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Development

1. The act of developing or disclosing that which is unknown; a gradual unfolding process by which anything is developed, as a plan or method, or an image upon a photographic plate; gradual advancement or growth through a series of progressive changes; also, the result of developing, or a developed state. A new development of imagination, taste, and poetry. (Channing)

2. (Science: biology) The series of changes which animal and vegetable organisms undergo in their passage from the embryonic state to maturity, from a lower to a higher state of organization.

3. (Science: mathematics) The act or process of changing or expanding an expression into another of equivalent value or meaning. The equivalent expression into which another has been developed.

4. The elaboration of a theme or subject; the unfolding of a musical idea; the evolution of a whole piece or movement from a leading theme or motive.

(Science: biology) development theory, the doctrine that animals and plants possess the power of passing by slow and successive stages from a lower to a higher state of organization, and that all the higher forms of life now in existence were thus developed by uniform laws from lower 596

forms, and are not the result of special creative acts. See the note under darwinian.

Synonym: Unfolding, disclosure, unraveling, evolution, elaboration, growth.

Origin: cf. F. Developpement

alternative forms: developement. (biology) the process of an individual organism growing organically; a purely biological unfolding of events involved in an organism changing gradually from a simple to a more complex level; he proposed an indicator of osseous development in children.Processing a photosensitive material in order to make an image visible; the development and printing of his pictures took only two hours.The growing stage of organisms from embryo to adult.