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Word: osgoodly (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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Unfortunately, Mr. Hobson has chosen to rest his case on a metaphor suggested by Professor Charles Osgood of the University of Illinois. Osgood describes the actions of two men standing on either side of a see-saw. When one takes a step backward, the other is obliged to do likewise to preserve the equilibrium of the system. As the two men continue to move backward to the ends of the see-saw, the board on which they are standing strains to the cracking point, and the balance becomes more precarious...

Author: By Josiah LEE Auspitz, | Title: Comment | 11/30/1961 | See Source »

...much better it would be if one man took the initiative to move forward, toward the center of the see-saw. His opponent would then be obliged to respond in kind to preserve equilibrium. Progressive movement toward the center, says Osgood, would lesson the tension on the board and minimize the effect of a single wrong step. And so it would. Osgood's teeter-totter tale is sound physics. It is not very good practical politics...

Author: By Josiah LEE Auspitz, | Title: Comment | 11/30/1961 | See Source »

...assertions are true, unilateral initiative is impossible, world opinion impotent, and "pacific" factions subversive. Mr. Hobson blithely assumes that both assertions are false and that East and West have something to gain from reduction of tension; he might have given some proof. Some situations in international relations may fit Osgood's idyllic see-saw model, but most seem more like a tug-of-war, in which any slack released by one side is immediately snatched up by the other...

Author: By Josiah LEE Auspitz, | Title: Comment | 11/30/1961 | See Source »

...Osgood's paper supposes that the United States, in one phase of an Imagined program, has announced that on a given date it will move the seating of the People's Republic of Chins in the United Nations. The Chinese, misinterpreting this as a sign of weakness, stop up bombardment of Quemoy and Matsu and prepare to Invade . . . there is an invasion attempt, which is repulsed, but no counterattack on the Chinese mainland. Eventually hostilities peter out. In the meantime we have nevertheless moved the seating of the Chines in the United Nations--Just as If nothing untoward had happened...

Author: By Josiah LEE Auspitz, | Title: Comment | 11/30/1961 | See Source »

...Osgood carefully formulated criteria for constructing unilateral initiatives, because "novel times produce the need for novel solutions." He insisted that words will be misunderstood until clarified by deeds, and added ironically that our government spends far less on thinking up initiatives than on paying 'experts' to hypothesize their failure...

Author: NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED | Title: Osgood Urges Tocsin to Continue Pursuit of 'Unilateral Initiatives' | 10/17/1961 | See Source »

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