Word: lipset
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...already light. The streets were deserted. Many thoughts ran through my mind. I thought of my optimistic conversation with Professor Lipset during the afternoon in the Yard. 'If the administration just plays it cool, maybe Harvard can turn the tide and be the first school to defeat the New Left.' He answered, "The question is whether they will be stupid enough to call the cops...
...political decisions. But the problems I deal with are invariant under"ism"transformations: they are in part problems of standards and accuracy, and the way political opinions are passed off as social "science." I developed the analysis on one concrete case in my book The File, triggered by Ladd-Lipset's "The 1977 Survey of the American Professiorate," and a review in the New York Review of Books of Education and Politics at Harvard by Lipset and David Riesman. As it happens, Seymour Martin Lipset is a member of the National Academy of Sciences...
...inability toaccept ambiguity. "I don't know that any socialscientist would meet their standards. They arepsychologically angered by it. They are people whowant certainty," the member is quoted as saying."They have no tolerance for ambiguity." Whoeverthe member was, his statement is very similar tothe statement by Seymour Martin Lipset, that "tobe a social scientist, one must have a hightolerance for ambiguity" (The File.)Readers can evaluate the pop psychology about"ambiguity" in light of my previous analyses...
...Lipset, readers can also refer to hisunambiguous statement in Political Man,containing the sentence, "This change in Westernpolitical life reflects the fact that thefundamental problems of the industrial revolutionhave been solved." Lipset was writing in 1960. Wasit a fact? Was it perceived as fact? By whom?When? Does Lipset or Huntington know thedifference between a fact, the perception of afact, an opinion, and what is neither? The abovesentence occurs on a page speckled with footnotes,which make it appear as if this particular opinionis rooted in scholarship. But all the footnotesdocument is the statement: "In 1960, a prevalentopinion in Western...
...generalize only with caution. I have noquantitative measurement as to how many people insociology or political science are purveyors ofpseudo-science, like Huntington and Lipset. Awidespread uncritical acceptance of Huntington'sworks, his eminence in his field, and hisnomination by Class V indicate that he is not anisolated phenomenon. As Edward Anders, a member ofthe geophysics section of the Academy has written:"Though there are many excellent people in [ClassV], I have repeatedly had misgivings about some ofthe candidates in in social and political science,and less frequently about those in psychology andeconomic science. My suspicions have been amplyconfirmed...