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in anxiety. None of these findings are well replicated, with the possible exception of TMEM132D, COMT and MAOA. The epigenetic signature of BDNF, a gene that codes for a protein called brain derived neurotrophic factor that is found in the brain, has also been associated with anxiety and specific patterns of neural activity. and a receptor gene for BDNF called NTRK2 was associated with anxiety in a large genomewide investigation. The reason that most candidate gene findings have not replicated is that anxiety is a complex trait that is influenced by many genomic variants, each of which has a small effect on its own. Increasingly, studies of anxiety are using a hypothesisfree approach to look for parts of the genome that are implicated in anxiety using big enough samples to find associations with variants that have small effects. The largest explorations of the common genetic architecture of anxiety have been facilitated by the UK Biobank, the ANGST consortium and the CRC Fear, Anxiety and Anxiety Disorders.
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Medical conditions
Many medical conditions can cause anxiety. This includes conditions that affect the ability to breathe, like COPD and asthma, and the difficulty in breathing that often occurs near death. Conditions that cause abdominal pain or chest pain can cause anxiety and may in some cases be a somatization of anxiety; the same is true for some sexual dysfunctions. Conditions that affect the face or the skin can cause social anxiety especially among adolescents, and developmental disabilities often lead to social anxiety for children as well. Lifethreatening conditions like cancer also cause anxiety.
Furthermore, certain organic diseases may present with anxiety or symptoms that mimic anxiety. These disorders include certain endocrine diseases hypo and hyperthyroidism, hyperprolactinemia, metabolic disorders diabetes, deficiency states low levels of vitamin D, B2, B12, folic acid, gastrointestinal diseases celiac disease, nonceliac gluten sensitivity, inflammatory bowel disease, heart diseases, blood
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diseases anemia, cerebral vascular accidents transient ischemic attack, stroke, and brain degenerative diseases Parkinson's disease, dementia, multiple sclerosis, Huntington's disease, among others.
Substanceinduced
Several drugs can cause or worsen anxiety, whether in intoxication, withdrawal or as side effect. These include alcohol, tobacco, sedatives including prescription benzodiazepines, opioids including prescription pain killers and illicit drugs like heroin, stimulants such as caffeine, cocaine and amphetamines, hallucinogens, and inhalants.
While many often report selfmedicating anxiety with these substances, improvements in anxiety from drugs are usually shortlived with worsening of anxiety in the long term, sometimes with acute anxiety as soon as the drug effects wear off and tend to be exaggerated. Acute exposure to toxic levels of benzene may cause euphoria, anxiety, and irritability lasting up to 2 weeks after the exposure.
Psychological
Poor coping skills e.g., rigidityinflexible problem sol
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ving, denial, avoidance, impulsivity, extreme selfexpectation, negative thoughts, affective instability, and inability to focus on problems are associated with anxiety. Anxiety is also linked and perpetuated by the person's own pessimistic outcome expectancy and how they cope with feedback negativity. Temperament e.g., neuroticism and attitudes e.g. pessimism have been found to be risk factors for anxiety.
Cognitive distortions such as overgeneralizing, catastrophizing, mind reading, emotional reasoning, binocular trick, and mental filter can result in anxiety. For example, an overgeneralized belief that something bad "always" happens may lead someone to have excessive fears of even minimally risky situations and to avoid benign social situations due to anticipatory anxiety of embarrassment. In addition, those who have high anxiety can also create future stressful life events. Together, these findings suggest that anxious thoughts can lead to anticipatory anxiety as well as stressful events, which in turn ca
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use more anxiety. Such unhealthy thoughts can be targets for successful treatment with cognitive therapy.
Psychodynamic theory posits that anxiety is often the result of opposing unconscious wishes or fears that manifest via maladaptive defense mechanisms such as suppression, repression, anticipation, regression, somatization, passive aggression, dissociation that develop to adapt to problems with early objects e.g., caregivers and empathic failures in childhood. For example, persistent parental discouragement of anger may result in repressionsuppression of angry feelings which manifests as gastrointestinal distress somatization when provoked by another while the anger remains unconscious and outside the individual's awareness. Such conflicts can be targets for successful treatment with psychodynamic therapy. While psychodynamic therapy tends to explore the underlying roots of anxiety, cognitive behavioral therapy has also been shown to be a successful treatment for anxiety by altering irrational thoughts an
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d unwanted behaviors.
Evolutionary psychology
An evolutionary psychology explanation is that increased anxiety serves the purpose of increased vigilance regarding potential threats in the environment as well as increased tendency to take proactive actions regarding such possible threats. This may cause false positive reactions but an individual suffering from anxiety may also avoid real threats. This may explain why anxious people are less likely to die due to accidents. There is ample empirical evidence that anxiety can have adaptive value. Within a school, timid fish are more likely than bold fish to survive a predator.
When people are confronted with unpleasant and potentially harmful stimuli such as foul odors or tastes, PETscans show increased blood flow in the amygdala. In these studies, the participants also reported moderate anxiety. This might indicate that anxiety is a protective mechanism designed to prevent the organism from engaging in potentially harmful behaviors.
Social
Social risk factors
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for anxiety include a history of trauma e.g., physical, sexual or emotional abuse or assault, bullying, early life experiences and parenting factors e.g., rejection, lack of warmth, high hostility, harsh discipline, high parental negative affect, anxious childrearing, modelling of dysfunctional and drugabusing behaviour, discouragement of emotions, poor socialization, poor attachment, and child abuse and neglect, cultural factors e.g., stoic familiescultures, persecuted minorities including the disabled, and socioeconomics e.g., uneducated, unemployed, impoverished although developed countries have higher rates of anxiety disorders than developing countries.
A 2019 comprehensive systematic review of over 50 studies showed that food insecurity in the United States is strongly associated with depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. Foodinsecure individuals had an almost 3 fold risk increase of testing positive for anxiety when compared to foodsecure individuals.
Gender socialization
Contextual factors that
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are thought to contribute to anxiety include gender socialization and learning experiences. In particular, learning mastery the degree to which people perceive their lives to be under their own control and instrumentality, which includes such traits as selfconfidence, selfefficacy, independence, and competitiveness fully mediate the relation between gender and anxiety. That is, though gender differences in anxiety exist, with higher levels of anxiety in women compared to men, gender socialization and learning mastery explain these gender differences.
Treatment
The first step in the management of a person with anxiety symptoms involves evaluating the possible presence of an underlying medical cause, the recognition of which is essential in order to decide the correct treatment. Anxiety symptoms may mask an organic disease, or appear associated with or as a result of a medical disorder.
Cognitive behavioral therapy CBT is effective for anxiety disorders and is a first line treatment. CBT appears to be equall
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y effective when carried out via the internet. While evidence for mental health apps is promising, it is preliminary.
Psychopharmacological treatment can be used in parallel to CBT or can be used alone. As a general rule, most anxiety disorders respond well to firstline agents. Such drugs, also used as antidepressants, are the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and serotoninnorepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, that work by blocking the reuptake of specific neurotransmitters and resulting in the increase in availability of these neurotransmitters. Additionally, benzodiazepines are often prescribed to individuals with anxiety disorder. Benzodiazepines produce an anxiolytic response by modulating GABA and increasing its receptor binding. A third common treatment involves a category of drug known as serotonin agonists. This category of drug works by initiating a physiological response at 5HT1A receptor by increasing the action of serotonin at this receptor. Other treatment options include pregabalin, tricyc
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lic antidepressants, and moclobemide, among others.
Prevention
The above risk factors give natural avenues for prevention. A 2017 review found that psychological or educational interventions have a small yet statistically significant benefit for the prevention of anxiety in varied population types.
Pathophysiology
Anxiety disorder appears to be a genetically inherited neurochemical dysfunction that may involve autonomic imbalance; decreased GABAergic tone; allelic polymorphism of the catecholOmethyltransferase COMT gene; increased adenosine receptor function; increased cortisol.
In the central nervous system CNS, the major mediators of the symptoms of anxiety disorders appear to be norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, and gammaaminobutyric acid GABA. Other neurotransmitters and peptides, such as corticotropinreleasing factor, may be involved. Peripherally, the autonomic nervous system, especially the sympathetic nervous system, mediates many of the symptoms. Increased flow in the right parahippocampal regi
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on and reduced serotonin type 1A receptor binding in the anterior and posterior cingulate and raphe of patients are the diagnostic factors for prevalence of anxiety disorder.
The amygdala is central to the processing of fear and anxiety, and its function may be disrupted in anxiety disorders. Anxiety processing in the basolateral amygdala has been implicated with expansion of dendritic arborization of the amygdaloid neurons. SK2 potassium channels mediate inhibitory influence on action potentials and reduce arborization.
See also
List of people with an anxiety disorder
References
External links
Emotions
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Alan Alexander Milne ; 18 January 1882 31 January 1956 was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear WinniethePooh and for various poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work. Milne served in both World Wars, joining the British Army in World War I, and as a captain of the British Home Guard in World War II.
He was the father of bookseller Christopher Robin Milne, upon whom the character Christopher Robin is based.
Early life and military career
Alan Alexander Milne was born in Kilburn, London, to John Vine Milne, who was born in England, and Sarah Marie Milne ne Heginbotham. He grew up at Henley House School, 67 Mortimer Road now Crescent, Kilburn, a small independent school run by his father. One of his teachers was H. G. Wells, who taught there in 188990. Milne attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied on a mathematics scholarship, graduating with a B.A. in Mathema
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tics in 1903. He edited and wrote for Granta, a student magazine. He collaborated with his brother Kenneth and their articles appeared over the initials AKM. Milne's work came to the attention of the leading British humour magazine Punch, where Milne was to become a contributor and later an assistant editor. Considered a talented cricket fielder, Milne played for two amateur teams that were largely composed of British writers the Allahakbarries and the Authors XI. His teammates included fellow writers J. M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle and P. G. Wodehouse.
Milne joined the British Army in World War I and served as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and later, after a debilitating illness, the Royal Corps of Signals. He was commissioned into the 4th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, on 1 February 1915 as a second lieutenant on probation. His commission was confirmed on 20 December 1915. On 7 July 1916, he was injured in the Battle of the Somme and invalided back to England. Having recuperated,
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he was recruited into Military Intelligence to write propaganda articles for MI7 b between 1916 and 1918. He was discharged on 14 February 1919, and settled in Mallord Street, Chelsea. He relinquished his commission on 19 February 1920, retaining the rank of lieutenant.
After the war, he wrote a denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour 1934, which he retracted somewhat with 1940's War with Honour. During World War II, Milne was one of the most prominent critics of fellow English writer and Authors XI cricket teammate P. G. Wodehouse, who was captured at his country home in France by the Nazis and imprisoned for a year. Wodehouse made radio broadcasts about his internment, which were broadcast from Berlin. Although the lighthearted broadcasts made fun of the Germans, Milne accused Wodehouse of committing an act of near treason by cooperating with his country's enemy. Wodehouse got some revenge on his former friend e.g. in The Mating Season by creating fatuous parodies of the Christopher Robin poems in som
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e of his later stories, and claiming that Milne "was probably jealous of all other writers.... But I loved his stuff."
Milne married Dorothy "Daphne" de Slincourt 18901971 in 1913 and their son Christopher Robin Milne was born in 1920. In 1925, Milne bought a country home, Cotchford Farm, in Hartfield, East Sussex.
During World War II, Milne was a captain in the British Home Guard in Hartfield Forest Row, insisting on being plain "Mr. Milne" to the members of his platoon. He retired to the farm after a stroke and brain surgery in 1952 left him an invalid, and by August 1953, "he seemed very old and disenchanted." Milne died in January 1956, aged 74.
Literary career
1903 to 1925
After graduating from Cambridge University in 1903, A. A. Milne contributed humorous verse and whimsical essays to Punch, joining the staff in 1906 and becoming an assistant editor.
During this period he published 18 plays and three novels, including the murder mystery The Red House Mystery 1922. His son was born in August 1920
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and in 1924 Milne produced a collection of children's poems, When We Were Very Young, which were illustrated by Punch staff cartoonist E. H. Shepard. A collection of short stories for children A Gallery of Children, and other stories that became part of the WinniethePooh books, were first published in 1925.
Milne was an early screenwriter for the nascent British film industry, writing four stories filmed in 1920 for the company Minerva Films founded in 1920 by the actor Leslie Howard and his friend and story editor Adrian Brunel. These were The Bump, starring Aubrey Smith; Twice Two; Five Pound Reward; and Bookworms. Some of these films survive in the archives of the British Film Institute. Milne had met Howard when the actor starred in Milne's play Mr Pim Passes By in London.
Looking back on this period in 1926, Milne observed that when he told his agent that he was going to write a detective story, he was told that what the country wanted from a "Punch humorist" was a humorous story; when two years later
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he said he was writing nursery rhymes, his agent and publisher were convinced he should write another detective story; and after another two years, he was being told that writing a detective story would be in the worst of taste given the demand for children's books. He concluded that "the only excuse which I have yet discovered for writing anything is that I want to write it; and I should be as proud to be delivered of a Telephone Directory con amore as I should be ashamed to create a Blank Verse Tragedy at the bidding of others."
1926 to 1928
Milne is most famous for his two Pooh books about a boy named Christopher Robin after his son, Christopher Robin Milne 19201996, and various characters inspired by his son's stuffed animals, most notably the bear named WinniethePooh. Christopher Robin Milne's stuffed bear, originally named Edward, was renamed Winnie after a Canadian black bear named Winnie after Winnipeg, which was used as a military mascot in World War I, and left to London Zoo during the war. "The P
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ooh" comes from a swan the young Milne named "Pooh". E. H. Shepard illustrated the original Pooh books, using his own son's teddy Growler "a magnificent bear" as the model. The rest of Christopher Robin Milne's toys, Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, Roo and Tigger, were incorporated into A. A. Milne's stories, and two more characters Rabbit and Owl were created by Milne's imagination. Christopher Robin Milne's own toys are now on display in New York where 750,000 people visit them every year.
The fictional Hundred Acre Wood of the Pooh stories derives from Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, South East England, where the Pooh stories were set. Milne lived on the northern edge of the forest at Cotchford Farm, , and took his son walking there. E. H. Shepard drew on the landscapes of Ashdown Forest as inspiration for many of the illustrations he provided for the Pooh books. The adult Christopher Robin commented "Pooh's Forest and Ashdown Forest are identical." Popular tourist locations at Ashdown F
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orest include Galleon's Lap, The Enchanted Place, the Heffalump Trap and Lone Pine, Eeyores Sad and Gloomy Place, and the wooden Pooh Bridge where Pooh and Piglet invented Poohsticks.
Not yet known as Pooh, he made his first appearance in a poem, "Teddy Bear", published in Punch magazine in February 1924 and republished in When We Were Very Young. Pooh first appeared in the London Evening News on Christmas Eve, 1925, in a story called "The Wrong Sort of Bees". WinniethePooh was published in 1926, followed by The House at Pooh Corner in 1928. A second collection of nursery rhymes, Now We Are Six, was published in 1927. All four books were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. Milne also published four plays in this period. He also "gallantly stepped forward" to contribute a quarter of the costs of dramatising P. G. Wodehouse's A Damsel in Distress. The World of Pooh won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958.
1929 onwards
The success of his children's books was to become a source of considerable annoyance to Milne, w
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hose selfavowed aim was to write whatever he pleased and who had, until then, found a ready audience for each change of direction he had freed prewar Punch from its ponderous facetiousness; he had made a considerable reputation as a playwright like his idol J. M. Barrie on both sides of the Atlantic; he had produced a witty piece of detective writing in The Red House Mystery although this was severely criticised by Raymond Chandler for the implausibility of its plot in his essay The Simple Art of Murder in the eponymous collection that appeared in 1950. But once Milne had, in his own words, "said goodbye to all that in 70,000 words" the approximate length of his four principal children's books, he had no intention of producing any reworkings lacking in originality, given that one of the sources of inspiration, his son, was growing older.
Another reason Milne stopped writing children's books, and especially about WinniethePooh, was that he felt "amazement and disgust" over the fame his son was exposed to, and
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said that "I feel that the legal Christopher Robin has already had more publicity than I want for him. I do not want CR Milne to ever wish that his name were Charles Robert."
In his literary home, Punch, where the When We Were Very Young verses had first appeared, Methuen continued to publish whatever Milne wrote, including the long poem "The Norman Church" and an assembly of articles entitled Year In, Year Out which Milne likened to a benefit night for the author.
In 1930, Milne adapted Kenneth Grahame's novel The Wind in the Willows for the stage as Toad of Toad Hall. The title was an implicit admission that such chapters as Chapter 7, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn," could not survive translation to the theatre. A special introduction written by Milne is included in some editions of Grahame's novel.
Milne and his wife became estranged from their son, who came to resent what he saw as his father's exploitation of his childhood and came to hate the books that had thrust him into the public eye. Christop
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her's marriage to his first cousin, Lesley de Slincourt, distanced him still further from his parents Lesley's father and Christopher's mother had not spoken to each other for 30 years.
Death and legacy
Commemoration
A. A. Milne died at his home in Hartfield, Sussex, on 31 January 1956, nearly two weeks after his 74th birthday. After a memorial service in London, his ashes were scattered in a crematorium's memorial garden in Brighton.
The rights to A. A. Milne's Pooh books were left to four beneficiaries his family, the Royal Literary Fund, Westminster School and the Garrick Club. After Milne's death in 1956, thirteen days after his 74th birthday, his widow sold her rights to the Pooh characters to Stephen Slesinger, whose widow sold the rights after Slesinger's death to the Walt Disney Company, which has made many Pooh cartoon movies, a Disney Channel television show, as well as Poohrelated merchandise. In 2001, the other beneficiaries sold their interest in the estate to the Disney Corporation for 350
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m. Previously Disney had been paying twiceyearly royalties to these beneficiaries. The estate of E. H. Shepard also received a sum in the deal. The UK copyright on the text of the original Winnie the Pooh books expires on 1 January 2027; at the beginning of the year after the 70th anniversary of the author's death PMA70, and has already expired in those countries with a PMA50 rule. This applies to all of Milne's works except those first published posthumously. The illustrations in the Pooh books will remain under copyright until the same amount of time has passed, after the illustrator's death; in the UK, this will be on 1 January 2047. In the United States, copyright will not expire until 95 years after publication for each of Milne's books first published before 1978, but this includes the illustrations.
In 2008, a collection of original illustrations featuring WinniethePooh and his animal friends sold for more than 1.2 million at auction in Sotheby's, London. Forbes magazine ranked Winnie the Pooh the mos
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t valuable fictional character in 2002; Winnie the Pooh merchandising products alone had annual sales of more than 5.9 billion. In 2005, Winnie the Pooh generated 6 billion, a figure surpassed only by Mickey Mouse.
A memorial plaque in Ashdown Forest, unveiled by Christopher Robin in 1979, commemorates the work of A. A. Milne and Shepard in creating the world of Pooh. Milne once wrote of Ashdown Forest "In that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing."
In 2003, Winnie the Pooh was listed at number 7 on the BBC's poll The Big Read which determined the UK's "bestloved novels" of all time. In 2006, Winnie the Pooh received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, marking the 80th birthday of Milne's creation. That same year a UK poll saw Winnie the Pooh voted onto the list of icons of England.
Marking the 90th anniversary of Milne's creation of the character, and the 90th birthday of Elizabeth II, in 2016 a new story sees Winnie the Pooh meet the Queen at Bucking
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ham Palace. The illustrated and audio adventure is titled WinniethePooh Meets the Queen, and has been narrated by actor Jim Broadbent. Also in 2016, a new character, a Penguin, was unveiled in The Best Bear in All the World, which was inspired by a longlost photograph of Milne and his son Christopher with a toy penguin.
Several of Milne's children's poems were set to music by the composer Harold FraserSimson. His poems have been parodied many times, including with the books When We Were Rather Older and Now We Are Sixty. The 1963 film The King's Breakfast was based on Milne's poem of the same name.
The Pooh books were used as the basis for two academic satires by Frederick C Crews 'The Pooh Perplex'19634 and 'Postmodern Pooh'2002.
An exhibition entitled "WinniethePooh Exploring a Classic" appeared at the V A from 9 December 2017 to 8 April 2018.
An elementary school in Houston, Texas, United States, operated by the Houston Independent School District HISD, is named after Milne. The school, A. A. Milne El
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ementary School in Brays Oaks, opened in 1991.
Archive
The bulk of A. A. Milne's papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The collection, established at the center in 1964, consists of manuscript drafts and fragments for over 150 of Milne's works, as well as correspondence, legal documents, genealogical records, and some personal effects. The library division holds several books formerly belonging to Milne and his wife Dorothy. The Harry Ransom Center also has small collections of correspondence from Christopher Robin Milne and Milne's frequent illustrator Ernest Shepard.
The original manuscripts for Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner are archived separately at Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
Religious views
Milne did not speak out much on the subject of religion, although he used religious terms to explain his decision, while remaining a pacifist, to join the British Home Guard "In fighting Hitler," he wrote, "we are truly fighting the Devil, the An
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tiChrist ... Hitler was a crusader against God."
His best known comment on the subject was recalled on his death
He wrote in the poem "Explained"
He also wrote in the poem "Vespers"
Works
Novels
Lovers in London 1905. Some consider this more of a short story collection; Milne did not like it and considered The Day's Play as his first book.
Once on a Time 1917
Mr. Pim 1921 A novelisation of his 1919 play Mr. Pim Passes By
The Red House Mystery 1922. Serialised London Daily News, serialised daily from 3 to 28 August 1921
Two People 1931 Inside jacket claims this is Milne's first attempt at a novel.
Four Days' Wonder 1933
Chloe Marr 1946
Nonfiction
Peace With Honour 1934
It's Too Late Now The Autobiography of a Writer 1939
War With Honour 1940
War Aims Unlimited 1941
Year In, Year Out 1952 illustrated by E. H. Shepard
Punch articles
The Day's Play 1910
The Holiday Round 1912
Once a Week 1914
The Sunny Side 1921
Those Were the Days 1929 The four volumes above, compiled
Newspaper articles
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and book introductions
The Chronicles of Clovis by "Saki" 1911 Introduction to
Not That It Matters 1919
If I May 1920
By Way of Introduction 1929
'Women and Children First!. John Bull, 10 November 1934
It Depends on the Book 1943, in September issue of Red Cross Newspaper The Prisoner of War
Story collections for children
A Gallery of Children 1925
WinniethePooh 1926 illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard
The House at Pooh Corner 1928 illustrated by E. H. Shepard
Short Stories
Poetry collections for children
When We Were Very Young 1924 illustrated by E. H. Shepard
Now We Are Six 1927 illustrated by E. H. Shepard
Story collections
The Secret and other stories 1929
The Birthday Party 1948
A Table Near the Band 1950
Poetry
When We Were Very Young 1924 illustrated by E. H. Shepard
For the Luncheon Interval 1925 poems from Punch
Now We Are Six 1927 illustrated by E. H. Shepard
Behind the Lines 1940
The Norman Church 1948
Screenplays and plays
WurzelFlummery 1917
Belinda 1918
The Boy Comes Ho
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me 1918
MakeBelieve 1918 children's play
The Camberley Triangle 1919
Mr. Pim Passes By 1919
The Red Feathers 1920
The Romantic Age 1920
The Stepmother 1920
The Truth About Blayds 1920
The Bump 1920, Minerva Films, starring C. Aubrey Smith and Faith Celli
Twice Two 1920, Minerva Films
Five Pound Reward 1920, Minerva Films
Bookworms 1920, Minerva Films
The Great Broxopp 1921
The Dover Road 1921
The Lucky One 1922
The Truth About Blayds 1922
The Artist A Duologue 1923
Give Me Yesterday 1923 a.k.a. Success in the UK
Ariadne 1924
The Man in the Bowler Hat A Terribly Exciting Affair 1924
To Have the Honour 1924
Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers 1926
Success 1926
Miss Marlow at Play 1927
Winnie the Pooh. Written specially by Milne for a 'Winnie the Pooh Party' in aid of the National MotherSaving Campaign, and performed once at Seaford House on 17 March 1928
The Fourth Wall or The Perfect Alibi 1928 later adapted for the film Birds of Prey 1930, directed by Basil Dean
The Ivory Door 1929
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Toad of Toad Hall 1929 adaptation of The Wind in the Willows
Michael and Mary 1930
Other People's Lives 1933 a.k.a. They Don't Mean Any Harm
Miss Elizabeth Bennet 1936 based on Pride and Prejudice
Sarah Simple 1937
Gentleman Unknown 1938
The General Takes Off His Helmet 1939 in The Queen's Book of the Red Cross
The Ugly Duckling 1941
Before the Flood 1951.
Portrayal
Milne is portrayed by Domhnall Gleeson in Goodbye Christopher Robin, a 2017 film.
In the 2018 fantasy film Christopher Robin, an extension of the Disney Winnie the Pooh franchise, Tristan Sturrock plays A.A. Milne.
References
Further reading
Thwaite, Ann. A.A. Milne His Life. London Faber and Faber, 1990.
Toby, Marlene. A.A. Milne, Author of WinniethePooh. Chicago Children's Press, 1995.
External links
A. A. Milne Papers at the Harry Ransom Center
Works by A. A. Milne at BiblioWiki Canada includes the complete text of the four Pooh books
Portraits of A. A. Milne in the National Portrait Gallery
Essays by Milne at Qu
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otidiana.org
Milne extract in The Guardian
Profile at JustPooh.com
A. A. Milne at poeticous.com
AA Milne Books The Guardian
Finding aid to the A.A. Milne letters at Columbia University Rare Book Manuscript Library
1882 births
1956 deaths
English people of Scottish descent
People from Hampstead
People from Kilburn, London
20thcentury British dramatists and playwrights
20thcentury British short story writers
20thcentury English novelists
20thcentury English poets
Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
British Army personnel of World War I
British Home Guard officers
Royal Warwickshire Fusiliers officers
English children's writers
Members of the Detection Club
People educated at Westminster School, London
Punch magazine people
English male poets
WinniethePooh
Writers from London
English male novelists
Children's poets
Royal Corps of Signals officers
Military personnel from London
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Asociacin Alumni, usually just Alumni, is an Argentine rugby union club located in Tortuguitas, Greater Buenos Aires. The senior squad currently competes at Top 12, the first division of the Unin de Rugby de Buenos Aires league system.
The club has ties with former football club Alumni because both were established by Buenos Aires English High School students.
History
Background
The first club with the name "Alumni" played association football, having been found in 1898 by students of Buenos Aires English High School BAEHS along with director Alexander Watson Hutton. Originally under the name "English High School A.C.", the team would be later obliged by the Association to change its name, therefore "Alumni" was chosen, following a proposal by Carlos Bowers, a former student of the school.
Alumni was the most successful team during the first years of Argentine football, winning 10 of 14 league championships contested. Alumni is still considered the first great football team in the country. Alumni was reo
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rganised in 1908, "in order to encourage people to practise all kind of sports, specially football". This was the last try to develop itself as a sports club rather than just a football team, such as Lomas, Belgrano and Quilmes had successfully done in the past, but the efforts were not enough. Alumni played its last game in 1911 and was definitely dissolved on April 24, 1913.
Rebirth through rugby
In 1951, two guards of the BAEHS, Daniel Ginhson also a former player of Buenos Aires F.C. and Guillermo Cubelli, supported by the school's alumni and fathers of the students, they decided to establish a club focused on rugby union exclusively. Former players still alive of Alumni football club and descendants of other players already dead gave their permission to use the name "Alumni".
On December 13, in a meeting presided by Carlos Bowers himself who had proposed the name "Alumni" to the original football team 50 years before, the club was officially established under the name "Asociacin Juvenil Alumni", also a
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dopting the same colors as its predecessor.
The team achieved good results and in 1960 the club presented a team that won the third division of the Buenos Aires league, reaching the second division. Since then, Alumni has played at the highest level of Argentine rugby and its rivalry with Belgrano Athletic Club is one of the fiercest local derbies in Buenos Aires. Alumni would later climb up to first division winning 5 titles 4 consecutive between 1989 and 1992, and the other in 2001.
In 2002, Alumni won its first Nacional de Clubes title, defeating Jockey Club de Rosario 2321 in the final.
Players
Current roster
As of January 2018
Federico Lucca
Gaspar Baldunciel
Guido Cambareri
Iaki Etchegaray
Bernardo Quaranta
Tobias Moyano
Mariano Romanini
Santiago Montagner
Tomas Passerotti
Lucas Frana
Luca Sabato
Franco Batezzatti
Franco Sabato
Rafael Desanto
Nito Provenzano
Tomas Bivort
Juan.P Ceraso
Santiago Alduncin
Juan.P Anderson
Lucas Magnasco
Joaquin Diaz Luzzi
Felipe Martignone
Tomas
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Corneille
Honours
Nacional de Clubes 1 2002
Torneo de la URBA 6 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 2001, 2018
See also
Buenos Aires English High School
Alumni Athletic Club
References
External links
Rugby clubs established in 1951
A
1951 establishments in Argentina
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An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word , meaning 'that which is thought worthy or fit' or 'that which commends itself as evident'.
The term has subtle differences in definition when used in the context of different fields of study. As defined in classic philosophy, an axiom is a statement that is so evident or wellestablished, that it is accepted without controversy or question. As used in modern logic, an axiom is a premise or starting point for reasoning.
As used in mathematics, the term axiom is used in two related but distinguishable senses "logical axioms" and "nonlogical axioms". Logical axioms are usually statements that are taken to be true within the system of logic they define and are often shown in symbolic form e.g., A and B implies A, while nonlogical axioms e.g., are actually substantive assertions about the elements of the domain of a
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specific mathematical theory such as arithmetic.
When used in the latter sense, "axiom", "postulate", and "assumption" may be used interchangeably. In most cases, a nonlogical axiom is simply a formal logical expression used in deduction to build a mathematical theory, and might or might not be selfevident in nature e.g., parallel postulate in Euclidean geometry. To axiomatize a system of knowledge is to show that its claims can be derived from a small, wellunderstood set of sentences the axioms, and there may be multiple ways to axiomatize a given mathematical domain.
Any axiom is a statement that serves as a starting point from which other statements are logically derived. Whether it is meaningful and, if so, what it means for an axiom to be "true" is a subject of debate in the philosophy of mathematics.
Etymology
The word axiom comes from the Greek word axma, a verbal noun from the verb axioein, meaning "to deem worthy", but also "to require", which in turn comes from xios, meaning "being in balance"
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, and hence "having the same value as", "worthy", "proper". Among the ancient Greek philosophers an axiom was a claim which could be seen to be selfevidently true without any need for proof.
The root meaning of the word postulate is to "demand"; for instance, Euclid demands that one agree that some things can be done e.g., any two points can be joined by a straight line.
Ancient geometers maintained some distinction between axioms and postulates. While commenting on Euclid's books, Proclus remarks that "Geminus held that this 4th Postulate should not be classed as a postulate but as an axiom, since it does not, like the first three Postulates, assert the possibility of some construction but expresses an essential property." Boethius translated 'postulate' as petitio and called the axioms notiones communes but in later manuscripts this usage was not always strictly kept.
Historical development
Early Greeks
The logicodeductive method whereby conclusions new knowledge follow from premises old knowledge thro
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ugh the application of sound arguments syllogisms, rules of inference was developed by the ancient Greeks, and has become the core principle of modern mathematics. Tautologies excluded, nothing can be deduced if nothing is assumed. Axioms and postulates are thus the basic assumptions underlying a given body of deductive knowledge. They are accepted without demonstration. All other assertions theorems, in the case of mathematics must be proven with the aid of these basic assumptions. However, the interpretation of mathematical knowledge has changed from ancient times to the modern, and consequently the terms axiom and postulate hold a slightly different meaning for the present day mathematician, than they did for Aristotle and Euclid.
The ancient Greeks considered geometry as just one of several sciences, and held the theorems of geometry on par with scientific facts. As such, they developed and used the logicodeductive method as a means of avoiding error, and for structuring and communicating knowledge. Aris
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totle's posterior analytics is a definitive exposition of the classical view.
An "axiom", in classical terminology, referred to a selfevident assumption common to many branches of science. A good example would be the assertion that When an equal amount is taken from equals, an equal amount results.
At the foundation of the various sciences lay certain additional hypotheses that were accepted without proof. Such a hypothesis was termed a postulate. While the axioms were common to many sciences, the postulates of each particular science were different. Their validity had to be established by means of realworld experience. Aristotle warns that the content of a science cannot be successfully communicated if the learner is in doubt about the truth of the postulates.
The classical approach is wellillustrated by Euclid's Elements, where a list of postulates is given commonsensical geometric facts drawn from our experience, followed by a list of "common notions" very basic, selfevident assertions.
Postulates
It
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is possible to draw a straight line from any point to any other point.
It is possible to extend a line segment continuously in both directions.
It is possible to describe a circle with any center and any radius.
It is true that all right angles are equal to one another.
"Parallel postulate" It is true that, if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, intersect on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.
Common notions
Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another.
If equals are added to equals, the wholes are equal.
If equals are subtracted from equals, the remainders are equal.
Things which coincide with one another are equal to one another.
The whole is greater than the part.
Modern development
A lesson learned by mathematics in the last 150 years is that it is useful to strip the meaning away from the mathematical assertion
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s axioms, postulates, propositions, theorems and definitions. One must concede the need for primitive notions, or undefined terms or concepts, in any study. Such abstraction or formalization makes mathematical knowledge more general, capable of multiple different meanings, and therefore useful in multiple contexts. Alessandro Padoa, Mario Pieri, and Giuseppe Peano were pioneers in this movement.
Structuralist mathematics goes further, and develops theories and axioms e.g. field theory, group theory, topology, vector spaces without any particular application in mind. The distinction between an "axiom" and a "postulate" disappears. The postulates of Euclid are profitably motivated by saying that they lead to a great wealth of geometric facts. The truth of these complicated facts rests on the acceptance of the basic hypotheses. However, by throwing out Euclid's fifth postulate, one can get theories that have meaning in wider contexts e.g., hyperbolic geometry. As such, one must simply be prepared to use labels
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such as "line" and "parallel" with greater flexibility. The development of hyperbolic geometry taught mathematicians that it is useful to regard postulates as purely formal statements, and not as facts based on experience.
When mathematicians employ the field axioms, the intentions are even more abstract. The propositions of field theory do not concern any one particular application; the mathematician now works in complete abstraction. There are many examples of fields; field theory gives correct knowledge about them all.
It is not correct to say that the axioms of field theory are "propositions that are regarded as true without proof." Rather, the field axioms are a set of constraints. If any given system of addition and multiplication satisfies these constraints, then one is in a position to instantly know a great deal of extra information about this system.
Modern mathematics formalizes its foundations to such an extent that mathematical theories can be regarded as mathematical objects, and mathematics
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itself can be regarded as a branch of logic. Frege, Russell, Poincar, Hilbert, and Gdel are some of the key figures in this development.
Another lesson learned in modern mathematics is to examine purported proofs carefully for hidden assumptions.
In the modern understanding, a set of axioms is any collection of formally stated assertions from which other formally stated assertions follow by the application of certain welldefined rules. In this view, logic becomes just another formal system. A set of axioms should be consistent; it should be impossible to derive a contradiction from the axioms. A set of axioms should also be nonredundant; an assertion that can be deduced from other axioms need not be regarded as an axiom.
It was the early hope of modern logicians that various branches of mathematics, perhaps all of mathematics, could be derived from a consistent collection of basic axioms. An early success of the formalist program was Hilbert's formalization of Euclidean geometry, and the related demonstra
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tion of the consistency of those axioms.
In a wider context, there was an attempt to base all of mathematics on Cantor's set theory. Here, the emergence of Russell's paradox and similar antinomies of nave set theory raised the possibility that any such system could turn out to be inconsistent.
The formalist project suffered a decisive setback, when in 1931 Gdel showed that it is possible, for any sufficiently large set of axioms Peano's axioms, for example to construct a statement whose truth is independent of that set of axioms. As a corollary, Gdel proved that the consistency of a theory like Peano arithmetic is an unprovable assertion within the scope of that theory.
It is reasonable to believe in the consistency of Peano arithmetic because it is satisfied by the system of natural numbers, an infinite but intuitively accessible formal system. However, at present, there is no known way of demonstrating the consistency of the modern ZermeloFraenkel axioms for set theory. Furthermore, using techniques of f
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orcing Cohen one can show that the continuum hypothesis Cantor is independent of the ZermeloFraenkel axioms. Thus, even this very general set of axioms cannot be regarded as the definitive foundation for mathematics.
Other sciences
Experimental sciences as opposed to mathematics and logic also have general founding assertions from which a deductive reasoning can be built so as to express propositions that predict properties either still general or much more specialized to a specific experimental context. For instance, Newton's laws in classical mechanics, Maxwell's equations in classical electromagnetism, Einstein's equation in general relativity, Mandel's laws of genetics, Darwin's Natural selection law, etc. These founding assertions are usually called principles or postulates so as to distinguish from mathematical axioms.
As a matter of facts, the role of axioms in mathematics and postulates in experimental sciences is different. In mathematics one neither "proves" nor "disproves" an axiom. A set of
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mathematical axioms gives a set of rules that fix a conceptual realm, in which the theorems logically follow. In contrast, in experimental sciences, a set of postulates shall allow deducing results that match or do not match experimental results. If postulates do not allow deducing experimental predictions, they do not set a scientific conceptual framework and have to be completed or made more accurate. If the postulates allow deducing predictions of experimental results, the comparison with experiments allows falsifying falsified the theory that the postulates install. A theory is considered valid as long as it has not been falsified.
Now, the transition between the mathematical axioms and scientific postulates is always slightly blurred, especially in physics. This is due to the heavy use of mathematical tools to support the physical theories. For instance, the introduction of Newton's laws rarely establishes as a prerequisite neither Euclidian geometry or differential calculus that they imply. It became
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more apparent when Albert Einstein first introduced special relativity where the invariant quantity is no more the Euclidian length defined as but the Minkowski spacetime interval defined as , and then general relativity where flat Minkowskian geometry is replaced with pseudoRiemannian geometry on curved manifolds.
In quantum physics, two sets of postulates have coexisted for some time, which provide a very nice example of falsification. The 'Copenhagen school' Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born developed an operational approach with a complete mathematical formalism that involves the description of quantum system by vectors 'states' in a separable Hilbert space, and physical quantities as linear operators that act in this Hilbert space. This approach is fully falsifiable and has so far produced the most accurate predictions in physics. But it has the unsatisfactory aspect of not allowing answers to questions one would naturally ask. For this reason, another 'hidden variables' approach was develope
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d for some time by Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrdinger, David Bohm. It was created so as to try to give deterministic explanation to phenomena such as entanglement. This approach assumed that the Copenhagen school description was not complete, and postulated that some yet unknown variable was to be added to the theory so as to allow answering some of the questions it does not answer the founding elements of which were discussed as the EPR paradox in 1935. Taking this ideas seriously, John Bell derived in 1964 a prediction that would lead to different experimental results Bell's inequalities in the Copenhagen and the Hidden variable case. The experiment was conducted first by Alain Aspect in the early 1980's, and the result excluded the simple hidden variable approach sophisticated hidden variables could still exist but their properties would still be more disturbing than the problems they try to solve. This does not mean that the conceptual framework of quantum physics can be considered as complete now, since s
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ome open questions still exist the limit between the quantum and classical realms, what happens during a quantum measurement, what happens in a completely closed quantum system such as the universe itself, etc.
Mathematical logic
In the field of mathematical logic, a clear distinction is made between two notions of axioms logical and nonlogical somewhat similar to the ancient distinction between "axioms" and "postulates" respectively.
Logical axioms
These are certain formulas in a formal language that are universally valid, that is, formulas that are satisfied by every assignment of values. Usually one takes as logical axioms at least some minimal set of tautologies that is sufficient for proving all tautologies in the language; in the case of predicate logic more logical axioms than that are required, in order to prove logical truths that are not tautologies in the strict sense.
Examples
Propositional logic
In propositional logic it is common to take as logical axioms all formulae of the following forms
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, where , , and can be any formulae of the language and where the included primitive connectives are only "" for negation of the immediately following proposition and "" for implication from antecedent to consequent propositions
Each of these patterns is an axiom schema, a rule for generating an infinite number of axioms. For example, if , , and are propositional variables, then and are both instances of axiom schema 1, and hence are axioms. It can be shown that with only these three axiom schemata and modus ponens, one can prove all tautologies of the propositional calculus. It can also be shown that no pair of these schemata is sufficient for proving all tautologies with modus ponens.
Other axiom schemata involving the same or different sets of primitive connectives can be alternatively constructed.
These axiom schemata are also used in the predicate calculus, but additional logical axioms are needed to include a quantifier in the calculus.
Firstorder logic
Axiom of Equality. Let be a firstorder
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language. For each variable , the formula
is universally valid.
This means that, for any variable symbol the formula can be regarded as an axiom. Also, in this example, for this not to fall into vagueness and a neverending series of "primitive notions", either a precise notion of what we mean by or, for that matter, "to be equal" has to be well established first, or a purely formal and syntactical usage of the symbol has to be enforced, only regarding it as a string and only a string of symbols, and mathematical logic does indeed do that.
Another, more interesting example axiom scheme, is that which provides us with what is known as Universal Instantiation
Axiom scheme for Universal Instantiation. Given a formula in a firstorder language , a variable and a term that is substitutable for in , the formula
is universally valid.
Where the symbol stands for the formula with the term substituted for . See Substitution of variables. In informal terms, this example allows us to state that, if we k
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now that a certain property holds for every and that stands for a particular object in our structure, then we should be able to claim . Again, we are claiming that the formula is valid, that is, we must be able to give a "proof" of this fact, or more properly speaking, a metaproof. These examples are metatheorems of our theory of mathematical logic since we are dealing with the very concept of proof itself. Aside from this, we can also have Existential Generalization
Axiom scheme for Existential Generalization. Given a formula in a firstorder language , a variable and a term that is substitutable for in , the formula
is universally valid.
Nonlogical axioms
Nonlogical axioms are formulas that play the role of theoryspecific assumptions. Reasoning about two different structures, for example, the natural numbers and the integers, may involve the same logical axioms; the nonlogical axioms aim to capture what is special about a particular structure or set of structures, such as groups. Thus nonlogica
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l axioms, unlike logical axioms, are not tautologies. Another name for a nonlogical axiom is postulate.
Almost every modern mathematical theory starts from a given set of nonlogical axioms, and it was thought that in principle every theory could be axiomatized in this way and formalized down to the bare language of logical formulas.
Nonlogical axioms are often simply referred to as axioms in mathematical discourse. This does not mean that it is claimed that they are true in some absolute sense. For example, in some groups, the group operation is commutative, and this can be asserted with the introduction of an additional axiom, but without this axiom, we can do quite well developing the more general group theory, and we can even take its negation as an axiom for the study of noncommutative groups.
Thus, an axiom is an elementary basis for a formal logic system that together with the rules of inference define a deductive system.
Examples
This section gives examples of mathematical theories that are deve
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loped entirely from a set of nonlogical axioms axioms, henceforth. A rigorous treatment of any of these topics begins with a specification of these axioms.
Basic theories, such as arithmetic, real analysis and complex analysis are often introduced nonaxiomatically, but implicitly or explicitly there is generally an assumption that the axioms being used are the axioms of ZermeloFraenkel set theory with choice, abbreviated ZFC, or some very similar system of axiomatic set theory like Von NeumannBernaysGdel set theory, a conservative extension of ZFC. Sometimes slightly stronger theories such as MorseKelley set theory or set theory with a strongly inaccessible cardinal allowing the use of a Grothendieck universe is used, but in fact, most mathematicians can actually prove all they need in systems weaker than ZFC, such as secondorder arithmetic.
The study of topology in mathematics extends all over through point set topology, algebraic topology, differential topology, and all the related paraphernalia, such as
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homology theory, homotopy theory. The development of abstract algebra brought with itself group theory, rings, fields, and Galois theory.
This list could be expanded to include most fields of mathematics, including measure theory, ergodic theory, probability, representation theory, and differential geometry.
Arithmetic
The Peano axioms are the most widely used axiomatization of firstorder arithmetic. They are a set of axioms strong enough to prove many important facts about number theory and they allowed Gdel to establish his famous second incompleteness theorem.
We have a language where is a constant symbol and is a unary function and the following axioms
for any formula with one free variable.
The standard structure is where is the set of natural numbers, is the successor function and is naturally interpreted as the number 0.
Euclidean geometry
Probably the oldest, and most famous, list of axioms are the 4 1 Euclid's postulates of plane geometry. The axioms are referred to as "4 1"
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because for nearly two millennia the fifth parallel postulate "through a point outside a line there is exactly one parallel" was suspected of being derivable from the first four. Ultimately, the fifth postulate was found to be independent of the first four. One can assume that exactly one parallel through a point outside a line exists, or that infinitely many exist. This choice gives us two alternative forms of geometry in which the interior angles of a triangle add up to exactly 180 degrees or less, respectively, and are known as Euclidean and hyperbolic geometries. If one also removes the second postulate "a line can be extended indefinitely" then elliptic geometry arises, where there is no parallel through a point outside a line, and in which the interior angles of a triangle add up to more than 180 degrees.
Real analysis
The objectives of the study are within the domain of real numbers. The real numbers are uniquely picked out up to isomorphism by the properties of a Dedekind complete ordered field, m
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eaning that any nonempty set of real numbers with an upper bound has a least upper bound. However, expressing these properties as axioms requires the use of secondorder logic. The LwenheimSkolem theorems tell us that if we restrict ourselves to firstorder logic, any axiom system for the reals admits other models, including both models that are smaller than the reals and models that are larger. Some of the latter are studied in nonstandard analysis.
Role in mathematical logic
Deductive systems and completeness
A deductive system consists of a set of logical axioms, a set of nonlogical axioms, and a set of rules of inference. A desirable property of a deductive system is that it be complete. A system is said to be complete if, for all formulas ,
that is, for any statement that is a logical consequence of there actually exists a deduction of the statement from . This is sometimes expressed as "everything that is true is provable", but it must be understood that "true" here means "made true by the set
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of axioms", and not, for example, "true in the intended interpretation". Gdel's completeness theorem establishes the completeness of a certain commonly used type of deductive system.
Note that "completeness" has a different meaning here than it does in the context of Gdel's first incompleteness theorem, which states that no recursive, consistent set of nonlogical axioms of the Theory of Arithmetic is complete, in the sense that there will always exist an arithmetic statement such that neither nor can be proved from the given set of axioms.
There is thus, on the one hand, the notion of completeness of a deductive system and on the other hand that of completeness of a set of nonlogical axioms. The completeness theorem and the incompleteness theorem, despite their names, do not contradict one another.
Further discussion
Early mathematicians regarded axiomatic geometry as a model of physical space, and obviously, there could only be one such model. The idea that alternative mathematical systems might exis
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t was very troubling to mathematicians of the 19th century and the developers of systems such as Boolean algebra made elaborate efforts to derive them from traditional arithmetic. Galois showed just before his untimely death that these efforts were largely wasted. Ultimately, the abstract parallels between algebraic systems were seen to be more important than the details, and modern algebra was born. In the modern view, axioms may be any set of formulas, as long as they are not known to be inconsistent.
See also
Axiomatic system
Dogma
First principle, axiom in science and philosophy
List of axioms
Model theory
Regul Juris
Theorem
Presupposition
Physical law
Principle
Notes
References
Further reading
Mendelson, Elliot 1987. Introduction to mathematical logic. Belmont, California Wadsworth Brooks.
External links
Metamath axioms page
Ancient Greek philosophy
Concepts in ancient Greek metaphysics
Concepts in epistemology
Concepts in ethics
Concepts in logic
Concepts in metaphysics
Conc
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epts in the philosophy of science
Deductive reasoning
Formal systems
History of logic
History of mathematics
History of philosophy
History of science
Intellectual history
Logic
Mathematical logic
Mathematical terminology
Philosophical terminology
Reasoning
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Alpha uppercase , lowercase ; , lpha, or is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , which is the West Semitic word for "ox". Letters that arose from alpha include the Latin letter A and the Cyrillic letter .
Uses
Greek
In Ancient Greek, alpha was pronounced and could be either phonemically long a or short a. Where there is ambiguity, long and short alpha are sometimes written with a macron and breve today , .
hr "a time"
glssa "tongue"
In Modern Greek, vowel length has been lost, and all instances of alpha simply represent .
In the polytonic orthography of Greek, alpha, like other vowel letters, can occur with several diacritic marks any of three accent symbols , and either of two breathing marks , as well as combinations of these. It can also combine with the iota subscript .
Greek grammar
In the AtticIonic dialect of Ancient Greek, long alpha fronted to eta. In Ionic, the shift took
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place in all positions. In Attic, the shift did not take place after epsilon, iota, and rho , , ; e, i, r. In Doric and Aeolic, long alpha is preserved in all positions.
Doric, Aeolic, Attic chr Ionic chr, "country"
Doric, Aeolic phm Attic, Ionic phm, "report"
Privative a is the Ancient Greek prefix or a, an, added to words to negate them. It originates from the ProtoIndoEuropean syllabic nasal and is cognate with English un.
Copulative a is the Greek prefix or ha, a. It comes from ProtoIndoEuropean .
Mathematics and science
The letter alpha represents various concepts in physics and chemistry, including alpha radiation, angular acceleration, alpha particles, alpha carbon and strength of electromagnetic interaction as Finestructure constant. Alpha also stands for thermal expansion coefficient of a compound in physical chemistry. It is also commonly used in mathematics in algebraic solutions representing quantities such as angles. Furthermore, in mathematics, the letter alpha is used to denote t
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he area underneath a normal curve in statistics to denote significance level when proving null and alternative hypotheses. In ethology, it is used to name the dominant individual in a group of animals. In aerodynamics, the letter is used as a symbol for the angle of attack of an aircraft and the word "alpha" is used as a synonym for this property. In mathematical logic, is sometimes used as a placeholder for ordinal numbers.
The proportionality operator "" in Unicode U221D is sometimes mistaken for alpha.
The uppercase letter alpha is not generally used as a symbol because it tends to be rendered identically to the uppercase Latin A.
International Phonetic Alphabet
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the letter , which looks similar to the lowercase alpha, represents the open back unrounded vowel.
History and symbolism
Origin
The Phoenician alphabet was adopted for Greek in the early 8th century BC, perhaps in Euboea.
The majority of the letters of the Phoenician alphabet were adopted into Greek wi
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th much the same sounds as they had had in Phoenician, but leph, the Phoenician letter representing the glottal stop ,
was adopted as representing the vowel ; similarly, h and ayin are Phoenician consonants that became Greek vowels, epsilon and omicron , respectively.
Plutarch
Plutarch, in Moralia, presents a discussion on why the letter alpha stands first in the alphabet. Ammonius asks Plutarch what he, being a Boeotian, has to say for Cadmus, the Phoenician who reputedly settled in Thebes and introduced the alphabet to Greece, placing alpha first because it is the Phoenician name for oxwhich, unlike Hesiod, the Phoenicians considered not the second or third, but the first of all necessities. "Nothing at all," Plutarch replied. He then added that he would rather be assisted by Lamprias, his own grandfather, than by Dionysus' grandfather, i.e. Cadmus. For Lamprias had said that the first articulate sound made is "alpha", because it is very plain and simplethe air coming off the mouth does not require a
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ny motion of the tongueand therefore this is the first sound that children make.
According to Plutarch's natural order of attribution of the vowels to the planets, alpha was connected with the Moon.
Alpha and Omega
As the first letter of the alphabet, Alpha as a Greek numeral came to represent the number 1.
Therefore, Alpha, both as a symbol and term, is used to refer to the "first", or "primary", or "principal" most significant occurrence or status of a thing.
The New Testament has God declaring himself to be the "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." Revelation 2213, KJV, and see also 18.
Consequently, the term "alpha" has also come to be used to denote "primary" position in social hierarchy, examples being "alpha males" or pack leaders.
Computer encodings
Greek alpha Coptic alfa
For accented Greek characters, see Greek diacritics Computer encoding.
Latin IPA alpha
Mathematical Technical alpha
References
Greek letters
Vowel letters
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Alvin Toffler October 4, 1928 June 27, 2016 was an American writer, futurist, and businessman known for his works discussing modern technologies, including the digital revolution and the communication revolution, with emphasis on their effects on cultures worldwide. He is regarded as one of the world's outstanding futurists.
Toffler was an associate editor of Fortune magazine. In his early works he focused on technology and its impact, which he termed "information overload." In 1970, his first major book about the future, Future Shock, became a worldwide bestseller and has sold over 6 million copies.
He and his wife Heidi Toffler, who collaborated with him for most of his writings, moved on to examining the reaction to changes in society with another bestselling book, The Third Wave in 1980. In it, he foresaw such technological advances as cloning, personal computers, the Internet, cable television and mobile communication. His later focus, via their other bestseller, Powershift, 1990, was on the increasin
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g power of 21stcentury military hardware and the proliferation of new technologies.
He founded Toffler Associates, a management consulting company, and was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, visiting professor at Cornell University, faculty member of the New School for Social Research, a White House correspondent, and a business consultant. Toffler's ideas and writings were a significant influence on the thinking of business and government leaders worldwide, including China's Zhao Ziyang, and AOL founder Steve Case.
Early life
Alvin Toffler was born on October 4, 1928, in New York City, and raised in Brooklyn. He was the son of Rose Albaum and Sam Toffler, a furrier, both Jewish immigrants from Poland. He had one younger sister. He was inspired to become a writer at the age of 7 by his aunt and uncle, who lived with the Tofflers. "They were Depressionera literary intellectuals," Toffler said, "and they always talked about exciting ideas."
Toffler graduated from New York University in 1950 a
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s an English major, though by his own account he was more focused on political activism than grades. He met his future wife, Adelaide Elizabeth Farrell nicknamed "Heidi", when she was starting a graduate course in linguistics. Being radical students, they decided against further graduate work and moved to the Midwest, where they married on April 29, 1950.
Career
Seeking experiences to write about, Alvin and Heidi Toffler spent the next five years as blue collar workers on assembly lines while studying industrial mass production in their daily work. He compared his own desire for experience to other writers, such as Jack London, who in his quest for subjects to write about sailed the seas, and John Steinbeck, who went to pick grapes with migrant workers. In their first factory jobs, Heidi became a union shop steward in the aluminum foundry where she worked. Alvin became a millwright and welder. In the evenings Alvin would write poetry and fiction, but discovered he was proficient at neither.
His handson prac
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tical labor experience helped Alvin Toffler land a position at a unionbacked newspaper, a transfer to its Washington bureau in 1957, then three years as a White House correspondent, covering Congress and the White House for a Pennsylvania daily newspaper.
They returned to New York City in 1959 when Fortune magazine invited Alvin to become its labor columnist, later having him write about business and management. After leaving Fortune magazine in 1962, Toffler began a freelance career, writing long form articles for scholarly journals and magazines. His 1964 Playboy interviews with Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov and Ayn Rand were considered among the magazine's best. His interview with Rand was the first time the magazine had given such a platform to a female intellectual, which as one commentator said, "the real bird of paradise Toffler captured for Playboy in 1964 was Ayn Rand."
Toffler was hired by IBM to conduct research and write a paper on the social and organizational impact of computers, leading t
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o his contact with the earliest computer "gurus" and artificial intelligence researchers and proponents. Xerox invited him to write about its research laboratory and ATT consulted him for strategic advice. This ATT work led to a study of telecommunications, which advised the company's top management to break up the company more than a decade before the government forced ATT to break up.
In the mid1960s, the Tofflers began five years of research on what would become Future Shock, published in 1970. It has sold over 6 million copies worldwide, according to the New York Times, or over 15 million copies according to the Tofflers' Web site. Toffler coined the term "future shock" to refer to what happens to a society when change happens too fast, which results in social confusion and normal decisionmaking processes breaking down. The book has never been out of print and has been translated into dozens of languages.
He continued the theme in The Third Wave in 1980. While he describes the first and second waves as
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the agricultural and industrial revolutions, the "third wave," a phrase he coined, represents the current information, computerbased revolution. He forecast the spread of the Internet and email, interactive media, cable television, cloning, and other digital advancements. He claimed that one of the side effects of the digital age has been "information overload," another term he coined. In 1990, he wrote Powershift, also with the help of his wife, Heidi.
In 1996, with American business consultant Tom Johnson, they cofounded Toffler Associates, an advisory firm designed to implement many of the ideas the Tofflers had written on. The firm worked with businesses, NGOs, and governments in the United States, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, and other countries. During this period in his career, Toffler lectured worldwide, taught at several schools and met world leaders, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, along with key executives and military officials.
Ideas and opinions
Toffler stated many of his ide
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as during an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1998. "Society needs people who take care of the elderly and who know how to be compassionate and honest," he said. "Society needs people who work in hospitals. Society needs all kinds of skills that are not just cognitive; they're emotional, they're affectional. You can't run the society on data and computers alone."
His opinions about the future of education, many of which were in Future Shock, have often been quoted. An often misattributed quote, however, is that of psychologist Herbert Gerjuoy "Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn."
Early in his career, after traveling to other countries, he became aware of the new and myriad inputs that visitors received from these other cultures. He explained during an interview that some visitors would become "truly disoriented and upset" by the strange environment, which he described as a reaction to culture shock. From that
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issue, he foresaw another problem for the future, when a culturally "new environment comes to you ... and comes to you rapidly." That kind of sudden cultural change within one's own country, which he felt many would not understand, would lead to a similar reaction, one of "future shock", which he wrote about in his book by that title. Toffler writes
In The Third Wave, Toffler describes three types of societies, based on the concept of "waves"each wave pushes the older societies and cultures aside. He describes the "First Wave" as the society after agrarian revolution and replaced the first huntergatherer cultures. The "Second Wave," he labels society during the Industrial Revolution ca. late 17th century through the mid20th century. That period saw the increase of urban industrial populations which had undermined the traditional nuclear family, and initiated a factorylike education system, and the growth of the corporation. Toffler said
The "Third Wave" was a term he coined to describe the postindustrial s
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ociety, which began in the late 1950s. His description of this period dovetails with other futurist writers, who also wrote about the Information Age, Space Age, Electronic Era, Global Village, terms which highlighted a scientifictechnological revolution. The Tofflers claimed to have predicted a number of geopolitical events, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the future economic growth in the AsiaPacific region.
Influences and popular culture
Toffler often visited with dignitaries in Asia, including China's Zhao Ziyang, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and South Korea's Kim Dae Jung, all of whom were influenced by his views as Asia's emerging markets increased in global significance during the 1980s and 1990s. Although they had originally censored some of his books and ideas, China's government cited him along with Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Gates as being among the Westerners who had most influenced their country. The Third Wave along with a video documentary based on it be
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came bestsellers in China and were widely distributed to schools. The video's success inspired the marketing of videos on related themes in the late 1990s by Infowars, whose name is derived from the term coined by Toffler in the book. Toffler's influence on Asian thinkers was summed up in an article in Daedalus, published by the American Academy of Arts Sciences
U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich publicly lauded his ideas about the future, and urged members of Congress to read Toffler's book, Creating a New Civilization 1995. Others, such as AOL founder Steve Case, cited Toffler's The Third Wave as a formative influence on his thinking, which inspired him to write The Third Wave An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future in 2016. Case said that Toffler was a "real pioneer in helping people, companies and even countries lean into the future."
In 1980, Ted Turner founded CNN, which he said was inspired by Toffler's forecasting the end of the dominance of the three main television networks. Turner's company, Turner
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Broadcasting, published Toffler's Creating a New Civilization in 1995. Shortly after the book was released, the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev hosted the Global Governance Conference in San Francisco with the theme, Toward a New Civilization, which was attended by dozens of world figures, including the Tofflers, George H. W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Carl Sagan, Abba Eban and Turner with his thenwife, actress Jane Fonda.
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim was influenced by his works, and became a friend of the writer. Global marketer J.D. Power also said he was inspired by Toffler's works.
Since the 1960s, people had tried to make sense out of the effect of new technologies and social change, a problem which made Toffler's writings widely influential beyond the confines of scientific, economic, and public policy. His works and ideas have been subject to various criticisms, usually with the same argumentation used against futurology that foreseeing the future is nigh impossible.
Techno music pioneer
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Juan Atkins cites Toffler's phrase "techno rebels" in The Third Wave as inspiring him to use the word "techno" to describe the musical style he helped to create
Musician Curtis Mayfield released a disco song called "Future Shock," later covered in an electro version by Herbie Hancock. Science fiction author John Brunner wrote "The Shockwave Rider," from the concept of "future shock."
The nightclub Toffler, in Rotterdam, is named after him.
In the song "Victoria" by The Exponents, the protagonist's daily routine and cultural interests are described "She's up in time to watch the soap operas, reads Cosmopolitan and Alvin Toffler".
Critical assessment
Accenture, the management consultancy firm, identified Toffler in 2002 as being among the most influential voices in business leaders, along with Bill Gates and Peter Drucker. Toffler has also been described in a Financial Times interview as the "world's most famous futurologist". In 2006, the People's Daily classed him among the 50 foreigners who shaped mode
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rn China, which one U.S. newspaper notes made him a "guru of sorts to world statesmen." Chinese Premier and General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was greatly influenced by Toffler. He convened conferences to discuss The Third Wave in the early 1980s, and in 1985 the book was the No. 2 best seller in China.
Author Mark Satin characterizes Toffler as an important early influence on radical centrist political thought.
Newt Gingrich became close to the Tofflers in the 1970s and said The Third Wave had immensely influenced his own thinking and was "one of the great seminal works of our time."
Selected awards
Toffler has received several prestigious prizes and awards, including the McKinsey Foundation Book Award for Contributions to Management Literature, Officier de L'Ordre des Arts et Lettres, and appointments, including Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
In 2006, Alvin and Heidi Toffler were recipients of Brown University's Indepen
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dent Award.
Personal life
Toffler was married to Heidi Toffler, also a writer and futurist. They lived in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, California, and previously lived in Redding, Connecticut.
The couple's only child, Karen Toffler 19542000, died at age 46 after more than a decade suffering from GuillainBarr syndrome.
Alvin Toffler died in his sleep on June 27, 2016, at his home in Los Angeles. No cause of death was given. He is buried at Westwood Memorial Park.
Bibliography
Alvin Toffler cowrote his books with his wife Heidi.
The Culture Consumers 1964 St. Martin's Press,
The Schoolhouse in the City 1968 Praeger editors,
Future Shock 1970 Bantam Books,
The Futurists 1972 Random House editors,
Learning for Tomorrow 1974 Random House editors,
The EcoSpasm Report 1975 Bantam Books,
The Third Wave 1980 Bantam Books,
Previews Premises 1983 William Morrow Co,
The Adaptive Corporation 1985 McGrawHill,
Powershift Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century 1990 Bant
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am Books,
War and AntiWar 1993 Warner Books,
Creating a New Civilization 1995 Turner Pub,
Revolutionary Wealth 2006 Knopf,
See also
Daniel Bell
Norman Swan
Human nature
John Naisbitt
References
External links
official Alvin Toffler site
Toffler Associates
Interview with Alvin Toffler by the World Affairs Council
Discuss Alvin Toffler's Future Shock with other readers, BookTalk.org
Alvin Toffler at Find a Grave
Future Shock Forum 2018
Finding aid to the Alvin and Heidi Toffler papers at Columbia University. Rare Book Manuscript Library
1928 births
2016 deaths
American people of PolishJewish descent
American technology writers
American futurologists
Burials at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
Jewish American writers
People from Ridgefield, Connecticut
Writers from Connecticut
Writers from Brooklyn
20thcentury American nonfiction writers
21stcentury American nonfiction writers
American transhumanists
New York University alumni
Singularitarians
People from Redding, Connecticut
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20thcentury American male writers
American male nonfiction writers
Jewish American journalists
People from Bel Air, Los Angeles
21stcentury American male writers
21stcentury American Jews
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The Amazing SpiderMan is an American comic book series published by Marvel Comics, featuring the fictional superhero SpiderMan as its main protagonist. Being in the mainstream continuity of the franchise, it began publication in 1963 as a bimonthly periodical as Amazing Fantasy had been, quickly being increased to monthly, and was published continuously, with a brief interruption in 1995, until its second volume with a new numbering order in 1999. In 2003, the series reverted to the numbering order of the first volume. The title has occasionally been published biweekly, and was published three times a month from 2008 to 2010.
After DC Comics' relaunch of Action Comics and Detective Comics with new No. 1 issues in 2011, it had been the highestnumbered American comic still in circulation until it was cancelled. The title ended its 50year run as a continuously published comic with the landmark issue 700 in December 2012. It was replaced by The Superior SpiderMan as part of the Marvel NOW! relaunch of Marvel's c
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omic lines.
Volume 3 of The Amazing SpiderMan was published in April 2014, following the conclusion of The Superior SpiderMan story arc. In late 2015, the series was relaunched with a 4th volume, following the 2015 Secret Wars event. The 5th and current volume began in 2018, as part of Marvel's Fresh Start series of comic relaunches.
Publication history
Writereditor Stan Lee and artist and coplotter Steve Ditko created the character of SpiderMan, and the pair produced 38 issues from March 1963 to July 1966. Ditko left after the 38th issue, while Lee remained as writer until issue 100. Since then, many writers and artists have taken over the monthly comic through the years, chronicling the adventures of Marvel's most identifiable hero.
The Amazing SpiderMan has been the character's flagship series for his first fifty years in publication, and was the only monthly series to star SpiderMan until Peter Parker, The Spectacular SpiderMan, in 1976, although 1972 saw the debut of Marvel TeamUp, with the vast major
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ity of issues featuring SpiderMan along with a rotating cast of other Marvel characters. Most of the major characters and villains of the SpiderMan saga have been introduced in Amazing, and with few exceptions, it is where most key events in the character's history have occurred. The title was published continuously until No. 441 Nov. 1998 when Marvel Comics relaunched it as vol. 2 No. 1 Jan. 1999, but on SpiderMan's 40th anniversary, this new title reverted to using the numbering of the original series, beginning again with issue No. 500 Dec. 2003 and lasting until the final issue, No. 700 Feb. 2013.
1960s
Due to strong sales on the character's first appearance in Amazing Fantasy No. 15, SpiderMan was given his own ongoing series in March 1963. The initial years of the series, under Lee and Ditko, chronicled SpiderMan's nascent career as a masked superhuman vigilante with his civilian life as hardluck yet perpetually goodhumored and wellmeaning teenager Peter Parker. Peter balanced his career as SpiderMan w
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ith his job as a freelance photographer for The Daily Bugle under the bombastic editorpublisher J. Jonah Jameson to support himself and his frail Aunt May. At the same time, Peter dealt with public hostility towards SpiderMan and the antagonism of his classmates Flash Thompson and Liz Allan at Midtown High School, while embarking on a tentative, illfated romance with Jameson's secretary, Betty Brant.
By focusing on Parker's everyday problems, Lee and Ditko created a groundbreakingly flawed, selfdoubting superhero, and the first major teenaged superhero to be a protagonist and not a sidekick. Ditko's quirky art provided a stark contrast to the more cleanly dynamic stylings of Marvel's most prominent artist, Jack Kirby, and combined with the humor and pathos of Lee's writing to lay the foundation for what became an enduring mythos.
Most of SpiderMan's key villains and supporting characters were introduced during this time. Issue No. 1 March 1963 featured the first appearances of J. Jonah Jameson and his astro
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naut son John Jameson, and the supervillain the Chameleon. It included the hero's first encounter with the superhero team the Fantastic Four. Issue No. 2 May 1963 featured the first appearance of the Vulture and the Tinkerer as well as the beginning of Parker's freelance photography career at the newspaper The Daily Bugle.
The LeeDitko era continued to usher in a significant number of villains and supporting characters, including Doctor Octopus in No. 3 July 1963; the Sandman and Betty Brant in No. 4 Sept. 1963; the Lizard in No. 6 Nov. 1963; Living Brain in 8, January 1964; Electro in No. 9 March 1964; Mysterio in No. 13 June 1964; the Green Goblin in No. 14 July 1964; Kraven The Hunter in No. 15 Aug. 1964; reporter Ned Leeds in No. 18 Nov. 1964; and the Scorpion in No. 20 Jan. 1965. The Molten Man was introduced in No. 28 Sept. 1965 which also featured Parker's graduation from high school. Peter began attending Empire State University in No. 31 Dec. 1965, the issue which featured the first appearances of f
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riends and classmates Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborn. Harry's father, Norman Osborn first appeared in No. 23 April 1965 as a member of Jameson's country club but is not named nor revealed as Harry's father until No. 37 June 1966.
One of the most celebrated issues of the LeeDitko run is No. 33 Feb. 1966, the third part of the story arc "If This Be My Destiny...!", which features the dramatic scene of SpiderMan, through force of will and thoughts of family, escaping from being pinned by heavy machinery. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that "Steve Ditko squeezes every ounce of anguish out of SpiderMan's predicament, complete with visions of the uncle he failed and the aunt he has sworn to save." Peter David observed that "After his origin, this twopage sequence from Amazing SpiderMan No. 33 is perhaps the bestloved sequence from the Stan LeeSteve Ditko era." Steve Saffel stated the "full page Ditko image from The Amazing SpiderMan No. 33 is one of the most powerful ever to appear in the series and influenced wr
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iters and artists for many years to come." and Matthew K. Manning wrote that "Ditko's illustrations for the first few pages of this Lee story included what would become one of the most iconic scenes in SpiderMan's history." The story was chosen as No. 15 in the 100 Greatest Marvels of All Time poll of Marvel's readers in 2001. Editor Robert Greenberger wrote in his introduction to the story that "These first five pages are a modernday equivalent to Shakespeare as Parker's soliloquy sets the stage for his next action. And with dramatic pacing and storytelling, Ditko delivers one of the great sequences in all comics."
Although credited only as artist for most of his run, Ditko would eventually plot the stories as well as draw them, leaving Lee to script the dialogue. A rift between Ditko and Lee developed, and the two men were not on speaking terms long before Ditko completed his last issue, The Amazing SpiderMan No. 38 July 1966. The exact reasons for the DitkoLee split have never been fully explained. Spider
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Man successor artist John Romita Sr., in a 2010 deposition, recalled that Lee and Ditko "ended up not being able to work together because they disagreed on almost everything, cultural, social, historically, everything, they disagreed on characters..."
In successor penciler Romita Sr.'s first issue, No. 39 Aug. 1966, nemesis the Green Goblin discovers SpiderMan's secret identity and reveals his own to the captive hero. Romita's SpiderMan more polished and heroiclooking than Ditko's became the model for two decades. The LeeRomita era saw the introduction of such characters as Daily Bugle managing editor Robbie Robertson in No. 52 Sept. 1967 and NYPD Captain George Stacy, father of Parker's girlfriend Gwen Stacy, in No. 56 Jan. 1968. The most important supporting character to be introduced during the Romita era was Mary Jane Watson, who made her first full appearance in No. 42, Nov. 1966, although she first appeared in No. 25 June 1965 with her face obscured and had been mentioned since No. 15 Aug. 1964. Pete
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r David wrote in 2010 that Romita "made the definitive statement of his arrival by pulling Mary Jane out from behind the oversized potted plant that blocked the readers' view of her face in issue 25 and placing her on panel in what would instantly become an iconic moment." Romita has stated that in designing Mary Jane, he "used AnnMargret from the movie Bye Bye Birdie as a guide, using her coloring, the shape of her face, her red hair and her formfitting short skirts."
Lee and Romita toned down the prevalent sense of antagonism in Parker's world by improving Parker's relationship with the supporting characters and having stories focused as much on the social and college lives of the characters as they did on SpiderMan's adventures. The stories became more topical, addressing issues such as civil rights, racism, prisoners' rights, the Vietnam War, and political elections.
Issue No. 50 June 1967 introduced the highly enduring criminal mastermind the Kingpin, who would become a major force as well in the super
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hero series Daredevil. Other notable first appearances in the LeeRomita era include the Rhino in No. 41 Oct. 1966, the Shocker in No. 46 March 1967, the Prowler in No. 78 Nov. 1969, and the Kingpin's son, Richard Fisk, in No. 83 April 1970.
1970s
Several spinoff series debuted in the 1970s Marvel TeamUp in 1972, and The Spectacular SpiderMan in 1976. A shortlived series titled GiantSize SpiderMan began in July 1974 and ran six issues through 1975. Spidey Super Stories, a series aimed at children ages 610, ran for 57 issues from October 1974 through 1982.
The flagship title's second decade took a grim turn with a story in 8990 Oct.Nov. 1970 featuring the death of Captain George Stacy. This was the first SpiderMan story to be penciled by Gil Kane, who would alternate drawing duties with Romita for the next yearandahalf and would draw several landmark issues.
One such story took place in the controversial issues 9698 MayJuly 1971. Writereditor Lee defied the Comics Code Authority with this story, in which Par
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ker's friend Harry Osborn, was hospitalized after overdosing on pills. Lee wrote this story upon a request from the U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for a story about the dangers of drugs. Citing its dictum against depicting drug use, even in an antidrug context, the CCA refused to put its seal on these issues. With the approval of Marvel publisher Martin Goodman, Lee had the comics published without the seal. The comics sold well and Marvel won praise for its socially conscious efforts. The CCA subsequently loosened the Code to permit negative depictions of drugs, among other new freedoms.
"The Six Arms Saga" of 100102 Sept.Nov. 1971 introduced Morbius, the Living Vampire. The second installment was the first Amazing SpiderMan story not written by cocreator Lee, with Roy Thomas taking over writing the book for several months before Lee returned to write 105110 Feb.July 1972. Lee, who was going on to become Marvel Comics' publisher, with Thomas becoming editorinchief, then turned writing du
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ties over to 19yearold Gerry Conway, who scripted the series through 1975. Romita penciled Conway's first halfdozen issues, which introduced the gangster Hammerhead in No. 113 Oct. 1972. Kane then succeeded Romita as penciler, although Romita would continue inking Kane for a time.
Issues 121122 JuneJuly 1973, by ConwayKaneRomita, which featured the death of Gwen Stacy at the hands of the Green Goblin in "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" in issue No. 121. Her demise and the Goblin's apparent death one issue later formed a story arc widely considered as the most defining in the history of SpiderMan. The aftermath of the story deepened both the characterization of Mary Jane Watson and her relationship with Parker.
In 1973, Gil Kane was succeeded by Ross Andru, whose run lasted from issue No. 125 October 1973 to No. 185 October 1978. Issue129 Feb. 1974 introduced the Punisher, who would become one of Marvel Comics' most popular characters. The ConwayAndru era featured the first appearances of the ManWolf in 124125 Se
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pt.Oct. 1973; the nearmarriage of Doctor Octopus and Aunt May in No. 131 April 1974; Harry Osborn stepping into his father's role as the Green Goblin in 135137 Aug.Oct.1974; and the original "Clone Saga", containing the introduction of SpiderMan's clone, in 147149 Aug.Oct. 1975.
Archie Goodwin and Gil Kane produced the title's 150th issue Nov. 1975 before Len Wein became writer with issue No. 151. During Wein's tenure, Harry Osborn and Liz Allen dated and became engaged; J. Jonah Jameson was introduced to his eventual second wife, Marla Madison; and Aunt May suffered a heart attack. Wein's last story on Amazing was a fiveissue arc in 176180 Jan.May 1978 featuring a third Green Goblin Harry Osborn's psychiatrist, Bart Hamilton.
Marv Wolfman, Marvel's editorinchief from 1975 to 1976, succeeded Wein as writer, and in his first issue, No. 182 July 1978, had Parker propose marriage to Watson who refused, in the following issue. Keith Pollard succeeded Ross Andru as artist shortly afterward, and with Wolfman intr
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oduced the likable rogue the Black Cat Felicia Hardy in No. 194 July 1979. As a love interest for SpiderMan, the Black Cat would go on to be an important supporting character for the better part of the next decade, and remain a friend and occasional lover into the 2010s.
1980s
The Amazing SpiderMan No. 200 Jan. 1980 featured the return and death of the burglar who killed SpiderMan's Uncle Ben. Writer Marv Wolfman and penciler Keith Pollard both left the title by midyear, succeeded by Dennis O'Neil, a writer known for groundbreaking 1970s work at rival DC Comics, and penciler John Romita Jr. O'Neil wrote two issues of The Amazing SpiderMan Annual which were both drawn by Frank Miller. The 1980 Annual featured a teamup with Doctor Strange while the 1981 Annual showcased a meeting with the Punisher. Roger Stern, who had written nearly 20 issues of sister title The Spectacular SpiderMan, took over Amazing with issue No. 224 January 1982. During his two years on the title, Stern augmented the backgrounds of lon
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gestablished SpiderMan villains, and with Romita Jr. created the mysterious supervillain the Hobgoblin in 238239 MarchApril 1983. Fans engaged with the mystery of the Hobgoblin's secret identity, which continued throughout 244245 and 249251 Sept.Oct. 1983 and Feb.April 1984. One lasting change was the reintroduction of Mary Jane Watson as a more serious, mature woman who becomes Peter's confidante after she reveals that she knows his secret identity. Stern also wrote "The Kid Who Collects SpiderMan" in The Amazing SpiderMan No. 248 January 1984, a story which ranks among his most popular.
By mid1984, Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz took over scripting and penciling. DeFalco helped establish Parker and Watson's mature relationship, laying the foundation for the characters' wedding in 1987. Notably, in No. 257 Oct. 1984, Watson tells Parker that she knows he is SpiderMan, and in No. 259 Dec. 1984, she reveals to Parker the extent of her troubled childhood. Other notable issues of the DeFalcoFrenz era include No. 25
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2 May 1984, with the first appearance of SpiderMan's black costume, which the hero would wear almost exclusively for the next four years' worth of comics; the debut of criminal mastermind the Rose, in No. 253 June 1984; the revelation in No. 258 Nov. 1984 that the black costume is a living being, a symbiote; and the introduction of the female mercenary Silver Sable in No. 265 June 1985.
Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz were both removed from The Amazing SpiderMan in 1986 by editor Jim Owsley under acrimonious circumstances. A succession of artists including Alan Kupperberg, John Romita Jr., and Alex Saviuk penciled the series from 1987 to 1988; Owsley wrote the book for the first half of 1987, scripting the fivepart "Gang War" story 284288 that DeFalco plotted. Former Spectacular SpiderMan writer Peter David scripted No. 289 June 1987, which revealed Ned Leeds as being the Hobgoblin although this was retconned in 1996 by Roger Stern into Leeds not being the original Hobgoblin after all.
David Michelinie took over
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as writer in the next issue, for a story arc in 290292 JulySept. 1987 that led to the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson in Amazing SpiderMan Annual No. 21. The "Kraven's Last Hunt" storyline by writer J.M. DeMatteis and artists Mike Zeck and Bob McLeod crossed over into The Amazing SpiderMan No. 293 and 294. Issue No. 298 March 1988 was the first SpiderMan comic to be drawn by future industry star Todd McFarlane, the first regular artist on The Amazing SpiderMan since Frenz's departure. McFarlane revolutionized SpiderMan's look. His depiction "Ditkoesque" poses, largeeyed, with wiry, contorted limbs, and messy, knotted, convoluted webbing influenced the way virtually all subsequent artists would draw the character. McFarlane's other significant contribution to the SpiderMan canon was the design for what would become one of SpiderMan's most wildly popular antagonists, the supervillain Venom. Issue No. 299 April 1988 featured Venom's first appearance a lastpage cameo before his first full appearan
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ce in No. 300 May 1988. The latter issue featured SpiderMan reverting to his original redandblue costume.
Other notable issues of the MichelinieMcFarlane era include No. 312 Feb. 1989, featuring the Green Goblin vs. the Hobgoblin; and 315317 MayJuly 1989, with the return of Venom. In July 2012, Todd McFarlane's original cover art for The Amazing SpiderMan No. 328 sold for a bid of 657,250, making it the most expensive American comic book art ever sold at auction.
1990s
With a civilian life as a married man, the SpiderMan of the 1990s was different from the superhero of the previous three decades. McFarlane left the title in 1990 to write and draw a new series titled simply SpiderMan. His successor, Erik Larsen, penciled the book from early 1990 to mid1991. After issue No. 350, Larsen was succeeded by Mark Bagley, who had won the 1986 Marvel Tryout Contest and was assigned a number of lowprofile penciling jobs followed by a run on New Warriors in 1990. Bagley penciled the flagship SpiderMan title from 1991 t
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