Origins.

The word "symphony" is derived from the Greek word (), meaning "agreement or concord of sound", "concert of vocal or instrumental music", from (), "harmonious". The word referred to a variety of different concepts before ultimately settling on its current meaning designating a musical form.  In late Greek and medieval theory, the word was used for consonance, as opposed to (), which was the word for "dissonance". In the Middle Ages and later, the Latin form "symphonia" was used to describe various instruments, especially those capable of producing more than one sound simultaneously. Isidore of Seville was the first to use the word symphonia as the name of a two-headed drum, and from c. 1155 to 1377 the French form "symphonie" was the name of the "organistrum" or hurdy-gurdy. In late medieval England, "symphony" was used in both of these senses, whereas by the 16th century it was equated with the dulcimer. In German, "Symphonie" was a generic term for spinets and virginals from the late 16th century to the 18th century.  In the sense of "sounding together," the word begins to appear in the titles of some works by 16th- and 17th-century composers including Giovanni Gabrieli's "Sacrae symphoniae", and "Symphoniae sacrae, liber secundus", published in 1597 and 1615, respectively; Adriano Banchieri's "Eclesiastiche sinfonie, dette canzoni in aria francese, per sonare, et cantare", op. 16, published in 1607; Lodovico Grossi da Viadana's "Sinfonie musicali", op. 18, published in 1610; and Heinrich Schütz's "Symphoniae sacrae", op. 6, and "Symphoniarum sacrarum secunda pars", op. 10, published in 1629 and 1647, respectively. Except for Viadana's collection, which contained purely instrumental and secular music, these were all collections of sacred vocal works, some with instrumental accompaniment.

Baroque era.

In the 17th century, for most of the Baroque era, the terms "symphony" and "sinfonia" were used for a range of different compositions, including instrumental pieces used in operas, sonatas and concertos—usually part of a larger work. The "opera sinfonia", or "Italian overture" had, by the 18th century, a standard structure of three contrasting movements: fast, slow, fast and dance-like. It is this form that is often considered as the direct forerunner of the orchestral symphony. The terms "overture", "symphony" and "sinfonia" were widely regarded as interchangeable for much of the 18th century.  In the 17th century, pieces scored for large instrumental ensemble did not precisely designate which instruments were to play which parts, as is the practice from the 19th century to the current period. When composers from the 17th century wrote pieces, they expected that these works would be performed by whatever group of musicians were available. To give one example, whereas the bassline in a 19th-century work is scored for cellos, double basses and other specific instruments, in a 17th-century work, a basso continuo part for a sinfonia would not specify which instruments would play the part. A performance of the piece might be done with a basso continuo group as small as a single cello and harpsichord. However, if a bigger budget was available for a performance and a larger sound was required, a basso continuo group might include multiple chord-playing instruments (harpsichord, lute, etc.) and a range of bass instruments, including cello, double bass, bass viol or even a serpent, an early bass wind instrument.

Galant and classical eras.

LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson write in the second edition of "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians" that "the symphony was cultivated with extraordinary intensity" in the 18th century. It played a role in many areas of public life, including church services, but a particularly strong area of support for symphonic performances was the aristocracy. In Vienna, perhaps the most important location in Europe for the composition of symphonies, "literally hundreds of noble families supported musical establishments, generally dividing their time between Vienna and their ancestral estate [elsewhere in the Empire]". Since the normal size of the orchestra at the time was quite small, many of these courtly establishments were capable of performing symphonies. The young Joseph Haydn, taking up his first job as a music director in 1757 for the Morzin family, found that when the Morzin household was in Vienna, his own orchestra was only part of a lively and competitive musical scene, with multiple aristocrats sponsoring concerts with their own ensembles.  LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson's article traces the gradual expansion of the symphonic orchestra through the 18th century. At first, symphonies were string symphonies, written in just four parts: first violin, second violin, viola, and bass (the bass line was taken by cello(s), double bass(es) playing the part an octave below, and perhaps also a bassoon). Occasionally the early symphonists even dispensed with the viola part, thus creating three-part symphonies. A basso continuo part including a bassoon together with a harpsichord or other chording instrument was also possible.  The first additions to this simple ensemble were a pair of horns, occasionally a pair of oboes, and then both horns and oboes together. Over the century, other instruments were added to the classical orchestra: flutes (sometimes replacing the oboes), separate parts for bassoons, clarinets, and trumpets and timpani. Works varied in their scoring concerning which of these additional instruments were to appear. The full-scale classical orchestra, deployed at the end of the century for the largest-scale symphonies, has the standard string ensemble mentioned above, pairs of winds (flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons), a pair of horns, and timpani. A keyboard continuo instrument (harpsichord or piano) remained an option.  The "Italian" style of symphony, often used as overture and entr'acte in opera houses, became a standard three-movement form: a fast movement, a slow movement, and another fast movement. Over the course of the 18th century it became the custom to write four-movement symphonies, along the lines described in the next paragraph. The three-movement symphony died out slowly; about half of Haydn's first thirty symphonies are in three movements; and for the young Mozart, the three-movement symphony was the norm, perhaps under the influence of his friend Johann Christian Bach. An outstanding late example of the three-movement Classical symphony is Mozart's "Prague" Symphony, from 1786.  The four-movement form that emerged from this evolution was as follows:  Variations on this layout, like changing the order of the middle movements or adding a slow introduction to the first movement, were common. Haydn, Mozart and their contemporaries restricted their use of the four-movement form to orchestral or multi-instrument chamber music such as quartets, though since Beethoven solo sonatas are as often written in four as in three movements.  The composition of early symphonies was centred on Milan, Vienna, and Mannheim. The Milanese school centred around Giovanni Battista Sammartini and included Antonio Brioschi, Ferdinando Galimberti and Giovanni Battista Lampugnani. Early exponents of the form in Vienna included Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Wenzel Raimund Birck and Georg Matthias Monn, while later significant Viennese composers of symphonies included Johann Baptist Wanhal, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Leopold Hofmann. The Mannheim school included Johann Stamitz.  The most important symphonists of the latter part of the 18th century are Haydn, who wrote at least 107 symphonies over the course of 36 years, and Mozart, with at least 47 symphonies in 24 years.

Romantic era.

At the beginning of the 19th century, Beethoven elevated the symphony from an everyday genre produced in large quantities to a supreme form in which composers strove to reach the highest potential of music in just a few works. Beethoven began with two works directly emulating his models Mozart and Haydn, then seven more symphonies, starting with the Third Symphony ("Eroica") that expanded the scope and ambition of the genre. His Symphony No. 5 is perhaps the most famous symphony ever written; its transition from the emotionally stormy C minor opening movement to a triumphant major-key finale provided a model adopted by later symphonists such as Brahms and Mahler. His Symphony No. 6 is a programmatic work, featuring instrumental imitations of bird calls and a storm; and, unconventionally, a fifth movement (symphonies usually had at most four movements). His Symphony No. 9 includes parts for vocal soloists and choir in the last movement, making it a choral symphony.  Of the symphonies of Franz Schubert, two are core repertory items and are frequently performed. Of the Eighth Symphony (1822), Schubert completed only the first two movements; this highly Romantic work is usually called by its nickname "The Unfinished". His last completed symphony, the Ninth (1826) is a massive work in the Classical idiom.  Of the early Romantics, Felix Mendelssohn (five symphonies) and Robert Schumann (four) continued to write symphonies in the classical mold, though using their own musical language. In contrast, Hector Berlioz favored programmatic works, including his "dramatic symphony" "Roméo et Juliette", the viola symphony "Harold en Italie" and the highly original "Symphonie fantastique". The latter is also a programme work and has both a march and a waltz and five movements instead of the customary four. His fourth and last symphony, the "Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale" (originally titled "Symphonie militaire") was composed in 1840 for a 200-piece marching military band, to be performed out of doors, and is an early example of a band symphony. Berlioz later added optional string parts and a choral finale. In 1851, Richard Wagner declared that all of these post-Beethoven symphonies were no more than an epilogue, offering nothing substantially new. Indeed, after Schumann's last symphony, the "Rhenish" composed in 1850, for two decades the Lisztian symphonic poem appeared to have displaced the symphony as the leading form of large-scale instrumental music. However, Liszt also composed two programmatic choral symphonies during this time, "Faust" and "Dante". If the symphony had otherwise been eclipsed, it was not long before it re-emerged in a "second age" in the 1870s and 1880s, with the symphonies of Anton Bruckner, Johannes Brahms, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Camille Saint-Saëns, Alexander Borodin, Antonín Dvořák, and César Franck—works which largely avoided the programmatic elements of Berlioz and Liszt and dominated the concert repertory for at least a century.  Over the course of the 19th century, composers continued to add to the size of the symphonic orchestra. Around the beginning of the century, a full-scale orchestra would consist of the string section plus pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, and lastly a set of timpani. This is, for instance, the scoring used in Beethoven's symphonies numbered 1, 2, 4, 7, and 8. Trombones, which had previously been confined to church and theater music, came to be added to the symphonic orchestra, notably in Beethoven's 5th, 6th, and 9th symphonies. The combination of bass drum, triangle, and cymbals (sometimes also: piccolo), which 18th century composers employed as a coloristic effect in so-called "Turkish music", came to be increasingly used during the second half of the 19th century without any such connotations of genre. By the time of Mahler (see below), it was possible for a composer to write a symphony scored for "a veritable compendium of orchestral instruments". In addition to increasing in variety of instruments, 19th century symphonies were gradually augmented with more string players and more wind parts, so that the orchestra grew substantially in sheer numbers, as concert halls likewise grew.

Modernist and postmodernist eras.

Towards the end of the 19th century, Gustav Mahler began writing long, large-scale symphonies that he continued composing into the early 20th century. His Third Symphony, completed in 1896, is one of the longest regularly performed symphonies at around 100 minutes in length for most performances. The Eighth Symphony was composed in 1906 and is nicknamed the "Symphony of a Thousand" because of the large number of voices required to perform the work.  The 20th century saw further diversification in the style and content of works that composers labeled "symphonies" (Anon. 2008). Some composers, including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Carl Nielsen, continued to write in the traditional four-movement form, while other composers took different approaches: Jean Sibelius' Symphony No. 7, his last, is in one movement, whereas Alan Hovhaness's Symphony No. 9, "Saint Vartan"—originally op. 80, changed to op. 180—composed in 1949–50, is in twenty-four.  A concern with unification of the traditional four-movement symphony into a single, subsuming formal conception had emerged in the late 19th century. This has been called a "two-dimensional symphonic form", and finds its key turning point in Arnold Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 (1909), which was followed in the 1920s by other notable single-movement German symphonies, including Kurt Weill's First Symphony (1921), Max Butting's Chamber Symphony, Op. 25 (1923), and Paul Dessau's 1926 Symphony.  There remained, however, certain tendencies. Designating a work a "symphony" still implied a degree of sophistication and seriousness of purpose. The word "sinfonietta" came into use to designate a work that is shorter, of more modest aims, or "lighter" than a symphony, such as Sergei Prokofiev's Sinfonietta for orchestra.  In the first half of the century, modernist composers including Edward Elgar, Gustav Mahler, Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen, Igor Stravinsky, Bohuslav Martinů, Roger Sessions, Sergei Prokofiev, Rued Langgaard and Dmitri Shostakovich composed symphonies "extraordinary in scope, richness, originality, and urgency of expression". One measure of the significance of a symphony is the degree to which it reflects conceptions of temporal form particular to the age in which it was created. Five composers from across the span of the 20th century who fulfil this measure are Jean Sibelius, Igor Stravinsky, Luciano Berio (in his Sinfonia, 1968–69), Elliott Carter (in his "Symphony of Three Orchestras", 1976), and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (in "Symphony/Antiphony", 1980).  From the mid-20th century into the 21st there has been a resurgence of interest in the symphony with many postmodernist composers adding substantially to the canon, not least in the United Kingdom: Peter Maxwell Davies (10), Robin Holloway (1), David Matthews (9), James MacMillan (4), Peter Seabourne (4), and Philip Sawyers (3).

Symphonies for concert band.

Hector Berlioz originally wrote the "Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale" for military band in 1840. After that, few symphonies were written for wind bands until the 20th century when more symphonies were written for concert band than in past centuries. Although examples exist from as early as 1932, the first such symphony of importance is Nikolai Myaskovsky's Symphony No. 19, Op. 46, composed in 1939 (Battisti 2002, 42). Some further examples are Paul Hindemith's Symphony in B-flat for Band, composed in 1951; Morton Gould's Symphony No. 4 "West Point", composed in 1952; Vincent Persichetti's Symphony No. 6, Op. 69, composed in 1956; Vittorio Giannini's Symphony No.3, composed in 1959; Alan Hovhaness's Symphonies No. 4, op. 165, No. 7, "Nanga Parvat", op. 175, No. 14, "Ararat", op. 194, and No. 23, "Ani", op. 249, composed in 1958, 1959, 1961, and 1972 respectively; Alfred Reed's 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th symphonies, composed in 1979, 1988, 1992, and 1994 respectively; and Johan de Meij's Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings", composed in 1988, and his Symphony No. 2 "The Big Apple", composed in 1993.

Other modern usages of "symphony".

In some forms of English, for example U.S. English the word "symphony" is also used to refer to the orchestra, the large ensemble that often performs these works. The word "symphony" appears in the name of many orchestras, for example, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, the Houston Symphony, or Miami's New World Symphony. For some orchestras, "(city name) Symphony" provides a shorter version of the full name; for instance, the OED gives "Vancouver Symphony" as a possible abbreviated form of Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, in common usage, a person may say they are going out to hear a symphony perform, a reference to the orchestra and not the works on the program. These usages are not common in U.K. English.

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often written by composers for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony).

交响曲(Symphony)是古典音乐的乐曲型式,是包含多个乐章的大型管弦乐曲,一般是为管弦乐团创作,乐团会包括弦乐器(包括小提琴、中提琴、大提琴、低音提琴)、木管乐器、铜管乐器及打击乐器,编制在30至100人之间。交响曲多半会有四个乐章,第一乐章通常是奏鸣曲式。交响曲会有包括所有乐器的大谱表。而各乐器演奏家会有只对应各自乐器的乐谱。有些交响曲会包括人声(例如贝多芬的第9号交响曲)。


Early life.

A member of the plebeian Antonia gens, Antony was born in Rome on 14 January 83 BC. His father and namesake was Marcus Antonius Creticus, son of the noted orator by the same name who had been murdered during the Marian Terror of the winter of 87–86 BC. His mother was Julia, a third cousin of Julius Caesar. Antony was an infant at the time of Lucius Cornelius Sulla's march on Rome in 82 BC. According to the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, Antony's father was incompetent and corrupt, and was only given power because he was incapable of using or abusing it effectively. In 74 BC he was given military command to defeat the pirates of the Mediterranean, but he died in Crete in 71 BC without making any significant progress. The elder Antony's death left Antony and his brothers, Lucius and Gaius, in the care of their mother, Julia, who

Early career.

Military service.

In 57 BC, Antony joined the military staff of Aulus Gabinius, the Proconsul of Syria, as chief of the cavalry. This appointment marks the beginning of his military career. As consul the previous year, Gabinius had consented to the exile of Cicero by Antony's mentor, Publius Clodius Pulcher.  Hyrcanus II, the Roman-supported Hasmonean High Priest of Judea, fled Jerusalem to Gabinius to seek protection against his rival and son-in-law Alexander. Years earlier in 63 BC, the Roman general Pompey had captured him and his father, King Aristobulus II, during his war

Service under Caesar.

Gallic Wars.

Antony's association with Publius Clodius Pulcher allowed him to achieve greater prominence. Clodius, through the influence of his benefactor Marcus Licinius Crassus, had developed a positive political relationship with Julius Caesar. Clodius secured Antony a position on Caesar's military staff in 54 BC, joining his conquest of Gaul. Serving under Caesar, Antony demonstrated excellent military leadership. Despite a temporary alienation later in life, Antony and Caesar developed friendly relations which would continue until Caesar's assassination in 44 BC. Caesar's influence secured greater political advancement for Antony. After a year of service in Gaul, Caesar dispatched Antony to Rome to formally begin his political career, receiving election as quaestor for 52 BC as a member of the Populares faction. Assigned to assist Caesar, Antony returned to Gaul and commanded Caesar's cavalry during his victory at the Battle of Alesia against the Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix. Following his year in office, Antony was promoted by Caesar to the rank of Legate and assigned command of two legions (approximately 7,500 total soldiers).  Meanwhile, the alliance among Caesar, Pompey and Crassus had effectively ended. Caesar's daughter Julia, who had married Pompey to secure the alliance, died in 54 BC

Civil War.

The feud between Caesar and Pompey erupted into open confrontation by early 49 BC. The consuls for the year, Gaius Claudius Marcellus Maior and Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus, were firm Optimates opposed to Caesar. Pompey, though remaining in Rome, was then serving as the governor of Spain and commanded several legions. Upon assuming office in January, Antony immediately summoned a meeting of the senate to resolve the conflict: he proposed both Caesar and Pompey lay down their commands and return to the status of mere private citizens. His proposal was well received by most of the senators but the consuls and Cato vehemently opposed it. Antony then made a new proposal: Caesar would retain only two of his eight legions, and the governorship of Illyrium if he was allowed to stand for the consulship "in absentia". This arrangement ensured his immunity from suit would continue: he had

Governor of Italy.

Instead of immediately pursuing Pompey and the remaining Optimates, Caesar returned to Rome and was appointed Dictator with Antony as his Master of the Horse and second in command. Caesar presided over his own election to a second consulship for 47 BC and then, after eleven days in office, resigned this dictatorship. Caesar then sailed to Egypt, where he deposed Ptolemy XIII in favor of his sister Cleopatra in 47 BC. The young Cleopatra became Caesar's mistress and bore him a son, Caesarion. Caesar's actions further strengthened Roman control over the already Roman-dominated kingdom.  While Caesar was away in Egypt, Antony remained in Rome to govern Italy and restore order. Without Caesar to guide him, however, Antony quickly faced political difficulties and proved himself unpopular. The chief cause of his political challenges concerned debt forgiveness. One of the tribunes for 47 BC, Publius Cornelius Dolabella, a former general under Pompey, proposed a law which would have canceled all outstanding debts. Antony opposed the law for political and personal reasons: he believed Caesar would not support such massive relief and suspected Dolabella had seduced his wife Antonia Hybrida Minor. When Dolabella sought to enact the law by force and seized the Roman Forum, Antony responded by unleashing his soldiers upon the assembled masses. The resulting instability, especially among Caesar's veterans who would have benefited from the law, forced Caesar to return to

Assassination of Caesar.

Ides of March.

Whatever conflicts existed between himself and Caesar, Antony remained faithful to Caesar, ensuring their estrangement did not last long. Antony reunited with Caesar at Narbo in 45 BC with full reconciliation coming in 44 BC when Antony was elected consul alongside Caesar. Caesar planned a new invasion of Parthia and desired to leave Antony in Italy to govern Rome in his name. The reconciliation came soon after Antony rejected an offer by Gaius Trebonius, one of Caesar's generals, to join a conspiracy to assassinate Caesar.

Leader of the Caesarian Party.

In the turmoil surrounding the assassination, Antony escaped Rome dressed as a slave, fearing Caesar's death would be the start of a bloodbath among his supporters. When this did not occur, he soon returned to Rome. The conspirators, who styled themselves the "Liberatores" ("The Liberators"), had barricaded themselves on the Capitoline Hill for their own safety. Though they believed Caesar's death would restore the Republic, Caesar had been immensely popular with the Roman middle and lower classes, who became enraged upon learning a small group of aristocrats had killed their champion.  Antony, as the sole consul, soon took the initiative and seized the state treasury. Calpurnia, Caesar's widow, presented him with Caesar's personal papers and custody of

First conflict with Octavian.

Octavian arrived in Rome in May to claim his inheritance. Although Antony had amassed political support, Octavian still had opportunity to rival him as the leading member of the Caesarian faction. The senatorial Republicans increasingly viewed Antony as a new tyrant. Antony had lost the support of many Romans and supporters of Caesar when he opposed the motion to elevate Caesar to divine status. When Antony refused to relinquish Caesar's vast fortune to him, Octavian borrowed heavily to fulfill the bequests in Caesar's will to the Roman people and to his veterans, as well as to establish his own bodyguard of veterans. This earned him the support of Caesarian sympathizers who hoped to use him as a means of eliminating Antony. The senate, and Cicero in particular, viewed Antony as the greater danger of the two. By summer 44 BC, Antony was in a difficult position due to his actions regarding his compromise with the Liberatores following Caesar's assassination. He could either denounce the Liberatores as murderers and alienate the senate or he could maintain his support for the compromise and risk betraying the legacy of Caesar, strengthening Octavian's position. In either case, his situation as ruler of Rome would be weakened. Roman historian

The Second Triumvirate.

Forming the Alliance.

With Antony defeated, the senate, hoping to eliminate Octavian and the remainder of the Caesarian party, assigned command of the Republic's legions to Decimus. Sextus Pompey, son of Caesar's old rival Pompey Magnus, was given command of the Republic's fleet from his base in Sicily while Brutus and Cassius were granted the governorships of Macedonia and Syria respectively. These appointments attempted to renew the "Republican" cause. However, the eight legions serving under Octavian, composed largely of Caesar's veterans, refused to follow one of Caesar's murderers, allowing Octavian to retain his command. Meanwhile, Antony recovered his position by joining forces with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, who had been

War against the Liberators.

Due to the infighting within the Triumvirate during 43 BC, Brutus and Cassius had assumed control of much of Rome's eastern territories, and amassed a large army. Before the Triumvirate could cross the Adriatic Sea into Greece where the Liberators had stationed their army, the Triumvirate had to address the threat posed by Sextus Pompey and his fleet. From his base in Sicily, Sextus raided the Italian coast and blockaded the Triumvirs. Octavian's friend and admiral Quintus Salvidienus Rufus thwarted an attack by Sextus against the southern Italian mainland at Rhegium, but Salvidienus was then defeated in the resulting naval battle because of the inexperience of his crews. Only when Antony arrived with his fleet was the blockade broken. Though the blockade was defeated, control of Sicily remained in Sextus' hand, but the defeat of the Liberators was the Triumvirate's first priority.  In the summer of 42 BC, Octavian and Antony sailed for Macedonia to face the Liberators with nineteen legions, the vast majority of their army (approximately 100,000 regular infantry plus supporting cavalry and irregular auxiliary units), leaving Rome under the administration of Lepidus. Likewise, the army of the Liberators also commanded an army of nineteen legions; their legions, however, were not at full strength while the legions of Antony and Octavian were. While the Triumvirs commanded a larger number of infantry, the Liberators commanded a larger cavalry contingent. The Liberators, who controlled Macedonia, did not wish to engage in a decisive battle, but rather to attain a good defensive position and then use their naval superiority to block the Triumvirs' communications with their supply base in Italy. They had

Master of the Roman East.

Division of the Republic.

The victory at Philippi left the members of the Triumvirate as masters of the Republic, save Sextus Pompey in Sicily. Upon returning to Rome, the Triumvirate repartitioned rule of Rome's provinces among themselves, with Antony as the clear senior partner. He received the largest distribution, governing all of the Eastern provinces while retaining Gaul in the West. Octavian's position improved, as he received Spain, which was taken from Lepidus. Lepidus was then reduced to holding only Africa, and he assumed a clearly tertiary role in the Triumvirate. Rule over Italy remained undivided, but Octavian was assigned the difficult and unpopular task of demobilizing their veterans and providing them with land distributions in Italy. Antony assumed direct control of

Activities in the East.

Antony spent the winter of 42 BC in Athens, where he ruled generously towards the Greek cities. A proclaimed "philhellene" ("Friend of all things Greek"), Antony supported Greek culture to win the loyalty of the inhabitants of the Greek East. He attended religious festivals and ceremonies, including initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries, a secret cult dedicated to the worship of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. Beginning in 41 BC, he traveled across the Aegean Sea to Anatolia, leaving his friend Lucius Marcius Censorius as governor of Macedonia and Achaea. Upon his arrival in Ephesus in Asia, Antony was worshiped as the god Dionysus born anew. He demanded heavy taxes from the Hellenic

Fulvia's Civil War.

Following the defeat of Brutus and Cassius, while Antony was stationed in the East, Octavian had authority over the West. Octavian's chief responsibility was distributing land to tens of thousands of Caesar's veterans who had fought for the Triumvirate. Additionally, tens of thousands of veterans who had fought for the Republican cause in the war also required land grants. This was necessary to ensure they would not support a political opponent of the Triumvirate. However, the Triumvirs did not possess sufficient state-controlled land to allot to the veterans. This left Octavian with two choices: alienating many Roman citizens by confiscating their land, or alienating many Roman soldiers who might back a military rebellion against the Triumvirate's rule. Octavian chose the former. As

Antony's Parthian War.

Roman–Parthian relations.

The rise of the Parthian Empire in the 3rd century BC and Rome's expansion into the Eastern Mediterranean during the 2nd century BC brought the two powers into direct contact, causing centuries of tumultuous and strained relations. Though periods of peace developed cultural and commercial exchanges, war was a constant threat. Influence over the buffer state of the Kingdom of Armenia, located to the north-east of Roman Syria, was often a central issue in the Roman-Parthian conflict. In 95 BC, Parthian Shah Mithridates II, installed Tigranes the Great as Parthian's client-king over Armenia. Tigranes would wage a series of three wars against Rome before being ultimately defeated by Pompey in 66 BC. Thereafter, with his son Artavasdes II in Rome as a hostage, Tigranes would rule Armenia as an ally of Rome until his death in 55 BC. Rome then installed Artavasdes II as king and continued its influence over Armenia.  In 53 BC, Rome's governor of Syria, Marcus Licinius Crassus, led an expedition across the Euphrates River into Parthian territory to confront the Parthian Shah Orodes II. Artavasdes II offered Crassus the aid of nearly forty thousand troops to assist his Parthian expedition on the condition that Crassus

Parthian Invasion.

A Parthian army, led by Orodes II's eldest son Pacorus, invaded Syria in early 40 BC. Labienus, the Republican ally of Brutus and Cassius, accompanied him to advise him and to rally the former Republican soldiers stationed in Syria to the Parthian cause. Labienus recruited many of the former Republican soldiers to the Parthian campaign in opposition to Antony. The joint Parthian–Roman force, after initial success in Syria, separated to lead their offensive in two directions: Pacorus marched south toward Hasmonean Judea while Labienus crossed the Taurus Mountains to the north into Cilicia. Labienus conquered southern Anatolia with little resistance. The

Conflict with Sextus Pompey.

While Antony and the other Triumvirs ratified the Treaty of Brundisium to redivide the Roman world among themselves, the rebel general Sextus Pompey, the son of Caesar's rival Pompey the Great, was largely ignored. From his stronghold on Sicily, he continued his piratical activities across Italy and blocked the shipment of grain to Rome. The lack of food in Rome caused the public to blame the Triumvirate and shift its sympathies towards Pompey. This pressure forced the Triumvirs to meet with Sextus in early 39 BC.  While Octavian wanted an end to

Reconquest of Judea.

With Publius Ventidius Bassus returned to Rome in triumph for his defensive campaign against the Parthians, Antony appointed Gaius Sosius as the new governor of Syria and Cilicia in early 38 BC. Antony, still in the West negotiating with Octavian, ordered Sosius to depose Antigonus, who had been installed in the recent Parthian invasion as the ruler of Hasmonean Judea, and to make Herod the new Roman client king in the region. Years before in 40 BC, the Roman senate had proclaimed Herod "King of the Jews" because Herod had been a loyal supporter of Hyrcanus II, Rome's previous client king before the Parthian invasion, and was from a family with long standing connections to

Parthian Campaign.

With the Triumvirate renewed in 38 BC, Antony returned to Athens in the winter with his new wife Octavia, the sister of Octavian. With the assassination of the Parthian king Orodes II by his son Phraates IV, who then seized the Parthian throne, in late 38 BC, Antony prepared to invade Parthia himself. Antony, however, realized Octavian had no intention of sending him the additional legions he had promised under the Treaty of Tarentum. To supplement his own armies, Antony instead looked to Rome's principal vassal in the East: his lover Cleopatra. In addition to significant financial resources, Cleopatra's backing of his Parthian campaign allowed Antony to amass the largest army Rome had ever assembled in the East. Wintering in Antioch during 37, Antony's combined Roman–Egyptian army numbered some 200,000, including sixteen legions (approximately 160,000 soldiers) plus an additional 40,000 auxiliaries. Such a force was twice the size of Marcus Licinius Crassus's army from his failed Parthian invasion of 53 BC and three times those of Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Lucius Cornelius Sulla during the Mithridatic Wars. The size of his army indicated Antony's intention to conquer Parthia, or at least receive its submission by capturing the Parthian capital of Ecbatana. Antony's rear was protected by Rome's client kingdoms in Anatolia, Syria, and Judea, while the client kingdoms of Cappadocia, Pontus, and Commagene would provide supplies along the march.  Antony's first

Antony and Cleopatra.

Meanwhile, in Rome, the triumvirate was no more. Octavian forced Lepidus to resign after the older triumvir attempted to take control of Sicily after the defeat of Sextus. Now in sole power, Octavian was occupied in wooing the traditional Republican aristocracy to his side. He married Livia and started to attack Antony in order to raise himself to power. He argued that Antony was a man of low morals to have left his faithful wife abandoned in Rome with the children to be with the promiscuous queen of Egypt. Antony was accused of everything, but most of all, of "going

Death.

Octavian, now close to absolute power, did not intend to give Antony and Cleopatra any rest. In 30 August BC, assisted by Agrippa, he invaded Egypt. With no other refuge to escape to, Antony committed suicide by stabbing himself with his sword in the mistaken belief that Cleopatra had already done so. When he found out that Cleopatra was still alive, his friends brought him to Cleopatra's monument

Aftermath and legacy.

Cicero's son, Cicero Minor, announced Antony's death to the senate. Antony's honours were revoked and his statues removed, but he was not subject to a complete damnatio memoriae. Cicero Minor also made a decree that no member of the Antonii would ever bear the name Marcus again. "In this way Heaven entrusted the family of Cicero the final acts in the punishment of Antony."  When Antony died, Octavian became uncontested ruler of Rome. In the following years, Octavian, who was known as Augustus after 27 BC, managed to accumulate in

Marriages and issue.

Antony was known to have an obsession with women, and sex. He had many mistresses (including Cytheris) and had been married in

Descendants.

Through his daughters by Octavia, he would become the paternal great grandfather of Roman Emperor Caligula, the maternal grandfather of Emperor Claudius, and both maternal great-great-grandfather and paternal great-great uncle of the Emperor Nero of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the very family, as represented by Octavian Augustus, that he had fought

Artistic portrayals.

Works in which the character of Mark Antony plays a central role:

Marcus Antonius (14 January 1 August 30 BC), commonly known in English as Mark Antony or Anthony, was a Roman politician and general who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from an oligarchy into the autocratic Roman Empire.

马克·安东尼(,约前83年1月14日出生于罗马,逝世于前30年8月1日)是一位古罗马政治家和军事家。他是凯撒最重要的军队指挥官和管理人员之一。凯撒被刺后,他与屋大维和雷必达一起组成了后三头同盟。前33年后三头同盟分裂,前30年马克·安东尼与埃及女王克丽奥佩脱拉七世先后自杀身亡。


Usage.

While XFree86 was widely used by most UNIX-like computer operating systems before its license change with version 4.4.0, it has since then been superseded by X.org and is used rarely nowadays. The last remaining operating system distribution to use it was NetBSD, which shipped some platforms with 4.5.0 by default until removing it as obsolete in 2015.<ref name=n/cvsweb></ref><ref name=m/2015/07/23></ref> and later releases use X.org by default on various ports (including i386 and amd64), and X.org is available through NetBSD pkgsrc for architectures for which XFree86 remains the default because of better support. , the codice_1 branch and release were the last to potentially contain XFree86, and XFree86 was completely removed before codice_2 branch and release in 2018.

Architecture.

The XFree86 server communicates with the host operating system's kernel to drive input and output devices, with the exception of graphics cards. These are generally managed directly by XFree86, so it includes its own drivers for all graphic cards a user might have. Some cards are supported by vendors themselves via binary-only drivers.  Since version 4.0, XFree86 has supported certain accelerated 3D graphics cards via the GLX and DRI extensions. Also in the version 4.0, XFree86 moved to a new driver model, from one X server binary per driver to a unique X server capable of loading several drivers at a time.  Because the server usually needs low level access to graphics hardware, on many configurations it needs to run as the superuser, or a user with UID 0. However, on some systems and configurations it is possible to run the server as a normal user.  It is also possible to use XFree86 in a framebuffer device, which in turn uses a kernel graphics card driver.  On a typical POSIX-system, the directory /etc/X11 includes the configuration files. The basic configuration file is /etc/X11/XF86Config (or XF86Config-4) that includes variables about the screen (monitor), keyboard and graphics card. The program "xf86config" is often used, although "xf86cfg" also comes with the XFree86 server and is certainly friendlier. Many Linux distributions used to include a configuration tool that was easier to use (such as Debian's debconf) or autodetected most (if not all) settings (Red Hat Linux and Fedora's "Anaconda", SuSE's "YaST" and Mandrake Linux used to choose this path).

History.

Early history and naming.

The project began in 1992 when David Wexelblat, Glenn Lai, David Dawes and Jim Tsillas joined forces addressing bugs in the source code of the X386 X display server (written by Thomas Roell), as contributed to X11R5. This version was initially called X386 1.2E. As newer versions of the (originally freeware) X386 were being sold under a proprietary software license by SGCS (of which Roell was a partner), confusion existed between the projects. After discussion, the project was renamed X"Free"86, as a pun (compare X-three-eighty-six to X-free-eighty-six). Roell has continued to sell proprietary X servers, most recently under the name "Accelerated-X".

Rise with Linux.

As Linux grew in popularity, XFree86 rose with it, as the main X project with drivers for PC video cards.  By the late 1990s, official X development was moribund. Most technical advancement was happening in the XFree86 project. In 1999, XFree86 was sponsored onto X.Org (the official industry consortium) by various hardware companies interested in its use with Linux and its status as the most popular version of X.

2002: growing dissent within the project.

By 2002, while Linux's popularity, and hence the installed base of X, surged, X.Org was all but inactive; active development was largely carried out by XFree86. However, there was considerable dissent within XFree86.  XFree86 used to have a "Core Team" which was made up of experienced developers, selected by other Core Team members for their merits. Only the members of this Core Team were allowed to commit to CVS. This was perceived as far too cathedral-like in its development model: developers were unable to get commit rights quickly and vendors ended up maintaining extensive patches.  A key event was Keith Packard losing his commit rights. Hours before the feature freeze window for XFree86 4.3.0 started, he committed the XFIXES extension, without prior discussion or without review within the Core Team. The Core Team decided to remove Keith's commit access, but without removing him from the Core Team itself, and the XFIXES extension was backed out 6 weeks later.

2003: The fork and the disbanding of the Core Team.

In March, the Core Team claimed that Keith Packard had been trying to fork the XFree86 project by working inside the project while trying to attract core developers to a new X Server project of his own making. Packard denied this had been his aim, but some emails were provided as evidence otherwise. Keith Packard was subsequently expelled from the Core Team.  A short time later, Keith Packard created xwin.org, which mainly served as a meeting point for cultivating the XFree86 fork. The rest of the year, many of the developers that were still active at XFree86 went over to the project that was being set up at the freedesktop.org and X.org domains.  By the end of the year, due to dwindling active membership and limited remaining development capacity, the XFree86 Core Team voted to disband itself.

2004: Licensing controversy.

Versions of XFree86 up to and including some release candidates for 4.4.0 were under the MIT License, a permissive, non-copyleft free software license. In February 2004, XFree86 4.4 was released with a change to the XFree86 license, by adding a credit clause, similar to that in the original BSD license, but broader in scope. The newer terms are referred to as the XFree86 License 1.1. Many projects relying on XFree86 found the new license unacceptable, and the Free Software Foundation considers it incompatible with the version 2 of the GNU General Public License, though compatible with version 3. The XFree86 Project states that the license is "as GPL compatible as any and all previous versions were", but does not mention which version or versions of the GPL this is valid for.  Some projects made releases (notably OpenBSD 3.5 and 3.6, and Debian 3.1 "Sarge") based on XFree86 version 4.4 RC2, the last version under the old license. Most operating systems incorporating XFree86 (including later versions of OpenBSD and Debian) migrated to the X.Org Server.  The last code commit was in 2009; the project was confirmed dormant in 2011.

Forks of XFree86.

Xwin.

Shortly after he was expelled from the XFree86 Core Team, Keith Packard started setting up xwin.org. While this was claimed to be the fork of XFree86, Keith Packard later refined this to "a forum for community participation in X". Xwin saw a lot of activity in the first two months after the announcements, but most of the activity was happening behind the scenes, and Keith moved his own development to freedesktop.org.

Xouvert.

Xouvert was later also hailed as the first XFree86 fork in August 2003. Even though releases were announced for October 2003 and April 2004, no releases were made. The last status change was made in March 2004 and it was communicated that there were delays in setting up a revision control system.

X.Org.

The X.Org Server became the official reference implementation of X11. The first version, X11R6.7.0, was forked from XFree86 version 4.4 RC2 to avoid the XFree86 license changes, with X11R6.6 changes merged in. Version X11R6.8 added many new extensions, drivers and fixes. It is hosted by and works closely with corporate-sponsored freedesktop.org.  Most of the open-source Unix-like operating systems have adopted the X.Org Server in place of XFree86, and most of the XFree86 developers have moved to X.Org.

XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and was available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free and open source software under the XFree86 License version 1.1. It was developed by the XFree86 Project, Inc. The lead developer was David Dawes. The last released version was 4.8.0, released December 2008. The last XFree86 CVS commit was made on May 18, 2009; the project was confirmed dormant in December 2011.

XFree86是X Window系统的其中一个实现,自1992年,它一直循着自由发放的开放源代码模式被发展。它主要的运作平台是Unix类操作系统,包括各版本的UNIX、Linux、BSD、Solaris、Mac OS X、IRIX、OpenVMS及Cygwin/X等。


Definition and basis.

The principle was formulated as a response to a series of observations that the laws of nature and parameters of the universe take on values that are consistent with conditions for life as we know it rather than a set of values that would not be consistent with life on Earth. The anthropic principle states that this is a necessity, because if life were impossible, no living entity would be there to observe it, and thus would not be known. That is, it must be possible to observe "some" universe, and hence, the laws and constants of any such universe must accommodate that possibility.  The term "anthropic" in "anthropic principle" has been argued to be a misnomer. While singling out our

Anthropic 'coincidences'.

In 1961, Robert Dicke noted that the age of the universe, as seen by living observers, cannot be random. Instead, biological factors constrain the universe to be more or less in a "golden age", neither too young nor too old. If the universe were one tenth as old as its present age, there would not have been sufficient time to build up appreciable levels of metallicity (levels of elements besides hydrogen and helium) especially carbon, by nucleosynthesis. Small rocky planets did not yet exist. If the universe were 10 times older than it actually is, most stars would be too old to remain on the main sequence and would have turned into white dwarfs, aside from the dimmest red dwarfs, and stable planetary systems would have already come to an end. Thus, Dicke explained the coincidence between large dimensionless numbers constructed from the constants of physics and the age of the universe, a coincidence which had inspired Dirac's varying-G theory.  Dicke later reasoned that the density of matter in

Origin.

The phrase "anthropic principle" first appeared in Brandon Carter's contribution to a 1973 Kraków symposium honouring Copernicus's 500th birthday. Carter, a theoretical astrophysicist, articulated the Anthropic Principle in reaction to the Copernican Principle, which states that humans do not occupy a privileged position in the Universe. As Carter said: "Although our situation is not necessarily "central", it is inevitably privileged to some extent." Specifically, Carter disagreed with using the Copernican principle to justify the Perfect Cosmological Principle, which states that all large regions "and times" in the universe must be statistically identical. The latter principle underlay the steady-state theory, which had recently been falsified by the 1965 discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation. This discovery was unequivocal evidence that the universe has changed radically over time (for example, via the Big Bang).  Carter defined two forms of the anthropic principle, a "weak" one which referred only to anthropic selection of privileged spacetime locations in the universe, and a more controversial "strong" form which addressed the values of the fundamental constants of physics.  Roger Penrose explained the weak form as follows:  One reason this is plausible is that there are many other places and times in which we can imagine finding ourselves. But when applying the strong principle, we only have one universe, with one set of fundamental parameters,

Variants.

Weak anthropic principle (WAP) (Carter): "[W]e must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is "necessarily" privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers." Note that for Carter, "location" refers to our location in time as well as space.  Strong anthropic principle (SAP) (Carter): "[T]he universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage. To paraphrase Descartes, "cogito ergo mundus talis est"."The Latin tag ("I think, therefore the world is such [as it is]") makes it clear that "must" indicates a deduction from the fact of our existence; the statement is thus a truism.  In their 1986 book, "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle", John Barrow and Frank Tipler depart from Carter and define the WAP and SAP as follows:  Weak anthropic principle (WAP) (Barrow and Tipler): "The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirements that the universe be old enough for it to have already done so."Unlike Carter they restrict the principle to carbon-based life, rather than just "observers". A more important difference is that they apply the WAP to the

Character of anthropic reasoning.

Carter chose to focus on a tautological aspect of his ideas, which has resulted in much confusion. In fact, anthropic reasoning interests scientists because of something that is only implicit in the above formal definitions, namely that we should give serious consideration to there being other universes with different values of the "fundamental parameters"—that is, the dimensionless physical constants and initial conditions for the Big Bang. Carter and others have argued that life as we know it would not be possible in most such universes. In other words, the universe we are in is fine tuned to permit life. Collins & Hawking (1973) characterized Carter's then-unpublished big idea as the postulate that "there is not one universe but a whole infinite ensemble of universes with all possible initial conditions". If this is granted, the anthropic principle provides a plausible explanation for the fine tuning of our universe: the "typical" universe is not fine-tuned, but given enough universes, a small fraction thereof will be capable of supporting intelligent life. Ours must be one of these, and so the observed fine tuning should be no cause for wonder.  Although philosophers have discussed related concepts for centuries, in the early 1970s the only genuine physical theory yielding a multiverse of sorts was the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. This would allow variation in initial conditions, but not in the truly fundamental constants. Since that time a number of mechanisms for producing a multiverse have been suggested: see the review by Max Tegmark. An important development in the 1980s was the combination of inflation theory with the hypothesis that some parameters are determined by symmetry breaking in the early universe, which allows parameters previously thought of as "fundamental constants" to vary over very large distances, thus eroding the distinction between Carter's weak and strong principles. At

Observational evidence.

No possible observational evidence bears on Carter's WAP, as it is merely advice to the scientist and asserts nothing debatable. The obvious test of Barrow's SAP, which says that the universe is "required" to support life, is to find evidence of life in universes other than ours. Any other universe is, by most definitions, unobservable (otherwise it would be included in "our" portion of "this" universe). Thus, in principle Barrow's SAP cannot be falsified by observing a universe in which an observer cannot exist.  Philosopher John Leslie states that the Carter SAP (with multiverse) predicts the following:  Hogan has emphasised that it would be very strange if all fundamental constants were strictly determined, since this would leave us with no ready explanation for

Applications of the principle.

The nucleosynthesis of carbon-12.

Fred Hoyle may have invoked anthropic reasoning to predict an astrophysical phenomenon. He is said to have reasoned, from the prevalence on Earth of life forms whose chemistry was based on carbon-12 nuclei, that there must be an undiscovered resonance in the carbon-12 nucleus facilitating its synthesis in stellar interiors via the triple-alpha process. He then calculated the

Cosmic inflation.

Don Page criticized the entire theory of cosmic inflation as follows. He emphasized that initial conditions which made possible a thermodynamic arrow of time in a universe with a Big Bang origin, must include the assumption that at the initial singularity, the entropy of the universe was low and therefore extremely improbable. Paul Davies rebutted this criticism by invoking an inflationary version of the anthropic principle.

String theory.

String theory predicts a large number of possible universes, called the "backgrounds" or "vacua". The set of these vacua is often called the "multiverse" or "anthropic landscape" or "string landscape". Leonard Susskind has argued that the existence of a large number of vacua puts anthropic reasoning on firm ground: only universes whose properties are such as to allow observers to exist are observed, while a possibly much larger set of universes lacking such properties go unnoticed.  Steven Weinberg believes the Anthropic Principle may be appropriated by cosmologists committed to nontheism, and refers to that

Dimensions of spacetime.

There are two kinds of dimensions, spatial (bidirectional) and temporal (unidirectional). Let the number of spatial dimensions be "N" and the number of temporal dimensions be "T". That "N" = 3 and "T" = 1, setting aside the compactified dimensions invoked by string theory and undetectable to date, can be explained by appealing to the physical consequences of letting "N" differ from 3 and "T" differ from 1. The argument is often of an anthropic character and possibly the first of its kind, albeit before

Metaphysical interpretations.

Some of the metaphysical disputes and speculations include, for example, attempts to back Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's earlier interpretation of the universe as being Christ centered (compare Omega Point), expressing a "creatio evolutiva" instead the elder notion of "creatio continua". From a strictly secular, humanist perspective, it allows as well to put human beings back in the center, an anthropogenic shift in cosmology. Karl W. Giberson has been sort of laconic in stating that

"The Anthropic Cosmological Principle".

A thorough extant study of the anthropic principle is the book "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" by John D. Barrow, a cosmologist, and Frank J. Tipler, a cosmologist and mathematical physicist. This book sets out in detail the many known anthropic coincidences and constraints, including many found by its authors. While the book is primarily a work of theoretical astrophysics, it also touches on quantum physics, chemistry, and earth science. An entire chapter argues that "Homo sapiens" is, with high probability, the only intelligent species in the Milky Way.  The book begins with an extensive review of many topics in the history of ideas the authors deem relevant to the anthropic principle, because the authors believe that principle has important antecedents in the notions of teleology and intelligent design. They discuss the writings of Fichte, Hegel, Bergson, and Alfred North Whitehead, and

Reception and controversies.

Carter has frequently regretted his own choice of the word "anthropic", because it conveys the misleading impression that the principle involves humans specifically, rather than intelligent observers in general. Others have criticised the word "principle" as being too grandiose to describe straightforward applications of selection effects.  A common criticism of Carter's SAP is that it is an easy deus ex machina which discourages searches for physical explanations. To quote Penrose again: "[I]t tends to be invoked by theorists whenever they do not have a good enough theory to explain the observed facts."  Carter's SAP and Barrow and Tipler's WAP have been dismissed as truisms or trivial tautologies—that is, statements true solely by virtue of their logical form and not because a substantive claim is made and supported by observation of reality. As such, they are criticized as an elaborate way of saying "if things were different, they would be different", which is a valid statement, but does not make a claim of some factual alternative over another.  Critics of the Barrow and Tipler SAP claim that it is neither testable nor falsifiable, and thus is not a scientific statement but rather a philosophical one. The same criticism has been leveled against the hypothesis of a multiverse, although some argue that it does make falsifiable predictions. A modified version of this criticism is that we understand so little about the emergence of life, especially intelligent life, that it is effectively impossible to calculate the number of observers in each universe. Also, the prior distribution of universes as a function of the fundamental constants is easily modified to get any desired result.  Many criticisms focus on versions of the strong anthropic principle, such as Barrow and Tipler's "anthropic cosmological principle", which are teleological notions that tend to describe the existence of life as a "necessary prerequisite" for the observable constants of physics. Similarly, Stephen Jay Gould, Michael Shermer, and others claim that the stronger versions of the anthropic principle seem to reverse known causes and effects. Gould compared the claim that the universe is fine-tuned for the benefit of our kind of life to saying that sausages were made long and narrow so that they could fit into modern hotdog buns, or saying that ships had been invented to house barnacles. These critics cite the vast physical, fossil, genetic, and other biological evidence consistent with life having been fine-tuned through natural selection to adapt to the physical and geophysical environment in which life exists. Life appears to have adapted to the universe, and not vice versa.  Some applications of the anthropic principle have been criticized as an argument by lack of imagination, for tacitly assuming that carbon compounds and water are the only possible chemistry of life (sometimes called "carbon chauvinism", see also alternative biochemistry). The range of fundamental physical constants consistent with the evolution of carbon-based life may also be wider than those who advocate a fine tuned universe have argued. For instance, Harnik et al. propose a Weakless Universe in which the weak nuclear force is eliminated. They show that this has no significant effect on the other fundamental interactions, provided some adjustments are made in how those interactions work. However, if some of the fine-tuned details of our universe were violated, that would rule out complex structures of any kind—stars, planets, galaxies, etc.  Lee Smolin has offered a theory designed to improve on the lack of imagination that anthropic principles have been accused of. He puts forth his fecund universes theory, which assumes universes have "offspring" through the creation of black holes whose offspring universes have values of physical constants that depend on those of the mother universe.  The philosophers of cosmology John Earman, Ernan McMullin, and Jesús Mosterín contend that "in its weak version, the anthropic principle is a mere tautology, which does not allow us to explain anything or to predict anything that we did not already know. In its strong version, it is a gratuitous speculation". A further criticism by Mosterín concerns the flawed "anthropic" inference from the assumption of an infinity of worlds to the existence of one like ours:

The anthropic principle is the philosophical premise that any data we collect about the universe is filtered by the fact that, in order for it to be observable at all, the universe must have been compatible with the emergence of conscious and sapient life that observes it. In other words, scientific observation of the universe would not even be possible if the laws of the universe had been incompatible with the development of sentient life. Proponents of the anthropic principle argue that it explains why this universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life, since if either had been different, we would not be around to make observations in the first place. As a result, outside the narrow range thought to be compatible with life it would seem impossible that life (in particular, intelligent life) could develop.

人择原理(;或人存定理),是一种认为物质宇宙必须与观测到它的存在意识的智慧生命相匹配的哲学理论。有些支持者提出人择原理解释了宇宙的年龄和为什么物理常数能够保证有意识生命的存活。所以他们也认为这个宇宙能给予智能生命(可观测者)存活的那么高的标准是一件正常的事情。 约翰·D·巴罗和法兰克·迪普勒给出的强人择原理(SAP)指出宇宙存在的某些机能的协调性最终会导致智慧生命的涌现。而有些以布兰登·卡特为首、对SAP持有批评态度的人给出了弱人择原理(WAP),指出表面上的微调的宇宙往往是选择偏差所带来的(尤其是幸存者偏差)。比如,只有那些最终有能力为生命提供良好生存条件的宇宙中能有生命,且这些生命能观察宇宙并给出调和性的解释。多数情况,这个对多重宇宙论的争论,应该在统计出宇宙总体的数量以及从这些中找出有选择偏好(我们作为观察者所在的宇宙协调性)后才能给出结论。


Examples.

Indo-European languages usually inflect verbs for several grammatical categories in complex paradigms, although some, like English, have simplified verb conjugation to a large extent. Below is the conjugation of the verb "to be" in the present tense (of the infinitive, if it exists, and indicative moods), in English, German, Yiddish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Icelandic, Faroese, Swedish, Norwegian, Latvian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Slovenian, Macedonian, Urdu or Hindi, Persian, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Albanian, Armenian, Irish, Ukrainian, Ancient Attic Greek and Modern Greek. This is usually the most irregular verb. The similarities in corresponding verb forms may be noticed. Some of the conjugations may be disused, like the English "thou"-form, or have additional meanings, like the English "you"-form, which can also stand for second person singular or be impersonal.

Verbal agreement.

Verbal agreement, or concord, is a morpho-syntactic construct in which properties of the subject and/or objects of a verb are indicated by the verb form. Verbs are then said to agree with their subjects (resp. objects).  Many English verbs exhibit subject agreement of the following sort: whereas "I go", "you go", "we go", "they go" are all grammatical in standard English, "she go" is not (except in the subjunctive, as "They requested that "she go" with them"). Instead, a special form of the verb "to go" has to be used to produce "she goes". On the other hand "I goes", "you goes" etc. are not grammatical in standard English. (Things are different in some English dialects that lack agreement.) A few English verbs have no special forms that indicate subject agreement ("I may", "you may", "she may"), and the verb "to be" has an additional form "am" that can only be used with the pronoun "I" as the subject.  Verbs in written French exhibit more intensive agreement morphology than English verbs: "je suis" (I am), "tu es" ("you are", singular informal), "elle est" (she is), "nous sommes" (we are), "vous êtes" ("you are", plural), "ils sont" (they are). Historically, English used to have a similar verbal paradigm. Some historic verb forms are used by Shakespeare as slightly archaic or more formal variants ("I do", "thou dost", "she doth", typically used by nobility) of the modern forms.  Some languages with verbal agreement can leave certain subjects implicit when the subject is fully determined by the verb form. In Spanish, for instance, subject pronouns do not need to be explicitly present, but in French, its close relative, they are obligatory. The Spanish equivalent to the French "je suis" (I am) can be simply "soy" (lit. "am"). The pronoun "yo" (I) in the explicit form "yo soy" is used only for emphasis or to clear ambiguity in complex texts.  Some languages have a richer agreement system in which verbs agree also with some or all of their objects. Ubykh exhibits verbal agreement for the subject, direct object, indirect object, benefaction and ablative objects ("a.w3.s.xe.n.t'u.n", "you gave it to him for me").  Basque can show agreement not only for subject, direct object and indirect object but it also can exhibit agreement for the listener as the implicit benefactor: "autoa ekarri digute" means "they brought us the car" (neuter agreement for listener), but "autoa ekarri ziguten" means "they brought us the car" (agreement for feminine singular listener).  Languages with a rich agreement morphology facilitate relatively free word order without leading to increased ambiguity. The canonical word order in Basque is subject–object–verb, but all permutations of subject, verb and object are permitted.

Nonverbal person agreement.

In some languages, predicative adjectives and copular complements receive a form of person agreement that is distinct from that used on ordinary predicative verbs. Although that is a form of conjugation in that it refers back to the person of the subject, it is not "verbal" because it always derives from pronouns that have become cliticised to the nouns to which they refer. An example of nonverbal person agreement, along with contrasting verbal conjugation, can be found from Beja (person agreement affixes in bold):  Another example can be found from Ket:  In Turkic, and a few Uralic and Australian Aboriginal languages, predicative adjectives and copular complements take affixes that are identical to those used on predicative verbs, but their negation is different. For example, in Turkish:  Under negation, that becomes (negative affixes in bold):  Therefore, the person agreement affixes used with predicative adjectives and nominals in Turkic languages are considered to be nonverbal in character. In some analyses, they are viewed as a form of verbal takeover by a copular strategy.

Factors that affect conjugation.

These common grammatical categories affect how verbs can be conjugated:  Here are other factors that may affect conjugation:

Conjugation classes.

Pama-Nyungan languages.

One common feature of Pama–Nyungan languages, the largest family of Australian Aboriginal languages, is the notion of conjugation classes, which are a set of groups into which each lexical verb falls. They determine how a verb is conjugated for Tense–aspect–mood. The classes can but do not universally correspond to the transitivity or valency of the verb in question. Generally, of the two to six conjugation classes in a Pama-Nyungan language, two classes are open with a large membership and allow for new coinages, and the remainder are closed and of limited membership.

Wati.

In Wati languages, verbs generally fall into four classes:  They are labelled by using common morphological components of verb endings in each respective class in infinitival forms. In the Wanman language these each correspond to la", "ya", "rra", and wa" verbs respectively.  See also a similar table of verb classes and conjugations in Pitjantjatjara, a Wati language wherein the correlating verb classes are presented below also by their imperative verbal endings -la, -∅, -ra and -wa respectively

Ngayarta.

Ngarla, a member of the Ngayarda sub-family of languages has a binary conjugation system labelled:  In the case of Ngarla, there is a notably strong correlation between conjugation class and transitivity, with transitive/ditransitive verbs falling in the l-class and intransitive/semi-transitive verbs in the ∅-class.  These classes even extend to how verbs are nominalized as instruments with the l-class verb including the addition of an "/l/" before the nominalizing suffix and the blank class remaining blank:  l-class example:  ∅-class example

Yidiny.

Yidiny has a ternary verb class system with two open classes and one closed class (~20 members). Verbs are classified as:

In linguistics, conjugation () is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (alteration of form according to rules of grammar). Verbs may inflect for grammatical categories such as person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, case, possession, definiteness, politeness, causativity, clusivity, interrogativity, transitivity, valency, polarity, telicity, volition, mirativity, evidentiality, animacy, associativity, pluractionality, and reciprocity. Verbs may also be affected by agreement, polypersonal agreement, incorporation, noun class, noun classifiers, and verb classifiers. Agglutinative and polysynthetic languages tend to have the most complex conjugations albeit some fusional languages such as Archi can also have extremely complex conjugation. Typically the principal parts are the root and/or several modifications of it (stems). All the different forms of the same verb constitute a lexeme, and the canonical form of the verb that is conventionally used to represent that lexeme (as seen in dictionary entries) is called a lemma.

变位(英文: conjugation、拉丁文:conjugatio)是指动词根据人称、数、性、时态、体、式的不同而产生的词形变化。变位是语法学中属于动词的特有范畴。静词的词形变化不能称为变位,而往往称为变格。