Word: opinionated
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Contrary to popular opinion, said Dr. Goldstein to his colleagues last week, the brain does not grasp simple, single objects first, but understands things only as parts of larger patterns. Many patients suffering from injuries of the cortex (most highly complex section of the brain) cannot use or understand any isolated words, symbols or objects. For example, certain patients who have brain injuries, but who appear normal in their behavior, when handed a knife, are unable to give it a name. But when handed a knife with a potato, they promptly cry: "That's a potato peeler...
...proposed abolition of the assistant professorship--seemed at least as evident as signs of approval. No specific motions, however, were entertained. Each meeting was prefaced with the statement that votes would not be taken; and particular requests for a vote were refused. The sole effort to evoke or appraise opinion as a whole consisted of the statement, made at each meeting, that failure to declare objection by letter would be taken as constituting approval of all the recommendations...
...putting into effect the recommendations of the report there has been still less effort to foster the development and expression of Faculty opinion than there was in adopting it. . . . it is safe to say that no other period in the history of the University has seen so many final decisions, respecting the future of such promising scholars, reached in so short a time. . . . To the fact of such decisions no objection, of course, can be made. But merely to state their number and the speed with which they have been reached is to state also that the deliberative procedures envisaged...
Surely the first requisite of wise administration in a University is the avoidance of needless frictions and serious mistakes by a regular practice of consulting, as a group, those who are best qualified to form and express an opinion. The legalistic iteration that in matters of personnel a department acts only "as an informal group to whom the administration has turned for advice" is satisfactory neither as an interpretation of the carefully defined provisions of your report nor as an assurance that its potentialities for clarity and harmony will be realized...
...consequence of circumstances which need not be related here, President Conant recently outlined to me one aspect of the University's appointment policy which, though special, seems to have an important bearing on the general situation. In my opinion, President Conant could quite properly have touched on this matter in his letter referred to above, since it involves all the essential elements of the difficult problem of academic appointment and tenure. At least, by so doing, he would have given an important clue to his thinking on that problem...