Kano school Japanese painting style of the 15th—19th centuries. It was practiced by a family of artists that served the Ashikaga shoguns of the Muromachi period and also Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the shoguns of the Tokugawa period. Bold, large-scale designs were executed on the folding screens and sliding panels that acted as space dividers in
Western gray kangaroo [Macropus fuliginosus).
WARREN GARST/TOM STACK AND ASSOCIATES
Kangaroo rat ( Dipodomys ).
ANTHONY MERCIECA FROM ROOT RESOURCES
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Kanphata Yogi ► Kao-hsiung I 1015
the castles of the day. Chinese-style ink painting was blended with poly¬ chromatic Yamato-e (“Japanese painting”); some artists used a back¬ ground of gold leaf for even more striking effects.
Kanphata Yogi Member of an order of religious ascetics that vener¬ ate the Hindu god Shiva. They are followers of Gorakhnath, a master yogi of the 12th century or earlier. Their ideology incorporates elements of magic, mysticism, and alchemy absorbed from both Hindu and Buddhist esoteric systems. Members focus on acquiring supernatural powers rather than following the more orthodox practices of meditation and devotion. They are distinguished by large earrings worn in the hollow of the ear.
Kanpur \'kan-,pur\ or Cawnpore City (pop., 2001 prelim.: 2,532,138), Uttar Pradesh, northern India. The British acquired it in 1801 and made it one of their frontier stations. In 1857, during the Indian Mutiny, it was the site of the massacre of British troops and civilians by native forces. One of the largest cities in India, it is a hub of road and rail trans¬ portation and a major commercial and industrial centre. Its educational institutions include a university and the Indian Institute of Technology.
Kansas State (pop., 2000: 2,688,418), central U.S. Bordered by Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Colorado, it covers 82,282 sq mi (213,110 sq km); its capital is Topeka. It is located on the Great Plains, rising more than 3,000 ft (915 m) from its eastern prairies to the high plains of the west. The region was occupied by the Kansa, Osage, Paw¬ nee, and Wichita Indians before European settlement. The first European explorer was Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, who came from Mexico in 1541 in search of gold. La Salle claimed the region for France in 1682. Kansas was acquired by the U.S. as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. In the early 19th century the federal government relocated displaced east¬ ern Indians to Kansas. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the Kan¬ sas Territory and opened it to white settlement. It was the site of conflicts over slavery, including one spurred by John Brown (see Bleeding Kansas). It entered the Union as the 34th state in 1861. After the Civil War, the coming of the railroads promoted the growth of cow towns; Texas cattle¬ men drove herds to Wichita and Abilene to reach the railheads. Agricul¬ ture became important as farmers worked on the Great Plains. During and following World War II, airplane production expanded, and farm products remained strong.
Kansas, Bleeding See Bleeding Kansas
Kansas City City (pop., 2000: 441,545), western Missouri, U.S., on the Missouri River. The city is contiguous with Kansas City, Kan. First settled by French fur traders in 1821, it was known as Westport, prosper¬ ing as a river port and as the terminus for the Santa Fe Trail and the Oregon Trail. Chartered in 1850 as the town of Kansas and as a city in 1853, it was renamed Kansas City in 1889 to distinguish it from the territory. The state’s largest city, it is an important marketing and shipping centre for a vast agricultural region and has extensive grain-storage and food¬ processing facilities. It is the seat of the University of Missouri at Kan¬ sas City and the world headquarters for the Church of the Nazarene.
Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) Legislation that organized the terri¬ tories of Kansas and Nebraska according to the doctrine of popular sov¬ ereignty. Introduced by Sen. Stephen A. Douglas to stop the sectional division over slavery, the act was criticized by antislavery groups as a capitulation to proslavery advocates. Groups on both sides rushed to settle Kansas Territory with their adherents, leading to the chaotic Bleeding Kan¬ sas period. Passage of the act led to the formation of the Republican Party as a political organization opposed to the expansion of slavery to any U.S. territory.
Kansas River or Kaw River River, northeastern Kansas, U.S. It flows east and empties into the Missouri River at Kansas City. It is 169 mi (272 km) long, and it drains an area of 61,300 sq mi (158,770 sq km), including northern Kansas and parts of southern Nebraska and eastern Colorado.
Kansu See Gansu
Kant \'kant\, Immanuel (b. April 22, 1724, Konigsberg, Prussia—d. Feb. 12, 1804, Konigsberg) German philosopher, one of the foremost thinkers of the Enlightenment. The son of a saddler, he studied at the uni¬ versity in Konigsberg and taught there as privatdocent (1755-70) and later as professor of logic and metaphysics (1770-97). His life was unevent¬ ful. His Critique of Pure Reason (1781) discusses the nature of knowl¬ edge in mathematics and physics and demonstrates the impossibility of
knowledge in metaphysics as it was traditionally conceived. Kant argued that the propositions of mathematics and physics, but not those of meta¬ physics, are “synthetic a priori,” in the sense that they are about objects of possible experience (synthetic) but at the same time knowable prior to, or independently of, experience (a priori), thus making them also neces¬ sarily true, rather than merely contingently true (see necessity). Mathemat¬ ics is synthetic and a priori because it deals with space and time, both of which are forms of human sensibility that condition whatever is appre¬ hended through the senses. Similarly, physics is synthetic and a priori because in its ordering of experience it uses concepts (“categories”) whose function is to prescribe the general form that sensible experience must take. Metaphysics in the traditional sense, understood as knowledge of the existence of God, the freedom of the will, and the immortality of the soul, is impossible, because these questions transcend any possible sense experience. But though they cannot be objects of knowledge, they are nevertheless justified as essential postulates of a moral life. Kant’s eth¬ ics, which he expounded in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and the earlier Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), was based on the principle known as the “categorical imperative,” one formulation of which is, “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” His last great work, The Critique of Judgment (1790), concerns the nature of aesthetic judgment and the existence of teleology, or purposiveness, in nature. Kant’s thought represents a turning point in the history of philosophy. In his own words, he effected a Copernican revolution: just as the founder of modern astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus, had explained the apparent movements of the stars by ascribing them partly to the movement of the observers, so Kant had accounted for the existence of a priori synthetic knowledge by demonstrating that in knowing, it is not the mind that conforms to things but instead things that conform to the mind. See also analytic- synthetic distinction; deontological ethics; idealism; Kantianism.
Kantianism Vkan-te-o-.ni-zom, kan-te-o-.ni-zomV System of critical philosophy created by Immanuel Kant and the philosophies that have arisen from the study of his writings. Kantianism comprises diverse philosophies that share Kant’s concern to explore the nature and limits of human knowledge in the hope of raising philosophy to the level of a science. Each submovement of Kantianism has tended to focus on its own selec¬ tion and reading of Kant’s many concerns. In the 1790s there emerged in Germany the so-called semi-Kantians, who altered features of Kant’s sys¬ tem they viewed as inadequate, unclear, or even wrong; its members included Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Bouterwek (1766-1828), and Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843). The period from 1790 to 1835 was the age of the post-Kantian idealists (see idealism). A major revival of interest in Kantian philosophy began c. 1860. See also Johann Gottlieb Fichte; G.W.F. Hegel; Neo-Kantianism; Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelung.