Word: method
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...these advisers live carefully compartmented lives. They see little of each other socially. They are divided roughly in their thinking between the Clifford philosophy of frontal attack and the Steelman philosophy that the better and safer attack is an oblique one. But the difference is principally in method, not in ideology. It is not enough to interrupt the almost noiseless ticking of the Little Cabinet's well-oiled clockwork...
...Leslie A. White of the University of Michigan wants to call them "culturologists") divide human history into "levels of energy use." All life, including human life, they hold, struggles to capture free energy. Men first captured energy by gathering edible wild plants or by catching edible wild animals. This method, used until about 5000 B.C., yielded poor returns. Man never raised a high culture on what nature put directly in his hands...
...first breakthrough came with the domestication (almost simultaneous) of plants and animals. Agricultural man, who appeared in the Middle East about 7,000 years ago, filled whole fields with food plants and thus turned more solar energy into a form he could use. This method (level two) was much more effective than level one. About 1,000 years after its start, high civilizations were flourishing, with big cities, proud kings, complex religions and devastating wars. Many such cultures rose and fell with rhythmic repetition. But except for such cycles, there was little change for nearly 6,000 years...
...small style to say it with, should be the one to write them. What is the secret of Author Goudge's success? Gentian Hill, her latest novel and the Literary Guild's first offer of the new year, can be studied as a casebook of her method...