Report of the Discussion

Extract

Perhaps the basic characteristic of this well planned, well managed, orderly session was the fact that it had something for everybody. One suspects, in fact, that archeologists, ichthyologists, astronomers, and other learned specialists could profitably have added their voices. There was, inevitably, some shop talk, but one major result of die effort to relate economic history to economic and historical geography was to elevate much of the discussion to a plane where all kinds of students could talk to one another. Babel became orderly—communications-wise, that is. To the apostles was imparted, for this occasion at least, the grace of a common tongue. A definite though necessarily broad set of conclusions emerged—ones that when translated back into disciplinary idiom promised to be immediately useful to the respective practitioners.