Word: methodic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...sweeping as the creationists' jihad against Darwin, but it is also far more focused: what is under attack here is not a vast theory with admitted gaps but a specific experiment on a specific piece of cloth--an apparently pure application of the scientific method that the West has taken for granted since the days of the Enlightenment...
While Smiley's straightforward style may not be the best method of recounting the almost overwhelming challenges that Lidie faces (both physically and mentally), it keeps the book feeling genuine, and never once lets it digress into a cheap Western adventure-romance dime novel. The author relies a bit too heavily on powers of description, with enormous paragraphs dedicated to describing the finery (or lack thereof) around the heroine. But then again, such descriptions keep the authenticity of the book alive...
...subconsciously. (Within half-a-dozen years, of course, Emily might easily be doing the Deepak Chopra thing just to drive her mother crazy.) So while the idea of testing TT was all Emily's, her parents were only too eager to bring her up to speed on the scientific method and statistical analysis. Moreover, mother and stepfather, along with Dr. Stephen Barrett, chairman of an outfit called Quackwatch Inc., helped her write the paper. Linda, in fact, is credited as lead author...
Against the worship of abstractions, F.D.R. wanted to find practical ways to help decent men and women struggling day by day to make a happier world for themselves and their children. His technique was, as he said, "bold, persistent experimentation...Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." Except for the part about admitting failure frankly, that was the practice of his Administration...
Gandhian nonviolence is widely believed to be the method by which India gained independence. (The view is assiduously fostered inside India as well as outside it.) Yet the Indian revolution did indeed become violent, and this violence so disappointed Gandhi that he stayed away from the independence celebrations in protest. Moreover, the ruinous economic impact of World War II on Britain, and--as British writer Patrick French says in his book Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and Division--the gradual collapse of the Raj's bureaucratic hold over India from the mid-'30s onward did as much...