Word: conception
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When James took over the concept of pragmatism and made it famous, he scrupulously gave his friend Peirce credit for the notion. Yet so greatly did Peirce feel James had changed the term's meaning that he re-christened his philosophical method "pragmaticism." This word, he remarked, is so ugly that is should be externally safe from "kidnappers...
Such a statement, the mathematician will say, involves a flagrant abuse of the concept of number. Yes--just as the moral and religious writings of Nietzsche involve the flagrant abuse of ethical and theological concepts. The ironical misuse of terms often draws attention to concealed weaknesses and camouflaged absurdities...
Soon the only peaceful solution to South Africa's problems may be partitioning the country into two states similar in concept to India and Pakistan. Partition, though, is far less likely than a major conflict between the races in which the independent African states will join the fight against the whites. Intervention in this malestrom would present far more perils to the United States than intervening through a boycott does...
Education, we say, must stress individuality, but by this we mean something quite different from the concept of privacy and withdrawal, which in fact is but a pleasant term for what should more accurately be called "atomism...
...apocalyptic vision of a thermonuclear war that would annihilate mankind has, in fact, slowly receded, giving way to the idea, voiced by Winston Churchill back in 1950, that the frightfulness of nuclear weapons makes total war improbable. Peace "through mutual terror." Churchill called it. A corollary of this concept is that in a nuclear stalemate the threat of nuclear retaliation ceases to be an effective deterrent to small-scale aggression with conventional weapons. In other words, nuclear stalemate can deter big wars but not little wars. To lessen the U.S.'s reliance on what the late John Foster Dulles...