Pure Sociology: A Treatise on the Origin and Spontaneous Development of Society 1919
(Originally published in 1919. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1919. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
Report on the Petrified Forests of Arizona (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Report on the Petrified Forests of Arizona
...)
Excerpt from Report on the Petrified Forests of Arizona
Perhaps the most prominent of all the scenic features of the region is the well-known Natural Bridge, consisting of a great petrified trunk lying across a canyon and forming a footbridge over which anyone may easily pass. For reasons that will be obvious, the full treatment of this feature is deferred to a more appropriate place.
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Dynamic Sociology, Or Applied Social Science: As Based Upon Statical Sociology and the Less Complex Sciences (V.2 ) (1883)
(Originally published in 1883. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1883. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
Dynamic Sociology, or Applied Social Science, Vol. 1 of 2: As Based Upon Statical Sociology and the Less Complex Sciences (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Dynamic Sociology, or Applied Social Science...)
Excerpt from Dynamic Sociology, or Applied Social Science, Vol. 1 of 2: As Based Upon Statical Sociology and the Less Complex Sciences
A growing sense of the essential sterility of all that has thus far been done in the domain of social science has furnished the chief incentive to the preparation of this work.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
(Originally published in 1913-18. This volume from the Cor...)
Originally published in 1913-18. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
Lester Frank Ward was an American paleobotanist, sociologist, and educator.
He was the leading American opponent of social Darwinism and of impotent government.
Background
Lester Frank Ward was born on 18 June, 1841 in Joliet, Illinois, the youngest of 10 children born to Justus Ward and his wife Silence Rolph Ward. Justus Ward (d. 1858) 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 Downers 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.
Education
Ward first attended a formal school at St. Charles, Kane County, Illinois, 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, liberally supplementing his education with outside reading.
He graduated at Columbian (now George Washington) University in 1869 and from the law school of the same university in 1871, his education having been delayed by his service in the Union army during the Civil War.
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.
Career
He wrote much on paleobotany, including A Sketch of Paleobotany (1885), The Geographical Distribution of Fossil Plants (188S) and The Status of the Mesozoic Floras of the United States (1905).
He is better known, however, for his work in sociology, in which, modifying Herbert Spencer and refuting the Spencerian individualism, he paralleled social with psychological and physical phenomena.
His more important works are: Dynamic Sociology (1883, 2nd ed.
1897), Psychic Factors of Civilization (1897), Outlines of Sociology (1898), Sociology and Economics (1899), Pure Sociology (1903), and, with J. Q. Dealy, Text-Book of Sociology (1905).
Achievements
His published works in sociology were so well received that, without an academic position, he was elected president of the American Sociological Society in 1906 and 1907.
Ward influenced a rising generation of progressive political leaders, such as Herbert Croly.
His belief that society could be scientifically controlled was especially attractive to intellectuals during the Progressive Era.
His influence in certain circles was affected by his opinions regarding organized priesthoods, which he believed had been responsible for more evil than good throughout human history.
Ward emphasized the importance of social forces which could be guided at a macro level by the use of intelligence to achieve conscious progress, rather than allowing evolution to take its own erratic course as proposed by William Graham Sumner and Herbert Spencer.
Ward emphasized universal and comprehensive public schooling to provide the public with the knowledge a democracy needs to successfully govern itself.
Quotations:
"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. "
"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. "
Membership
He was a member of the American Sociological Association.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
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".
Connections
It was while attending the Susquehanna Collegiate Institute that he met Elizabeth "Lizzie" Carolyn Vought (some sources cite Bought), and fell deeply in love.
Their "rather torrid love affair" was documented in Ward's first journal Young Ward's Diary. They married on August 13, 1862.
Lizzie assisted him in editing a newsletter called "The Iconoclast, " dedicated to free thinking and attacks on organized religion. She gave birth to a son, but the child died when he was less than a year old. Lizzie died in 1872.
Rosamond Asenath Simons was married to Lester F. Ward as his second wife in the year 1873.
