A 1930s North American Creative Community: The Harvard “Pareto Circleâ€

Annie L. Cot

History of Political Economy, 2011, vol. 43, issue 1, 131-159

Abstract: Academic seminars are a rather recent invention. Among the seminars that flourished at Harvard during the late 1920s and early 1930s, one played a major role in creating what Margaret Gilbert (1989, 2000) calls a “joint commitment†of its members. Organized by Lawrence J. Henderson, it was centered on Vilfredo Pareto’s Trattato di sociologia generale, first published in 1916. Within this circle, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and specialists in industrial relations elaborated collectively both a new set of scientific beliefs and a new methodology for each of their own disciplines. Their joint commitment took the form of a common epistemological credo, according to which all social sciences needed to be restructured around a common “conceptual scheme,†expressed in terms of “general equilibrium.â€

Keywords: Lawrence J. Henderson; Vilfredo Pareto; Harvard University (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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