Word: scientistic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Your story on the National Academy of Science's refusal to grant membership to a political scientist ((EDUCATION, May 11)) has helped perpetuate the myth that physical scientists are totally objective in their work. Obviously, you have not noticed how physicists mold their positions on the feasibility of President Reagan's Star Wars program to correlate with their political ideologies. While the scientific merit of Political Scientist Samuel Huntington's work is debatable, Mathematician Serge Lang's comments on that work reveal considerable ignorance about the nature of science. This is not surprising. Though mathematics is the language of science...
Some researchers suggest that the ambitious young psychologist might have succumbed to the pressures facing anyone who depends on scarce Government funds. "Publish or perish, commitment to a larger ideal and simple career advancement -- take your pick, one or all," notes one prominent scientist. "It's troubling," says Western Michigan University Psychology Professor Alan Poling, who co-authored some of Breuning's papers. "As scientists we work largely on faith. To have trusted a person who seems guilty of substantial wrongdoing is disheartening...
Surveying the damage, Church Historian Martin Marty of the University of Chicago sees a "widespread sense of moral disarray." Once, notes Bryn Mawr Political Scientist Stephen Salkever, "there was a traditional language of public discourse, based partly on biblical sources and partly on republican sources." But that language, says Salkever, has fallen into disuse, leaving American society with no moral lingua franca. Agrees Jesuit Father Joseph O'Hare, president of Fordham University: "We've had a traditional set of standards that have been challenged and found wanting or no longer fashionable. Now there don't seem to be any moral...
Chirac was one of the beneficiaries of glasnost on his second day in Moscow. At a reception at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he met Sakharov, the academy's most celebrated -- and recently rehabilitated -- member. The scientist told Chirac that the changes in the Soviet Union could "contribute to stability in the world." Sakharov was less optimistic on human rights in the Soviet Union: it was "very unsatisfactory," he said, that the release of "prisoners of conscience" had been "interrupted." In an earlier aside to French reporters, Sakharov addressed arms control: "Every time there is a chance for a possible...
James MacGregor Burns, Williams College political scientist and biographer of Franklin Roosevelt