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
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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.
Dictionary > Development
