Synonyms:
organism, being
Meaning: a living thing that has (or can develop) the ability to act or function independently
Usage examples
The greater the social organism the more complex and varied its parts, the more intricate and varied the interplay of culture and breed and character within it.
As soon as the improvement is well marked, all repetition of the medicine should cease, and the natural reaction of the organism should be permitted to complete the cure.
The distress consequent upon them, increases in proportion as the reactive powers of the organism decrease, which is more particularly the case in the present generation.
If this change takes place, it is proper to exhibit Apis in a more dynamic form, in order to assimilate it more harmoniously to the newly awakened reactive power of the organism.
With the more complex, classical types of the musical organism Chopin had little sympathy, but he contrived nevertheless to write two movements of a piano sonata that are excellent--the first half of the B flat minor Sonata.
Primary mathematical notions, for instance, are evidences of a successful reactive method attained in the organism and translated in consciousness into a stable grammar which has wide applicability and great persistence, so that it has come to be elaborated ideally into prodigious abstract systems of thought.
The case may be made clearer by considering a genuinely-empirical generalization, such as 'All men are mortal.' It is plain that we believe this proposition, in the first place, because there is no known instance of men living beyond a certain age, and in the second place because there seem to be physiological grounds for thinking that an organism such as a man's body must sooner or later wear out.