Oneida Community Utopian religious community founded by John H. Noyes in Oneida, N.Y., in 1848. Noyes, who believed that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ had occurred in ad 70, and his disciples formed their first religious society in Putney, Vt., in 1841 in order to establish the millennial kingdom. Their practice of “complex marriage,” according to which each adult community member was married to each adult of the opposite sex, aroused the hostility of the townspeople, and they were obliged to move to Oneida. The Oneida group lived communally and flourished for 30 years, supporting itself by farming and manufacturing steel traps, silverware, and other items. The community broke up in 1879, and two years later the remaining members reorganized it as a commer¬ cial enterprise, which is noted for the manufacture of silver plate.
O'Neill, Eugene (Gladstone) (b. Oct. 16, 1888, New York, N.Y., U.S.—d. Nov. 27, 1953, Boston, Mass.) U.S. playwright. The son of a touring actor, he spent an itinerant youth as a seaman, heavy drinker, and derelict, then began writing plays while recovering from tuberculosis (1912). His one-act Bound East for Cardiff (1916) was produced by the experimental Provincetown Payers, which also staged his other early plays (1916-20). Beyond the Horizon was produced on Broadway in 1920, earning him his first Pulitzer Prize. Enormously prolific, he often wrote about tortured family relationships and the conflict between idealism and materialism. Soon recognized as a major dramatist, he became widely translated and produced. His many plays of the 1920s include The Emperor Jones (1921), The Hairy Ape (1922), Anna Christie (1922; Pulitzer Prize), Desire Under the Elms (1925), The Great God Brown (1926), and Strange Interlude (1928; Pulitzer Prize). Among his later plays are Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), Ah! Wilderness (1933; his only comedy). The Iceman Cometh (1946), and the autobiographical Long Day’s Journey into Night (produced 1956; Pulitzer Prize), considered his masterpiece. O’Neill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936, the first U.S. playwright so honoured.
O'Neill, John (b. March 8, 1834, County Monaghan, Ire.—d. Jan. 7, 1878, Omaha, Neb., U.S.) Irish-born military leader of the American branch of the Fenians, a secret Irish nationalist society. He arrived in the U.S. in 1848 and settled in Tennessee, where he joined the Fenians. A supporter of its scheme to invade Canada to win Irish freedom from Brit¬ ain, in 1866 he led a group of 600 men across the Niagara River and cap¬ tured Fort Erie before fleeing back to the U.S. In 1870 he led a raid along the Vermont border that was repulsed; he led another raid on Manitoba in 1871. See also John O'Mahony.
Onin War Vo-nin\ (1467-77) Civil war in central Japan that destroyed the remnants of central governmental authority and led to a century of warfare. The conflict sprang from a succession dispute, with one power¬ ful clan supporting the brother of the Ashikaga shogun (military ruler) and another supporting the shogun’s infant son. It ended in stalemate, but clans across Japan became involved in hopes of increasing their territory through victory. The nation was at last reunified in the late 16th and early
17th centuries under Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. See also Muromachi period; Warring States period.
onion Herbaceous biennial plant (. Allium cepa) of the lily family, prob¬ ably native to South Asia but now grown worldwide, and its edible bulb. Among the hardiest and oldest garden-vegetable plants, onions bear a cluster of small, greenish white flowers on one or more leafless stalks. The leaf base swells to form the underground mature edible onion. Onions are pungent; because they contain a sulfur-rich volatile oil, peeling or slicing them can cause a person’s eyes to tear. Onions vary in size, shape, colour, and pungency.
Though low in standard nutrients, they are valued for their flavour.
Onions have been claimed to cure colds, earaches, and laryngitis and have been used to treat animal bites, powder burns, and warts; like their close relative garlic, they are being studied for other suspected beneficial qualities. See also allium.
Onnes, Heike Kamerlingh See Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
Onsager Von-.sa-gorV, Lars (b. Nov. 27, 1903, Oslo, Nor.—d. Oct. 5, 1976, Coral Gables, Fla., U.S.) Norwegian-born U.S. chemist. He immi¬ grated to the U.S. and taught principally at Yale University. His develop¬ ment of a general theory of irreversible chemical processes, described as the “fourth law of thermodynamics,” gained him a 1968 Nobel Prize. He also applied the laws of thermodynamics to systems not in equilibrium. His expla¬ nation of the movement of ions in solution as related to turbulence and fluid density had a major effect on the development of physical chemistry.
Ontario Province (pop., 2001: 11,874,400), the second largest in Canada. Situated between Hudson Bay and James Bay and the St. Lawrence RiVER-Great Lakes chain, it is bordered by the U.S. and the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Manitoba. It covers 412,581 sq mi (1,068,580 sq km). Its capital is Toronto. Before European settlement, the area was inhabited by Iroquois and Algonquin Indian tribes. In the 17th century it was visited by French explorers and missionaries. It passed to the British in 1763 after the French and Indian War. It was the scene of many battles in the War of 1812. The area was known as Canada West from 1841 until 1867, when it became one of four provinces of the new Dominion of Canada. Northern Ontario has a rocky and rugged terrain with thick forests, bogs, lakes, and extensive mineral reserves. Southern Ontario is an important farming and industrial region and is the centre of Canada’s population and urban development. Ottawa, the national capital, is also in Ontario.
Ontario, Lake Smallest and easternmost of the Great Lakes of North America. Bounded by New York and Ontario, and with the U.S.-Canada border passing through it, the lake is roughly elliptical; its major axis, 193 mi (311 km) long, lies nearly east to west, and its greatest width is 53 mi (85 km). The Niagara River is the lake’s main feeder. There are five islands at its eastern end, where the lake discharges into the St. Lawrence River near Kingston, Ont. The Welland Canal and the Niagara River connect it to Lake Erie to the southwest. It was visited by Samuel de Champlain in 1615; its early French name was Lac Frontenac. Ports on the lake include Toronto and Hamilton, Ont., and Rochester and Oswego, N.Y.
ontological argument Argument that proceeds from the idea of God to the reality of God. It was first clearly formulated by St. Anselm in his Proslogion (1077-78); a later famous version is given by Rene Descartes. Anselm began with the concept of God as that than which nothing greater can be conceived. To think of such a being as existing only in thought and not also in reality involves a contradiction, since a being that lacks real existence is not a being than which none greater can be conceived. A yet greater being would be one with the further attribute of existence. Thus the unsurpassably perfect being must exist; otherwise it would not be unsurpassably perfect. This is among the most discussed and contested arguments in the history of thought.
ontology Theory of being as such. It was originally called “first phi¬ losophy” by Aristotle. In the 18th century Christian Wolff contrasted ontology, or general metaphysics, with special metaphysical theories of
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1410 I onychophoran ► opera
souls, bodies, or God, claiming that ontology could be a deductive dis¬ cipline revealing the essences of things. This view was later strongly criticized by David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Ontology was revived in the early 20th century by practitioners of phenomenology and existentialism, notably Edmund Husserl and his student Martin Heidegger. In the English- speaking world, interest in ontology was renewed in the mid-20th century by W.V.O. Quine; by the end of the century it had become a central dis¬ cipline of analytic philosophy. See also idealism; realism; universal.