Coercive Acts See Intolerable Acts
Coetzee \kut-'se\, J(ohn) M(ichael) (b. Feb. 9, 1940, Cape Town, S.Af.) South African novelist. Coetzee taught English at the University of Cape Town, translated works from the Dutch, and wrote literary criti¬ cism before publishing his first book, Dusklands (1974). He won inter¬ national fame with In the Heart of the Country (1977) and Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), in which he attacked the legacy of colonialism; they were followed by The Life and Times of Michael K (1983, Booker Prize), which concerns a man of limited intelligence caught in a civil war; Foe (1986), a twist on Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe; the autobiographical Boyhood (1997); and others. Among his nonfiction works are Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (1996) and The Lives of Animals (1999). In 1999 he became the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice when he received the award for his novel Disgrace (1999). In 2003 Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Coeur \'kcer\, Jacques (b. c. 1395, Bourges, Fr.—d. Nov. 25, 1456, probably Chios in the Aegean Sea) French merchant and royal official. A member of the council of King Charles VII, he was put in charge of tax collection, and was ennobled in 1441. He built a great commercial empire
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428 I cofactor ► cognitivism
that dealt in salt, silks, and many other commodities, and with his huge wealth he funded the king’s reconquest of Normandy (1450) and made loans to many aristocrats. Falsely accused of poisoning the king’s mis¬ tress and of dishonest speculation, he was arrested in 1451 but escaped to Italy. He died while commanding a naval expedition against the Turks.
cofactor An atom, organic molecule, or molecular group that is neces¬ sary for the catalytic activity (see catalysis) of many enzymes. A cofactor may be tightly bound to the protein portion of an enzyme and thus be an integral part of its functional structure, or it may be only loosely associ¬ ated and free to diffuse away from the enzyme. Cofactors of the integral kind include metal atoms—such as iron, copper, or magnesium —or mod¬ erately sized organic molecules called prosthetic groups; many of the lat¬ ter contain a metal atom, often in a coordination complex (see transition element). Removal of the cofactor from the enzyme’s structure causes loss of its catalytic activity. Loosely associated cofactors are called coenzymes; examples include most members of the vitamin B complex. Rather than directly contributing to the catalytic ability of an enzyme, coenzymes par¬ ticipate with the enzyme in the catalytic reaction. Sometimes this distinc¬ tion in definition is no longer made, and coenzyme is used in the broader sense of cofactor.
coffee Tropical evergreen shrub of the genus Coffea, in the madder family, or its seeds, called beans; also the beverage made by brewing the roasted and ground beans with water. Two of the 25 or more species, C. arabica and C. canephora, supply almost all the world’s coffee. Arabica coffee is considered to brew a more flavourful and aromatic beverage than Robusta, the main variety of C. canephora. Arabicas are grown in Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Indonesia, Robustas mainly in Africa. The shrub bears bouquets of small white flowers with a jasminelike fra¬ grance. The fruit, 0.5-0.75 in. (13-19 mm) long and red when mature, is called a cherry. Coffee contains large amounts of caffeine, the effects of which have always been an important element in the drink’s popularity. Coffee drinking began in 15th-century Arabia. It reached Europe by the mid 17th century and immediately became hugely popular. Coffee is now consumed by about one-third of the world’s population.
coffer In architecture, a square or polygonal ornamental sunken panel used in a series as decoration for a ceiling or vault. Coffers were prob¬ ably originally formed by wooden beams crossing one another to pro¬ duce a grid. The earliest surviving examples were made of stone by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Coffer¬ ing was revived in the Renaissance and was common in Baroque and Neoclassical architecture.
cofferdam Watertight enclosure from which water is pumped to expose the bed of a body of water in order to permit the construction of a pier or other hydraulic work. Coffer¬ dams are made by driving metal sheetpiling (a series of thin, inter¬ locking panels) into the bed to form a watertight fence. Roman engineers used cofferdams to found the piers of their arch bridges and aqueducts. See also CAISSON.
Coffin, Levi (b. Oct. 28, 1798,
New Garden, N.C., U.S.—d. Sept. 16, 1877, Cincinnati, Ohio) U.S. abo¬ litionist. Despite little formal education, he became a teacher. As a devout Quaker, he opposed slavery. In 1826 he moved to Newport, Ind., where he made his home into a depot of the Underground Railroad and used much of his wealth as a merchant to help the escaping slaves. In 1847 he moved to Cincinnati, where he opened a store selling goods made only by free labour. He continued his work with the Underground Railroad until the outbreak of the American Civil War; he then worked to aid liberated slaves.
cogeneration In power systems, use of steam for both power genera¬ tion and heating. High-temperature, high-pressure steam from a boiler and superheater first passes through a turbine to produce power. It is exhausted at a temperature and pressure suitable for heating purposes, instead of being expanded in the turbine to the lowest possible pressure and then
discharged to the condenser, which would waste the remaining energy in the steam. The steam at the higher pressure can provide large amounts of lower-temperature energy for heating buildings or evaporating brine in a chemical plant. Considerable overall energy savings can be obtained by cogeneration. See also steam engine.
cogito, ergo sum Latin "I think, therefore I am" Dictum coined in 1637 by Rene Descartes as a first step in demonstrating the attainability of certain knowledge. It is the only statement to survive the test of his methodic doubt. The statement is indubitable, Descartes argued, because even if an all-powerful demon were to try to deceive him into thinking he exists when he does not, Descartes would have to exist in order to be deceived. Therefore, whenever he thinks, he exists. Furthermore, Des¬ cartes maintained, the statement “I am” (sum) expresses an immediate intuition, not the conclusion of a process of reasoning, and is thus indu¬ bitable.
cognac \'kon-,yak\ Brandy from the French departments of Charente and Charente-Maritime. Tracing its origin to the 17th century, cognac (named for the town of Cognac) is distilled from white wine in special pot stills (alembics) and aged in Limousin oak. Most cognacs spend from one and one-half to five years in wood, though rarer varieties may age much longer.
cognition Act or process of knowing. Cognition includes every mental process that may be described as an experience of knowing (including perceiving, recognizing, conceiving, and reasoning), as distinguished from an experience of feeling or of willing. Philosophers have long been interested in the relationship between the knowing mind and external reality; psychologists took up the study of cognition in the 20th century. See also cognitive psychology; cognitive science; philosophy of mind.
cognitive dissonance Mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The concept was intro¬ duced by the psychologist Leon Festinger (1919-89) in the late 1950s. He and later researchers showed that, when confronted with challenging new information, most people seek to preserve their current understanding of the world by rejecting, explaining away, or avoiding the new information or by convincing themselves that no conflict really exists. Cognitive dis¬ sonance is nonetheless considered an explanation for attitude change.