Month: September 2023

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Economists Michigan War and Defense Economics

Michigan. Account of lecture on economic and sociological theory. Boulding, 1961

 

My first presentation at an ASSA annual meeting took place in an 8-10 a.m. session  on Sunday, December 30, 1979 in Atlanta, Georgia. At “my” session were three paper authors together with the chair. Across from the four economists sitting at the panelists’ table was a public of three. Sitting in the first row of chairs was the thesis advisor of my fellow panelist Robert Scott Gassler, Professor Kenneth Boulding. So considering the product of quality and quantity of attendees, I was pretty fortunate with that early Sunday morning public. Most of the economists following Economics in the Rear-view Mirror have their own stories of brushes with legendary economists and that was mine with Kenneth Boulding. But let’s get to the Boulding content of today’s post.

Kenneth Boulding has always been a favorite of economists with interdisciplinary leanings. Fewer probably remember him as the John Bates Clark medalist (1949) who followed Samuelson and preceded Friedman, Tobin, Arrow, Klein, and Solow. He was one of a dying breed of economists having a range and depth of interests that spanned the social sciences. He has no single method or empirical finding that has survived in the textbooks that I am familiar with. However, in most every random foray into his writings I have usually found some nugget of insight or wisdom to keep. 

This post began as an exploration of the University of Michigan student newspaper archives. I stumbled upon an account of a 1961 lecture given by Kenneth Boulding. The newspaper story included a photo of him that I had not ever seen. Most images one finds are typically of the later, American bald eagle look that was iconic Boulding and how he is etched on my memory. The image from the newspaper article is presumably from 1960 or 1961 and worth including among the economist mugshots shared by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.

Prefacing the transcribed newspaper report of Kenneth Boulding’s 1961 lecture “Economic Theory and Sociological Theory” are (i) an interdisciplinary verse composed by Boulding (included in his contribution to the 1963 AEA Papers and Proceedings); (ii) the University of Michigan’s tribute to him on the occasion of the award of an honorary doctor of laws degree (1978); (iii) a brief biographical sketch from the finding aid to Boulding’s papers at the University of Michigan.

Links to four published works from 1962 have been appended to the post to provide some meat to the skeleton of a lecture reported in the University of Michigan newspaper account.

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A Boulding Verse

Four things that give mankind a shove
Are threats, exchange, persuasion, love;
But taken in the wrong proportions
These give us cultural abortions.
For threats bring manifold abuses
In games where everybody loses;
Exchange enriches every nation
But leads to dangerous alienation;
Persuaders organize their brothers
But fool themselves as well as others;
And love, with longer pull than hate,
Is slow indeed to propagate.

Source: Boulding, Kenneth E. “Towards a Pure Theory of Threat Systems.” The American Economic Review 53, no. 2 (1963): 424–34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1823883.

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Honorary Degree
University of Michigan
(December 17, 1978)

Since Kenneth Boulding, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, was Professor of Economics at The University of Michigan for twenty years, we may claim him as our own. Here, stimulated by our Institute for Social Research, he was able to go “beyond economics” into the philosophical and psychological problems, ranging from consumer-behavior to war-and-peace, of conflict resolution.

Honors soon followed: the John B. Clark medal for Economics, the American Council of Learned Societies’ prize in the Humanities, the Presidency of the American Association, memberships in the National Academy of Science and the American Philosophical Society. He has been visiting Professor at the University College of Kingston, Jamaica; the University of Natal; the University of Edinburgh; and the International Christian University in Tokyo. He is at home in the world as well as the universe.

A member of the Society of Friends, Professor Boulding has carried his religious commitment into the practice of love to achieve through his more than thirty challenging books goals heretofore deemed unattainable. Early he discovered that the actual writing of poetry is a whetstone with which to sharpen one’s English prose. Out of his discipline, his humanity, and his
faith, Kenneth Boulding, to quote one of his own “eiconic” phrases from The Image, has built a true “Temple of the Mind.”

With admiration and love, therefore, The University of Michigan bestows upon him the degree Doctor of Laws.

Source: University of Michigan. Faculty History Project.

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Biographical Note from the Boulding papers at Michigan

Kenneth Ewart Boulding, professor of economics and pacifist, was born in Liverpool, England, January 18, 1910. He was educated at New College, Oxford, England (1928-1932) and the University of Chicago (1932-1934). Boulding taught economics at Colgate (1937-1941), Fisk (1942-1943), Iowa State (1943-1946), and McGill University (1946-1947) before joining the University of Michigan as a professor of economics, 1949-1967. Since 1968, Boulding has been associated with the University of Colorado at Boulder as a professor of economics and director for the Program on General Social and Economic Dynamics and the Institute of Behavioral Science.

Some of his related activities and honors included receiving the John Bates Clark Medal for Economics for 1949; a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1954-1955; visiting professorships in Jamaica (1959-1960) and Japan (1963-1964); and directing the University of Michigan Center for Research in Conflict Resolution (1964-1966). Boulding also wrote numerous books, articles, and book reviews. Boulding was active in several peace, anti-nuclear, and disarmament groups, notably the Society of Friends and the National Council of Churches Department of the Church and Economic Life, and UNESCO. His wife, Elise (Biorn-Hansen) Boulding, was a sociologist and also very active in the international peace movement, women’s issues, and Quaker activities.

Kenneth Boulding viewed economics as a creative and philosophical integration of various disciplines–political science, sociology and anthropology. He coined the word “eiconics” to describe the weaving together and restructuring of interdisciplinary knowledge.

Source:  Finding aid for the Kenneth Ewart Boulding Papers, 1880-1968, University of Michigan Library.

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Boulding Cites Passage To ‘Post Civilization Era’

By PHILIP SUTIN
The Michigan Daily (March 2, 1961)

“The world is passing from the civilization era to a post civilization era,” Prof. Kenneth Boulding of the economics department said yesterday in, his lecture on “Economic Theory and Sociological Theory.”

He noted that many of the characteristics of civilization are disintegrating. Cities, national defense, poverty, and exploitation which distinguishes this order are now changing.

National Defense

As an example he cited national defense. “National defense as a social system ended in 1945,” he said.

He explained his hypothesis by the theory of oligopoly. In a bipolar situation, for example, each nation has a certain basic home strength and declining foreign power as the distance from that nation increases. A boundary of equal strength exists between the two which shifts with variations in power until one is no longer viable.

However, today nations are at a point where they are no longer unconditionally viable due to their lack of desire or inability to reduce the power of the opposition, he said.

“Oligopoly can be demonstrated by two firms, A and B, which produce identical commodities. The total costs of transportation increase with increasing distance from the firm.

“A boundary of indifference exists between them where the consumer goes equally to both.

Push Boundary

“If A should cut his price, the boundary will be pushed toward B. This price cutting and shifting of boundaries will continue until one cannot cut his price. He can then no longer be viable,” Boulding explained.

“This is analogous to the arms race,” he said.

In discussing social theory, Boulding noted that all social sciences are essentially one. Each discipline takes pieces of the social system, often in incompatible ways.

In their studies social scientists take different levels of abstraction and parcel out the various institutions. The first action, he said, is laudable while the second is deplorable.

However, social scientists cannot study people, as they are much too complicated. So they try to develop a series of abstractions which are relevant to reality.

Meet Difficulties

They run into difficulties, however, in trying to find the level of abstraction. Society encompasses the entire social systems which is fundamentally symbolic, he explained.

“Social scientists have never succeeded in developing a level of abstraction to deal with symbolic systems. They do not know what to abstract out of them or what gives these symbolic systems power,” Boulding said.

Sociology can learn a great deal from economics as many social phenomena have exchange relationships like those that occur in economics.

The basic unit of economics, he noted is the commodity. This world of commodity is seen in terms of price. “It is only accidental to the economist that people move commodities,” Boulding noted,

Generalize Exchange

However, exchange can be generalized, missing important factors in social relationships. As an example, Boulding cited labor relations. “The economist pulls out the commodity from labor, but leaves a great residue. Group relations and alternative uses of time are important factors. A great cloud of reality overshadows- the economic framework of labor relations,” Boulding said.

He noted other comparisons between economics and sociology. The economist, he said, looks at behavior as fundamentally a problem of choice.

The individual looks over the field of alternatives, puts an evaluation in terms of ordinal numbers on each possibility, and chooses number one.

However, “rational behavior may not be sensible behavior” as rationality is merely ordering the field.

The economists view people in terms of this field theory, Boulding explained. Behavorial action tends toward the point of highest utility.

Source: The Michigan Daily, vol. 71, issue 105 (March 2, 1961), p. 5.

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Sample of Boulding’s Writings
(1962)

  • Boulding, Kenneth E. Conflict and Defense. New York: Harper & Bros., 1962.
  • Boulding, Kenneth E. “Where Are We Going If Anywhere? A Look at Post-Civilization.” Human Organization 21, no. 2 (1962): 162–67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44127756 .
  • Boulding, Kenneth E. “The Death of the City: A Frightened Look at Post-Civilization.” Ekistics 13, no. 75 (1962): 19–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43617612 .
  • Davis, James A., and Kenneth E. Boulding. Review of Two Critiques of Homans’ Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms, by George Caspar Homans. American Journal of Sociology 67, no. 4 (1962): 454–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2775146.

Image Source:  The Michigan Daily, vol. 71, issue 105 (March 2, 1961), p. 5.

Categories
Cornell Dartmouth Economists Harvard Michigan Teaching Undergraduate

Harvard. Recitation section work described. Day, 1914

About 110 years ago the structure of a common lecture and smaller recitation sections for large college courses was novel enough to warrant a description with explanation. The assistant professor of economics and statistician, Edmund Ezra Day (Harvard Ph.D., 1909) penned a two page article for the Harvard Illustrated Magazine that is transcribed following a brief overview of Day’s career. 

Day went on to professorships at Harvard and the University of Michigan followed by a detour through the Rockefeller Foundation that took him to the Presidency of Cornell University. Economics in the Rear-view Mirror begins this post with a chronology of Edmund Ezra Day’s life.

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Biographical Timeline

1883. Born December 7 to Ezra Alonzo and Louise Moulton (Nelson) Day at Manchester, New Hampshire.

1905. B.S., Dartmouth College (Phi Beta Kappa).

1906. A.M., Dartmouth College.

1906-10. Instructor of economics, Dartmouth College.

1909. Ph.D., Harvard University. Thesis: “The History of the General Property Tax in Massachusetts.”

1910-20. Assistant professor of economics, Harvard University.

1912. Married June 5 to Emily Sophia Emerson (daughter of Dean Charles F. Emerson of Dartmouth College). Two sons and two daughters.

1915. Questions on the Principles of Economics (with Joseph Stancliffe Davis). New York: Macmillan.

1918. Seven months as statistician of the division of planning and statistics of the U. S. shipping board. Director, in 1919.

1918. September to December 1918 as statistician of the central bureau of planning and statistics of the war industries board.

1920-23. Professor of economics, Harvard University.

1920. “An Index of the Physical Volume of Production”. The Review of Economic Statistics (September 1920—January 1921).

1922. Revised edition of Questions on the Principles of Economics (with Joseph Stancliffe Davis). New York: Macmillan.

1920-23. Chairman of the department of economics.

1923-27. Professor of economics, University of Michigan. Beginning second semester of 1922-23 academic year)

1923-24. Chairman department of economics, University of Michigan.

1925. Statistical Analysis. New York: Macmillan.

1924-28. Founding dean of the school of business administration, University of Michigan. (leave of absence during 1927-28).

1927. Dean of Administration, University of Michigan.

1927. President of the American Statistical Association.

1927-28. Leave of absence to act as administrative head of Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial for the promotion of social sciences in New York City.

1928. The Growth of Manufactures, 1899 to 1923. A Study of Indexes of Increase in the Volume of Manufactured Products (with Woodlief Thomas). Census Monographs VIII. Washington, D.C.: USGPO.

1928-37. Director for the social sciences of the Rockefeller Foundation.

1930-37. Director for general education and for the social sciences with the General Education Board.

1932-33. U.S. representative on the preparatory commission of experts for the economic conference, held in London in 1933.

1937-49. President of Cornell University.

1941. The Defense of Freedom: Four Addresses on the Present Crisis in American Democracy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

1941 or 1942. Oncoming Changes in the Organization of American Public Education.  By Edmund E. Day, Chairman of the Committee on Teacher Education of the Association of Colleges and Universities of the State of New York.

1949-50. Chancellor, Cornell University.

1951. March 23. Died from a heart attack.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Other misc. facts: Edmund Ezra Day was president of the New York State Citizens Council, the Association of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, the World Student Service Fund; he was chairman of the American Council on Education, director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (appointed January 1937), Councillor of the National Industrial Conference Board, and a trustee of Tuskegee institute beginning 1939. He held fifteen honorary degrees.

Sources:

  • Memorial minute. Cornell, 1951.
  • Ithaca Journal, March 23, 1951. p. 1. “Dr. Day, President Emeritus of Cornell, Dies at 67 of heart Attack in his Car.”
  • The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1942.

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Section Work in Economics

EDMUND E. DAY, ’09, Assistant Professor in Economics.

Among the methods of undergraduate instruction, the section-meeting is of large importance. By the section-meeting is meant an exercise attended by only a fraction of the men enrolled in the course. Usually it stands combined in varying proportions with the lecture. Usually, too, it is not in charge of the instructor “giving the course” (sic), but rather of an assistant. But neither of these common features is essential to the section idea.

The most important single question raised by the section method is: What is its purpose? Undoubtedly the section may, and does, serve many ends. It clearly is valuable in the grading of undergraduate work. It is in this rôle that, in many courses, the section is really significant. Such are the cases in which one-half of the only section-hour each week is devoted to a written test, and the balance of the hour to remarks by the assistant. But the section may certainly be made more than an adjunct to the College Office. Obviously, the section-meeting fosters that familiarity between student and instructor which should invariably exert a wholesome influence; serving the same purpose in undergraduate instruction that publicity does in politics.

Furthermore, in many courses the section-meeting offers the only opportunity for open discussion, for a free give and take between instructor and instructed. Such discussion is the sine qua non of effective teaching in many, if not in most, subjects. It develops clear thinking, power in logical analysis, and effective speech. It stimulates that interest which encourages faithful work from day to day, instead of hasty cramming at examinations. In general, it makes for permanent intellectual power as against temporary mental acquisition.

Such being the opportunities of the section-meeting, by what organization and methods may they best be seized? The immediate interest of the student might seem to demand that the instructor in charge of the course should conduct its sections. But this would violate every rule of good economy. Professors of scholarly and scientific experience and reputation, while they would probably give section instruction better than most assistants, have a vastly greater advantage in the work they are at present doing. In the long run they best advance undergraduate instruction by delegating section work to the younger men. Nor is this so generally to the disadvantage of the section as is commonly supposed. As a rule, the young instructor of promise brings to his task a zest, a sympathetic knowledge of college ways and ideals, an appreciation of the difficulties of the beginner which the older man has long since lost. And after all, teaching ability is in large measure a gift which needs little polishing by experience, good teachers are just as rare among older men as among the younger.

Section instructors and students should be, as we have noted, on terms of familiarity. Therefore assistants should be selected with great care. Appointments in the past have perhaps too little emphasized the need of certain human qualities not weighted in the Ph.D. examination. The leaven of a little sympathy, of more good humor, and of still more downright fairness and good sense works wonders in raising the level of section instruction.

Grading seems an essential element in section work, but it should be reduced to a minimum. This does not mean that it should be confined to a written test. Some grading had best accompany work in discussion. This seems necessary to compel intelligent discussion. Too often discussion degenerates into what the undergraduate expressively calls “drool.” Upon the other hand, so-called discussion sometimes is narrowed into mere drill upon the text. The assistant must steer the difficult course between the two extremes. In this endeavor a reasonable amount of inconspicuous “policing” is desirable.

Spirited and stimulated discussion is, after all, the most significant aim of the section-meeting. This imposes responsibilities upon instructor and student alike. The instructor must be able to direct and control discussion, the student must contribute his share of thought and interest; together they coöperate to make section work a success. The test of the section work in any course lies in the quality of the discussion provoked.

The weaknesses of the section are such as to call for improvement, rather than abolition, of the method. Improvement is in large measure a question of money cost. Adequate outlay would probably guarantee section instructors satisfactory alike to students and department staffs. Sufficient outlay to secure assistants with a firm grasp of their subjects is absolutely essential. But some improvements probably are within reach without much additional cost. Thus, by careful provision for standardizing grading, we may reduce the risks involved in the assignment of different students to assistants in the same course but of different experience and temperament. The value of section work may be more generally recognized and upheld. Greater emphasis may be laid on teaching ability in selecting assistants. And finally, possibly in coöperation with the Education Department, assistants may be helped to acquire the gentle art of section work.

Other improvements of the section method will undoubtedly be suggested. But to give it up entirely seems unwise; the section has probably come to stay. It seems, for the present, an advisable concession to large-scale education.

Source: The Harvard Illustrated Magazine, Vol. 15, No. 6 (March 1914), 295-296.

Image Source: Edmund Ezra Day in Harvard Class Album 1915.

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Germany Harvard

Germany. Harvard Man’s Impressions of Berlin University. Gannett, 1914

Profesor Harnack

 

Lewis Stiles Gannett (Harvard A.B., 1913) was awarded a 1913-14 Robert Treat Paine Traveling Fellowship to pursue studies in social ethics in Berlin. He returned to Harvard as a graduate student in social science where his fellowship was continued and he went on to receive an A.M. degree in 1915.

Gannett was born in Rochester N.Y. in 1891. He was a journalist and editor at the New York World. Later he worked as an editor at Survey and The Nation. Beginning in 1930 he wrote a thrice-weekly, then daily review column “Books and Things” in the New York Herald Tribune. He retired from that paper in 1956. Lewis S. Gannett died in 1966.

For readers who find the following comparisons of interest, similar observations can be found in the earlier post “University Life in Germany“.

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A Harvard Man’s Impressions
of Berlin University

LEWIS S. GANNETT, ’13, Robert Treat Paine Travelling Fellow.

The first thing Professor Paszkowski (pronounce it if you can) says in his course in German for foreigners at the University of Berlin is, “Um Gottes willen, don’t go home and write about Germany. If you don’t know why, go over to the library and read what Germans have written about America.”

We Harvard men in particular ought to have learned the dangers of superficial observation. Yet it is the superficial differences that first impress one at another university. For instance, one has long known that women were admitted to the German universities, and perhaps one has wondered how the Germans solved the problem of co-education. There is no problem. The women do not sit in an isolated group in one corner. They sit here, there, one or two in every row. No one “fusses” with them, no one protests against their enervating influence. They are there to hear the lectures: they hear them, go away, and that is all there is to it. There is no complicating factor of student life. Altogether it is a rather pleasing contrast to the schoolboy self-consciousness of some of our American youth.

Indeed, they could not all sit together if they would — they could not get seats together. The first week of lectures each student goes about leaving his calling-card wherever he has secured a favorable seat. He writes upon it — if Schmoller be the lecturer — “Schmoller Di Fr 6-7,” and thereafter Tuesdays and Fridays, from six until seven, that place is his seat. Let an unwary American think a seat unclaimed because empty, and he soon learns the contrary. “Dieser Platz ist schon belegt,” he hears, and any thought of argument is soon drowned in a torrent of impossible German expostulation. The card may have been lost or be otherwise missing — but the German gets the seat.

[Cf.: a video clip of the German team winning the pool lounge chair Olympics when a vacation pool opened in the morning.]

“Akademische Freiheit” is the Veritas of the German university. It means many things — the right of the student to attend only when it fits his convenience (no record of attendance is kept), the right of the professor to begin lecturing when he sees fit. Lectures begin as a rule two weeks after the semester officially opens — sometimes not for a month. No professor would think of entering a class-room until fifteen or twenty minutes after the hour. Imagine Harvard’s students eagerly awaiting the professor — often until almost the half hour!

[Note: The so-called “Academic quarter” with classes beginning 15 minutes after the hour has its roots in historical past when students would hear church bells designating the hour, giving them 15 minutes to get to their class posted for the hour.]

The German is perpetually hungry. One does not appreciate meal hours of eight, two and eight, until one learns the secrets of second breakfasts, afternoon coffee and the other opportunities that are not listed. Yet even after two months in Germany, it is somewhat of a surprise, on entering for the first time the main building of the University of Berlin, to find staring one in the face a large sign “Erfrischungs-Raum,” which, upon investigation, is found to offer beer, milk, sundry poor substitutes for ginger ale, excellent “kerchen” [sic, presumably a misprint of “kuchen”=”cake”] and execrable sandwiches. From a thoroughly Teutonic viewpoint, even eight minutes to Boston and a dozen new lunch-rooms cannot compensate for such a Bierhalle within the academic walls.

Almost equally astonishing are pocket-lunches. Between classes one is quite expected to promenade the hall munching a dingy brown sandwich of rye bread and ham, or a “brotchen mit leberwurst belegt” (which means a perfectly good roll spoiled by sausage) or if one prefers to sit in the lecture room, he will be in good company in satisfying his hunger there.

These all are superficial differences. So, too, are the eccentricities of costume, evidences of that German individualism so startling to one who has heard glib talk of German socialism. It is verboten to walk three abreast or to whistle too loudly on Unter den Linden, but to trot about with weirdly-cut hair undefiled by hat or cap, clad in Shelleyesque blouses and poetically short trousers — these are but evidences of genius. At home we are accustomed to sartorial individuality in musicians, but our students are often only too conspicuous for their unity of “taste.” The brightly-colored corps caps — often of absurd and always of conspicuous design — are almost the only evidences of student-life at Berlin. Between classes it is a common sight to see a group of purple, or red, or green-capped students, each with a cane upon his arm, one or two even daring a monocle, gathered together in as conspicuous a position as possible, to gaze upon the passing herd.

Berlin is a city university. The buildings are in the heart of the biggest city in Germany, on the Linden, flanked by the Guard-House and the Royal Library, opposite the Opera-House and Crown Prince’s Palace. There is no room for expansion. The pitiful little “Chestnut-wood” that used to cover the tiny space behind it, is now as desolate a mass of building material as was ever our library-site in the days when the grandeur that was Gore’s was gone, and Widener was not yet. The classrooms in the old building are fragrantly reminiscent of some of Sever’s time-honored halls, but the ventilation is even worse. The old library, now become a university building, is somewhat better, but the department seminars and many of the overflow class-rooms are to be found in various off-corners in the neighboring streets. It is as if we availed ourselves of rooms in College House and Little’s Block and the Abbott Building as class-rooms. If one wants to hear Professor Roethe, now the only German university professor who refuses to admit women into his class-room, one does well to start early, to allow time to hunt.

There are no dormitories in any of the German universities. The fifteen thousand Berlin students are scattered all over the big city and far out into the suburbs. Hence, partly, the absence of student life. The students meet in the class-rooms, greet each other, and go their separate ways. It is individualism carried to such an extreme that the university seems rather a great knowledge factory than a college organism.

There are more fundamental differences. The academic freedom is not a matter of lecture attendance alone — there is a significant difference of attitude toward the student. He is regarded as a grown man — somewhat as he was under President Eliot’s administration at Harvard — whereas in America today he is almost always treated as a boy. In Germany (where he is a year or two older), the opportunities are laid before him. If, as too often proves true, he is still a boy, he squanders his first semesters recklessly, and begins to work only when the day of reckoning approaches. It is not until the end of the eighth semester (there are two semesters in the year) that the German student is examined at all. Then comes such an examination as the American undergraduate never knows. He is then, indeed, two years beyond our A.B. stage, for as is well known, the first two years of our college work correspond roughly to the last two of the German “gymnasium.” The surprising thing-to an American — is the amount of work that is done. A great number of German students loaf as no American student would be allowed to, but it is doubtful if in America so many would work without any incentive of test or examination. The system of treating the student as a man perhaps sends more students to the bottom, but I think it sends the top men higher.

That was the old theory at Harvard — that it was a college for the exceptional man, that the average man, or the a-little-under-the-average man, if he lacked the spunk to make his own way, had no business to be there. That, it would seem, must be the justification of the endowed universities in the future to train leaders, not masses. The state universities are bound by the very nature of their position, to concentrate their attention upon the average man. It would seem that we would only enter a useless competition unless we set ourself a higher, or at least different task. Whether our present tendency away from the German system will succeed in lifting the bottom men to a higher average without degrading the top men toward that same average, remains to be seen. The attempt is at least worth the venture.

The title “professor” is perhaps a higher honor in Germany than in any other nation of the world. The students pick their courses somewhat at haphazard, but they select their professors with a deal of care. The theological students are few, but [Adolph von] Harnack’s course in Church History is one of the biggest in the university. Students who would otherwise never think again of Greek, flock to hear [Ulrich von] Wilamowitz[-Moellendorff]. One elects to hear [Georg] Simmel or [Adolf] Lasson or [Alois] Riehl lecture, instead of choosing Philosophy X or 47. Four or five men give parallel courses in general Economics — the student hears him whom he most respects. And as the best professors are concentrated in no one university, no German student thinks of remaining eight semesters at any one. He travels about, and when he is done, he has heard all the best men in his special subject. (Hence again the comparative lack of student life, and the utter lack of university loyalty.)

Berlin is one hundred and seventy three years younger than Harvard, but from the very beginning, hers has been an illustrious faculty. Fichte, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Humboldt, Helmholtz, Virchow, Mommsen, Treitschke, Eric Schmidt — it is hard to select.

No examination-schedule compels the lecturers to cover any given field — they may wander as they choose. Hence, often, such veritable culture-courses as that of [Ulrich von] Wilamowitz[-Moellendorff] of which a friend writes: “His words were hard to catch, but I found him a most wonderful old man, with the sweetest enthusiastic smile. I began to appreciate more than ever the fire of scholarship. This morning he was discussing lost manuscripts, what we would know if we only had certain now lost — e. g., Plutarch’s ‘Lives of the Emperors.’ I never before so felt the enthusiasm of the philologist or the archæologist. His smile was the delicate child-like smile of an old man. I felt as if he were telling us a fairy-tale, or rather letting us into some pretty secret — as indeed he was, the secrets of a life-time of scholarship.”

The large American colony, the small but enthusiastic Harvard Club, the Exchange Professor — especially if he be Professor [Archibald Cary] Coolidge all combine to make a Harvard man at home in Berlin. So, too, the appreciation of Harvard by the Berlin press. Let me close this pot-pourri of random impressions with a quotation from the Berliner Tageblatt, which, perhaps the most influential of the Berlin dailies, recently headed a contributed article upon its front page, as follows: “Professor B. [Hiram Bingham III, publicized the existence of the Machu Picchu Incan citadel in Peru] is professor of South American history at Yale University, which, next to Harvard, is the most distinguished in America.”

Source: The Harvard Illustrated Magazine. Vol. 15. No. 6 (March 1914), pp. 297-301.

Image Source: Professor Aloph von Harnack, ditto, p. 300.

Categories
Exam Questions Harvard Sociology Suggested Reading Syllabus

Harvard. Course readings, final exams, and enrollment for Principles of Sociology. Carver and Field, 1904-1905

 

The post begins with excerpts from Thomas Nixon Carver’s autobiography dealing with his own training and teaching of sociology. He was an economist back when most sociology courses were taught within economics departments as was the case at Harvard up through the early 1930’s. Carver’s recollections are followed by the enrollment figures, the reading list, and the semester examinations for his Principles of Sociology course from the 1904-05 academic year.

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Carver’s background and institutional legacy in sociology
(From his autobiography)

Graduate Coursework at Cornell

[p. 105] The economics faculty consisted of Jeremiah W. Jenks, chairman, Walter F. Willcox, Charles H. Hull, and young  [Lucius S.] Merriam. The history department was very strong but I did not take any history courses, to my later regret. My fellowship was officially a teaching fellowship, but I was told that the holders had never been called upon to teach. It paid $550 which proved sufficient for my needs. I took courses under all three of the older men in the department of economics, but none under Merriam. Jenks conducted the seminar and gave a course on economic legislation, both of which I took. Hull gave a course on the history of economic thought, which I took, and another on industrial history. Willcox gave a course in statistics and another on sociology, both of which I took….

[p.111] … Johns Hopkins at that time was known principally because of its graduate school. Cornell had a growing graduate school but it was an appendage rather than the main part of the university. At Johns Hopkins, graduate students were segregated and had relatively few contacts with undergraduates. At Cornell, on the other hand, they were pretty well mixed.

Cornell had a larger faculty than Johns Hopkins and probably as many distinguished scholars, but the average was perhaps not so high, most of them being concerned with undergraduate teaching.

In the Department of Economics, Jenks was the oldest member and chairman of the department. He was more interested in the practical than in the theoretical side of economics. Merriam was a brilliant theorist and, had he lived, would have strengthened that side of their work. Jenks was a wide awake and interesting teacher, a man of the world who could meet on equal terms men prominent in government and business and might have done well in the diplomatic service.

Hull had an encyclopedic knowledge of American industrial history and should have written books on the subject, but he was so afraid that he might overlook something that he never got quite ready to write.

Probably the most brilliant of the three was Walter F. Willcox. Before the rise of the mathematical school of statisticians he was the leading statistician of the country. He also took us through Spencer’s Principles of Sociology and added a good many original ideas of his own. He was one of the few teachers of sociology whom I have known who were capable of taking a realistic and rational view of things.

Teaching at Oberlin

[pp. 122-123] Professor Hull had returned from his sojourn at Johns Hopkins. This relieved me of the classes in English and American history which I had carried the year before [1894-1895]. I added a course [in 1895-1896] in anthropology and one in sociology to my offering.

Teaching at Harvard
(Carver joined the faculty 1900-01)

[p. 132] There was no Department of Sociology at Harvard, but Edward Cummings had given a course on principles of sociology in the Department of Economics. Since I had been giving a course in that subject at Oberlin it was suggested that I continue it at Harvard. [1901-02; 1902-03 (taught by Ripley  and Carver); 1903-04] In addition I gave a course on economic theory and a half course on methods of economic investigation.

[p. 172] The course on the principles of sociology developed into a study of the Darwinian theory as applied to social groups. Variation among the forms of social organization and of moral systems, and the selection or survival of those systems and forms that make for group strength, were considered to constitute the method of social evolution.

The Harvard Illustrated, a student publication, at that time conducted a poll of the senior class, asking the students to name the best courses they had taken. For a number of

years Professor Palmer’s course in ethics ranked highest. My course on principles of sociology began to climb until it finally achieved first place. Then the poll was discontinued.

[pp. 210-212] I have mentioned several times the courses which I had developed at Harvard: principles of agricultural economics, principles of sociology, methods of social reform, and the distribution of wealth. I was, all those years, covering more ground than any other member of the department…
…Up to this time there had been no department of sociology at Harvard. There was a Department of Anthropology and a Department of Social Ethics, but the only course in sociological principles was the one which I gave in the Department of Economics. At one of the meetings of the American Sociological Society I heard Sorokin of the University of Minnesota read a paper. I was impressed by his prodigious learning and general sanity. I began to cultivate his acquaintance and finally was instrumental in bringing him to Harvard….The Department of Economics, on my motion, invited him to give a course of three lectures at Harvard. While he was in Cambridge, I introduced him to President Lowell. Later, on my motion, the department voted to recommend to the Corporation that Sorokin be offered a professorship in the Department of Economics to give courses in sociology at Harvard. The offer was made, he accepted, and a beginning was made toward starting a department of sociology.

Source: Thomas Nixon Carver. Recollections of an Unplanned Life. Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1949.

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Course Enrollment

Economics 3. Professor Carver and Mr. J. A. Field. — Principles of Sociology. Theories of Social Progress.

Total 47: 10 Graduates, 7 Seniors, 18 Juniors, 7 Sophomores, 5 Others.

Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard College, 1904-1905, p. 74.

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ECONOMICS 3
Prescribed Reading and Collateral References. 1904-05

TO BE READ IN FULL
  1. Herbert Spencer. Principles of Sociology.
  2. Walter Bagehot. Physics and Politics.
  3. Benjamin Kidd. Social Evolution.
  4. F. H. Giddings. Principles of Sociology.
COLLATERAL READING. STARRED REFERENCES ARE ESPECIALLY RECOMMENDED

I. SCOPE AND METHOD OF SOCIOLOGY

  1. Auguste Comte. Positive Philosophy. Book VI. Chs.2-4.
  2. Herbert Spencer. Classification of the Sciences, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. II.
  3. *Herbert Spencer. The Study of Sociology. Chs. 1-3.
  4. J. S. Mill. System of Logic. Book VI.
  5. W. S. Jevons. Principles of Science. Ch. 31. Sec. 11.
  6. Lester F. Ward. Outlines of Sociology. I.
  7. W. H. Stuckenberg. Introduction to the Study of Sociology. Chs. 2 and 3.
  8. Émile Durkheim. Les Regles de la Méthode Sociologique.
  9. Guillaume de Greef. Les Lois Sociologiques.
  10. Arthur Fairbanks. Introduction to Sociology. Introduction.

Il. THE FACTORS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS

A. Physical and Biological Factors

  1. Herbert Spencer. The Factors of Organic Evolution, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. I.
  2. Herbert Spencer. Progress, its Law and Cause, in Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative. Vol. I.
  3. Auguste Comte. Positive Philosophy. Book VI. Ch. 6.
  4. Lester F. Ward. Dynamical Sociology. Ch. 7.
  5. Simon N. Patten. The Theory of Social Forces. Ch. 1.
  6. Geddes and Thompson. The Evolution of Sex. Chs. 1, 2, 19, 21.
  7. Robert Mackintosh. From Comte to Benjamin Kidd.
  8. *G. de LaPouge. Les Sélections Sociales. Chs. 1-6.
  9. August Weismann. The Germ Plasm: a Theory of Heredity.
  10. George Job Romanes. An Examination of Weismannism.
  11. Alfred Russell Wallace. Studies: Scientific and Social.
  12. *R. L. Dugdale. The Jukes.
  13. Oscar C. McCulloh. The Tribe of Ishmael.
  14. *Francis Galton. Hereditary Genius.
  15. Arthur Fairbanks. Introduction to Sociology. Pt. III.
  16. H. W. Conn. The Method of Evolution.

B. Psychic

  1. Auguste Comte. Positive Philosophy. Book VI. Ch. 5.
  2. *Jeremy Bentham. Principles of Morals and Legislation. Chs. 1 and 2.
  3. Lester F. Ward. The Psychic Factors of Civilization.
  4. Tarde. Social Laws.
  5. [G. Tarde]. The Laws of Imitation.
  6. [G. Tarde]. La Logique Sociale.
  7. Gustar Le Bon. The Crowd.
  8. The Psychology of Peoples.
  9. Mark Baldwin. Social and Ethical Interpretations.
  10. [J. Mark Baldwin]. Mental Development in the Child and the Race.
  11. John Fisk. The Destiny of Man.
  12. Henry Drummond. The Ascent of Man.
  13. Simon N. Patten. The Theory of Social Forces. Chs. 2-5.
  14. *E. A. Ross. Social Control.

C. Social and Economic

  1. Lester F. Ward. Outlines of Sociology. Pt. II.
  2. *[Lester F. Ward]. Dynamical Sociology. Ch. 10.
  3. Brooks Adams. The Law of Civilization and Decay.
  4. D. G. Ritchie. Darwinism and Politics.
  5. *A. G. Warner. American Charities. Pt. I. Ch. 5.
  6. *G. de LaPouge. Les Sélections Sociales. Chs. 7-15.
  7. T. R. Malthus. Principle of Population.
  8. H. Bosanquet. The Standard of Life.
  9. W. H. Mallock. Aristocracy and Evolution.
  10. T. V. Veblen. The Theory of the Leisure Class.
  11. W. S. Jevons. Methods of Social Reform.
  12. Jane Addams and Others. Philanthropy and Social Progress.
  13. Demolins. Anglo-Saxon Superiority.
  14. *Thomas H. Huxley. Evolution and Ethics.
  15. Georg Simmel. Ueber Sociale Differencierung.
  16. Émile Durkheim. De la Division du Travail social.
  17. J. H. W. Stuckenberg. Introduction to the Study of Sociology. Ch. 6.
  18. Achille Loria. The Economic Foundations of Society.
  19. [Achille Loria]. Problems Sociaux Contemporains. Ch. 6.
  20. William Z. Ripley. The Races of Europe.

D. Political and Legal

  1. Jeremy Bentham. Principles of Morals and Legislation. Chs. 12-17.
  2. F. M. Taylor. The Right of the State to Be.
  3. *W. W. Willoughby. Social Justice. Chs. 5-9.
  4. *D. G. Ritchie. Principles of State Interference.
  5. W. S. Jevons. The State in Relation to Labor.
  6. Henry C. Adams. The Relation of the State to Industrial Action, in Publications Am. Econ. Assoc. Vol. I. No. 6.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Syllabi, course outlines and readings in economics, 1895-2003. Box 1. Folder “Economics, 1904-1905.”

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ECONOMICS 3
Mid-year Examination, 1904-05

  1. What is meant by a rational sanction for conduct? How is it distinguished from the rationalization of religion and law?
  2. Has resentment, or the desire for vengeance, any place as a factor in producing social order? Explain your answer.
  3. Describe Spencer’s conception of the Industrial Type of Society and give your opinion of its validity.
    (a) as representing an actual stage in social progress;
    (b) as an ideal social type.
  4. What accounts for the force of the religious sanction for conduct among primitive peoples? What does Spencer believe will be the place of ethics in the religion of the future, and what are his reasons? Are the two explanations in harmony?
  5. Describe the principal forms of the family relation, and the type of society in which each form prevails.
  6. Comment briefly but specifically upon any five of the following topics:—
    (a) Exogamy.
    (b) The domestic relations of the Veddahs.
    (c) The domestic relations of the Thibetans.
    (d) The Ynca political system.
    (e) Political organization among the Eskimos.
    (f) The political system of the Dahomans.
    (g) The industrial attainments of the Fuegians.
  7. What is Spencer’s explanation of the origin of ceremonial in general; and how does he account for particular forms? According to this theory what does the formality of our social relations indicate concerning the original social or anti-social traits of mankind?
  8. By what stages has the medical profession been evolved, and how does it perform the general social function which according to Spencer characterizes the professions?
  9. “The salvation of every society, as of every species, depends on the maintenance of an absolute opposition between the regime of the family and the regime of the State.” Spencer, Vol. I, p. 719.
    What opposition is referred to? Does it appear more conspicuously in the militant or in the industrial type of society?
  10. “From war has been gained all that it has to give.” Spencer, Vol. II, p. 664.
    What has war done to develop society? Why is its work done? Why, if war is now intolerable, is it improper to check the conflicts of classes and individuals within the state?

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University. Mid-year Examinations, 1852-1943. Box 7, Bound Volume: Examination Papers, Mid-Years 1904-05.

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ECONOMICS 3
Year-end Examination, 1904-05

Omit one question.

  1. “Can we then allege special connexions between the different types of family and the different social types classed as militant and industrial?” (Spencer, Principles of Sociology, I, p. 675.) Explain.
  2. In what particulars is society fundamentally unlike a biological organism?
  3. Can you define social progress in terms of human well-being and at the same time make it consistent with a general theory of evolution? Explain.
  4. What is meant by the storing of social energy and what are the agencies by which it is accomplished?
  5. What is meant by the power of idealization and how does it affect social progress?
  6. Under what conditions and on what grounds would you justify the interference of the state with the liberty of the individual?
  7. Give the titles and authors of such books as you have read of sociological topics, including those prescribed in the course, and write your impression of one which is not prescribed.

Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Examination Papers 1873-1915. Box 7, Bound volume: Examination Papers, 1904-05;  Papers Set for Final Examinations in History, Government, Economics,…,Music in Harvard College (June, 1905), p. 24.

Image Source: “Thomas Nixon Carver, 1865-1961” link at the History of Economic Thought Website. “Portrait of Carver (as a young man)“.
Detail in the Oberlin College Yearbook 1901 Hi-o-hi (no. 16)