Word: humanism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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More often than not, human intelligence seeks to resolve these and a host of similar riddles by intuition alone. And intuition makes an excellent guide. But it is the cardinal premise of a division of social science called decision theory that intuition is often not enough. Decision theory is based on the premise that man's capacity to solve life's problems correctly is limited by two factors: in extremely complex situations, he is not always capable of mastering all the information, and he does not always decide as logic and reason tell him he should. Beyond human...
Unaffected by such emotional factors, a computer does better at the game than people do-which does not mean that decision theorists have contempt for man. In fact, Edwards has a profound respect for the logical abilities of the human mind. One of the inexplicable wonders of life is that a normal man can, with almost ridiculous ease, solve in an instant problems of theoretically great complexity. Take for example, ticktacktoe. Theoretically, in five moves alone this childishly simple game can be played 15,120 different ways. Nonetheless, man easily cuts his way through these impenetrable thickets of choice...
...dipp'd into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales...
Carlos Baker's warts-and-all treatment doesn't make Hemingway particularly likable. But it does make him more fully human than any accounts by previous memoirists or by Hemingway himself. Baker's approach-a kind of uncompromised sympathy-grants Hemingway in abundance the personal virtues of charm, impulsive kindness, physical courage and even "grace under pressure"-if the pressure did not threaten him too directly. But long before his final crackup, Baker makes evident, Hemingway felt habitually threatened. The he-man swagger and the toothy grin camouflaged a soul less in the family of Jack London...
Despite his improbable appendage and his charismatic leadership-he combines traces of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver-Smith as a character is most extraordinary for his recognizable human qualities and frailties. Behind Horn Smith's power and hatred there is a person who desperately needs the recognition and sympathy even of a self-consciously inadequate white priest. Yet the fact that Pratt and Smith somehow strike up something that can be construed as friendship is remarkable. The unusual results of their mutual "needs" raise the novel above the level of an otherwise purely allegorical tale...