K. E. Boulding | |
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| Born | Kenneth Ewart Boulding (1910-01-18)18 January 1910 Liverpool, UK |
| Died | 18 March 1993(1993-03-18) (aged 83) |
| Nationality | British, American |
| Alma mater | Oxford University |
| Known for | Boulding's Hierarchy Kenneth Boulding's evolutionary perspective Spaceship Earth Loss-of-strength gradient |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 5, includingWilliam Frederick Boulding |
| Awards | John Bates Clark Medal (1949) 33 honorary degrees[1]: 5 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Economics Systems theory Evolutionary economics |
| Institutions | University of Edinburgh Colgate University Iowa State University University of Michigan The University of the West Indies University of Colorado at Boulder |
| Part ofa series on |
| Ecological economics |
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 Humanity's economic system viewed as a subsystem of the global environment |
Concepts
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Kenneth Ewart Boulding (/ˈboʊldɪŋ/; January 18, 1910 – March 18, 1993) was an English-born Americaneconomist, educator, peace activist, and interdisciplinary philosopher.[2][3] Boulding was the author of twocitation classics:The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society (1956) andConflict and Defense: A General Theory (1962). He was co-founder ofgeneral systems theory and founder of numerous ongoing intellectual projects ineconomics andsocial science. He was married to sociologistElise M. Boulding.
Boulding was born and raised inLiverpool, England, the only child of William C. Boulding and Elizabeth Ann Boulding.[4] His father was a gas fitter and a lay preacher in theWesleyan Methodist Church,[5] and his mother was a housewife. Boulding's middle nameEwart came fromWilliam Ewart Gladstone, of whom his father was a great admirer.[6]: 367 In his adolescent years Boulding became interested inpacifism and joined theReligious Society of Friends.[7]
After attendingLiverpool Collegiate School on a scholarship, Boulding won a chemistry scholarship toOxford University atNew College in 1929. He soon transferred toPhilosophy, Politics and Economics.[6]: 367–368 His economics tutors wereHenry Phelps Brown, and Maurice Allen (1908–1988), who would become a director of theBank of England in the late 1960s. Boulding obtained aFirst in economics in 1931. In his last year he wrote "The Place of the 'Displacement Cost' Concept in Economic Theory", which was accepted and published inThe Economic Journal, after extensive comments by its editorJohn Maynard Keynes.[5]
On a small university scholarship Boulding spent another year at Oxford doing graduate work, which resulted in a thesis on capital movements. While he was turned down for a fellowship forChrist Church, Oxford, in 1932 he did win a Commonwealth Fellowship to theUniversity of Chicago. En route he became "quite well acquainted" withJoseph Schumpeter.[6]: 368–371
On the fellowship from 1932 to 1934, Boulding continued his economics studies at Chicago and at Harvard University.[7] AlthoughJacob Viner encouraged him to focus on his PhD work, he studied with Schumpeter, took classes fromHenry Schultz andFrank Knight, and wrote some of his own articles. At Chicago, he became friends with another graduate student,Albert Gailord Hart.[6]: 372–373
His studies with Schumpeter[8]: 2 were interrupted by aspontaneous pneumothorax ('collapsed lung'). After recovery he spent the last six months of his Commonwealth Fellowship in Chicago, writing articles oncapital theory.[6]: 373 Two of those articles, "The Application of the Pure Theory of Population Change to the Theory of Capital", and "The Theory of a Single Investment", were published inThe Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1934–1935, and were the topic ofFrank H. Knight's reflection[citation needed] the next year. After returning to the UK for three years, Boulding settled in the U.S. He was granted citizenship in 1948.
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Under the terms of his Commonwealth Fellowship Boulding returned to the UK in the summer of 1934, and obtained a three-year position in economics at theUniversity of Edinburgh.[9] Academic life at the university seemed very dead to him, and he made himself unpopular with a speech to students that was published inThe Scotsman with the headline, "Scottish University Sitting on Haunches for the last Fifty Years."
In those days Boulding was actively involved in theQuaker community, writing a pamphlet on nonviolent methods in 1936 and drafting a letter for the Friends to the prime minister, asking Britain to disclaim the "war guilt" clauses in the Treaty of Versailles and move toward a more just peace.[9]
During this period Boulding learned aboutPaton's (1922)Accounting Theory and the (1916)Principles of Accounting. He was influenced by Paton's approach and this led him to view thefirm as "governed by a principle that might be called thehomeostasis of the constant changing balance sheet". Boulding (1989) explained that: "In the short run, the firm simply responded to changes in the balance sheet resulting from purchases. When customers purchased finished goods, inventory went down, cash went up, and the cash would be spent on labour and materials to make more finished goods. This equilibrium balance sheet, however, would be constantly changing as technologies, new goods, and new enterprises came into play."[6]: 373–374
In 1935, in his second year in Edinburgh,Frank H. Knight published an article on his work, entitled "The theory of investment once more: Mr. Boulding and the Austrians," inThe Quarterly Journal of Economics. This brought Boulding at the age of 24 to prominence as a notable intellectual in the social sciences.[10]
In the summer of 1937 Boulding returned to the US to attend a world congress of Quakers inPhiladelphia. He obtained a faculty position in upstate New York atColgate University.[6]: 374 From 1937 to 1941 he taught economics there.[11] Fontaine (2010) summarized his stay:
... Boulding enjoyed the congenial surroundings of Colgate University. He did not feel alienated from his colleagues and acquaintances, as he had in British academic circles. For the first two years, social and professional life was fulfilling. But from September 1939, the invasion of Poland and his home country's declaration of war on Germany caused increasing emotional distress and strong feelings of hate against the Germans. His Quaker convictions were shaken until he had amystical experience in May 1940 which restored his faith in pacifism...[12]: 223
In a state of spiritual crisis Boulding managed to finish his textbook,Economic Analysis, which he had started in the free summer semesters at Colgate in the previous two years. This work would become a bestseller[8]: 2 and earned him even more respect in the field of economics.[12]: 223
From 1942 to 1943, Boulding taught atFisk University, ahistorically black school inNashville, Tennessee.
From 1945 to 1949 he was a faculty member of Iowa State College atAmes, Iowa, nowIowa State University.From 1949 to 1967 he was a faculty member of theUniversity of Michigan.
In 1967, he joined the faculty of theUniversity of Colorado at Boulder, where he remained until his retiremen}t.[when?]
A number of national and regional scholarly societies elected Boulding as their president, including theAmerican Economic Association in 1968–69,[13] theSociety for General Systems Research, theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1980,[14] theInternational Studies Association, the Peace Research Society, and the Association for the Study of the Grants Economy.[1]: 6 In 1978 Larry D. Singell stated:
The election of Kenneth Boulding as president-elect of the AAAS continues the tradition of selecting an individual who is not only distinguished because of significant and fundamental contributions to a particular field of science but who also has the knowledge and vision to look at science as a whole and accordingly to represent the entire scientific community.[10]
Boulding was nominated for the Nobel Prize at different times for both peace and economics.[15] He was an elected member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences (1957),[16] theAmerican Philosophical Society (1960),[17] and the United StatesNational Academy of Sciences (1975).[18]
In 1941 Boulding, met his wifeElise, they had 5 children and were active members of theReligious Society of Friends, or Quakers.[19] He took part in Quaker gatherings, served on committees, and spoke to and about the Friends. The two were members of meetings in Nashville, Ann Arbor, and Boulder. Although he usually stuttered, when he ministered at a Friends meeting, he spoke fluently.
Boulding was instrumental in organizing the firstVietnam Warteach-in at the University of Michigan in March, 1965.[20] He later spoke on the steps of the Hatcher Graduate Library at the university and was pelted with snowballs by a group of disagreeing students.
In March 1977, he conducted a silent vigil at the headquarters of theAmerican Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia to protest what he considered its distancing itself from Quakers. He penned the widely circulated "There is a Spirit", a series of sonnets he wrote in 1945 based on the last statement of the 17th century QuakerJames Nayler.
Boulding was widely recognized in academia as a prolific writer and an integrator of knowledge.[21] For Boulding, economics andsociology were not social sciences— rather, they were all aspects of a single social science devoted to the study of human persons and their relationships (organizations). Boulding spearheaded an evolutionary (instead of equilibrium) approach to economics.[citation needed]
Boulding emphasized that human economic and other behavior is embedded in a larger interconnected system. To understand the results of our behavior, economic or otherwise, we must first research and develop a scientific understanding of theecodynamics of the general system, the global society in which we live, in all its dimensions spiritual and material. Boulding believed that in the absence of a committed effort to the right kind of social science research and understanding, the human species might well be doomed tohuman extinction. But he was optimistic, believing our evolutionary journey had just begun.[2]
Boulding's first major work in economics was his introductory textbook, entitledEconomic Analysis.[10] It was written when he was an instructor at Colgate University in the late-1930s and first appeared in 1941 fromHarper & Brothers in single-volume and two-volume editions.[2] The book was augmented and republished in four editions, the last in 1966. In a 1942 book review,Max Millikan pointed out that the book was published at the right time and the right place.[22] According to Millikan:
For some years there has been a yawning gap in the literature of economic theory between the very elementary text designed for beginning students and the clutter of specialized monographs and periodical articles accessible only to the fully trained economist. The teacher attempting to lead his charges over this difficult and dangerous terrain has had to choose between two unsatisfactory alternatives. He could devote all his time to formal lecturing about a subject that requires informal discussion and problems for its proper comprehension; or he could assign and discuss a hodgepodge of advanced books and articles in the hope, usually vain, that some fraction of the class would struggle through to a comprehension of some fraction of the material.[22]
Millikan concluded that Boulding's work had filled the gap "neatly and effectively... material is organized by tools of analysis and the problems in the solution of which those tools are useful rather than in the conventional manner".[22] In the preface Boulding had explained that the book was "intended as a text from which the student can learn and the teacher can teach the methods and results of economic analysis. It also seeks to be a contribution to the development and systematization of the body of economic analysis itself."[23]
Looking back in 1989, Boulding explained, that "the first edition fundamentally followedIrving Fisher and Keynes'sTreatise on Money. Even though I had read Keynes'sGeneral Theory by that time, I think I had not really understood it. I am not quite sure that I do now. The second edition, however, in 1948, was a thoroughly Keynesian general theory."[6]: 373 The first edition was published at the outbreak of World War II and did not sell well, but the second revised edition did and became "one of the core textbooks used in college in the United States (and eventually around the world)."[8]: 49
Boulding was an exponent of theevolutionary economics movement. In his "Economic Development as an Evolutionary System" (1961, 1964), Boulding suggests a parallel between economic development and biological evolution.
Boulding, who had no background in farming, was involved in agricultural economics for at least 3 decades.[24]Boulding stated in "Agricultural Organizations and Policies: A Personal Evaluation" (1962), which nevertheless was published as a national policy program for US agriculture by the influentialCommittee for economic development:
The dilemma is, however, that if you are to get resources out of any occupation, you have to squeeze it. The only way I know to get toothpaste out of a tube is to squeeze, and the only way to get people out of agriculture is likewise to squeeze agriculture. If the toothpaste is thin, you don’t squeeze very hard. On the other hand, if the toothpaste is thick, you have to put real pressure on it. If you can’t get people out of agriculture easily, you are going to have to do farmers severe injustice in order to solve the problem of allocation.[25]
Boulding argued to abolish theUSDA because he felt it was aspecial interest group for an industry that did not need one.[25]
Following the publication ofRachel Carson'sSilent Spring in 1962, the developing environmental movement drew attention to the relationship between economic growth and development andenvironmental degradation. Boulding in his influential 1966 essay "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth" identified the need for the economic system to fit itself to the ecological system with its limited pools of resources.[26] He advised to see earth´s ecosystem best represented as astock asset.[24]
Boulding published some thirty books and more than eight hundred articles.
Some of his most cited works:
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