Word: modernize
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Training for Thinkers. For his students, it was not always a pleasant experience. Morris Cohen seldom answered questions; he preferred to ask them. Like a modern Socrates ("though ... I lacked, except on rare occasions of good health, the courtesy of Socrates"), he wanted to whisk away his students' prejudices. Unlike Socrates, he felt that if their convictions vanished too, there was little he could do about it. He supplied no new doctrines to take the place of the ones he destroyed, gave his students no Cohen-made faith. His job as he saw it was to train "thinkers rather...
...philosopher, a scientist, and a theologian discussed "Values for Modern Man" last night before nearly 1400 persons at the fifth session of a current Law School Forum series in the Cambridge High and Latin School Auditorium...
Professor Hocking started the discussion by declaring that "values are tangible things" which reflect whatever man wants. Yet "values change and are changing," he stated, "and I find an antipathy to certainty in modern times." In this respect, Hocking added, "Western society has been going oriental in its values...
Professor Bridgman pointed out that as a scientist he "was not prepared to make a direct answer" to the problems of values for modern man. Science can deal only with questions which can be answered by yes or no, he contended...
...intelligent attack" must be made on these problems, he said, "if we are to escape the fate which almost engulfed physics." Bridgman referred to how indefinite terminology seriously bogged down science in the last century. If modern man becomes precise in his definitions of vague words like "democracy," he argued, then difficulties over values may disappear...