Word: abstraction
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...dominated by a triumvirate of men whose fame was international. Prompted by a desire to come into intimate contact with these great minds many students at Harvard were moved to take the course. Now these men have gone and Philosophy A has become a dull symposium of abstract thought nourished by the diversification plan of the University. This decline can be traced to two underlying causes; the nature of the course itself, and the departure of James, Royce, and Munsterburg...
...afford the pupil an opportunity during the early years to discover under guidance his particular aptitudes, to acquire such a factual knowledge as is essential for his future development, to gain some acquaintance and initial facility with the tools of learning. Intelligent thinking requires imagination and a capacity for abstract reasoning; but it is no less nobly based on ability to command or to discover facts, to evaluate them, and to perceive their relations...
...cooperation between school and college I have not meant to overlook the more vital element of cooperation on the part of the student. The theory that a subject is good for a boy because it is hard and distasteful has long been discredited. The subjects which are difficult and abstract should indeed be taught in as interesting a manner as possible; and the boy whose inaptitude for them has been clearly demonstrated should not be forced to continue. But the modicum of truth remains that progress does not regularly take place along the line of least resistance. Unless the secondary...
...leapt up in convulsions of inarticulate joy or horror at Stravinsky's colossal strains, were supplied with a concrete ideology for their raptures or protests. No patience for the average soul's necessity to articulate has Composer Stravinsky. A poet of barbarism, he describes his outpourings as abstract sound; scorns, protests all attempts to translate him, to fit him into patterns of human thought. In deference to this idea the ballet directed by Leonide Massine, the setting and costumes by Nicholas Roerich, all aimed at abstraction of movement and form. But there was a libretto for nonabstract minds...
...talking picture is a sensitive, faithful and brilliant photograph of a great War play. The story is a pattern loosely and skillfully woven around the lives and characters of certain British officers in a front line sector?their amusements, memories, meals, relations to each other?all unified by the abstract presence of a power bent on destroying them, and which does in the end destroy them. These soldiers are heroic, but with a kind of heroism never before depicted on the screen?a makeshift heroism, concocted in despair as the best way to behave in circumstances which are absurd, insane...