Minimalism (disambiguation)

The term minimalism may refer to:

See also

Biblical Minimalism

Biblical minimalism, also known as the Copenhagen School because two of its most prominent figures taught at Copenhagen University, was a movement or trend in biblical scholarship that began in the 1990s with two main claims:

Minimalism was not a unified movement, but rather a label that came to be applied to several scholars at different universities who held similar views, chiefly Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas L. Thompson at the University of Copenhagen, Philip R. Davies, and Keith Whitelam. Minimalism gave rise to intense debate during the 1990s - the term "minimalists" was in fact a derogatory one given by its opponents, who were consequently dubbed "maximalists", but in fact neither side accepted either label. The so-called Maximalists, or neo-Albrightians, were composed of two quite distinct groups, the first represented by the archaeologist William Dever and the influential publication Biblical Archaeology Review, the second by conservative evangelical Christians such as biblical scholar Iain Provan and Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen. Although these debates were in some cases heated, most scholars stayed in the middle ground between minimalists and maximalists evaluating the arguments of both schools critically, and since the 1990s, while some of the minimalist arguments have been challenged or rejected, others have been refined and adopted into the mainstream of biblical scholarship.

Minimalist program

In linguistics, the minimalist program (MP) is a major line of inquiry that has been developing inside generative grammar since the early 1990s, starting with a 1993 paper by Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky presents MP as a program, not as a theory, following Imre Lakatos's distinction. The MP seeks to be a mode of inquiry characterized by the flexibility of the multiple directions that its minimalism enables. Ultimately, the MP provides a conceptual framework used to guide the development of grammatical theory. For Chomsky, there are minimalist questions, but the answers can be framed in any theory. Of all these questions, the one that plays the most crucial role is this: why language has the properties it has. The MP lays out a very specific view of the basis of syntactic grammar that, when compared to other formalisms, is often taken to look very much like a theory.

Theoretical goals

Perfection

The MP appeals to the idea that the language ability in humans shows signs of being incorporated under an optimal design with exquisite organization, which seems to suggest that the inner workings conform to a very simple computational law or a particular mental organ. In other words, the MP works on the assumption that universal grammar constitutes a perfect design in the sense that it contains only what is necessary to meet our conceptual and physical (phonological) needs.

Pound sterling

The pound sterling (symbol: £; ISO code: GBP), commonly known simply as the pound, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the British Antarctic Territory, and Tristan da Cunha. It is subdivided into 100 pence (singular: penny). A number of nations that do not use sterling also have currencies called the pound. At various times, the pound sterling was commodity money or bank notes backed by silver or gold, but it is currently fiat money, backed only by the economy in the areas where it is accepted. The pound sterling is the world's oldest currency still in use and which has been in continuous use since its inception.

The British Crown dependencies of Guernsey and Jersey produce their own local issues of sterling: "Guernsey pound" and "Jersey pound". The pound sterling is also used in the Isle of Man (alongside the Manx pound),Gibraltar (alongside the Gibraltar pound), the Falkland Islands (alongside the Falkland Islands pound), Saint Helena and Ascension Island in Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha (alongside the Saint Helena pound). The Bank of England is the central bank for the pound sterling, issuing its own coins and banknotes, and regulating issuance of banknotes by private banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Banknotes issued by other jurisdictions are not regulated by the Bank of England; local governments use Bank of England notes as backing for local issuance by allowing them to be exchanged 1:1 at face value.

Pound (mass)

The pound or pound-mass (abbreviations: lb, lb_m, lbm, ℔) is a unit of mass used in the imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement. A number of different definitions have been used, the most common today being the international avoirdupois pound which is legally defined as exactly 6999453592370000000♠0.45359237 kilograms, and which is divided into 16 avoirdupois ounces.

The unit is descended from the Roman libra (hence the abbreviation "lb"); the name pound is a Germanic adaptation of the Latin phrase libra pondo, "a pound by weight".

Usage of the unqualified term pound reflects the historical conflation of mass and weight. This accounts for the modern distinguishing terms pound-mass and pound-force.

Current use

The United States and countries of the Commonwealth of Nations agreed upon common definitions for the pound and the yard. Since 1 July 1959, the international avoirdupois pound has been defined as exactly 6999453592370000000♠0.45359237 kg.

In the United Kingdom, the use of the international pound was implemented in the Weights and Measures Act 1963.

Pound (currency)

The pound is a unit of currency in some nations. The term originated in Great Britain as the value of a pound (weight) of silver.

The word pound is the English translation of the Latin word libra pondo, which means "weighed on to scales" and was the unit of account of the Roman Empire. The British pound derived from the Roman libra, which is why the pound (mass) is often initialised to 'lb'; along with the French livre, the Italian lira and the Portuguese Libra, when, during Middle Ages the European countries adopted the LSD system.

The currency's symbol is £, a stylised representation of the letter L, standing for livre or lira. Historically, £1 worth of silver coins were a troy pound in weight; in April 2011 this amount of silver was worth approximately £300 sterling.

Today, the term may refer to a number of (primarily British and related) currencies and a variety of obsolete currencies. Some of them, those official in former Italian states and in countries formerly belonging to the Ottoman Empire, are called pound in English, while in the local languages their official name is lira.