Showing papers by "Williams College published in 1971"

Exploratory behavior in response to the spatial rearrangement of familiar stimuli

Abstract: The effects of the spatial rearrangement of familiar stimuli on exploratory behavior were studied in the Mongolian gerbil. Using an open-field situation, Ss were exposed to one or a number of stimuli in a particular spatial relation to each other and to the walls of the container. A rearrangement of these stimuli (or stimulus) subsequently evoked considerably more exploration than did the control treatment. Total locomotion, the number of approaches to stimuli, and the total time spent investigating stimuli were all affected.

The Average Workweek of Capital in Manufacturing

Abstract: This article derives a quarterly series from 1952–1968 on the average workweek of capital in use in manufacturing. The basic information used is data on the number of production workers engaged on first, second, and third shifts and the average workweek on the first shift. The nationwide series is built up from periodic data on SMSA's for which results are also given. The series shows a different cyclical behavior from the Wharton capacity utilization index and a different long-run behavior from the Federal Reserve's index of capacity utilization.

The Welles Mission to Europe, February–March 1940: Illusion or Realism?

Abstract: 1HE winter of 1939-1940 was a period of deep anxiety both for belligerents and for neutrals. While in many countries the long weeks of military disengagement nourished popular hopes of peace before spring, the governments of the warring nations continued apace their mobilization for the anticipated confrontation. In this atmosphere of international doubt and apprehension it was only natural that conjecture would immediately envelop President Franklin Roosevelt's announcement on February 9 that he was dispatching Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles on a tour of Rome, Berlin, London, and Paris "solely for the purpose of advising the President and the secretary of state as to present conditions in Europe."' The standard and most detailed account of this revealing episode in Rooseveltian diplomacy is found in the study by William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason. They agree that the mission is revealing; indeed, the Welles trip is central to their thesis regarding American foreign policy during the "phony war." They see the mission as a function of illusions in Washington, presumably about the war aims of the belligerents. The Welles journey, they argue, demonstrated "more clearly than any of its antecedents the illusions prevalent in this country in the final weeks of the phony war...." Not only did Roosevelt want to make a "supreme effort to penetrate the veil of uncertainty" across Europe, but "a major objective of the Welles Mission [was] to explore peace possibilities even with a Nazi Government." Other historians, domestic and foreign, have accepted the essentials of this argument.2

Effects of food deprivation on spontaneous activity and blood glucose

Abstract: In Exp. 1, rats were food-deprived for either 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 days in a wheel or stabilimeter. Activity increased with deprivation for the wheel groups only, whereas blood glucose decreased in both conditions but significantly more for the wheel groups. Glucose was more highly related to weight loss than activity. In Exp. 2, groups were deprived in the wheels but prevented from running just prior to blood analysis. No short-term effect was observed; rather glucose changes were the same as found in Exp. 1. A possible relationship between glucose and activity is discussed.

The Birth of an African Peasantry

Abstract: The history of human societies, at least as it appears in books discussing this topic, is focussed as a rule on activities of heroes. Kings, rulers and conquerors were most often the heroes of historical analyses. Karl Marx, and later his followers, rejected such an approach. To them, the history of all hitherto existing societies was a history of class struggle and transformation of lower modes of production into higher ones. The Marxists proclaimed that the true heroes of the history are the masses, and the most dynamic and revolutionary hero among all is the worker. He is predestined to overthrow the capitalist order of exploitation and to establish a socialist society instead. Max Weber and Joseph A. Schumpeter paid tributes to the entrepreneur. From their perspective he was the inventor and organizer of modern productivity generating abundance, hence the true maker of history. Other writers viewed the literary men, the artists whose works became great monuments of human culture or the scientists whose discoveries have changed our understanding of nature, as the heroes of history. The only people which until recently were never accorded the status of heroes of history by anyone were the peasants. They were described as stubborn, conservative, backward oriented, parochial, without great imagination and initiative, unable to develop a common solidarity on their own. True, it was said that they too have produced their own folk-culture. This, however, was rather a culture of a lower quality in comparison with the culture engendered in urban centres and at the courts of the aristocracy. Some writers discovered a great beauty in the purity, naivety and virginity of the folk-culture; but even they wrote that peasant culture lacks the refinement and sophistication of urban culture. There were no peasants among great modern inventors, explorers, law-makers. It was said that even the peasant rebellions were spontaneous, unorganized, often purposeless and more frequently caused by religious motivations than by real

Plato and his Liberal Opponents

Abstract: In One of the few thoughtful essays that have come out of the controversy about the Republic's political theory, Renford Bambrough draws attention to the basic philosophical issue underlying the controversy in the following manner:

Sociological Paradigms: Analogies of Teleology, Apocalypse and Prophecy

Abstract: Following Thomas Kuhn's conception of the periodic revolutions that interrupt the normal accretive growth of a science, an analogy is drawn between the typology of theological postures ("teleology," "apocalypse," and "prophecy") offered by Harvey Cox and paradigms central to an understanding of the crisis confronting contemporary sociology. Correlated with the teleological stance is the "system" image that stood as sociologically orthodox through the 1950's; the "conflict" image which threatened to replace "system" in the 1960's is immediately congruent with an apocalyptic posture; and there is increasing evidence that the "system-conflict" polarity will be resolved in decade of the 1970's in a manner analogous to the stance of the Old Testament prophet. A dialectical' image is coming to the fore which is motivated, as were the nabi, by the assumption that the revelation of modes of present and past social order will operate in the longer run to free those who become aware of such order from its compulsive repetiton.