Word: presentation
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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JUDGING by present high levels of violent crime, this nation is sick. Conservative political candidates offer their law-and-order solution, while sociologists insist on the abolition of social injustices. Two Harvard Medical School professors have come up with a third prescription-analysis of the biological causes of violent behavior. Violence and the Brain, a newly-published monograph, urges a scientific investigation of the role of the brain in individual violence while developing biologically-oriented social implications for both the criminologist and the politician to study...
...fact that behavior is functionally determined by brain mechanisms suggests a number of intriguing problems, some of which the book tries to develop. How much of present widespread violence can be attributed to poor impulse control? And how many of these cases are related to brain malfunctions? If an individual's threshold for violent action is low, is it due to a gross cerebral defect, such as a tumor? Or is it the result of progressive environmental influences, such as living in a lower-class urban environment or watching violent television programs, which might create a cerebral predisposition to violence...
...medical and biologically-oriented parts of Violence and the Brain give a complete accounting of the present level of knowledge concerning the functioning of the brain in violent behavior on a fairly elementary level. Diagrams of the limbic brain system are given, and brain wave recordings are charted, but smooth, nontechnical explanations keep the material within easy reach of a general audience. In fact, some of the casualness in discussing the medical applications of surgical techniques may seem a bit gruesome to the uninitiated. A dozen pages of pictures illustrate the drilling of holes in the human skull...
East Coast candidates, particularly in Ivy schools, are better known among their Harvard colleagues, and in the present democratic "shoot 'em down" consultations, less likely to survive. Ironically, names associated with Eastern universities are therefore more likely to be the strongest candidates...
...call for a man of scholarship came unanimously from members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which is by far the largest and most influential constituency which the Corporation must deal within the search. The reaction of the Faculty to the present list, however, has ranged from unenthusiastic approval to boredom to mild outrage...