“The tall building, concentrating man in one place more densely than ever before, similarly concentrates the dilemma of our public architecture at the end of the twentieth century: whether the new forms made possible by technology are doomed by the low calculations of modern patrons and their architects.” MenMadeEndsFormTechnologyModernCenturyBuildingLowsArchitectureTallArchitectDoomedTwentieth CenturyDilemmaCalculationsConcentratingPatronTall Buildings Author:Martin Filler
“It has been a long road from Plato's Meno to the present, but it is perhaps encouraging that most of the progress along that road has been made since the turn of the twentieth century, and a large fraction of it since the midpoint of the century. Thought was still wholly intangible and ineffable until modern formal logic interpreted it as the manipulation of formal tokens. And it seemed still to inhabit mainly the heaven of Platonic ideals, or the equally obscure spaces of the human mind, until computers taught us how symbols could be processed by machines.” MindHumansLongHas BeensMadeStillsTurnsHeavenSpaceProgressModernCenturyTaughtComputerIdealsLogicMachinesSymbolsManipulationHuman MindFormalObscurePlatoTwentieth CenturyFractionsTaught UsTokensIntangibleIneffablePlatonicLong RoadPlato S Author:Allen Newell
“Should an anthropologist or a sociologist be looking for a bizarre society to study, I would suggest he come to Ulster. It is one of Europe's oddest countries. Here, in the middle of the twentieth century, with modern technology transforming everybody's lives, you find a medieval mentality that is being dragged painfully into the eighteenth century by some forward-looking people.” PeopleShouldCountryTechnologyStudyModernMiddleCenturyEuropeMentalityIrelandBizarreTwentieth CenturyTransformingMedievalAnthropologistsSociologistsModern TechnologyUlster Author:Bernadette Devlin
“The first typical adolescent of modern times was Wagner's Siegfried. : the music of Siegfried expressed for the first time that combination of (provisional) purity, physical strength, naturism, spontaneity and joie de vivre which was to make the adolescent the hero of our twentieth century, the century of adolescence.” FirstsMusicModernCenturyStrengthHeroFirst TimeCombinationPurityAdolescenceTypicalTwentieth CenturySpontaneityModern TimesWagnerPhysical StrengthJoie De Vivre Book:Centuries of childhood: a social history of family life Source: Centuries of childhood: a social history of family life
“Up until Prohibition, an apple grown in America was far less likely to be eaten than to wind up in a barrel of cider. ("Hard" cider is a twentieth-century term, redundant before then since virtually all cider was hard until modern refrigeration allowed people to keep sweet cider sweet.)” PeopleHardAmericaTermModernCenturySweetWindApplesTwentieth CenturyProhibitionBarrelsRedundantCiderApple Cider Book:The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World Source: The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
“The development of physics in the twentieth century already has transformed the consciousness of those involved with it. The study (of modern physics) produces insights into the nature of reality very similar to those produced by the study of eastern philosophy.” PhilosophyRealityConsciousnessStudyModernCenturyProduceDevelopmentInvolvedInsightPhysicsTransformedEasternTwentieth CenturyEastern PhilosophyModern Physics Author:Gary Zukav
“We are more gullible and superstitious today than we were in the Middle Ages, and an example of modern credulity is the widespread belief that the Earth is round. The average man can advance not a single reason for thinking that the Earth is round. He merely swallows this theory because there is something about it that appeals to the twentieth century mentality.” ThinkingMenReasonAgeTodayEarthBeliefModernMiddleCenturyExampleTheoryRoundsAverageAppealsMentalityMiddle AgesTwentieth CenturySuperstitiousCredulityAverage ManGullibleRound Earth Author:George Bernard Shaw