Word: sorokin
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...late Harvard sociologist, Pitirim Sorokin. By this he meant the glorification of pleasure over Puritan duty, of leisure over work. The '60s was a time of almost frantic experiment in sexual liberation; in the next decade, thanks in part to the Pill, sex will continue to be casual. But it may also be less frenetic. Divorce will be even more common, and the law may come to recognize term marriages, unions that will dissolve automatically after a certain length of time. Marijuana most likely will be either legalized or condoned...
Most of Harvard's remaining professors found themselves understandably pre-occupied with the war. Charles Townsend Copeland might continue his annual poetry readings in Emerson Hall, but Pitirim Sorokin abandoned purely academic pursuits to perfect and publicize his plan for world peace--national sovereignty, he believed, had to be sacrificed for a world government with a monopoly of force...
Died. Pitirim A. Sorokin, 79, eminent Russian-born sociologist and longtime (1931-1964) Harvard professor; in Winchester, Mass. Sorokin's theory of historical change, as laid down in his Social and Cultural Dynamics, centered on the distinction between "sensate" or materialistic values and "ideational" values based on faith and love. Western civilization, he felt, was far too sensate. Over the years, he wrote some 30 books (The Crisis of Our Age, Altruistic Love) aimed at curbing mankind's predatory, self-destructive instinct...
...Sorokin's sociology books are studied and respected in almost every country of the world. Even in Russia his works are now available. A visiting colleague from the Soviet Union once told him that he was regarded in Russia as the most eminent non-Marxian sociologist in the world...
...Center for Research on Creative Altruism may tempt some to make light of Sorokin. But he was a scholar and an innovator, and his books will be studied by sociologists for many years...