing by her vacillations, her woes do ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... the required amount of liquids, gastrostomy should be done at once and esophagoscopic treatment postponed until water hunger has been relieved. Gastrostomy aids in the treatment by putting the esophagus at rest, and by affording the means of maintaining a high degree of nutrition unhampered by the variability or efficiency of the swallowing function. Careful diet and gentle treatment will, however, usually avoid gastrostomy. The diet in the gastrostomy-fed patients should be as varied as in oral alimentation; even solids of the consistency of mashed potatoes, if previously forced through ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... between the Ornithomyia and bird. The fact that fleas are so common and universal—for in all lands we have them, like the poor, always with us; and that they are found on all mammals, from the king of beasts to the small modest mouse—seems to show a great amount of variability and adaptiveness, as well as a very high antiquity. It has often been reported that fleas have been found hopping on the ground in desert places, where they could not have been dropped by man or beast; and it has been assumed that ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... his way. Nor, to this comparison, can it be an adequate objection, that the twistings of the town are always the same, and those of human nature subject to variation. The grand points of human nature are the same to-day they were a thousand years ago. The only variability in them is ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... for in the two processes the mind finds itself again. The confusion between them is therefore natural. To escape it, different names would have to be given to the two kinds of order, and that is not easy, because of the variety and variability of the forms they take. The order of the second kind may be defined as geometry, which is its extreme limit; more generally, it is that kind of order that is concerned whenever a relation of necessary determination is found between causes and effects. It evokes ideas ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... member of the Slav family, has in his character all the childishness and inconsistency of a beardless race. He has courage, spirit, and strength; but, cursed with instability, that courage, strength, and energy have neither method nor guidance; for the Pole displays a variability resembling that of the winds which blow across that vast plain broken with swamps; and though he has the impetuosity of the snow squalls that wrench and sweep away buildings, like those aerial avalanches he is lost in the first pool and melts into water. Man ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... capable of change to a greater or less extent. When in a state of nature variations are comparatively slow and infrequent, but when in a state of domestication they occur much oftener and to a much greater extent. The greater variability in the latter case is doubtless owing, in some measure, to our domestic productions being reared under conditions of life not so uniform, and different from, those to which the parent species was exposed in a ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... the same work we read: "It has been seen in the last chapter that amongst organic beings in a state of nature there is some individual variability. * * * But the mere existence of individual variability and of some few well-marked varieties, though necessary as a foundation of the work, helps us but little in understanding how species arise in nature. How have all those exquisite adaptations ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... nature to keep the ocean in good health. The same may be affirmed with respect to the winds. Wind is a substance, as well as water, capable of great expansion, but still a substance. A certain portion has been allotted to the world for its convenience, and there is a regularity in its apparent variability. It must be self-evident, when all the wind has been collected to the eastward, by the north-west gales which prevail in winter, that it must be crowded and penned up in that quarter, and, from its known expansive powers, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Butler, in his Evolution, Old and New, effectually disposes of Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire's statement that at the beginning of his work (tome iv., 1753) he affirms the fixity of species, while from 1761 to 1766 he declares for variability. But Butler asserts from his reading of the first edition that "from the very first chapter onward he leant strongly to mutability, even if he did not openly avow his belief in it.... The reader who turns to Buffon himself will find that the idea that Buffon took a less advanced position ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... field of general interest. But science can accept no broken chains. For all the thrill of mystery, we may not forget that the hypnotic state is but highly strung attention,—at the last turn of the screw,—and that the alternation of personality is after all no more than the highest power of variability of mood. In regard to the annihilation of the sense of personality, it may be said that no connection with daily experience is at first apparent. Scientists, as well as the world at large, have been inclined to look on the loss of the sense of personality as pathological; and yet it may be maintained ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... wisely putting himself into harmony by his own free-will. He is even as a wisp in the wind, moved by every breath of passion, acting now by his will and now by his instincts, erring with one, only to retrieve by the other, falling by one, only to rise by the other—a creature of incalculable variability. We have the consolation of knowing that evolution is ever in action, that the ideal is a light that cannot fail. He will not forever balance thus between good and evil. When this jangle of free-will instinct ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... Besides star maps, clusters, too, and special portions of the heavens are being photographed by the Rev. T.E. Espin, of West Kirby; and such pictures will be of the greatest value, not only in fixing the position at a given date, but also aiding in the determination of magnitude, color, variability, proper motion, and even of the orbits of double and multiple stars, and the possible discovery of new planets and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... perfectly true that we cannot test and measure the material of psychology with the same definiteness and accuracy that the chemist applies to the subject-matter of his department; but that may be due to want of knowledge, or to the extreme complexity and variability of the matter with which we are dealing. And if it were true that the same tests could not be applied in psychology that are applied elsewhere, this would be no cause for scientific despair. It would only mean that fresh tests would have to be devised for a new group ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... l'economie politique. I will examine further on the question as to what this sole source or basis of the varying economic conditions is, but the important point now is to emphasize their constant variability, from the pre-historic ages down to historical times and to the different ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... the corresponding lack of leverage when its head hits the ground sidewise; the instances I have noted may have been those in which the lion's spring landed too far back to throw the victim properly; or perhaps they were merely examples of the great variability in the habits of ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... Llywarch Hen from 'the cruel prison of the earth, from the abode of death, from the loveless land.' The salient features, therefore, of the Celtic conceptions of the other-world are their consonance with the suggestions made by Celtic scenery to the Celtic imagination, the vagueness and variability of these conceptions in different minds and in different moods, the absence of any ethical considerations beyond the incentive given to bravery by the thought of immortality, and the remarkable development of a sense of possible inter-relations between the two worlds, whether ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl

... have yet met with where I somewhat differ from your views are in the chapter on the Causes of Variability, in which I think several of your arguments are unsound: but this is too long a subject ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... authority. He rather prides himself on having never allowed himself, by any philosophy, to be turned away from his first and natural sic opinions, and from the condition in which God had placed him; being well aware of his own variability volubilite. 'Thus I have, by the grace of God, remained wholly attached, without internal agitation and troubles of conscience, to the ancient beliefs of our religion, during the conflict of so many sects and party divisions which ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... according to which He is said to know those things which are in act in some period of time. But from the fact that He knows some things might be which are not, or that some things might not be which are, it does not follow that His knowledge is variable, but rather that He knows the variability of things. If, however, anything existed which God did not previously know, and afterwards knew, then His knowledge would be variable. But this could not be; for whatever is, or can be in any period of time, is known by God in His eternity. Therefore from the fact ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... "socialist labor," or "labor" parties. Socialism in this sense of a party organization, or movement, is very different from a social philosophy. In its partizan phase socialism exhibits all of the baffling variability and elusiveness that it does in its other aspects. However, in its printed program the socialist party sets forth both a socialist philosophy and an ideal of active socialism in their ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... has a real importance. It emphasizes a remarkable characteristic of Lord Northcliffe's variability. It emphasizes the romantic quality of his mind. Nothing would please him more than to discover in one of his office boys an editor for The Times. His own life has given him almost a novelette's passion for romance. He lives in that atmosphere. Few men I have known are so free from ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... which Darwin notes, that our cultivated plants and domestic breeds date from so ancient a time that we know really nothing of their origin, has an important bearing on the great antiquity of man, then scarcely imagined, now generally accepted; seeing that all domestic development depends on a variability in living creatures, which man can not produce, but can only ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... he had hit upon the key to the origin of species in the slow and insensible changes which he fancied species underwent during the course of the geologic ages, and should thus have used the phrase as the title of his book. Had he called his work the "Variability of Species," or the "Modification of Species," it would not have been such a misnomer. Sudden mutations give us new varieties, but not new species. In fact, of the origin of species we know absolutely nothing, no more than we do about the origin of ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... reached by malaria, and in many resorts—and some of them most sunny and agreeable to the invalid—the deadliest fevers always lie in wait. There is great contrast between summer and winter, and exceeding variability in the same month. This variability is the parent of many diseases of the lungs, the bowels, and the liver. It is demonstrated now by long-continued observations that dampness and cold are not so ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... the legacies which it bequeaths. Though, like nearly all fevers, it is self-limited, tends to run its course and subside when the body has manufactured an antitoxin in sufficient amounts, it is unique in another respect, and that is in the extraordinary variability of the length of its "course." This may range anywhere from ten days to as many weeks, the "average expectation of life" being about six weeks. The agonizing intensity of the pain and acute edge of the discomfort usually subside in from five to fifteen ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... This variability of disposition, as Leicester well knew, was chiefly formidable to those who had a share in the Queen's affections, and who depended rather on her personal regard than on the indispensable services which they could render to her councils and her crown. The favour of Burleigh or of Walsingham, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... executing his designs, for he knew the youth and character of his wife, and he felt sure that if he were absent she would not be able to control herself; and he considered also the mutability and variability of the feminine character, and that the young gallants were accustomed to pass in front of his house to see his wife, even when he was at home,—whence he imagined that in his absence they might come closer, and peradventure even ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... shows varieties that are being propagated asexually, but have not yet been given variety names. Seedlings not propagated by budding or grafting, if recognized have been omitted because of individual variability. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various



Words linked to "Variability" :   ruggedness, changeability, evenness, variedness, changeableness, irregularity, rockiness, unevenness, variance, invariability, patchiness, variable



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