Academics From The United States

"Introspectionism got its ism because the protesting new schools needed a clear and stable contrasting background against which to exhibit their novel features. No proponent of introspection a the basic method of psychology ever called himself an introspectionist."

"It is not likely that the history of psychology can be written in the next three centuries without mention of Freud's name and still claim to be a general history of psychology... Perhaps, had Freud been smothered in his cradle, the times would have produced a substitute, It is hard to say. The dynamics of history lack control experiments."

"The gift of professional maturity comes only to the psychologist who knows the history of his science."

"[William James, in the 1890s] began that metamorphosis of German psychology which was to alter the Teutonic worm of sensory content into the American butterfly of functional reality."

"Psychologically attention is drainage, whatever it may be physiologically."

"American psychology inherited its physical body from German experimentalism, but it got its mind from Darwin."

"Titchener interest lay in the generalized, normal, adult mind that had also been Wundt's main concern."

"So far as consciousness goes, one does one's thinking before one knows what he is to think about."

"[ ] was troubled by materialism... His philosophical solution of the spiritual problem lat in his affirmation of the identity of the mind and matter and in his assurance that the entire universe can be regarded as readily from the point of view of its consciousness... as it can be viewed as inert matter."

"Leibniz foreshadowed the entire doctrine of the unconscious, but Herbart actually began it. Wundt was to appeal first to unconscious inference in order to explain perception, and then to apperception. Fechner was to take from Herbart the notion of the measurement of the magnitude..."

"Broca’s famous observation was in itself very simple. There had in 1831 been admitted at the Bicêtre, an insane hospital near Paris, a man whose sole defect seemed to be that he could not talk. He communicated intelligently by signs and was otherwise mentally normal. He remained at the Bicêtre for thirty years with this defect and on April 12, 1861, was put under the care of Broca, the surgeon, because of a gangrenous infection. Broca for five days subjected him to a careful examination, in which he satisfied himself that the musculature of the larynx and articulatory organs was not hindered in normal movements, that there was no other paralysis that could interfere with speech, and that the man was intelligent enough to speak. On April 17 the patient— fortunately, it must have seemed, for science—died; and within a day Broca had performed an autopsy, discovering a lesion in the third frontal convolution of the left cerebral hemisphere, and had presented the brain in alcohol to the Société d’Anthropologie."

"The experimental psychologist... needs historical sophistication within his own sphere of expertness. Without such knowledge he sees the present in distorted perspective, he mistakes old facts and old views for new, and he remains unable to evaluate the significance of new movements and methods. In this matter I can hardly state my faith too strongly. A psychological sophistication that contains no component of historical orientation seems to me to be no sophistication at all."

"Half the time I read Hayek's The Sensory Order with amazement at the extent of his reading and comprehension … he is right … most of the time."

"I believe that robotic thinking helps precision of psychological thought, and will continue to help it until psychophysiology is so far advanced that an image is nothing other than a neural event, and object constancy is obviously just something that happens in the brain. That time is still a long way off, and in the interval I choose to sit cozily with my robot, squeezing his hand and feeling a thrill -- a scientist's thrill -- when he squeezes mine back again."

"The function of reciting (actually chanting—for Scripture and national epic were sung, not read) Pentateuch and Homer at national reunions is the same in both cases. The narrative knits the segments of the nation together telling how they achieved their place in history in the course of a great event (The Exodus or the Trojan War). All of the tribes and their leaders are heroic. The text brings in each tribe by name. ...there must be an honoured place for all."

"Professor Gordon has made himself at home in both the Semitic and Indo-European compartments of philology. This makes it possible for him to do things and to see things that are beyond a single compartment scholar's horizon."

"During the 1960's Cyrus Gordon, a respected professor of the Semitic languages and an ardent diffusionist, revived the Paraíba Stone's claims to authenticity. Basically Gordon asserted that the Paraíba inscription contained Phoenician grammatical constructions unknown in 1872. These same constructions were originally used in the 1870's to argue against the stone's authenticity. Subsequent research during the twentieth century, Gordon said, revealed that the anomalous grammatical usages in the Paraíba Stone were genuine. Other equally qualified specialists disagree with his conclusions and continue to declare the Paraíba Stone a hoax. That opinion remains the judgement of archeologists and historians in general."

"In 1894 Cyrus Thomas, a Smithsonian Institution archeologist, identified the Bat Creek site as a Cherokee burial ground. That identification has been challenged in the twentieth century by various writers including the irrepressible Cyrus Gordon, professor of Semitic languages. They claim that the Bat Creek inscription is Hebrew and related to the Bar Kochba rebellion that took place during AD 135 in Roman Judea. Gordon attempted to bolster the theory by pointing out that the Bat Creek inscription ties in quite nicely with various finds of Roman and Bar Kochba coins in the Kentucky and Tennessee area. Unfortunately, experts consider these finds to be fakes. Gordon's willingness to consider the possibility that these inscriptions were made by refugees from the defeat of the Jewish Revolt in AD 70 does not help his case because the arguments against it are almost as strong as those against the Bar Kochba rebellion."

"Dr. Gordon... contended that Hebrew inscriptions many centuries old had been found at two sites in the southeastern United States. Frank Moore Cross said... that Dr. Gordon was "in many ways a great scholar" but that this belief "simply did not make sense.""

"Cyrus Gordon is a brilliant linguist and one of the greatest living Semitists. Despite attempts by his enemies to replace it, his pioneering Ugaritic Grammar remains the standard work on the first new Semitic language to be discovered this century. Nevertheless, for the past thirty years he has been on the fringes of academia and most scholars consider him to be a crank. This is partly because his sins or errors are not ones of omission – towards which academia is extremely lenient – but of commission, which are considered irredeemably heinous. Moreover, his attempts to demonstrate the existence of Phoenician or even early Jewish influence on America are so far from conventional wisdom as to make him appear ludicrous. This means that all his original work can be, and has been, brushed aside with contempt."

"If archeology had yielded only the Epic of Kret, we would have enough to bridge the gap between the Iliad and Genesis. But... our new sources are so rich that we have only begun... The years ahead bid fair to be the most fruitful in the annals of Classical and Biblical scholarship. Our debt to the Bible and Classics is so great that this type of research will deepen our understanding of our culture and of ourselves."

"The prevailing view is simply that the Judges were inspired, not hereditary leaders. But this misses the point; the Judges were normally from the ruling aristocracy, quite like the kings in Homer. ...The kings did not necessarily inherit rulership from their fathers but sometimes did, like Odysseus from Laertes, or Abimelech from Gideon. ...the kings came from the fighting and landed aristocracy..."

"Aristocrats (among Hebrews and Greeks) often had harems that included women of common or even servile origin, as well as well-born aristocratic ladies. Normally, the successors would be chosen from the sons born by ladies; but on occasion those born by servile or common wives achieved the ascendency. In the latter case, tradition could dwell on the phenomenon as "worthy of saga.""

"The central problem of the Greek tragedies is why we suffer so at the hands of God. The movement that evoked Greek tragedy in the fifth century B.C. was spread over the East Mediterranean evoking a parallel response in Israel. ...And as in Greek tragedy, Job deals with the problem of why man suffers so at the had of God."

"Battles ended with sunset or dusk; so heroes, on special occasions when they needed more time, were vouchsafed victory by the stoppage of the sun in Greek as well as Hebrew saga."

"The Conquest of Joshua could not have been a primitive assault, because a civilized land like Canaan with well-fortified cities could easily have repulsed an attack that was militarily naïve. ...Spies were sent to search out the land and lay the groundwork."

"The warriors who constituted the aristocracy were awarded land grants to recompense them for their share in conquering the country. Both in Greece and in Israel, the theory of society was basically the same. The conquerors were the fighting and ruling stratum; the conquered natives were degraded to the labouring class. In Sparta the latter were called Helots. In Israel the Canaanites were the "hewers of wood and the drawers of water.""

"The notion of a language of the gods appears in Sanskrit, Greek, Old Norse and Hittite cultures."

"When the characters of epic and heroic saga are on significant missions, they are led divinely."

"Despite the polytheism of the East Mediterranean nations, monotheistic trends were always present even in such crass polytheisms such as we find in Homer and in Egyptian literature."

"When Zeus' son Sarpedon meets his fate, Zeus expresses grief for his dead son by causing blood to rain (Iliad 16: 459-461). In Egypt, the function of rain is replaced by the Nile which fructifies the soil. Accordingly, the Biblical Plague of Blood (Exodus 7: 19-25) is the Egyptian equivalent of the bloody rainfall in the Iliad."

"Music was an art fostered by the mightiest of heroes. Achilles is represented as entertaining himself with his lyre. (Iliad 9: 185-6). We compare David, the warrior skilled in poetry, singing and musical instruments."

"Epic poetry is divinely inspired (Iliad I: I) and as such is just as true as oracles, and for the same reason. It is no accident that oracles (such as those at Delphi) were enunciated in the same dactylic hexameter as the epic."

"Homeric tradition has its own way of telling us that Minoan/Mycenaean civilisation was intertwined with the culture of the Semitic Phoenicians. Iliad 14: 321-322 makes Phoenix (named after the ancestor of the Phoenicians) the maternal grandfather of Minos. ...Archaeology bears out early cultural connections between the two."

"Historical, sociological, literary, linguistic, archeological and other techniques must be brought to bear when they are applicable to the material at hand."

"That both the Gilgamesh Epic and the Odyssey deal with the episodic wanderings of a hero, would not be sufficiently specific to establish a genuine relation between them. But when both epics begin with the declaration that the hero gained experience from his wide wanderings, and end with his homecoming, a relationship dimly appears. ...when we note that whole episodes are in essential agreement, we are on firmer ground. For instance, both Gilgamesh and Odysseus reject a goddess's proposal for marriage; and each of the heroes interviews his dead companion in Hades."

"Out of the Armana Age synthesis emerged the earliest traditions of Israel and Greece."

"The parallels that form the core of this book fit into a historical framework in the wake of the Armana Age during the closing centuries of the second millenium. Prior to the Armana Age (i.e., before 1400 B.C.) Egyptian, Canaanite, Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Aegean and other influences met around the East Mediterranean to form an international order, by which each was in turn affected."

"It would be foolhardy to swell the pages of this book with an exhaustive list of Greco-Hebrew differences. Everyone knows that Homer is very different from the Bible."

"The customs of both the Greeks and Hebrews in that heroic age were often alien to their respective descendants in the classical periods. We shall have to bear in mind that the gulf separating classical Israel (of the great Prophets) from classical Greece (of the scientists and philosophers) must not be read back into the heroic age when both peoples formed part of the same international complex."

"Just as Mycenaean civilisation is a development of the Minoan, so too the Philistines who came to Palestine from Caphtor were an offshoot of the same general Aegean civilisation. ...until David's victories around 1000 B.C., the Philistines dominated the Hebrews, so that, militarily at least, the Davidic monarchy was the Hebrew response to the Philistine stimulus. ...the Achaeans, Trojans, Philistines and Hebrews during the closing centuries of the second millennium belonged to the same international complex of peoples, sharing many conventions and institutions, specifically in military matters."

"The text of Homer about the Mycenaen Age with its memories of the Trojan War, and the Hebrew text covering from the Conquest through David's reign, cover ground with much in common geographically, chronologically and ethnically."

"Manslaughter was requited through blood revenge. Accordingly the offender, to escape the avenger, would be forced to flee, cut off from his land and people, at the mercy of strangers far from home. [Examples are] 2 Samuel (14: 5-7)... Iliad a6: 571-574... Odyssey (15: 271-278)... (Genesis 4: 14)... (Genesis 4: 15)"

"The priestly guilds were highly mobile, with the result that cultic practices crossed ethnic lines over wide areas."

"The Greeks viewed the Mediterranean not as a barrier but as a network of routes connecting people who dwelt along its shores. This is familiar to any student of Greece. ...the Hebrews express themselves similarly in passages like Psalm 8: 9 ("crossing the paths of the seas")."

"We absorb attitudes as well as subject matter in the learning process. ...the attitudes tend to determine what we see, and what we fail to see, in the subject matter. This is why attitude is just as important as content in the educational process."

"It seems strange that so many generations of Old Testament scholars, trained in Greek as well as Hebrew literature, have managed to keep their Greek and Hebrew studies rigidly compartmentalised."

"The prevailing attitude (which is gradually losing its grip) may be described as the tacit assumption that ancient Israel and Greece are two water-tight compartments... One is said to be sacred; the other, profane; one, Semitic; the other, Indo-European. One, Asiatic and Oriental; the other, European and Occidental. But the fact is that both flourished during the same centuries, in the same East Mediterranean corner of the globe, with both ethnic groups in contact with each other from the start."

"V. Bérard attributed the [Greece and Israel] links mainly to the role of the Phoenicians. P. Jensen explained matters through the diffusion of the Gilgamesh Epic. ...but their one-sidedness and exaggeration brought them, and indeed the problem itself, into disrepute among critical scholars. The history of the problem has been ably documented by W. Baumgartner..."

"For centuries scholars have been forced to grapple with the problem of accounting for the parallels between Greek literature and the Bible. Did Greece borrow from Israel? Or did Israel borrow from Greece? Can the parallels be accidental, do they obliterate the uniqueness of both Israel and Greece?"