In law, acceptance is the act by which a person binds himself to pay a bill of exchange drawn upon him. No acceptance is valid unless made in writing on the bill, but an acceptance may be either absolute or conditional, that is, stipulating some alteration in the amount or date of payment, or some condition to be fulfilled previous to payment. Research Acceptance
An acceptance test is a test operation of a new or modified device or system before usage by customers; ascertaining performance is to specifications. The FCCequivalent is 'Proof of Performance Testing'. Research Acceptance Test
Constituent Assembly was a name given to the first convention of the delegates of the French nation (1789-1791) to distinguish it from the legislative assembly of 1791. It drew up and obtained the acceptance of the first of the famous revolutionary constitutions. The Constituent Assembly of 1848 had a similar aim. Research Constituent Assembly
Dominant ideology means the principal ideas, values and morals in a given society. It is a particular version of reality but only one of a number of possible versions. These ideas may, however, be so well established that members of society believe them to be naturally given and beyond question (like when people thought the earth was flat). It is possible for different ideologies to exist within a given society different versions of reality but they lack the persuasive power and generalised acceptance enjoyed by the
dominant ideology. Marxist sociologists have pointed out that ideologies are rarely neutral, and serve to justify and support the interests of a powerful social group over less-powerful groups. The dominant ideology thesis asserts that working-class subordination in capitalist societies is largely the outcome of the cultural dominance achieved by the capitalist class. For Marx, the ruling ideas in a given society are always the ideas of the ruling social group. This theory is well supported by evidence of the general blindacceptance of the 'goodness' of pharmaceuticals purveyed by the immensely powerful pharmaceutical industries in the west, despite negative evidence such as dependency and side effects. Feminine sociologists make a similar point, but starting from a different premise. Some sociologists, such as Abercrombie, criticise the dominant ideology thesis, arguing that its proponents overestimate the extent to which different groups are integrated into the dominant culture, and underestimate the extent to which different
groups can generate ideas which run counter to dominant ideologies. However, evidence to support this criticism is sparse, but contrary evidence is widespread in the persecution of Copernicus, Galileo, and the 20th century AIDS dissidents, all of which questioned a dominant ideology only to be hounded and ridiculed at the time. Research Dominant Ideology
Ethics (from the Greek ethikos, 'dealing with nature'), in philosophy, can roughly be characterised as dividing into three parts: normative ethics; practical ethics; and meta-ethics. Normative ethics is the study of general normative principles or virtues. There are various doctrines concerning general normative principles. Altruists hold that when deciding how to act one ought to take the interests of others into account, as well as one's own. Hedonists hold that one ought to pursue only pleasure or happiness for oneself and others. The Golden Rule states that one should act towards others-as one wants them to act towards oneself. Consequentialists believe that one ought to do whatever will have the best consequences. (Utilitarianism, the doctrine that one ought to do whatever will maximise well-being or happiness is one version of consequentialism). Deontologists hold that the rightness or wrongness of actions is a matter of how they accord with moral rules, not of their consequences.
One must obey the rule that one ought to tell the truth, even if the consequences of breaking the rule would be better. Others hold that rightness or wrongness cannot be captured by a set of moral rules at all, and that it is not simply the consequences of an action which determine its moral status. Rather, one ought to be a virtuous person, one who has certain emotional reactions to various situations, reactions which lead one to behave in ways which are virtuous, honest, generous or kind. Practical ethics is the study of specific, practical ethical problems such as abortion, euthanasia, war and out treatment of animals. Clearly, the study of practical ethical issues is not independent of the study of general normative principles. General normative principles have implications for specific practical ethical problems, so acceptance of a general normative principle may lead one to change one's opinions about a specific practical issue, and one's firm conviction concerning a specific practical issue may lead one to see the failing of a general normative principle.
Meta-ethics is not concerned with which moral principles which we should follow, or how they relate to specific practical problems, but investigates abstract conceptual and metaphysical issues which arise for any moral principle. One meta-ethical claim is that any moral judgement concerning a particular is universal to all similar particulars. Emotivism claims that moral judgements are simply expressions of emotions. Descriptivism claims that moral terms are purely descriptive. Prescriptivism claims that moral terms have two independent components of meaning: descriptive and evaluative. Ethical relativism is the doctrine that moral judgements are true or false only relative to a particular context. Some hold that murder is wrong because God has commanded us not to commit murder. Ethical Intuitionism is the doctrine that there is a special faculty of moral intuition which gives us access to moral facts, to facts about how we ought to behave. The naturalistic fallacy is the supposed fallacy of inferring an 'ought' from an 'is': the issue
being whether ethics is objective or subjective. Research Ethics
Freemasonry is a term applied to the organization of a society calling themselves free and accepted masons, and all the mysteries therewith connected. This society, if we can reckon as one a number of societies, many of which are unconnected with each other, though they have the same origin and a great similarity in their constitution, extends over almost all parts of the globe, and is consequently of the greatest service to travellers who are members of the craft. According to its own peculiar language it. is founded on the practice of social and moral virtue. It claims the character of charity in the most extended sense; and brotherly love, relief, and truth are inculcated in it. Fable and imagination have traced back the origin of freemasonry to the Roman Empire, to the Pharaohs, the temple of Solomon, the Tower of Babel, and even to the building of Noah's ark. In reality it took its rise in the middle ages along with other incorporated crafts. Skilled masons moved from place to place to assist in building the magnificentsacred structures - cathedrals, abbeys, etc - which had their origin in these times, and it was essential for them to have some signs by which, on coming to a strange place, they could be recognized as real craftsmen and not impostors.
Freemasonry in its modified and more modern form dates only from the 17th century. The modern ritual is said to have been partly borrowed from the Rosicrucians and knights templars, and partly devised by Elias Ashmole, the founder of the Ashmolean Museum. Freemasonry, thus modified, soon began to spread over the world. In 1725 it was introduced into France by Lord Berwentwater; and in 1733 the first American lodge was established. The United Grand Lodge of England recognizes only two species of Freemasonry - the Craft and the Royal Arch; Scotch, Irish, American, and Continental lodges acknowledge higher degrees; but these, with the exception of the Mark Degree and not universal. In ordinary freemasonry there are three grades - those of apprentice, fellow-craft and master-mason - each of which has its peculiar initiation ceremonies; the last of these grades, however, is necessary to the attainment of the full rights and privileges of brotherhood.
At the end of the 20th century the Freemasonry were linked national organisations open to men and women over 21, united by the possession of a common code of morals and beliefs, and of certain traditional 'secrets'. Apart from requiring a belief in the ' Great Architect of the Universe' and acceptance of its moral code, English Freemasons maintain strict impartiality in politics and religion.
Freemasonry assumed a political and anticlerical character; it has been condemned by the papacy, and in certain countries was suppressed by the State. Both in Britain and the USA the freemasons maintain hospitals and institutions for their sick or aged members, and schools for their orphans. Research Freemasonry
The Renaissance was that change in the outlook of Europe which took place during the centuries from the fourteenth to the sixteenth. In its broadest sense the Renaissance affected every department of human life. But in its narrower sense it refers to the revival of the learning of ancient Greece, and to the effects of that revival on the arts and literature of modern peoples. The Church in the Middle Ages had taught men to revere authority and to find in her teaching an answer to all the problems of life, whereas the Greeks taught men to inquire and to explore rather than to accept, and to enjoy rather than to suffer. It was this attitude of mind, more than anything else, which shook the medieval world to its foundations. The views of the ancient Greeks, now re-born into the world, were in sharp contrast with the ideals of the Middle Ages. From these ideals many men for a time turned with a feeling of contempt.
The Renaissance was a many-sided movement: it deeply influenced learning and education, art and architecture, science and invention, geography and exploration, and, above all, religion. After the fall of Rome, a knowledge of Greek had rapidly died out in the West and no provision was made for its teaching similar to that made for Latin. In Italy, owing to the closeness of its relations with the East, the number of scholars, monks, and others, who learnt some Greek was greater than elsewhere. It is not, surprising, therefore, that the revival of learning received its main impulse from Italy. From the time of Petrarch and Boccaccio, Italian scholars became more and more devoted to ancient studies, and they began to visit Constantinople, where Greek learning had been preserved. There they hunted out, copied, and eagerly studied the precious manuscripts of the past, and these opened up a new world of thought. Further, from the time that the Turks' crossed from Asia into Europe, some of the Greeks themselves began to travel westwards and to accept well-paid teaching posts in the wealthy Italian cities. And, though the revival began in Italy, the new ideas were rapidly circulated by the new printing presses invented at the time, and every nation in due course played its part in the Renaissance.
The great and wealthy city of Florence was the centre of the Italian Renaissance. Cosimo de Medici, a merchant prince who became ruler of the city, was a patron of the New Learning, and he encouraged Greek scholars to settle in Florence. His grandson, Lorenzo de Medici, known as The Magnificent, loved to gather round him the learned men of the day; he spent 60,000 pounds a year on books; and he caused 200 rare manuscripts to be brought from the East to the Medici library. Rome was second only to Florence as a centre of the New Learning. The Popes themselves became great patrons of learning. Nicholas V founded the Vatican Library. When the son of Lorenzo de Medici became Pope as Leo X, the Renaissance in Rome reached its highest point. Leo made Rome, as he said, ' the capital of the world in literature, as it is in everything else'. He provided a hundred professors for his Greek college in Rome, and he brought his father's library to the Holy City. The library was afterwards restored to Florence by his cousin Clement VII, another member of this remarkable Medici family. The New Learning influenced England from the time of Edward IV, and it made great headway in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII when the scholars known as the Oxford Reformers were flourishing.
The first Englishman to bring Greek manuscripts to England was William Selling. One of his pupils was Thomas Linacre, who went to Florence and shared the instruction given to the young Medici princes; he read in the Vatican Library, and made the acquaintance of Aldo at Venice. Another Oxford teacher who drew his inspiration from Italian sources was William Grocyn, one of the first men to give lectures on Greek literature at his University.
One of Grocyn's pupils was John Colet, who visited Italy in 1496 and returned to lecture on the Gospels in the Greek original at Oxford. He and Sir Thomas More, were friends of Erasmus, a Dutch scholar of international fame. Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, was herself a patroness of the New Learning. She founded two Cambridge colleges, Christ's and St. John's, and two Lady Margaret Professorships of Divinity, one at Oxford and one at Cambridge. The Revival of Learning was one aspect of the Renaissance; the outburst of artistic energy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was another. The painters of the new period broke away from the conventional art of the Middle Ages and began again to draw from living models. As with the artists, so with the sculptors. Donatello 'went straight with his mighty chisel to original sources - to youth and manhood, and the love of living'. The great figures of that age - Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian - still dominate the history of European art. Examples of their works, and of many other Italian artists of the Renaissance, as well as of the Northern artists - Holbein, Durer, and others - are to be seen in the magnificent collection at the National Gallery.
It was natural that men who sought their inspiration from the Greeks should turn with renewed interest to classical architecture. The ruins of ancient Rome provided examples ready to hand; and soon churches planned like classical temples were rising in every city in Italy. St. Peter's, Rome, was designed by Bramante, and the famous dome added by Michelangelo. But great as was the enthusiasm for this architecture Renaissance architecture did not establish itself in England until the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, though Henry VII's tomb at WestminsterAbbey is an example of the Florentine art of the period.
The Renaissance period, filled as it was with a love of experiment, naturally produced a renewed interest in science. With the exception of isolated geniuses like Friar Roger Bacon, there were no medieval scientists worthy of the name. Practically no scientific discoveries had been made for centuries. Modern Science begins its history with the Renaissance and owes a good deal to Leonardo da Vinci. He was the first of a long line of experimenters whose work has continued to the present day. The greatest shock to the medieval notions of the universe was given by Copernicus. For two thousand years mankind with few exceptions had believed that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun revolved round our planet every twenty-four hours. Such had been the teaching of Ptolemy, the Greek scientist. Another Greek, Pythagoras, had questioned it, and advanced the extraordinary notion that the sun, not the earth, was the centre of the universe; but there were few who accepted his theory until Copernicus turned his attention to the 'solar system'. Through slits cut in the walls of his house, Copernicus watched the movements of the planets. Just before he died in 1543 he published a book - 'The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies' - giving to the world the results of his observations.
Twenty years later the famous Galileo was born at Pisa, and it was he who perfected the telescope. He lived to popularise the theory of Copernicus, but he was nearly put to death for his pains and was forced by the Court of Inquisition to recant. The Italian Galileo, and the English Newton who discovered the laws of gravity, were the two greatest scientists of the seventeenth century. In the realm of geographical discovery, no age in the world' s history was more momentous than the Age of the Renaissance. Columbus, who discovered America; Vasco De Gama, who found the Cape Route to India; Cabot, Cartier, and Cortez, the discoverers of Newfoundland, Canada, and Mexico; Balboa, who first sailed on the Pacific; Magellan, whose ship was the first to sail round the world - all these and many more make the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries an era without parallel in the annals of discovery.
The new ideas which came surging into the world during the Renaissance acted in many respects as disruptive forces. This was particularly true in the realm of religion. An unquestioning acceptance of authority - i.e. of the teaching of the Catholic Church - was the keynote of the medieval attitude to life, but an eager, inquiring generation began to question this attitude. Men, too, were shocked by the moral decay of the Church and of the Papacy; voices were raised demanding reforms. Some reformers, like Colet and Erasmus, tried to reconcile the new ideas with the Church of Rome and worked to reform it; others, of whom Luther was the greatest, rejected altogether its authority.
The revolution in European history known as the Reformation was an indirect result of the Renaissance - of the New Learning which invited comparison between the present and the past; of the invention of printing which scattered broadcast the new ideas; and again, of the growing idea of the Nation and with it the supremacy of the State. Research Renaissance
In American politics, a rider is an objectionable party measure, likely to be vetoed on its own merits, which is added to an important bill so as to secure its passage. The first use of the rider, of national importance, was the joining in 1820 of the bill for the admission of Maine to that permitting slavery in Missouri, so as to compel the acceptance of both or neither. These were afterward separated. The Army Appropriation Bill of 1856 had a rider attached prohibiting the
employment of Federal troops for the enforcement of territorial law in Kansas. The President signed this measure, but protested against the rider. In 1879 the Democrats in Congress attempted by riders on appropriation bills to bring to an end the Federal interference in Southern politics. President Hayes, by firm use of the veto, dealt a severe blow at this objectionable practice. State Constitutions have frequently prevented it by allowing the Governor to veto separate items in appropriation bills. Research Rider
Rolls-Royce is an international company best known for its luxurious cars, but also providing power systems, aero engines and marine propulsion equipment.
Rolls-Royce grew from the electrical and mechanical business established by Henry Royce in 1884. Royce built his first motor car in 1904 and in May of that year met Charles Rolls, whose company sold quality cars in London. Agreement was reached that Royce Limited would manufacture a range of cars to be exclusively sold by CS Rolls & Co they were to bear the name Rolls-Royce. In 1906 following success with the cars the Rolls-Royce company was formed to the launch of the six-cylinder SilverGhost car which, within a year, was hailed as 'the best car in the world'. At the start of the Great War, in response to the nation's needs, Royce designed his first aero engine the Eagle, which provided half of the total horsepower used in the air war by the allies. In 1953 Rolls-Royce entered the civil aviation market with the Dart in the Vickers Viscount which was to become the cornerstone of the universal acceptance of the gas turbine by the airline industry. Research Rolls-Royce More information about Rolls-Royce
In English ecclesiastical history, the Six Articles were articles imposed by a statute (often called the Bloody Statute) passed in 1541, the thirty-third year of the reign of Henry VIII. They decreed the acknowledgment of transubstantiation, the sufficiency of communion in one kind, the obligation of vows of chastity, the propriety of private masses, celibacy of the clergy, and auricular confession. Acceptance of these doctrines was made obligatory on all persons under the severest penalties; the act, however, was relaxed in 1544, and repealed in 1549. Research Six Articles
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Acceptance
More information about 
