Without lots of minute research, the grand syntheses that Schama cherishes would be impossible.
Kemp believes in the grand synthesis, the higher goal that unites warring parties.
That a passionate conservative can embrace the civil-rights movement is also an instance of the grand synthesis that makes Kemp a different kind of Republican.
The companion format is certainly a poor vehicle for grand syntheses.
They would claim to have solved everything--to have wrapped up all known problems in one grand synthesis.
The arts complex itself is a grand artistic synthesis - an opera, or Gesamtkunstwerk, in Wagner's term - of pre-electronic communications.
Of course the implications of that knowledge could be vast, but no one expected grand syntheses to emerge.
Rembrandt is the exhibition's drawing card; his art is the grand synthesis of richly painted surfaces in the service of the ordinary.
Obama's reluctance to articulate a grand synthesis has alienated both realists and idealists.