History of the social sciences.

TLDR: The Organization Man (1956), William H. Whyte, Jr., instructed an entire generation in the realities of organizational life in America, insisting that the organization employed the ideas and techniques of the social sciences to resolve tensions between the group and the individual.

Abstract: A FORCEFUL ANSWER to the question why anyone should be interested 1A1. in the history of the social sciences in America was provided three decades ago. In his classic The Organization Man (1956), William H. Whyte, Jr., instructed an entire generation in the realities of organizational life in America. Whyte insisted that the organization employed the ideas and techniques of the social sciences to resolve tensions between the group and the individual. With equal measures of paternalism and insidiousness, the organization established its hegemony in society and culture. The organization and its social ethic were everywhere: in grade schools and colleges, neighborhoods and suburbs, houses of worship and places of recreation, factories and offices, mass culture and popular government, even in the private worlds of family relations and personal friendships. Whyte argued that the organizational ideal demanded the individual's conformity with and acquiescence to the larger group or collective. The organizational ethos branded individualism as subversive. The organization throttled individuality. The individual had no meaningful existence outside the organization or the group. Thus Whyte attributed much of the responsibility for this crisis of American culture and society, not simply to the organization, but to its appropriation of social science thinking for its own purposes.' Whatever the merits of the particulars of Whyte's indictment, his general thesis provides a useful and exciting point of departure for historical inquiry. The social sciences have played an enormous role in science, society, and culture for much of American history. The social sciences have been concerned with people, not things. They have been concerned with us, our society, economy, polity, and culture. Ultimately they have been invented and formulated as responses to the most profound questions of the relations among human beings, above all of the implications of group identity for individuals in the national population. This does not mean that the social sciences have not been sciences, disciplines, and professions. It does, however, signify that much more has been involved. As useful as a traditional disciplinary focus is, scholars should be prepared to use broader perspectives as well. In the last quarter century the history of the social sciences has slowly become a recognized field for historians of science and American historians. Within the field there are several journals, a newsletter, and a scholarly organization. Increasingly contributions to the history of various disciplines have appeared with the full apparatus of professional historical scholarship. Today it is not uncommon for historians to write about eugenics, sociobiology, mental testing, and the so-called helping and manipulative professions, for example, topics that bid