Conception
Conception names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Conception IMMACULATE application of abstraction
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
IMMACULATE application of abstraction, comparison, and attention which elaborates what logicians call notions or concepts ; the acts of the mind in producing concepts or notions. (2) The notions or concepts so produced; the "general" or " abstract ideas" of Locke; the " abstract general notions" of Hamilton. These are properly expressed by common terms, and constitute the object of study in pure or formal logic. The number of attributes embraced in a concept or notion constitutes its intention, comprehension, or logical content, and this determines its area or sphere of applicability, that is, its extension or logical extent . These two quantities exist in an inverse ratio to one another. The maximum of the extent of a conception or notion is the minimum of the content, and the maximum of the content is the minimum of the extent. On this single maxim pure or formal logic has been based.
Conception IMMACULATE, in the Roman Catholic Church
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
IMMACULATE, in the Roman Catholic Church , the doctrine that the Virgin Mary was born without the stain of original sin. This doctrine came into favor in the 12th century, when, however, it was opposed by St. Bernard, and it afterward became a subject of vehement controversy between the Scotists, who supported , and the Thomists, who opposed it . In 1708 Clement XI. appointed a festival to be celebrated throughout the Church in honor of the immaculate conception . Since that time it was received in the Roman Church as an opinion, but not as an article of faith till 1854, when the Pope issued a bull which makes the immaculate conception a point of faith.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The two senses Collier's gave in 1921 — the logical act of forming concepts, and the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception — no longer cover what most readers now mean by the word. Nothing here touches biological conception, which since Collier's wrote has become the dominant sense and the subject of enormous change: in vitro fertilisation produced its first baby, Louise Brown, in 1978, and conception outside the body is now routine. The doctrinal account still stands: Pius IX's bull Ineffabilis Deus of 1854 remains the defining statement, and 8 December is still the feast. The logical account has dated most: the "single maxim" that content and extent vary in strict inverse ratio is no longer treated as the basis of logic, and psychologists since Eleanor Rosch's work in the 1970s have described concepts as clusters around typical examples rather than as bundles of shared attributes.
Written for this edition, 2026.