EVOLUTION

(Lat.evolvo, /««/oM.) In Physiology, the theory of generation, in which the germ is held to pre-exist in the parent, and its parts to be unfolded and expanded, but not actually formed, by the procreative acts. The principal and most consistent supporters of this theory maintain that the first created individuals contained the germs of all future po ible succe ors, succe ively included one within the other; and that generation is merely the act of unfolding, or an evolution of the germ: Swammerdam, Bonnet, Spallanzani, Haller, and Cuvier maintain this theory. The theory of evolution is opposed to that of epigenesis generation, in which the germ is held to be actually formed as well as expanded by virtue of the procreative powers of the parent. Its chief supporters are Harvey, Caspar Fred. Wolff, Blumenbach, and the profe ors of the modern German physiological school. Evolution, in Arithmetic and Algebra, denotes the extraction of roots. {See Extraction.) In Geometry, evolution is the opening or unfolding of a curve, EVOV^. In Music, the vowels used with the ending notes of the ecclesiastical tones: it is a word, for brevity's sake, formed of the six vowels in the words sceculorum amen, which are subjoined to the notes in Antiphonaries, ., to indicate that those are the ending notes. [s. 438]