 As Holton (1995a; 2005) reports from his first-hand observations, the privacy of operations (and the consequent privacy of science) was not an idle philosophical doctrine for Bridgman. In the lab he carried out as much of the work as possible with his own hands, using few assistants and crafting most of his instruments himself. Holton (1995a, 222–223) quotes the following report as typical of the way Bridgman worked: “It is easy, if all precautions are observed, to drill a hole … 17 inches long, in from 7 to 8 hours”—that is, a hole as narrow as the lead in a pencil, in a block of very hard steel. In academic life Bridgman (1955, 44) openly lamented the “intellectual fashion … of emphasizing that all our activities are fundamentally social in nature”. As for his social and political writings, they were often agonizing attempts to clarify, for himself, the place of the “intelligent individual” in society. He was unabashedly elitist, both on behalf of the gifted individual and of scientists as a group, and argued that giving appropriate special treatment to scientists would in the end benefit society (that is, all the individuals in society). Maila Walter observes (1990, 192–193): “Within the community of scientists and scientific philosophers, Bridgman had become the lone spokesman for a radical existential subjectivism”, more akin to Rheinhold Niebuhr’s existentialist theology than to any commonly recognized philosophy of science. Bridgman’s uncompromising individualism continued right to the end, with a self-administered euthanasia in the late stage of a painful terminal illness (see Holton 1995a, 226–227).