[Wolff, Kurt] / [Sayer Minas, J. / Horowitz, Irving Louis].

Manuscript – Review by Kurt Wolff for Irving Horowitz’ publication: “Philosophy, Science and the Sociology of Knowledge” and enclosed also correspondence between Kurt H. Wolff and Professor J. Sayer Minas, from the “Philosophy of Science Association” (J.Sayer Minas was at the time Book Review Editor and taught at Case Institute of Technology”).

[Brandeis / Cleveland], CIT etc., 1962. Octavo. 6 pages. Very good condition. From the library of exiled sociologist, Kurt H. Wolff.

Remembering J. Sayer Minas: Former Dean of the Faculty of Arts J. Sayer Minas died on March 27 at the age of 87.

″Minas was an important figure in the early history of the Department of Philosophy,” writes philosophy chair David DeVidi. “His PhD thesis was on many-valued logic, and he spent many years working in ‘operations research,’ a field nowadays more liked to be called ‘management science.’ He also worked in decision theory and in the more mathematical parts of the philosophy of science, including confirmation theory.″

It was hardly surprising, then, that someone who studied decision-making would be attracted to administrative roles within the university. Minas served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts on two non-consecutive occasions, first from 1967 to 1970 and then from 1974 to 1979. Minas was an administrator during turbulent times on campus, both in terms of the student movement, which was approaching critical mass as the Sixties turned into the Seventies, and in terms of academic politics. As DeVidi notes, “In the years between these stints, the faculty had four deans, one of them twice!” And in 1975, at the height of the Renison Academic Assembly affair, Minas’s office was occupied for more than 30 hours by student protesters.

The unofficial history of the university, “Water Under the Bridge,” remembers Minas this way: “His brushcut hair, his taste for American beer in a time when American beer was pretty exotic stuff, his hobby of hand-printing, his early use of computers to keep track of projects and budgets, his blunt conversational style, and his peculiar modesty all made him well known across the university for most of the next two decades.″

He is also remembered for “The Minas Formula,” which has been used by the Faculty of Arts for over 40 years to determine equitable allocations of resources to departments. Minas was succeeded in the role of arts dean by Robin Banks, who died March 19.

He held a number of other administrative posts during his nearly two-decade career at the university, serving as dean of graduate studies in 1966-67, acting vice-president in 1969, and University Computing Officer in 1982-83. Near the end of his career, Minas moved to the University of Pennsylvania, and then to Drexel University.

″Minas is recalled fondly by those who had a chance to work with him as a man of great charm and humour,” DeVidi writes. “One remarked on his wit – he was locally well known for his observation that most of the decision theorists he worked with were almost wholly incapable of actually making decisions about the practical details of life. In the words of another, “he was a very remarkable person, one of a kind and sorely missed.” (Source: Obituary on University of Waterloo Website).

• Keywords: Autograph · Autograph – History Rare · Autograph – Rare · Kurt Heinrich Wolff – Brandeis University Sociologist · Kurt Heinrich Wolff – Brandeis University Sociology Department · Kurt Wolff Collection · Kurt Wolff Library (American Sociologist) · Manuscript / Autograph – Rare · Manuscript Material – Rare · Signed · Sociology · Sociology – Rare · Sociology in Exile
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 29997AB

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