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Lee Ross, expert in why we misunderstand each other, dies at 78
Personal humiliation inspired Lee Ross greatest insight.
by NYTimes News Service
Jun. 16 2021 @ 6:23pm
Personal humiliation inspired Lee Ross greatest insight.
In 1969, when he defended his graduate dissertation at Columbia University, a committee of faculty members let loose a downpour of esoteric questions. Ross had done a study of how perceptions differed under bright and dim light. What, one inquisitor asked, was the wavelength of the dim light, calculated in the infinitesimal unit of measurement known as angstroms?
That is what it meant to be a real academic, Ross thought: to know about stuff like angstroms. He felt sure he was unworthy.
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This is Part 1 of a 2-part series on the power of touch in the clinical medical environment.
In Part 2, we will resume our interview with Stephen W. Russell, MD, co-president of the Society of Bedside Medicine and professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.
According to Aristotle, the first and most important sensation that human beings share with the animal kingdom is touch. Without touch, he posited, animals cannot exist.
1 The philosopher took these theories a step further, linking sensory perception with the soul; the sensitive soul, in particular, renders animals capable of feeling pleasure and pain, and of the senses governed by this soul, touch or tactility was considered the âmost pervasive and intelligent.â