Word: viewing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...came a view of the universe in which space and time were all relative. Indirectly, relativity paved the way for a new relativism in morality, arts and politics. There was less faith in absolutes, not only of time and space but also of truth and morality. "It formed a knife," historian Paul Johnson says of relativity theory, "to help cut society adrift from its traditional moorings." Just as Darwinism became, a century ago, not just a biological theory but also a social theology, so too did relativity shape the social theology of the 20th century...
Einstein often invoked God, although his was a rather depersonalized deity. He believed, he said, in a "God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists." His faith in this divine harmony was what caused him to reject the view that the universe is subject to randomness and uncertainty. "The Lord God is subtle, but malicious he is not." Searching for God's design, he said, was "the source of all true art and science." Although this quest may be a cause for humility, it is also what gives meaning and dignity to our lives...
...Party as the cause of Germany's defeat and economic woes, Einstein and his "Jewish physics" were a favorite target. Nazis, however, weren't his only foes. For Stalinists, relativity represented rampant capitalist individualism; for some churchmen, it meant ungodly atheism, even though Einstein, who had an impersonal Spinozan view of God, often spoke about trying to understand how the Lord (der Alte, or the Old Man) shaped the universe...
...your father walked out before you were born and your mother says she tried to abort you by guzzling turpentine, you may grow up with a sour view of humanity. Mary Patricia Plangman Highsmith--born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921--had murder on her mind from the first of her 23 novels, the 1950 Strangers on a Train. Alfred Hitchcock made a film of it a year later, though he dared include only one of the book's two murders. Soon after, the woman whom screenwriter Michael Tolkin (The Player) calls "our best expatriate since Henry James" left...
...actors' energy and obliterates the historical reality. Welles is a pompous oaf, and Houseman his toady. The rich are scheming, the poor artists cliches of do-gooder striving. These are caricatures drawn so violently that one sees blotches of ink instead of quick, deft lines. Perhaps, in the long view, we are all idiots. But we don't need a 60-year perspective to see Robbins' attitude revealed in all its meanness of spirit. If he hated these people so, why did he waste his time and ours putting them on film...