A Powerful, Inductive Mind
Stephen Peter Rosen

It is impossible to think or talk about Sam without thinking about the power of his mind. He would ask the biggest questions he could think of: What are American politics all about? Where does democracy come from? As Americans, who are we? He would then proceed to devour and digest all of the literature on every aspect of the human activity relevant to the question and, by the pure force of his mind, weld an answer. It was a powerful, inductive mind. It was not a mind satisfied with giving perfect answers to petty questions. It was the mind of a Darwin.

It is also impossible to think about Sam without thinking about his self-discipline -- over his own body and over his work. He was committed to the truth and ruthlessly disciplined in its pursuit. Woe to any academic, young or old, in whose work Sam found any intellectual sloppiness. Sam would not tolerate it, as he did not tolerate it in himself. I know of at least one 250-page manuscript that Sam wrote and never circulated because it was not up to his standards. He dropped another fascinating research project when, after a year or more or work, he judged that his arguments simply did not stand up to his own critical scrutiny. He took seriously the criticism that his book on civilizations did not have clearly specified independent and dependent variables, carefully developed an analytic schema of the book, and convened an academic seminar at which he presented it and invited criticism.

Because he was so committed to the hard work of finding the truth, he could be stern toward those less disciplined. One brilliant public intellectual was being considered for a university position on the strength of his written work. Sam was opposed. "Will he train graduate students?" he asked, throwing up his chin and raising his eyebrows, implying that the person in question would never do so in a million years and so should not be hired. 

Sam was also ornery, fiercely loyal to his principles and his prejudices, in small things and in large. Sam liked ornery people, perhaps the only shared characteristic among the otherwise very different people who liked to work with him. He liked people who stood up for themselves and fought for the ideas they had worked out. But his orneriness was not bad temper, rather the tip of the massive iceberg that was his courage. And he was fiercely loyal to the people in his life and was a righteous friend.

The power of his mind, his discipline, and his orneriness did not make him easily approachable. To paraphrase Shakespeare: to those who liked him not, he could seem cold, aloof, and austere; but to those whom he loved, he was warm and as radiant as the sun.