Word: scientist
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...also held in high respect by his fellow historians. Those skills include an almost unique combination of encyclopedic knowledge, sharp reporter's eye, extraordinary facility and a literary style any novelist would be proud of. Schlesinger has no use for the notion of the historian as a scientist. To Schlesinger, the historian is one who "noses around in chaos, like any other writer," and out of chaos produces a drama that illuminates the facts while
Little Shudder. Schlesinger believes in the "confusion theory" of history as opposed to the "conspiracy theory." According to Political Scientist James MacGregor Burns, the conspiracy theory holds that "if something happened, somebody planned it." Schlesinger, on the other hand, believes in "the role of chance and contingency, the sheer intricacy of situations, the murk of battle." Schlesinger is also scornful of the "prophetic" historians-Marx, Spengler, Toynbee-who use "one big hypothesis to explain a variety of small things." Says he: "They" have reduced the chaos of history to a single order of explanation, which can infallibly penetrate the mysteries...
Self-Study. Political Scientist Heard came to Vanderbilt from the deanship of the University of North Carolina's graduate school. Taking over two years ago, he ordered a self-study in which 285 faculty and staff members produced a massive critical report. Heard read all 36 Ibs. of it, now uses it as a basis for measuring Vanderbilt's progress. He created a separate department of molecular biology and a division of bio-medical sciences, established a "distinguished professor" rank with high salaries to attract top talent, and overhauled the sociology department...
...raising the level of education enormously by the investment in space. Since other investments of $20 billion would obviously raise the level more, the concomitant argument is that if America were not spending the money on space, she would not be spending it. "Every few months some scientist comes up with a shopping list of things we could have if we didn't have a space program," said a Life editor. "We could cure cancer and we could give every teacher in the U.S. a huge pay raise and so on. But that's absurd...
Clearly nobody has taught Keniston how to write. This deficiency would not be so serious if Keniston were an economist, historian, or even a psychologist of ordinary pretensions. But it seems that he would imitate his teachers, that he aspires to the position of free-lance social scientist, unfettered by the disciplinary distinctions usually imposed by the Academy. While the ambition is an hororable one, the plodding prose of The Uncommitted suggests that Keniston may not be the right man for the job--at least...