of view he would have been perhaps the first historian of
philosophy of his time, had his professional labours been less
exacting. Except during the first few years at Manchester,
he delivered his lectures without manuscripts. In 1903,
under the title The Development of Modern Philosophy and
Other Essays, his more important lectures were published
with a short biographical introduction by Prof. W. R.
Sorley of Cambridge University (see Mind, xiii. 1904, p. 73
foll.). Most of the matter is taken verbatim from the
note-book of one of his students. Under the same editorship
there appeared, three years later, his Development of Greek
Philosophy. In addition to his professional work, he did much
administrative work for Victoria University and the university of
Glasgow. In the organization of Victoria University he took
a foremost part, and, as chairman of the Board of Studies
at Owens College, he presided over the general academical
board of the Victoria University. At Glasgow he was soon
elected one of the representatives on the court, and to him
were due in large measure the extension of the academical
session and the improved equipment of the university.
Throughout his lectures, Adamson pursued the critical and
historical method without formulating a constructive theory of his
own. He felt that any philosophical advance must be based on
the Kantian methods. It was his habit to make straight for
the ultimate issue, disregarding half-truths and declining
compromise. He left a hypothesis to be worked out by
others; this done, he would criticize with all the rigour of
logic, and with a profound distrust of imagination, metaphor
and the attitude known as the will-to-believe. As he grew
older his metaphysical optimism waned. He felt that the
increase of knowledge must come in the domains of physical
science. But this empirical tendency as regards science
never modified his metaphysical outlook. He has been called
Kantian and Neo-Kantian, Realist and Idealist (by himself,
for he held that appearance and reality are co-extensive and
coincident). At the same time, in his criticism of other views
he was almost typical of Hegelian idealism. All processes
of reasoning or judgment (i.e. all units of thought) are
(1) analysable only by abstraction, and (2) are compound of
deduction and induction, i.e. rational and empirical. An
illustration of his empirical tendency is found in his attitude
to the Absolute and the Self. The ``Absolute'' doctrines he
regarded as a mere disguise of failure, a dishonest attempt
to clothe ignorance in the pretentious garb of mystery. The
Self as a primary, determining entity, he would not therefore
admit. He represented an empiricism which, so far from
refuting, was actually based on, idealism, and yet was alert to
expose the fallacies of a particular idealist construction (see
his essay in Ethical Democracy, edited by Dr Stanton Coit).
ADAM'S PEAK, a mountain in Ceylon, about 45 miles E. from
Colombo, in N. lat. 6 deg. 55', E. long. 80 deg. 30'. It rises
steeply to a height of 7352 feet, and commands a magnificent
prospect. Its conical summit terminates in an oblong platform,
74 ft. by 24, on which there is a hollow, resembling the form
of a human foot, 5 ft. 4 in. by 2 ft. 6 in.; and this has been
consecrated as the footprint of Buddha. The margin of this
supposed footprint is ornamented with gems, and a wooden canopy
protects it from the weather. It is held in high veneration
by the Sinhalese, and numerous pilgrims ascend to the sacred
spot, where a priest resides to receive their offerings and
bless them on their departure. By the Mahommedans the impression
is regarded as that of the foot of Adam, who here, according
to their tradition, fulfilled a penance of one thousand
years; while the Hindus claim it as that of their god Siva.
ADANA. (1) A vilayet in the S.E. of Asia Minor, which
includes the ancient Cilicia. The mountain districts are rich
in unexploited mineral wealth, and the fertile coast-plain,
which produces cotton, rice, cereals, sugar and much fruit,
and affords abundant pasturage, is well watered by the rivers
that descend from the Taurus range. Imports and exports pass
through Mersina (q.v.). (2) The chief town of the vilayet,
situated in the alluvial plain about 30 m. from the sea in
N. lat. 37 deg. 1', E. long. 35 deg. 18', on the right bank of
the Seihan (Sihun, anc. Sarus), which is navigable by small
craft as far as the town. Adana is connected with Tersus and
Mersina by a railway built in 1887, and has a magnificent stone
bridge, which carries the road to Missis and the east, and
dates in parts from the time of Justinian, but was restored
first in 743 A.D. and called Jisr al-Walid after the
Omayyad caliph of that name, and again in 840 hy the Caliph
Mutasim. There are, also, a ruined castle founded by Harun
al-Rashid in 782, fine fountains, good buildings, river-side
quays, cotton mills and an American mission with church and
schools. Adana, which retains its ancient name, rose to
importance as a station on the Roman military road to the East,
and was at one time a rival of Tarsus. The town was largely
rebuilt by Mansur in 758, and during subsequent centuries
it often changed hands and suffered many vicissitudes. Its
position, commanding the passage of the mountains to the north
of Syria, rendered it important as a military station in the
contest between the Egyptians and the Turks in 1832. After the
defeat of the Turkish army at Konia it was granted to Ibrahim
Pasha, and though the firman announcing his appointment named
him only muhassil, or collector of the crown revenue, it
continued to be held by the Egyptians till the treaty of July
1840 restored it to the Porte. The chief productions of the
province are cotton, corn, sesame and wool, which are largely
exported. The population of the town is greatly mixed, and,
having a large element of nomads in it, varies much from time to
time. At its maximum it reaches nearly 50,000. (D. G. H.)
ADANSON, MICHEL (1727-1806), French naturalist, of Scottish
descent, was born on the 7th of April 1727, at Aix, in
Provence. After leaving the College Sainte Barbe in
Paris, he was employed in the cabinets of R. A. F. Reaumur
and Bernard de Jussieu, as well as in the Jardin des
Plantes. At the end of 1748 he left France on an exploring
expedition to Senegal, which from the unhealthiness of its
climate was a terra incognita to naturalists. His ardour
remained unabated during the five years of his residence in
Africa. He collected and described, in greater or less detail,
an immense number of animals and plants; collected specimens
of every object of commerce; delineated maps of the country;
made systematic meteorological and astronomical observations;
and prepared grammars and dictionaries of the languages spoken
on the banks of the Senegal. After his return to Paris in
1754 he made use of a small portion of the materials he had
collected in his Histoire naturelle du Senegal (Paris,
1757). This work has a special interest from the essay on
shells, printed at the end of it, where Adanson proposed his
universal method, a system of classification distinct from
those of Buffon and Linnaeus. He founded his classification
of all organized beings on the consideration of each individual
organ. As each organ gave birth to new relations, so he
established a corresponding number of arbitrary arrangements.
Those beings possessing the greatest number of similar organs
were referred to one great division, and the relationship was
considered more remote in proportion to the dissimilarity of
organs. In 1763 he published his Familles naturelles des
plantes. In this work he developed the principle of arrangement
above mentioned, which, in its adherence to natural botanical
relations, was based on the system of J. P. Tournefort, and
had been anticipated to some extent nearly a century before
by John Ray. The success of this work was hindered by its
innovations in the use of terms, which were ridiculed by
the defenders of the popular sexual system of Linnaeus; but
it did much to open the way for the establishment, by means
principally of A. L. de Jussieu's Genera Plantarum (1789),
of the natural method of the classification of plants. In
1774 Adanson submitted to the consideration of the Academy of
Sciences an immense work, extending to all known beings and
substances. It consisted of 27 large volumes of manuscript,
employed in displaying the general relations of all these
matters, and their distribution; 150 volumes more, occupied
with the alphabetical arrangement of 40,000 species; a
vocabulary, containing 200,000 words, with their explanations;
and a number of detached memoirs, 40,000 figures and 30,000
specimens of the three kingdoms of nature. The committee
to which the inspection of this enormous mass was entrusted
strongly recommended Adanson to separate and publish all
that was peculiarly his own, leaving out what was merely
compilation. He obstinately rejected this advice; and
the huge work, at which he continued to labour, was never
published. He had been elected a member of the Academy
of Sciences in 1759, and he latterly subsisted on a small
pension it had conferred on him. Of this he was deprived in
the dissolution of the Academy by the Constituent Assembly,
and was consequently reduced to such a depth of poverty as
to be unable to appear before the French Institute when it
invited him to take his place among its members. Afterwards
he was granted a pension sufficient to relieve his simple
wants. He died at Paris after months of severe suffering, on
the 3rd of August 1806, requesting, as the only decoration of
his grave, a garland of flowers gathered from the fifty-eight
families he had differentiated--``a touching though transitory
image,'' says Cuvier, ``of the more durable monument which
he has erected to himself in his works.'' Besides the books
already mentioned he published papers on the ship-worm, the
baobab tree, the Adansonia digitata of Linnaeus, the origin
of the varieties of cultivated plants, and gum-producing trees.
ADAPTATION (from Lat. adaptare, to fit to), a process of
fitting, or modifying, a thing to other uses, and so altering
its form or original purpose. In literature there may be,
e.g., an adaptation of a novel for a drama, or in music an
arrangement of a piece for two hands into one for four, &c. In
biology, according to the doctrine of evolution, adaptation
plays a prominent part as the process by which an organism or
species of organisms becomes modified to suit the conditions
of its life. Every change in a living organism involves
adaptation; for in all cases life consists in a continuous
adjustment of internal to external relations. Every living
organism reacts to its environment; if the reaction is
unfavourable, disability leading to ultimate extinction is the
result. If the reaction is favourable, its result is called an
adaptation. How far such adaptations are produced afresh in
each generation, whether or no their effects are transmitted
to descendants and so directly modify the stock, to what extent
adaptations characteristic of a species or variety have come
about by selection of individuals capable, in each generation,
of responding favourably, or how far by the selection of
individuals fortuitously suitable to the environment, or, how
far, possibly by the inheritance of the responses to the
environment, are problems of biology not yet definitely solved.
ADDA (anc. Addua), a river of North Italy. Its true
