1,721,054 research outputs found
John M. Clark and frank H. Knight on the adding-up theorem, overhead costs, and more
No full textThis note offers new archival insight into a 1925 polemical exchange between Frank Knight and John Maurice Clark that was hosted in the pages of Journal of Political Economy. Although the exchange centered on the effects of overhead costs on marginal productivity theory and the so-called adding-up theorem, it also provided significant elements to assess the methodological differences between two of the most representative American economists of the interwar years
SOCIAL STRATIFICATION, HEREDITARIANISM, AND EUGENICS. A HARVARD TALE
No full textThis chapter documents how eugenics, scientific racism, and hereditarianism
survived at Harvard well into the interwar years. In the late 1920s and early
1930s, Thomas Nixon Carver and Frank W. Taussig published works in
which they established a close nexus between an individual’s economic position
and his biological fitness. Carver, writing in 1929, argued that social
class rigidities are attributable to the inheritance of superior and inferior abilities
on the respective social class levels and proposed an “economic test of
fitness” as a eugenic criterion to distinguish worthy from unworthy individuals.
In 1932, Taussig, together with Carl Smith Joslyn, published
American Business Leaders a study that showed how groups with superior social status are proportionately much more productive of professional and business leaders than are the groups with inferior social status. Like Carver, Taussig and Joslyn attributed this circumstance primarily to hereditary rather than environmental factors. Taussig, Joslyn, and Carver are not the only protagonists of our story. The Russian-born sociologists Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin, who joined the newly established Department of Sociology at Harvard in 1930, also played a crucial role. His book Social Mobility (1927) exercised a major influence on both Taussig and Carver and contributed decisively to the survival of eugenic and hereditarian ideas at Harvard in the 1930s
RELIGION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. A NOTE ON THE SIMON N. PATTEN - THOMAS N. CARVER DEBATE
No full textSimon N. Patten and Thomas N. Carver were among the most influential American social scientists during the so-called Progressive Era. This paper offers a reconstruction of the debate between the two men over the religious foundations ofsocial reform. The polemical exchange between them originated in 1911 with the publicationof Patten’s The Social Basis of Religion – a book which intended to transfer Christian doctrines from the traditional basis to the realm of social science. The volume’s general reception was far from enthusiastic, and Carver joined the chorus of the critics with a rather unfavorable review which appeared in the American Economic Review. Patten rejoined with a note in 1912, where he expanded on his views on religion and evolution, both social and biological. Carver replied to Patten (but without ever mentioning his name) the same year with the publication of The Religion Worth Having. In this small, yet significant volume, Carver presented a reading of religion which differed from Patten’s in virtually all respects and that, contrary to some classic interpretations, owed far more to eugenics than to Darwinism
On the Origins of American Business Leaders: Frank W. Taussig, Carl S. Joslyn, and the “Brain Trust” of American Eugenics
No full textIn their 1932 volume American Business Leaders: A Study in Social Origins
and Social Stratification, Frank W. Taussig and Carl S. Joslyn, then a young Harvard
graduate, argued that success in business depended more on innate superiority than on other environmental factors such as financial aid, influential connections, and formal education. The aim of this article is to analyze the main contentions of Taussig and Joslyn, as well as the intellectual genesis of, and the general reactions to, this controversial volume.
Although our main focus is on Taussig and Joslyn, other figures, all directly affiliated with
Harvard, will play a decisive role in our narrative—the economist Thomas Nixon Carver,
the psychologist William McDougall, and the sociologist Pitirim Aleksandrovic Sorokin.
This makes the scope of this article in many respects broader than its title may suggest—in
the sense that it will allow us to place a work like American Business Leaders within the
context of an important strand of social science research at Harvard during the interwar year
HEREDITARIANISM, EUGENICS, AND AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE INTERWAR YEARS: MEET THE CARVERIANS
No full textLike other Progressive Era reformers, Thomas Nixon Carver promoted a form of
biology-infused social science that included both eugenics and a strong version of
hereditarianism. Carver was also a charismatic teacher who trained several generations
of economists and sociologists at Harvard. In this paper we will focus on the
contribution of three of them: James A. Field, Norman E. Himes, and Carl S. Joslyn.
These authors differ in terms of style, method, and emphasis—with Field and Himes
more interested in population and birth control issues, and Joslyn in the dynamics of
social stratification. As it will be shown below, however, all of them reveal an explicit
commitment to hereditarianism and eugenics, which can be directly traced back to
Carver’s influence during their student days at Harvard
Frank H. Knight on social values in economic consumption: an archival note
No full textWe reproduce an unpublished address on “Social Values in Economic Consumption” which Knight prepared for a SSRC Conference in June 1931. This material sheds new light on Knight in two respects. First, anticipating what is known as the relative income hypothesis, Knight indicated that a general increase in income, not only leaves the individual’s relative position in society unaltered but makes her/his situation worse off due to the peculiar characteristics of the market for “personal services.” Second, this address provides further evidence of how, in spite of some substantial methodological differences, Knight’s research interests converged with those of the institutionalists
ON SIMON NELSON PATTEN’S PROGRESSIVISM: A NOTE
No full textThis article is an attempt to offer an assessment of the main coordinates of Simon
Nelson Patten’s views on democracy and biological determinism. This will allowus to
better delineate the differences—as well as the affinities—between Patten and the core
of progressives discussed by Thomas C. Leonard in a series of path-breaking
contributions, culminating in his Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics, and American
Economics in the Progressive Era. It is our contention that even within the persisting
intricacies, ambiguities, and contradictions of Patten’s expository style, it is possible
to trace a shift in some aspects of his ideas—a gradual evolution thatmakes his peculiar
brand of progressivism different from that of his most “illiberal” counterparts
Norman Edwin Himes’s “Eugenics and Democracy: A Call to Action” (1939). The Eugenic Manifesto of a Devoted Carverian
No full textThis note presents an unpublished 1939 address given by the American sociologist
and population specialist Norman Edwin Himes on “Eugenics and Democracy:
A Call to Action.” Himes’s discussion of eugenics and democracy has a twofold
relevance. First, it provides further evidence that among population studies specialists
a generalized commitment to eugenics persisted well beyond the era of the socalled
Progressive Era and continued throughout the 1930s. Second, Himes’s approach
reveals an attempt to reformulate a eugenic agenda along “liberal” lines,
which was intended to distance him from the coercive and racialist approach of his
progressive predecessors. Yet, it will be shown, even though Himes seemed to temper
the extremism of the earlier movement with sociological and voluntaristic language,
there was little actual change in the ultimate goals of his agenda regardless
of the apparent switch to democratic eugenics
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