Word: abstract
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Furthermore, Gould's abstract theorizing--mostly in the introduction and conclusion--detracts from the punch of the book. He writes of the issues of cultural beliefs affecting scientific research and of the simplification of intelligence into a one-dimensional characteristic; he uses intelligence testing, he says, to prove this larger point. However, his scientific jargon and awkward writing style in this part hinder clear presentation of these valid points. The beautiful narrative style evident in the bulk of the book is not evident in his hypothesizing...
Moral norms are abstract. To decide whether some particular, concrete unanalyzed action is forbidden, tolerated, encouraged, or required, principles must be applied to the case...
...feelings about someone else's behavior, a way of asserting what we think acceptable or unacceptable. In a book called The Moralities of Everyday Life, to be published early next year, Psychologists John Sabini and Maury Silver write that "gossip brings ethics home by introducing abstract morality to the mundane...
...intellectual fashion. Nobody liked these buildings then. Nobody wants them now. From sea to shining Seagram, it was a big waste of time. But the legacy is permanent, because the International Style created "Compounds," an entrenched dictatorship over taste centered in the Eastern universities. These Compounds wanted to impose abstract dogmas on the real world of American desires and American fantasies. Nobody since has been able to get out of this straitjacket...
...life of the mountain landscape and the bustle of a city that has become synonymous for unimaginable squalor and degradation. Its reputation transcends differences among cultures and continents but serves as a worst-case scenario for the human condition. For the rest of the world, it is only an abstract image of crowded and dirty nothingness--"New York subways are nearly as crowded as the streets of Calcutta," a recent article read--but for the people of the city, the world outside is equally foreign and abstract. "Calcutta might be poor, but there's no other city to live...