Word: understands
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...counsel for the town of Mashpee, asked an Indian witness to define for the jury what being an Indian witness to define for the jury what being an Indian meant. The witness replied: "If I were to sit here all day explaining it to you, you still would never understand...
...only one symptom of a widespread cultural arrogance and intolerance that emerged all too clearly in this trial. The trial itself, more than the jury's inconclusive decision, demonstrated how difficult the attainment of judicial impartiality is in a society biased toward a cultural norm many groups cannot understand or accept...
Still, they tried. Writes Crick, who with James Watson won his Nobel Prize for elucidating the structure of DNA, the master molecule of life: "We understand how an organism can build molecules, although the largest of them is far too minute for us to see, even with a high-powered microscope; yet we do not understand how it builds a flower or a hand or an eye, all of which are plainly visible to us." Even less is known, Crick notes, about how an animal's nervous system is formed, how the growth of the nerves is directed...
...question asked in a classic 1950 history of experimental psychology-"Where or how does the brain store its memories? That is the great mystery"-is still unanswered a quarter of a century later. Psychologist Wilse Webb cheerfully admits that after years of research on sleep, he still does not understand its purpose...
...affirmative action (or reverse discrimination, depending on your viewpoint), the call for more law and order, the idea that the federal government tried to do too much too quickly in the '60s and must pull back now, the white flight to suburbia, all fit together into one unhappy picture. Understanding Brooklyn, where the battleground is big, the players easy to spot and the conflict starting early, helps one to understand how the foul weed of neoconservatism flourishes in soil once overgrown with liberal begonias...