Historians From The United States

"The Marxist historian Robert M. Young (1985), building on the long-standing suspicion that the selection theory reflects the competitive ethos of Victorian capitalism, has undertaken a sustained critique of Darwinism intended to show that scientific knowledge reflects the values of those who generate it."

"Alexander Bain was probably the first modern thinker whose primary concern was with psychology itself He has been credited with writing the first 'comprehensive treatise having psychology as its sole purpose'. His two-volume systematic work, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859), was the standard British text for almost half a century, until Stout's replaced it. He also founded Mind (1876-), the first psychological journal in any country. His work requires close attention, because it is the meeting-point of experimental sensory-motor physiology and the association psychology. His influence on the conceptions of later workers was direct and extremely important. Ferrier studied classics and philosophy under Bain at Aberdeen (first class honours, 1863). When he and Jackson acknowledge their intellectual debts or make references to psychology, the names most often mentioned are Bain and Spencer-the figures whose work was the culmination of the association psychology in its traditional form."

"People are always asking about the good old days. I say, why don't you say the good now days?"

"Of the many references to Newton in 18th-century electrical writings only a small number were to the Principia, the greater part by far were to the Opticks. This was true not alone of the electrical writings but also in other fields of experimental enquiry. ...[The Opticks] would allow the reader to roam, with great Newton as his guide, through the major unresolved problems of science and even the relation of the whole world of nature to Him who had created it. ...in the Opticks Newton did not adopt the motto... —Hypotheses non fingo; I frame no hypotheses—but, so to speak, let himself go, allowing his imagination full reign and by far exceeding the bounds of experimental evidence."

"Galileo had the experience of beholding the heavens as they actually are for perhaps the first time, and wherever he looked he found evidence to support the Copernican system against the Ptolemaic, or at least weaken the authority of the ancients. This shattering experience—of observing the depths of the universe, of being the first mortal to know what the heavens are actually like—made so deep an impression... that it is only by considering the events of 1609... that one can understand the subsequent direction of his life."

"Opticks was out of harmony with the ideas of 19th-century physics. ...an exposition of the "wrong" (i.e., corpuscular) theory of light,—even though it also contained many of the basic principles of the "correct" (i.e., wave) theory. Not only had Newton erred in his choice... but also he apparently had found no insuperable difficulty in simultaneously embracing features of two opposing theories. ...by adopting a combination of the two theories at once, he had violated one of the major canons of 19th-century physics... Today our point of view is influenced by the theory of photons and matter waves, or the... complementarity of Niels Bohr; and we may read with a new interest Newtons ideas on the interaction of light and matter or his explanation of the corpuscular and undulatory aspects of light."

"Proud of being the first American to receive a doctorate expressly in the history of science (as opposed to writing a thesis for a history department), I Bernard Cohen went on to lead the professionalization of the discipline and to establish a flagship history of science department at Harvard."

"The pioneering practitioners of the new science knew that they were producing a new kind of knowledge and so they declared this newness in the titles of their books and articles. Thus we have Galileo's Two New Sciences, Boyle's New Experiments, Kepler's New Astronomy, and Tartaglia's New Science. When Ben Jonson presented a masque entitled "News from the New World," his new world was not the newly found continent of North America, but the new world of science, the world revealed by the telescope of Galileo."

"The seventeenth century witnessed the birth of modern science as we know it today. The science was something new, based on a direct confrontation of nature by experiment and observation. But there was another feature of the new science—a dependence on numbers, on real numbers of actual experience. ...The ancients knew a few numerical laws... But prior to the Scientific Revolution, the goal of science (or the study of nature) was not to seek laws of nature expressed in terms of numbers or number relations. ...the new science ...not only found laws based on numbers but they were also willing to express these laws in terms of higher powers of numbers—squares and cubes."

"By contrast, Galileo, the other legendary scientific figure of the era, not only published the most compelling critique of Aristotelian scholasticism in his Dialogues on the Two Chief World Systems, but in the process turned the issue of the epistemic authority of theology versus the epistemic authority of empirical science into a hallmark of modern times. Although Newton clearly sympathized with Galileo, he wrote virtually nothing critical of the Aristotelian tradition in philosophy, and the immense effort he devoted to theology was aimed not at challenging its epistemic authority, but largely at putting it on a firmer footing. Newton made no direct contributions to philosophy of a similar magnitude. Indeed, from his extant writings alone Newton has more claim to being a major theologian than a major philosopher."

"Isaac Newton deserves to be included in a series of companions to major philosophers even though he was not a philosopher in the sense in which Descartes, Locke, and Kant were philosophers. That is, Newton made no direct contributions to epistemology or metaphysics that would warrant his inclusion in the standard list of major philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant – or even in a list of other significant philosophers of the era – Bacon, Hobbes, Arnauld, Malebranche, Wolff, and Reid. The contributions to knowledge that made Newton a dominant figure of the last millennium were to science, not to philosophy."

"His conflict with the Catholic Church arose because deep in his heart Galileo was a believer. There was for him no path of compromise, no way to have separate secular and theological cosmologies. If the Copernican system was true as he believed, what else could Galileo do but fight with every weapon he had in his arsenal... to make his Church accept a new system of the universe. ...In the contrast between Galileo's heroic stand when he tried to reform the cosmological basis of orthodox theology and his humbled, kneeling surrender when he disavowed his Copernicanism, we may sense the tremendous forces attendant on the birth of modern science."

"The creation of Modern France through expansion goes back to the establishment of a small kingdom in the area around Paris in the late tenth century and was not completed until the incorporation of Nice and Savoy in 1860. The existing "hexagon" was the result of a long series of wars and conquests involving the triumph of French language and culture over what once were autonomous and culturally distinctive communities. The assimilation of Gascons, Savoyards, Occitans, Basques, and others helped to sustain the myth that French overseas expansionism in the nineteenth century, especially to North and West Africa, was a continuation of the same assimilationist project."

"It seems to me that the United States and France can learn from each other. French universalism, or its equivalent, is a powerful weapon against racism, which is based on the belief in innate unalterable differences among human groups. Stressing what rights all people have because of what they have in common remains at the heart of anti-racism. A stronger awareness of such human commonality may be needed in the United States at a time when a stress on diversity and ethnic particularism may deprive us of any compelling vision of the larger national community and impede cooperation in the pursuit of a free and just society. On the other hand the identification of such universalism with a particular national identity and with specific cultural traits that go beyond essential human rights can lead to an intolerance of the Other that approaches color-coded racism in its harmful effects."

"As open systems, organizations faced an environment that might be placid and benevolent, or turbulent and harsh. Economic, social, political, and technological changes could come rapidly or slowly, and some organizational arrangements might be better able to cope with the changing environment than others. Could it be that there was no one way to structure an organization that design was influenced by environmental factors and could vary, depending on technology?"

"Although the Gordon and Howell report noted the diversity of approaches to the study of management, it was Harold Koontz who delineated the differences and applied the catchy label ‘‘management theory jungle.’’"

"Mooney's unpublished paper “The Science of Industrial Organization” (1929) portrays GM's multidivisional organization's use of the line-staff concept in organizing overseas assembly plants. Here I compare General Motors with Ford Motor Company, which had first-mover advantages overseas, and examine how each company organized and managed their international operations. “Linking pins,” a social-science concept, illustrates how GM's organizational hierarchy achieved vertical coordination of effort."

"Wren and Bedeian 2008 is the most important management history book, and it is the one most widely used as a primary source in courses on management history."

"Historian Daniel A. Wren says that operations research/ management science has "… roots in scientific management." Like Taylor and the Gilbreths, today's management scientists use research and analysis to find optimal solutions to management problems. Modern-day management scientists, of course, use much more sophisticated mathematical tools and computers. And management science's goal is not to try to find a “science of management” but “to use scientific analysis and tools to solve management problems.”"

"The Management of Innovation (1961) [by Tom Burns and George M. Stalker is]... the first major attempt to deal with the nature of organization-environment relations and identify the types of organizational structure and managerial practices that are appropriate for different environmental condition. Introduced the mechanistic-organic polarity (never a dichotomy) to the management lexicon."

"Management as an activity has always existed to make people’s desires through organized effort. Management facilitates the efforts of people in organized groups and arises when people seek to cooperate to achieve goals."

"Prior to 1952, when M. Ventris first published his decipherment of the 'Linear B' tablets from Crete and Greece, showing that they were Greek, everyone assumed that Hebrew was recorded in writing before Greek. But now... we are reading Linear B Greek texts, written before the birth of Abraham (let alone before the date of any known Hebrew text)."

"Professor Gordon has made himself at home in both the Semitic and Indo-European compartments of philology. This makes it possible for him to do things and to see things that are beyond a single compartment scholar's horizon."

"During the 1960's Cyrus Gordon, a respected professor of the Semitic languages and an ardent diffusionist, revived the Paraíba Stone's claims to authenticity. Basically Gordon asserted that the Paraíba inscription contained Phoenician grammatical constructions unknown in 1872. These same constructions were originally used in the 1870's to argue against the stone's authenticity. Subsequent research during the twentieth century, Gordon said, revealed that the anomalous grammatical usages in the Paraíba Stone were genuine. Other equally qualified specialists disagree with his conclusions and continue to declare the Paraíba Stone a hoax. That opinion remains the judgement of archeologists and historians in general."

"In 1894 Cyrus Thomas, a Smithsonian Institution archeologist, identified the Bat Creek site as a Cherokee burial ground. That identification has been challenged in the twentieth century by various writers including the irrepressible Cyrus Gordon, professor of Semitic languages. They claim that the Bat Creek inscription is Hebrew and related to the Bar Kochba rebellion that took place during AD 135 in Roman Judea. Gordon attempted to bolster the theory by pointing out that the Bat Creek inscription ties in quite nicely with various finds of Roman and Bar Kochba coins in the Kentucky and Tennessee area. Unfortunately, experts consider these finds to be fakes. Gordon's willingness to consider the possibility that these inscriptions were made by refugees from the defeat of the Jewish Revolt in AD 70 does not help his case because the arguments against it are almost as strong as those against the Bar Kochba rebellion."

"Dr. Gordon... contended that Hebrew inscriptions many centuries old had been found at two sites in the southeastern United States. Frank Moore Cross said... that Dr. Gordon was "in many ways a great scholar" but that this belief "simply did not make sense.""

"Cyrus Gordon is a brilliant linguist and one of the greatest living Semitists. Despite attempts by his enemies to replace it, his pioneering Ugaritic Grammar remains the standard work on the first new Semitic language to be discovered this century. Nevertheless, for the past thirty years he has been on the fringes of academia and most scholars consider him to be a crank. This is partly because his sins or errors are not ones of omission – towards which academia is extremely lenient – but of commission, which are considered irredeemably heinous. Moreover, his attempts to demonstrate the existence of Phoenician or even early Jewish influence on America are so far from conventional wisdom as to make him appear ludicrous. This means that all his original work can be, and has been, brushed aside with contempt."

"If archeology had yielded only the Epic of Kret, we would have enough to bridge the gap between the Iliad and Genesis. But... our new sources are so rich that we have only begun... The years ahead bid fair to be the most fruitful in the annals of Classical and Biblical scholarship. Our debt to the Bible and Classics is so great that this type of research will deepen our understanding of our culture and of ourselves."

"The prevailing view is simply that the Judges were inspired, not hereditary leaders. But this misses the point; the Judges were normally from the ruling aristocracy, quite like the kings in Homer. ...The kings did not necessarily inherit rulership from their fathers but sometimes did, like Odysseus from Laertes, or Abimelech from Gideon. ...the kings came from the fighting and landed aristocracy..."

"Aristocrats (among Hebrews and Greeks) often had harems that included women of common or even servile origin, as well as well-born aristocratic ladies. Normally, the successors would be chosen from the sons born by ladies; but on occasion those born by servile or common wives achieved the ascendency. In the latter case, tradition could dwell on the phenomenon as "worthy of saga.""

"The central problem of the Greek tragedies is why we suffer so at the hands of God. The movement that evoked Greek tragedy in the fifth century B.C. was spread over the East Mediterranean evoking a parallel response in Israel. ...And as in Greek tragedy, Job deals with the problem of why man suffers so at the had of God."

"Battles ended with sunset or dusk; so heroes, on special occasions when they needed more time, were vouchsafed victory by the stoppage of the sun in Greek as well as Hebrew saga."

"The Conquest of Joshua could not have been a primitive assault, because a civilized land like Canaan with well-fortified cities could easily have repulsed an attack that was militarily naïve. ...Spies were sent to search out the land and lay the groundwork."

"The function of reciting (actually chanting—for Scripture and national epic were sung, not read) Pentateuch and Homer at national reunions is the same in both cases. The narrative knits the segments of the nation together telling how they achieved their place in history in the course of a great event (The Exodus or the Trojan War). All of the tribes and their leaders are heroic. The text brings in each tribe by name. ...there must be an honoured place for all."

"The Samaritans (whose beginnings were pre-Josianic) have a Pentateuch quite similar to the familiar Jewish Pentateuch. ...our Pentateuchal text was fairly well established before the rift between the Samaritans and Judeans."

"Scripture makes it clear that unlike the conceptions of Abraham and of Jacob, Isaac was conceived through divine agency. Like the Mycenaean Greek heroes, Isaac could claim paternity at two levels; the human and the divine. ...Normative Judaism has divested itself of this approach to the paternity of heroes, in spite of the tell-tale text in Genesis. Midrash does not hesitate to call Moses half-god and half-man. ...The Church tradition that connects the sacrifice of Isaac with the sacrifice of Christ apparently rests on a sound exegesis, for the sacrifice of Isaac would have meant not only the sacrifice of Abraham's son but of God's."

"The [Judaic] Patriarchs are depicted as Arameans as long as they remained in their native lands."

"Like Helen, Sarah is wonderously fair and ageless. ...Like Helen, Sarah's name means "princess" in normal Hebrew, and "queen" in Akkadian. It is conceivable that (like David afterwards, whose name dāvîd means "leader, chief") her title came to be used as her name."

"Once we recognize the factor of royal epic in Genesis, we see that the Helen-of-Troy motif permeates the Patriarchal Narratives. ...Like Helen and Hurrai, Sarah and Dinah are heroines according to the standards of royal epic."

"The most important document at Ugarit for both Biblical and Homeric studies is the Epic of Kret. It anticipates the Helen-of-Troy motif in the Iliad and Genesis, thus bridging the gap between the two literatures."

"Heroic epic and saga (Indic as well as Greek and Hebrew, etc.) combine action with genealogy. This is necessary because the action is performed by aristocrats who require genealogies."

"The incorporation of... earlier sources does not mean that the Pentateuch or Former Prophets is the work of an editor who pasted together various docuements. Once we view the work as a whole, we see that it is a fresh creation though not a creatio ex nihilo. The same holds for Homeric Epic that has been subjected to the same kinds of modern literary criticism."

"The Book [of Judges] as a whole gives a coherent picture of an era and propounds the thesis that the institutions of pre-monarchic Israel were so chaotic... that centralized, hereditary kingship was necessary."

"Minos has rightly been compared with Moses. Both are greater-than-life-size figures who received the law from the supreme god on the sacred mountain (see Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2: 61 concerning Minos)."

"Only two people in East Mediterranean antiquity developed [parallel tendecies towards] "canonical" Scripture: the Greeks and the Jews. The Greeks treated Homer as their Scripture par excellence, much as the Jews regarded the Bible. ...Hebrew and pagan Greek scriptures were each considered the divinely inspired guide for life."

"The older cultures did not develop the concept of canonical writings. There is no Bible in Egypt or Mesopotamia. Neither country had a collection of sacred writings that excluded other writings from comparable status. ...there was never an official "Book of the Dead" in Egypt."

"The ancients were not as denominationally minded as we in matters of their clergy. They were more concerned with obtaining services of a bona fide professional member of a priestley guild who was qualified to intercede between mortals and immortals, than with finding a religious leader whose sole qualification was like-mindedness."

"There is a large corpus of magical texts from Babylonia of the Sassanian Era, designed to exorcise demons. In these texts, which are mostly Jewish and Christian, the Indo-Iranian deities called daiva appear as demons. ...the demons of these texts are constantly appearing to women in the form of their husbands, and impregnating them. As a result, the names of the clients are always matronymic because no one could be sure of his paternity. ...both the Greeks and Iranians had such notions."

"When a new religion supplants an old religion, the gods of the old often survive as the demons of the new."

"If the entire aristocracy is of divine descent, Zeus (or El) cannot save the human son without upsetting the order of things. ...Hera reminds Zeus that many sons of gods are fighting around Troy, and that if Zeus spares his son, other gods will do the same for their sons, so that the earthly system will cease (Iliad 16: 445-449)"