Lester Frank Ward
Encyclopedia
Lester F. Ward was an American botanist, paleontologist, and sociologist. He served as the first president of the American Sociological Association
.
, the youngest of 10 children born to Justus Ward and his wife Silence Rolph Ward. Justus Ward was of old New England colonial stock, but he wasn't rich and farmed to earn a living. Silence Ward was the daughter of a clergyman; she was a talented perfectionist, educated and fond of literature. When Lester Frank was one year of age the family moved closer to Chicago, to a place called Cass, now known as Downer's Grove, Illinois about twenty three miles from Lake Michigan. The family then moved to a homestead in nearby St. Charles, Illinois
where his father built a saw mill business making railroad ties. Ward first attended a formal school in 1850 when he was nine years old. He was known as Frank Ward to his classmates and friends and showed a great enthusiasm for books and learning and he liberally supplemented his education with outside reading. 4 years after Ward started attending school, his parents, Lester Frank and one of his older bothers, Erastus, traveled to Iowa in a covered wagon for a new life on the frontier. Four years later, in 1858, Justus Ward unexpectedly died and the family returned to St. Charles, much to the dismay of Ward's mother who wanted the boys to stay in Iowa and continue their father's work. The two brothers lived together for a sort period of time in the old family homestead in St. Charles, doing farm work to earn a living, and encouraged each other to pursue an education and abandon their father's life of physical labor. Their estranged mother lived just down the street in the home of one of their sisters. In late 1858 the two brothers moved to Pennsylvania
at the invitation of Lester Frank's oldest brother Cyrenus (9 years Lester Frank's senior) who was starting a business making wagon wheel hubs and needed workers. The brothers saw this as an opportunity to move closer to civilization and to eventually attend college. The business failed, however, and Lester Frank, who still didn't have the money to attend college, found a job teaching in a small country school; in the Summer months he worked as a farm laborer. He finally saved the money to attend college and enrolled in the Susquehanna Collegiate Institute in 1860. While he was at first self-conscious about his spotty formal education and self learning, he soon found that his knowledge compared favorably to his classmates, and he was rapidly promoted. It was here that he met Elizabeth "Lizzie" Carolyn Vought and fell deeply in love. (Their rather torrid love affair is documented in Ward's first journal: "Young Ward's Diary", which remains under copyright and in print.) He married Lizzie on Aug. 13, 1862 and almost immediately enlisted in the Union Army and was sent to the Civil War front where he was wounded three times. After the end of the war he successfully petitioned for work with the federal government in Washington, DC, where he and Lizzie then moved. Lizzie assisted him in editing a newsletter called "The Iconoclast", dedicated to free thinking. She gave birth to a son, but the child died when he was less than a year old. Then, in 1872, Lizzie became ill and died. These were hard times for Ward to live through.
After moving to Washington, Ward attended Columbian College, now the George Washington University
, and graduating in 1869 with the degree of A.B.. In 1871 he received the degree of LL.B. (and was admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia), and that of A.M.
in 1873. Ward never practiced law, however, and concentrated on his carrier in the federal government. Almost all of the basic research in such fields as geography, paleontology, archeology and anthropology were concentrated in Washington, DC. at this time in history, and a job as a federal government scientist was a prestigious and influential position. In 1883 he was made Geologist of the U.S. Geological Survey. In 189S, he was made Paleontologist. He held this position until 1906, when he resigned to accept the chair of Sociology at Brown University
. While he worked at the Geological Survey he became good friends with John Wesley Powell
, the powerful and influential second director of the US Geological Survey (1881–1894) and the director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution
.
and right
, both determined to claim "the science of society" as their own. The champion of the conservatives and businessmen was Herbert Spencer
; he was opposed on the left by Karl Marx
. Although Spencer and Marx disagreed about many things they were similar in that their systems were static: they both claimed to have divined the immutable stages of development that a society went through and they both taught that mankind was essentially helpless before the force of evolution
.
With the publication of the two volume , 1200 page, Dynamic Sociology--Or Applied Social Science as Based Upon Statical Sociology and the Less Complex Sciences(1883), Lester Ward hoped to restore the central importance of experimentation and the scientific method to the field of sociology. For Ward science wasn't cold or impersonal, it was human centered and results oriented. As he put it in the Preface to Dynamic Sociology: "The real object of science is to benefit man. A science which fails to do this, however agreeable its study, is lifeless. Sociology, which of all sciences should benefit man most, is in danger of falling into the class of polite amusements, or dead sciences. It is the object of this work to point out a method by which the breath of life may be breathed into its nostrils."
Ward theorized that poverty could be minimized or eliminated by the systematic intervention of society. Mankind wasn't helpless before the impersonal force of nature and evolution
– through the power of Mind, man could take control of the situation and direct the evolution of human society. This theory is known as telesis
. Also see: meliorism
, sociocracy
and public sociology
. A sociology which intelligently and scientifically directed the social and economic development of society should institute a universal and comprehensive system of education
, regulate competition
, connect the people together on the basis of equal opportunities and cooperation
, and promote the happiness
and the freedom of everyone.
and his theories of laissez-faire
and survival of the fittest
that totally dominated socio/economic thought in the United States after the Civil War. While Marx and communism/socialism didn't catch on in the United States during Ward's lifetime, Spencer became famous: he was the leading light for conservatives. Ward placed himself in direct opposition to Spencer and Spencer's American disciple, William Graham Sumner
, who had become the most well known and widely read American sociologist by single-mindedly promoting the principles of laissez-faire. To quote the historian Henry Steele Commager
: "Ward was the first major scholar to attack this whole system of negativist and absolutist sociology and he remains the ablest.... Before Ward could begin to formulate that science of society which he hoped would inaugurate an era of such progress as the world had not yet seen, he had to destroy the superstitions that still held domain over the mind of his generation. Of these, laissez-faire was the most stupefying, and it was on the doctrine of laissez-faire that he trained his heaviest guns. The work of demolition performed in Dynamic Sociology, Psychic Factors and Applied Sociology was thorough."
of writers such as Harvard's Carol Gilligan
, who have developed the claims of female superiority. Ward is now considered a feminist writer by historians such as Ann Taylor Allen. Ward's persuasion on the question of female intelligence as described by himself: "And now from the point of view of intellectual development itself we find her side by side, and shoulder to shoulder with him furnishing, from the very outset, far back in prehistoric, presocial, and even prehuman times, the necessary complement to his otherwise one-sided, headlong, and wayward career, without which he would soon have warped and distorted the race and rendered it incapable of the very progress which he claims exclusively to inspire. And herefore again, even in the realm of intellect, where he would fain reign supreme, she has proved herself fully his equal and is entitled to her share of whatever credit attaches to human progress hereby achieved."
underwent considerable change throughout his life. Ward was a Republican Whig and supported the abolition of the American system of slavery. He enlisted in the Union army during the Civil war and was wounded three times. However, a close reading of "Dynamic Sociology" will uncover several statements that would be considered racist and ethnocentric by today's standards. There are references to the superiority of Western culture and the savagery of the American Indian and black races, made all the more jarring by the modern feel of much of the rest of the book. However, Ward lived in Washington D.C., then the center of anthropological research in the US; he was always up-to-date on the latest findings of science and in tune with the developing zeitgeist
, and by the early twentieth century, perhaps influenced by W.E.B. Du Bois
and the Franz Boas
he began to focus more on the question of race. During this period his views on race were arguably more progressive and in tune with modern standards than any other white academic of the time, with, of course, the exception of Boas,who is sometimes credited with doing more than any other American in combating the theory of White supremacy. Ward, given his age and reputation, could afford to take a somewhat radical stand on the politically explosive question of White supremacy, but Boas did not have those advantages. After Ward's death in 1913 and with the approach of World War I
the German-born Boas came to be seen by some, including W.H. Holmes, the head of National Research Council
(and who had worked with Ward for many years at the U.S. Geological Survey), as possibly being an agent of the German government determined to sow revolution in the US and among its troops. The NRC had been set up by the Wilson administration in 1916 in response to the increased need for scientific and technical services caused by World War I, and soon Boas's influence over the field of anthropology the US began to wane. By 1919 he was censured by the American Anthropological Association
for his political activities, a censure which would not be lifted until 2005. (See also: Scientific racism
, Master race
, and Institutional racism
) (the source for the information about Boas is Gossett, Thomas F.; Race: The History of an Idea in America)
. However, as Ward's article "Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Lamarckism" shows, Ward had a sophisticated understanding of this subject. While he clearly described himself as being a Neo-Lamarckian, he completely and enthusiastically accepted Darwin's findings and theories. On the other hand, he believed that, logically, there had to be a mechanism that would allow environmental factors to influence evolution faster than Darwin's rather slow evolutionary process. The modern theory of Epigenetics
suggests that Ward was correct on this issue, although old-school Darwinians continue to ridicule Larmarkianism.
to modern scientific and sociological standards, Ward accomplished much the same thing 10 years earlier in the United States. However, Ward would be the last person to claim that his contributions were somehow unique or original to him. As Gillis J. Harp points out in "The Positivist Republic", Comte's positivism found a fertile ground in the democratic republic of the United States, and there soon developed among the pragmatic intellectual community in New York City, which featured such thinkers as William James
and Charles Sanders Peirce and, on the other hand, among the federal government scientists in Washington D.C. (like Ward) a general consensus regarding positivism.
, the Marxist Russian Revolution, and the rise of Nazism
in Europe. Ward was basically just replaced by Durkheim in the history books, which was easily accomplished because Durkheim's views were similar to Ward's but without the relentless criticism of lassiez-faire and without Ward's calls for a strong central government and "social engineering". In 1937 Talcott Parsons
, the Harvard sociologist and functionalist who almost single-handedly set American sociology's academic curriculum in the mid-20th century, wrote that "Spencer is dead", thereby dismissing not only Spencer but also Spencer's most powerful critic.
. In the book "Lester Ward and the Welfare State", Commager details Ward's influence and refers to him as the "father of the modern welfare state".
As a political approach, Ward's system became known as social liberalism
, as distinguished from the classical liberalism
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which featured such thinkers as Adam Smith
and John Stuart Mill
. While classical liberalism had sought prosperity and progress through laissez-fare, Ward's "American social liberalism" sought to enhance social progress through direct government intervention. Ward believed that in large, complex and rapidly growing societies human freedom could only be achieved with the assistance of a strong democratic government acting in the interest of the individual. The characteristic element of Ward's thinking was his faith that government, acting on the empirical and scientifically based findings of the science of sociology, could be harnessed to create a near Utopian social order.
Ward's thinking had a profound impact on the administrations of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt
, Woodrow Wilson
and Franklin D. Roosevelt
and on the modern Democratic Party. The "liberalism" of the Democrats today is not that of Smith and Mill, which stressed non-interference from the government in economic issues, but of Ward, which stressed the unique position of government to effect positive change. While Roosevelt's experiments in social engineering were popular and effective, the full effect of the forces Ward set in motion came to bear half a century after his death, in the Great Society
programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson
and the Vietnam war
.
Ward realized that the path to human progress was not easy or smooth. His hope was that the "science" of sociology, which was but in its infancy, would allow government officials to learn from their past mistakes.
Ward died in Washington, D.C.
. He is buried in Watertown, New York.
, Friedrich Hayek
and Robert Nozick
expanded on the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, arguing that the decentralized market economy
was superior to centralized government control, both practically and ethically. In 1971 David Halberstam's remarkable work, The Best and the Brightest documented the perfidy of the elite bureaucrats of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, both heavily influenced by Ward, in promoting State welfare and the Vietnam War. H. R. McMaster's work, Dereliction of Duty, goes even further in its critique. Milton Friedman
's Nobel prize-winning work, Capitalism and Freedom, rose above the philosophic duel between Ward and Spencer over social Darwinism and made the case for the dependence of political freedom on economic freedom. It is at this point of intellectual history that Ward's Statist philosophy can be regarded as refuted, and his non sequitir of seeing in centralized State power the freedoms of the individual guaranteed, as fully exposed.
As far as Ward's relationship to Marx is concerned, Ward can rightly be called a soft Marxist, since he sought Marxian ends (universal, state-controlled education and social redress through an empowered government) through non-revolutionary means. Like Marx he supported a cradle-to-grave caretaker government, a system subsequently rejected by once Communist Russia, yet currently bankrupting Europe and the United States.
Ward was a highly influential intellectual figure, one whose thinking influenced both political parties in the sixties, but one whose views have subsequently proven false. The Reagan Revolution, while certainly not reverting to social Darwinism, grew out of the public realization of the failure of Ward's system. In this sense, both Ward and his social Darwinist antagonists were wrong. Democratic freedoms are completely contrary to the static, classist ideas of upper-class advocates such as William Graham Sumner, whose real impetus seems to have been to justify the robber barons, nor is Ward's paternalistic caretaker state even plausibly supportive of an active and participatory democracy.
"Every implement or utensil, every mechanical device...is a triumph of mind over the physical forces of nature in ceaseless and aimless competition. All human institutions—religion, government, law, marriage, custom—together with innumerable other modes of regulating social, industrial and commercial life are, broadly viewed, only so many ways of meeting and checkmating the principle of competition as it manifests itself in society." --Lester Ward
"Thus far, social progress has in a certain awkward manner taken care of itself, but in the near future it will have to be cared for. To do this, and maintain the dynamic condition against all the hostile forces which thicken with every new advance, is the real problem of sociology considered as an applied science" --Lester Ward
"To overcome [the] manifold hindrances to human progress, to check this enormous waste of resources, to calm these rhythmic billows of hyper-action and reaction, to secure the rational adaptation of means to remote ends, to prevent the natural forces from clashing with the human feelings, to make the current of physical phenomena flow in the channels of human advantage - these are some of the tasks which belong to the great art which forms the final or active department of the science of society - this, in brief, is DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY. “Voir pour prévoir";(1*) "prévoyance, d'où action,"(2*) i.e., predict in order to control, such is the logical history and process of all science; and, if sociology is a science, such must be its destiny and its legitimate function." --Lester Ward
"Again, society desires most the education of those most needing to be educated. From an economical point of view, an uneducated class is an expensive class. It is from it that most criminals, drones, and paupers come. From it—and this is still more important—no progressive actions ever flow. Therefore, society is most anxious that this class, which would never educate itself, should be educated...The secret of the superiority of state over private education lies in the fact that in the former the teacher is responsible to society ... [T]he result desired by the state is a wholly different one from that desired by parents, guardians, and pupils." --Lester Ward
"And now, mark : The charge of paternalism is chiefly made by the class that enjoys the largest share of government protection. Those who denounce state interference are the ones who most frequently and successfully invoke it. The cry of laissez faire mainly goes up from the ones who, if really "let alone," would instantly lose their wealth-absorbing power.... Nothing is more obvious to-day than the signal inability of capital and private enterprise to take care of themselves unaided by the state; and while they are incessantly denouncing "paternalism," by which they mean the claim of the defenceless laborer and artisan to a share in this lavish state protection, they are all the while besieging legislatures for relief from their own incompetency, and "pleading the baby act" through a trained body of lawyers and lobbyists. The dispensing of national pap to this class should rather be called "maternalism," to which a square, open, and dignified paternalism would be infinitely preferable." --Lester Ward
"When a well-clothed philosopher on a bitter winter’s night sits in a warm room well lighted for his purpose and writes on paper with pen and ink in the arbitrary characters of a highly developed language the statement that civilisation is the result of natural laws, and that man’s duty is to let nature alone so that untrammeled it may work out a higher civilisation, he simply ignores every circumstance of his existence and deliberately closes his eyes to every fact within the range of his faculties. If man had acted upon his theory there would have been no civilisation, and our philosopher would have remained a troglodyte." – --Lester Ward
"In perspicacity, intellectual acumen, and imagination, he [Lester Ward] was the equal of Henry Adams or Thorstein Velben or Louis Sullivan, but he was better rounded and more constructive than these major critics. In the rugged vigor of his mind, the richness of his learning, the originality of his insights, the breath of his conceptions, he takes place alongside William James, John Dewey and Oliver Wendell Holmes as one of the creative spirits of Twentieth-century America." – --Henry Steele Commager
www.galelargey.com
American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...
.
Biography
Lester Frank Ward was born in Joliet, IllinoisJoliet, Illinois
Joliet is a city in Will and Kendall Counties in the U.S. state of Illinois, located southwest of Chicago. It is the county seat of Will County. As of the 2010 census, the city was the fourth-most populated in Illinois, with a population of 147,433. It continues to be Illinois' fastest growing...
, the youngest of 10 children born to Justus Ward and his wife Silence Rolph Ward. Justus Ward was of old New England colonial stock, but he wasn't rich and farmed to earn a living. Silence Ward was the daughter of a clergyman; she was a talented perfectionist, educated and fond of literature. When Lester Frank was one year of age the family moved closer to Chicago, to a place called Cass, now known as Downer's Grove, Illinois about twenty three miles from Lake Michigan. The family then moved to a homestead in nearby St. Charles, Illinois
St. Charles, Illinois
St. Charles is a Chicago suburb in Kane and DuPage counties of Illinois, United States, and is roughly west of Chicago on Illinois Route 64. According to a 2004 census estimate, the city has a total population of 32,134. The official city slogan is Pride of the Fox, after the Fox River that runs...
where his father built a saw mill business making railroad ties. Ward first attended a formal school in 1850 when he was nine years old. He was known as Frank Ward to his classmates and friends and showed a great enthusiasm for books and learning and he liberally supplemented his education with outside reading. 4 years after Ward started attending school, his parents, Lester Frank and one of his older bothers, Erastus, traveled to Iowa in a covered wagon for a new life on the frontier. Four years later, in 1858, Justus Ward unexpectedly died and the family returned to St. Charles, much to the dismay of Ward's mother who wanted the boys to stay in Iowa and continue their father's work. The two brothers lived together for a sort period of time in the old family homestead in St. Charles, doing farm work to earn a living, and encouraged each other to pursue an education and abandon their father's life of physical labor. Their estranged mother lived just down the street in the home of one of their sisters. In late 1858 the two brothers moved to Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
at the invitation of Lester Frank's oldest brother Cyrenus (9 years Lester Frank's senior) who was starting a business making wagon wheel hubs and needed workers. The brothers saw this as an opportunity to move closer to civilization and to eventually attend college. The business failed, however, and Lester Frank, who still didn't have the money to attend college, found a job teaching in a small country school; in the Summer months he worked as a farm laborer. He finally saved the money to attend college and enrolled in the Susquehanna Collegiate Institute in 1860. While he was at first self-conscious about his spotty formal education and self learning, he soon found that his knowledge compared favorably to his classmates, and he was rapidly promoted. It was here that he met Elizabeth "Lizzie" Carolyn Vought and fell deeply in love. (Their rather torrid love affair is documented in Ward's first journal: "Young Ward's Diary", which remains under copyright and in print.) He married Lizzie on Aug. 13, 1862 and almost immediately enlisted in the Union Army and was sent to the Civil War front where he was wounded three times. After the end of the war he successfully petitioned for work with the federal government in Washington, DC, where he and Lizzie then moved. Lizzie assisted him in editing a newsletter called "The Iconoclast", dedicated to free thinking. She gave birth to a son, but the child died when he was less than a year old. Then, in 1872, Lizzie became ill and died. These were hard times for Ward to live through.
After moving to Washington, Ward attended Columbian College, now the George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
, and graduating in 1869 with the degree of A.B.. In 1871 he received the degree of LL.B. (and was admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia), and that of A.M.
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in 1873. Ward never practiced law, however, and concentrated on his carrier in the federal government. Almost all of the basic research in such fields as geography, paleontology, archeology and anthropology were concentrated in Washington, DC. at this time in history, and a job as a federal government scientist was a prestigious and influential position. In 1883 he was made Geologist of the U.S. Geological Survey. In 189S, he was made Paleontologist. He held this position until 1906, when he resigned to accept the chair of Sociology at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
. While he worked at the Geological Survey he became good friends with John Wesley Powell
John Wesley Powell
John Wesley Powell was a U.S. soldier, geologist, explorer of the American West, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions...
, the powerful and influential second director of the US Geological Survey (1881–1894) and the director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
.
An Introduction to Ward's Works and Ideas
By the early 1880s the new field of sociology had become dominated by ideologues of the leftLeft-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
and right
Right
Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory...
, both determined to claim "the science of society" as their own. The champion of the conservatives and businessmen was Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
; he was opposed on the left by Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
. Although Spencer and Marx disagreed about many things they were similar in that their systems were static: they both claimed to have divined the immutable stages of development that a society went through and they both taught that mankind was essentially helpless before the force of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
.
With the publication of the two volume , 1200 page, Dynamic Sociology--Or Applied Social Science as Based Upon Statical Sociology and the Less Complex Sciences(1883), Lester Ward hoped to restore the central importance of experimentation and the scientific method to the field of sociology. For Ward science wasn't cold or impersonal, it was human centered and results oriented. As he put it in the Preface to Dynamic Sociology: "The real object of science is to benefit man. A science which fails to do this, however agreeable its study, is lifeless. Sociology, which of all sciences should benefit man most, is in danger of falling into the class of polite amusements, or dead sciences. It is the object of this work to point out a method by which the breath of life may be breathed into its nostrils."
Ward theorized that poverty could be minimized or eliminated by the systematic intervention of society. Mankind wasn't helpless before the impersonal force of nature and evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
– through the power of Mind, man could take control of the situation and direct the evolution of human society. This theory is known as telesis
Telesis
Telesis or "planned progress" was a concept and neologism coined by the American sociologist Lester Frank Ward , in the late 19th century to describe directed social advancement via education and the scientific method...
. Also see: meliorism
Meliorism
Meliorism is an idea in metaphysical thinking holding that progress is a real concept leading to an improvement of the world. It holds that humans can, through their interference with processes that would otherwise be natural, produce an outcome which is an improvement over the aforementioned...
, sociocracy
Sociocracy
Sociocracy is a system of governance, using consent-based decision making among equivalent individuals and an organizational structure based on cybernetic principles...
and public sociology
Public sociology
Public sociology is an approach to the discipline which seeks to transcend the academy and engage wider audiences. Rather than being defined by a particular method, theory, or set of political values, public sociology may be seen as a style of sociology, a way of writing and a form of intellectual...
. A sociology which intelligently and scientifically directed the social and economic development of society should institute a universal and comprehensive system of education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, regulate competition
Competition
Competition is a contest between individuals, groups, animals, etc. for territory, a niche, or a location of resources. It arises whenever two and only two strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. For...
, connect the people together on the basis of equal opportunities and cooperation
Cooperation
Cooperation or co-operation is the process of working or acting together. In its simplest form it involves things working in harmony, side by side, while in its more complicated forms, it can involve something as complex as the inner workings of a human being or even the social patterns of a...
, and promote the happiness
Happiness
Happiness is a mental state of well-being characterized by positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources....
and the freedom of everyone.
Ward's Criticism of Laissez-faire
Ward is most often remembered for his relentless attack on Herbert SpencerHerbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
and his theories of laissez-faire
Laissez-faire
In economics, laissez-faire describes an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including restrictive regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies....
and survival of the fittest
Survival of the fittest
"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase originating in evolutionary theory, as an alternative description of Natural selection. The phrase is today commonly used in contexts that are incompatible with the original meaning as intended by its first two proponents: British polymath philosopher Herbert...
that totally dominated socio/economic thought in the United States after the Civil War. While Marx and communism/socialism didn't catch on in the United States during Ward's lifetime, Spencer became famous: he was the leading light for conservatives. Ward placed himself in direct opposition to Spencer and Spencer's American disciple, William Graham Sumner
William Graham Sumner
William Graham Sumner was an American academic and "held the first professorship in sociology" at Yale College. For many years he had a reputation as one of the most influential teachers there. He was a polymath with numerous books and essays on American history, economic history, political...
, who had become the most well known and widely read American sociologist by single-mindedly promoting the principles of laissez-faire. To quote the historian Henry Steele Commager
Henry Steele Commager
Henry Steele Commager was an American historian who helped define Modern liberalism in the United States for two generations through his forty books and 700 essays and reviews...
: "Ward was the first major scholar to attack this whole system of negativist and absolutist sociology and he remains the ablest.... Before Ward could begin to formulate that science of society which he hoped would inaugurate an era of such progress as the world had not yet seen, he had to destroy the superstitions that still held domain over the mind of his generation. Of these, laissez-faire was the most stupefying, and it was on the doctrine of laissez-faire that he trained his heaviest guns. The work of demolition performed in Dynamic Sociology, Psychic Factors and Applied Sociology was thorough."
Female Equality
Ward was a strong advocate for equal rights for women and even theorized that women were naturally superior to men, much to the scorn of mainstream sociologists. In this regard, Ward presaged the rise of feminism, and especially the difference feminismDifference feminism
Difference feminism is a philosophy that stresses that men and women are ontologically different versions of the human being. Many Catholics adhere to and have written on the philosophy, though the philosophy is not specifically Catholic....
of writers such as Harvard's Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan
Carol Gilligan is an American feminist, ethicist, and psychologist best known for her work with and against Lawrence Kohlberg on ethical community and ethical relationships, and certain subject-object problems in ethics. She is currently a Professor at New York University and a Visiting Professor...
, who have developed the claims of female superiority. Ward is now considered a feminist writer by historians such as Ann Taylor Allen. Ward's persuasion on the question of female intelligence as described by himself: "And now from the point of view of intellectual development itself we find her side by side, and shoulder to shoulder with him furnishing, from the very outset, far back in prehistoric, presocial, and even prehuman times, the necessary complement to his otherwise one-sided, headlong, and wayward career, without which he would soon have warped and distorted the race and rendered it incapable of the very progress which he claims exclusively to inspire. And herefore again, even in the realm of intellect, where he would fain reign supreme, she has proved herself fully his equal and is entitled to her share of whatever credit attaches to human progress hereby achieved."
Environmental policy in the US
Ward had a considerable influence on the United State's environmental policy in the late 19th and early 20th century. Ross listed Ward among the four "philosopher/scientists" that shaped American early environmental policies. (see: Ross, John R.; Man over Nature)White supremacy and race
Ward's views on the question of race and the theory of white supremacyWhite supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
underwent considerable change throughout his life. Ward was a Republican Whig and supported the abolition of the American system of slavery. He enlisted in the Union army during the Civil war and was wounded three times. However, a close reading of "Dynamic Sociology" will uncover several statements that would be considered racist and ethnocentric by today's standards. There are references to the superiority of Western culture and the savagery of the American Indian and black races, made all the more jarring by the modern feel of much of the rest of the book. However, Ward lived in Washington D.C., then the center of anthropological research in the US; he was always up-to-date on the latest findings of science and in tune with the developing zeitgeist
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
, and by the early twentieth century, perhaps influenced by W.E.B. Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. Born in Massachusetts, Du Bois attended Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate...
and the Franz Boas
Franz Boas
Franz Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology." Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did...
he began to focus more on the question of race. During this period his views on race were arguably more progressive and in tune with modern standards than any other white academic of the time, with, of course, the exception of Boas,who is sometimes credited with doing more than any other American in combating the theory of White supremacy. Ward, given his age and reputation, could afford to take a somewhat radical stand on the politically explosive question of White supremacy, but Boas did not have those advantages. After Ward's death in 1913 and with the approach of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
the German-born Boas came to be seen by some, including W.H. Holmes, the head of National Research Council
United States National Research Council
The National Research Council of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academies, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.The National Academies include:* National Academy of Sciences...
(and who had worked with Ward for many years at the U.S. Geological Survey), as possibly being an agent of the German government determined to sow revolution in the US and among its troops. The NRC had been set up by the Wilson administration in 1916 in response to the increased need for scientific and technical services caused by World War I, and soon Boas's influence over the field of anthropology the US began to wane. By 1919 he was censured by the American Anthropological Association
American Anthropological Association
The American Anthropological Association is a professional organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 11,000 members, the Arlington, Virginia based association includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, biological anthropologists, linguistic...
for his political activities, a censure which would not be lifted until 2005. (See also: Scientific racism
Scientific racism
Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...
, Master race
Master race
Master race was a phrase and concept originating in the slave-holding Southern US. The later phrase Herrenvolk , interpreted as 'master race', was a concept in Nazi ideology in which the Nordic peoples, one of the branches of what in the late-19th and early-20th century was called the Aryan race,...
, and Institutional racism
Institutional racism
Institutional racism describes any kind of system of inequality based on race. It can occur in institutions such as public government bodies, private business corporations , and universities . The term was coined by Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael in the late 1960s...
) (the source for the information about Boas is Gossett, Thomas F.; Race: The History of an Idea in America)
Lamarckianism
Ward is often categorized as been a follower of Jean-Baptiste LamarckJean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck , often known simply as Lamarck, was a French naturalist...
. However, as Ward's article "Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Lamarckism" shows, Ward had a sophisticated understanding of this subject. While he clearly described himself as being a Neo-Lamarckian, he completely and enthusiastically accepted Darwin's findings and theories. On the other hand, he believed that, logically, there had to be a mechanism that would allow environmental factors to influence evolution faster than Darwin's rather slow evolutionary process. The modern theory of Epigenetics
Epigenetics
In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – hence the name epi- -genetics...
suggests that Ward was correct on this issue, although old-school Darwinians continue to ridicule Larmarkianism.
Ward's Positivism
While Durkheim is usually credited for updating Comte's positivismPositivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
to modern scientific and sociological standards, Ward accomplished much the same thing 10 years earlier in the United States. However, Ward would be the last person to claim that his contributions were somehow unique or original to him. As Gillis J. Harp points out in "The Positivist Republic", Comte's positivism found a fertile ground in the democratic republic of the United States, and there soon developed among the pragmatic intellectual community in New York City, which featured such thinkers as William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
and Charles Sanders Peirce and, on the other hand, among the federal government scientists in Washington D.C. (like Ward) a general consensus regarding positivism.
Ward's Influence on Academic Sociology
Despite Ward's impressive and ground breaking accomplishments he has been largely written out of the history of sociology. Why? Paradoxically the thing that made Ward most attractive in the 19th century, his criticism of lassiez-faire, made him seem dangerously radical to the ever-cautious academic community in early 20th century America. This perception was strengthened by the growing socialist movement in the US, led by Eugene V. DebsEugene V. Debs
Eugene Victor Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the International Labor Union and the Industrial Workers of the World , and several times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States...
, the Marxist Russian Revolution, and the rise of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
in Europe. Ward was basically just replaced by Durkheim in the history books, which was easily accomplished because Durkheim's views were similar to Ward's but without the relentless criticism of lassiez-faire and without Ward's calls for a strong central government and "social engineering". In 1937 Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons
Talcott Parsons was an American sociologist who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1927 to 1973....
, the Harvard sociologist and functionalist who almost single-handedly set American sociology's academic curriculum in the mid-20th century, wrote that "Spencer is dead", thereby dismissing not only Spencer but also Spencer's most powerful critic.
Ward's Journals
It would be interesting to know Ward's candid views on the controversial political subjects and the people of the time (and that he was interested in these topics can be seen in the rather odd introduction to the second edition of "Dynamic Sociology" were he talks at length about the situation in per-revolutionary Russia and jokes about Dynamic Sociology being mistranslated as "Dynamite Socialism"). However, all but the first of his voluminous journals were reportedly destroyed by his wife after his death. Ward's first journal, "Young Ward's diary: A human and eager record of the years between 1860 and 1870...", remains under copyright and one could always hope that more of his writings may reappear at some future date.Ward's Influence on U.S. Government Policy
Ward had strong influence on a rising generation of progressive political leaders, such as Herbert CrolyHerbert Croly
Herbert David Croly was an intellectual leader of the Progressive Movement as an editor, and political philosopher and a co-founder of the magazine The New Republic in early twentieth-century America...
. In the book "Lester Ward and the Welfare State", Commager details Ward's influence and refers to him as the "father of the modern welfare state".
As a political approach, Ward's system became known as social liberalism
Social liberalism
Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it believes the legitimate role of the state includes addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding...
, as distinguished from the classical liberalism
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which featured such thinkers as Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
and John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
. While classical liberalism had sought prosperity and progress through laissez-fare, Ward's "American social liberalism" sought to enhance social progress through direct government intervention. Ward believed that in large, complex and rapidly growing societies human freedom could only be achieved with the assistance of a strong democratic government acting in the interest of the individual. The characteristic element of Ward's thinking was his faith that government, acting on the empirical and scientifically based findings of the science of sociology, could be harnessed to create a near Utopian social order.
Ward's thinking had a profound impact on the administrations of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
, Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
and Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
and on the modern Democratic Party. The "liberalism" of the Democrats today is not that of Smith and Mill, which stressed non-interference from the government in economic issues, but of Ward, which stressed the unique position of government to effect positive change. While Roosevelt's experiments in social engineering were popular and effective, the full effect of the forces Ward set in motion came to bear half a century after his death, in the Great Society
Great Society
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States promoted by President Lyndon B. Johnson and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice...
programs of President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
and the Vietnam war
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
.
Ward realized that the path to human progress was not easy or smooth. His hope was that the "science" of sociology, which was but in its infancy, would allow government officials to learn from their past mistakes.
Ward died in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. He is buried in Watertown, New York.
Critique
Ward's view of sociology as a science potentially equal in quality to the physical sciences has been called into question. Sociology is a social science, but one of the weakest. The term "science" imputes a veracity to the study of sociology that this discipline simply does not have. Since its inception by people such as Ward and Max Weber, a social democrat lawyer and political activist, sociology has been a politically oriented study, aimed at the creation of a welfare state-type system. In the 20th century a new generation of conservative economists and conservative thinkers, such as Ludwig von MisesLudwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal who had a significant influence on the modern Libertarian movement and the "Austrian School" of economic thought.-Biography:-Early life:...
, Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August Hayek CH , born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek, was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought...
and Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick was an American political philosopher, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia , a right-libertarian answer to John Rawls's A Theory of Justice...
expanded on the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, arguing that the decentralized market economy
Market economy
A market economy is an economy in which the prices of goods and services are determined in a free price system. This is often contrasted with a state-directed or planned economy. Market economies can range from hypothetically pure laissez-faire variants to an assortment of real-world mixed...
was superior to centralized government control, both practically and ethically. In 1971 David Halberstam's remarkable work, The Best and the Brightest documented the perfidy of the elite bureaucrats of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, both heavily influenced by Ward, in promoting State welfare and the Vietnam War. H. R. McMaster's work, Dereliction of Duty, goes even further in its critique. Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades...
's Nobel prize-winning work, Capitalism and Freedom, rose above the philosophic duel between Ward and Spencer over social Darwinism and made the case for the dependence of political freedom on economic freedom. It is at this point of intellectual history that Ward's Statist philosophy can be regarded as refuted, and his non sequitir of seeing in centralized State power the freedoms of the individual guaranteed, as fully exposed.
As far as Ward's relationship to Marx is concerned, Ward can rightly be called a soft Marxist, since he sought Marxian ends (universal, state-controlled education and social redress through an empowered government) through non-revolutionary means. Like Marx he supported a cradle-to-grave caretaker government, a system subsequently rejected by once Communist Russia, yet currently bankrupting Europe and the United States.
Ward was a highly influential intellectual figure, one whose thinking influenced both political parties in the sixties, but one whose views have subsequently proven false. The Reagan Revolution, while certainly not reverting to social Darwinism, grew out of the public realization of the failure of Ward's system. In this sense, both Ward and his social Darwinist antagonists were wrong. Democratic freedoms are completely contrary to the static, classist ideas of upper-class advocates such as William Graham Sumner, whose real impetus seems to have been to justify the robber barons, nor is Ward's paternalistic caretaker state even plausibly supportive of an active and participatory democracy.
Quotes
"In many respects the botanist looks at the world from a point of view precisely the reverse of that of other people. Rich fields of corn are to him waste lands; cities are his abhorrence, and great open areas under high cultivation he calls 'poor country'; while on the other hand the impenetrable forest delights his gaze, the rocky cliff charms him, thin-soiled barrens, boggy fens, and unreclaimable swamps and morasses are for him the finest land in a State. He takes no delight in the 'march of civilization,' the ax and the plow are to him symbols of barbarism, and the reclaiming of waste lands and opening up of his favorite haunts to civilization he instinctively denounces as acts of vandalism." -- Lester Ward"Every implement or utensil, every mechanical device...is a triumph of mind over the physical forces of nature in ceaseless and aimless competition. All human institutions—religion, government, law, marriage, custom—together with innumerable other modes of regulating social, industrial and commercial life are, broadly viewed, only so many ways of meeting and checkmating the principle of competition as it manifests itself in society." --Lester Ward
"Thus far, social progress has in a certain awkward manner taken care of itself, but in the near future it will have to be cared for. To do this, and maintain the dynamic condition against all the hostile forces which thicken with every new advance, is the real problem of sociology considered as an applied science" --Lester Ward
"To overcome [the] manifold hindrances to human progress, to check this enormous waste of resources, to calm these rhythmic billows of hyper-action and reaction, to secure the rational adaptation of means to remote ends, to prevent the natural forces from clashing with the human feelings, to make the current of physical phenomena flow in the channels of human advantage - these are some of the tasks which belong to the great art which forms the final or active department of the science of society - this, in brief, is DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY. “Voir pour prévoir";(1*) "prévoyance, d'où action,"(2*) i.e., predict in order to control, such is the logical history and process of all science; and, if sociology is a science, such must be its destiny and its legitimate function." --Lester Ward
"Again, society desires most the education of those most needing to be educated. From an economical point of view, an uneducated class is an expensive class. It is from it that most criminals, drones, and paupers come. From it—and this is still more important—no progressive actions ever flow. Therefore, society is most anxious that this class, which would never educate itself, should be educated...The secret of the superiority of state over private education lies in the fact that in the former the teacher is responsible to society ... [T]he result desired by the state is a wholly different one from that desired by parents, guardians, and pupils." --Lester Ward
"And now, mark : The charge of paternalism is chiefly made by the class that enjoys the largest share of government protection. Those who denounce state interference are the ones who most frequently and successfully invoke it. The cry of laissez faire mainly goes up from the ones who, if really "let alone," would instantly lose their wealth-absorbing power.... Nothing is more obvious to-day than the signal inability of capital and private enterprise to take care of themselves unaided by the state; and while they are incessantly denouncing "paternalism," by which they mean the claim of the defenceless laborer and artisan to a share in this lavish state protection, they are all the while besieging legislatures for relief from their own incompetency, and "pleading the baby act" through a trained body of lawyers and lobbyists. The dispensing of national pap to this class should rather be called "maternalism," to which a square, open, and dignified paternalism would be infinitely preferable." --Lester Ward
"When a well-clothed philosopher on a bitter winter’s night sits in a warm room well lighted for his purpose and writes on paper with pen and ink in the arbitrary characters of a highly developed language the statement that civilisation is the result of natural laws, and that man’s duty is to let nature alone so that untrammeled it may work out a higher civilisation, he simply ignores every circumstance of his existence and deliberately closes his eyes to every fact within the range of his faculties. If man had acted upon his theory there would have been no civilisation, and our philosopher would have remained a troglodyte." – --Lester Ward
"In perspicacity, intellectual acumen, and imagination, he [Lester Ward] was the equal of Henry Adams or Thorstein Velben or Louis Sullivan, but he was better rounded and more constructive than these major critics. In the rugged vigor of his mind, the richness of his learning, the originality of his insights, the breath of his conceptions, he takes place alongside William James, John Dewey and Oliver Wendell Holmes as one of the creative spirits of Twentieth-century America." – --Henry Steele Commager
Literature
- Becker, Ernest; Escape From Evil; Free Press, reissue edition; 1985.
- Burnham, John C. Lester Frank Ward in American thought. Washington, D.C., 1956. http://books.google.com/books?id=4Q_5F1gu-mMC&printsec=titlepage&dq=Burnham,+John+C.+Lester+Frank+Ward+in+American+thought.&source=gbs_toc_s&cad=1
- Cape, Emily Palmer; Lester F. Ward: A Personal Sketch http://www.archive.org/details/lesterfwardperso00capeiala
- Chugerman, S Lester F. Ward, The American Aristotle (1939, repr. 1965).
- Chriss, James J. (2006): "The Place of Lester Ward among the Sociological Classics," Journal of Classical Sociology 6 (1): 5-21.
- Commager, Henry Steele; The American Mind; Chapter 10: Lester Ward and the Science of Society; Yale University Press; 1950. http://books.google.com/books?id=De5sdTFRt5YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=commager+the+american+mind&sig=ACfU3U11MMq0SqETx--ZijN4Kuqs-4hgkA#v=onepage&q=what%20sumner%20did%20not%20see&f=false
- Commager, Henry Steele, ed.; Lester Ward and the Welfare State. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967.
- Coser, Lewis; A History of Sociological Analysis, Basic Books, New York http://www.sociology.ccsu.edu/adair/american_trends_by_lewis_coser.htm
- Dahms,Harry F.; Lester F. Ward http://web.utk.edu/~hdahms/Ward.pdf
- Finlay, Barbara; Lester Frank Ward as a Sociologist Of Gender: A New Look at His Sociological Work; Gender & Society, Vol. 13, No. 2, 251-265 (1999) http://gas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/251
- Gossett, Thomas F.; Race: The History of an Idea in America, pg. 160 http://books.google.com/books?id=WUucYTW6ug0C&pg=PP1&dq=Race:+the+history+of+an+idea+in+America&client=opera#v=onepage&q=&f=false
- Harp, Gillis J.; Positivist Republic, Ch. 5 "Lester F. Ward: Positivist Whig" http://books.google.com/books?id=8M_6u9DO7PwC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0
- Hofstadter, Richard.; Social Darwinism in American Thought, Chapter 4, (original 1944, 1955; reprint Boston: Beacon Press, 1992). http://books.google.com/books?id=Ty8aEmWc_ekC&dq=Social+Darwinism+in+American+Thought&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=ahuvSd3ENJ6DtwfatZn-BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result
- Largey, Gale; Lester Ward: A Global Sociologist http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/3/7/7/0/pages237708/p237708-1.php
- Mers, Adelheid; Fusion http://adelheidmers.org/aweb/fusion.pdf
- Perlstadt,Harry; Applied Sociology as Translational Research: A One Hundred Fifty Year Voyage http://www.msu.edu/~perlstad/History_Applied_Sociology_H_Perlstadt_Jun_05.pdf
- Rafferty, Edward C.; Apostle of Human Progress. Lester Frank Ward and American Political Thought, 1841/1913. http://books.google.com/books?id=4Q_5F1gu-mMC&source=gbs_navlinks_s
- Ravitch, Diane; Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms; Simon & Schuster; Chapter one: The Educational Ladder http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/r/ravitch-back.html
- Ross, John R.; Man over Nature: the origins of the conservation movement https://journals.ku.edu/index.php/amerstud/article/view/2348/2307
- Ross, Dorthy; The Origins of American Social Science; Cambridge University Press http://books.google.com/books?id=rg4blh6xmhIC&pg=PA85&dq=%22beginnings+of+sociology%22+Dorothy+Ross&num=50&client=opera&sig=ACfU3U3yskKN_N59SPWMHWZttxk4Oo48MQ
- Seidelman,Raymond and Harpham, Edward J.; Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis, 1884–1984; pg. 26 http://books.google.com/books?id=09-ZDrzUz-gC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0
- Wood, Clement; The Sociology Of Lester F Ward http://www.archive.org/details/sociologyofleste033176mbp
Major works
Ward's major works can be found here: http://www.geocities.ws/ralf_schreyer/ward/lesterward.html and here: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Ward%2C%20Lester- (1881) Guide to the Flora of Washington, D.C. and Vicinity, 1881.
- (1883) Dynamic Sociology—Or Applied social science as based upon statical sociology and the less complex sciences (2 vols.)
- (1885) Sketch of Paleo-Botany
- (1887) Types of the Laramie Flora
- (1891) Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Lamarckism
- (1893) The Psychic Factors of Civilization
- (1893-5) The Potomac formation
- (1895–97) Contributions to Social Philosophy
- (1898) Outlines of Sociology
- (1902) Contemporary Sociology
- (1903) Pure Sociology. A Treatise on the Origin and Spontaneous Development of Society
- (1905) Status of the Mesozoic floras of the United States
- (1905) A Text-book of Sociology
- (1906) Applied Sociology. A Treatise on the Conscious Improvement of Society by Society
- (1913–18) Glimpses of the Cosmos. A Mental Autobiography. (6 vols.)
- "Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Lamarckism" (1891) http://www.archive.org/details/neodarwinismand00washgoog
- "Contributions to Social Philosophy. V. Sociology and Psychology." American Journal of Sociology 1 (1896): 618-632. http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Ward/Ward_1896b.html
- "SOCIAL CLASSES IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY" American Journal of Sociology, 1907-08 http://books.google.com/books?id=TsM-zbaqVAYC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=lester+f+ward&source=web&ots=5DkiL47CzI&sig=yhCeXL-pkFU9HRl9ClaUTP265OQ&hl=en
- "Eugenics, Euthenics, and Eudemics", American Journal of Sociology, 1913 http://books.google.com/books?id=KDEZAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA382&dq=Eugenics,+Euthenics,+and+Eudemics.+Lester+F+Ward&hl=en&ei=vIFATZJig4LyBvm_6agE&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
See also
The documentary Lester F. Ward: A Life's Journey (108 minutes) examines the life and ideas of Lester Ward.It begins with his childhood and follows him as a young man, a soldier in the Civil War, his work with John Wesley Powell as a paleontologist, and his extensive communications with a wide range of European sociologists. Described as "the American Aristotle" Ward was an "apostle of human progress" who vigorously advocated for public education and the rights of women and minorities. The noted feminist Charlotte Gilman described Ward as "one of the world's greatest men" and dedicated her book The Man-Made World to him. Nonetheless Ward vehemently opposed her support of the eugenics movement. As he put it, "People are equal in all except privilege."www.galelargey.com
- History of feminismHistory of feminismThe history of feminism involves the story of feminist movements and of feminist thinkers. Depending on time, culture and country, feminists around the world have sometimes had different causes and goals...
External links
- The Young and the Neuro
- Like Water for Money
- Mathematical Fortune-Telling
- Rethinking What Leads the Way: Science, or New Technology?
- Government's end: why Washington stopped working
- The Happiest People
- The Real Crisis in Government
- Lester Ward's papers at George Washington University
- Ralf Schreyer's Lester Ward web site – Several complete primary and secondary sources, including some excellent photographs of Ward
- Short biography
- Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7321 - Lester Frank Ward Papers, 1882–1913, with Related Materials to Circa 1965.
- American Sociological Association - Lester Ward
- The Sunday Review; Towanda, Pennsylvania
- A Lester Ward web site
- Public Sociology website
- Mansfield professor makes documentary on Lester Frank Ward