Mark Solovey

Science and the State During the Cold War: Blurred Boundaries and a Contested Legacy

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Marginal to the Revolution: The Curious Relationship between Economics and the Behavioral Sciences Movement in Mid-Twentieth-Century America

American economics largely ignored the behavioral sciences movement in the decade after World War II. The social scientists who adopted the “behavioral sciences” moniker were self-consciously nomothetic, fond of mathematics and statistical analysis, and eager to stand close to the natural sciences. The same was true of leading postwar economists, and yet they alone opted out, with only a few exceptions. We explore this divide as it emerged in the early development of the Ford Foundations Behavioral Sciences Program (BSP). We describe early efforts to incorporate economics into the BSP in a substantial manner, premised on the belief that economic analysis could be greatly strengthened by the behavioral science orientation, with its emphasis on rigorous empirical study of actual human behavior. Yet these efforts failed, in large part because economists, especially those commonly labeled “neoclassical,” were uninterested, skeptical, and even dismissive of what they took to be an immature and faddish initiative. Gaps in postwar prestige and clashing models of social science contributed to the Ford Foundations decision to fund economics on a separate track from the other social sciences. In our account, the adoption of the “behavioral sciences” terminology in tandem with the movements institutional anchoring at the Ford Foundation thus reflected and widened the split between economists and their counterparts in the other social sciences.

Cold War Social Science: Specter, Reality, or Useful Concept?

From the end of World War II to the early 1970s, American social science expanded in dramatic and unprecedented fashion. Moreover, nothing like it has happened again. Consider the following figures in total membership for the major national professional society for sociologists, the American Sociological Association (ASA, and prior to 1959 known as the American Sociological Society). Founded in 1905, this organization had 1,021 members in 1920, 1,530 in 1930, and, after a significant decline during the Great Depression, 1,034 in 1940. Though World War II saw little change, rapid growth quickly followed, as ASA membership rose to 3,241 in 1950, 6,875 in 1960, and 14,156 in 1970. The peak came in 1972 with 14,934 members, before a sudden leveling off and even slight decline to 13,304 in 1980. As of 2010, total ASA membership had climbed over the 14,000 mark once again, but the total was still lower than the 1972 peak.1 Other major national professional associations for economists, political scientists, and scholars in nearby disciplines such as those for anthropologists and psychologists follow this general pattern. The steep rise in professional association membership was accompanied by impressive growth in related areas— college courses, undergraduate majors, graduate programs, university departments, academic journals, and scholarly publications.2

The Price of Success: Sociologist Harry Alpert, the NSF's First Social Science Policy Architect

Summary Harry Alpert (1912–1977), the US sociologist, is best-known for his directorship of the National Science Foundations social science programme in the 1950s. This study extends our understanding of Alpert in two main ways: first, by examining the earlier development of his views and career. Beginning with his 1939 biography of Emile Durkheim, we explore the early development of Alperts views about foundational questions concerning the scientific status of sociology and social science more generally, proper social science methodology, the practical value of social science, the academic institutionalisation of sociology, and the unity-of-science viewpoint. Second, this paper illuminates Alperts complex involvement with certain tensions in mid-century US social science that were themselves linked to major transformations in national science policy, public patronage, and unequal relations between the social and natural sciences. We show that Alperts views about the intellectual foundations, practical relevance, and institutional standing of the social sciences were, in some important respects, at odds with his NSF policy work. Although remembered as a quantitative evangelist and advocate for the unity-of-science viewpoint, Alpert was in fact an urbane critic of natural-science envy, social scientific certainty, and what he saw as excessive devotion to quantitative methods.

Whatever possessed the president? Academic experts and presidential policy, 1960–1988

Any books that you read, no matter how you got the sentences that have been read from the books, surely they will give you goodness. But, we will show you one of recommendation of the book that you need to read. This whatever possessed the president academic experts and presidential policy 196