A seminar with Talcott Parsons at Brown University: "My Life and Work" Saturday, March 10, 1973

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Jan, 2006

Seminar Faculty: Robert M. Marsh, Martin U. Martel, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Albert F. Wessen, and C. Parker Wolf in sociology; and A. Hunter Dupree in the history of science. Faculty Visitors: George H. Borts and Mark B. Schupack (economics), Erwin C. Hargrove (political science), and Philip L. Quinn (philosophy of science). Seminar Students: Robert J. Cormack, Inge Corless, Robert B. Corno, Jeffrey J. Cymrot, Robert D. Conway, John Fulton, Raymond L. Goldstein, Adrian Hayes, Gary Kulik (history), Jennie J. Kronenfeld, Jolyon Miller (political science), Brian Nilson (philosophy), Ibitola P. Onoge, James Rafferty, Mark A. Shields, Stanley Tureski (political science), Peter H. Ulbrich, Harry E. Warner II, and Keith Williamson.

Videotaping was directed by Mr. Alan Sondheim (Rhode Island School of Design), with the consulting aid of Frank L. Ryan (Director of our Language Laboratory) and Gerald P. Sadlier (Audiovideo Director at Rhode Island Junior College, formerly with Brown). The camera work and setting up was carried out by Steve McGinnis and other student volunteers with equipment generously provided by the Chemistry Department and the two cooperating institutions mentioned.

SEMINAR PART I

Morning Session

Welcoming Remarks

Professor Martin U. Martel, Sociology: I'd like to welcome you to our seminar, and thank you for driving down from Boston this morning to join us for our final session. This really is the first time that we in sociology at Brown have had a seminar devoted entirely to a single person's work. It may be worth noting that in addition to those of us in sociology, we also had the help of A. Hunter Dupree in the history department. The seminar students also included several from history, political science, and philosophy, which speaks well for the interdisciplinary interest in your work.

I might note that the session today also is a new experience for us in that it is the first time that any of us have tried to "film" (video-tape) a seminar. And some of us still are a little new to the idea.

I wanted to mention that, in preparation for this morning, the seminar members met the other night. We tried to make a list of some of the kinds of topics we were hoping you might discuss. To begin with, we spent about half an hour listing some of our main questions on a blackboard. When we finished we were struck that we had quickly filled up the board, and that our list ranged from questions about basic philosophical issues, to some about contemporary political and economic affairs, extending over into areas of psychology, psychiatry and even as relevant to so wide a range of problem areas.

We also were left wondering how we could ever ask you to discuss a work of such enormous complexity in a four-hour Saturday session. It was for this reason that--when several of us saw you last Tuesday-we asked if you could review for us how your work developed, in something of its chronological order. We are hoping that you might do that in two parts: first (in the morning session) tracing the main developments from your undergraduate days to perhaps the time of World War II; and then, after lunch, discussing the more recent developments since the war. We also thought that perhaps we could bring in at least some of our many questions in relation to your works, at the time they first come up.

Recalling that you started your academic career first as an economist (before venturing into sociology), we partly have the question of: "How is it that a young, respectable economist ever went so wrong?" To help us begin, we are calling on Hunter Dupree, our historian of science, to lead off.

Leibnitz's Challenge

Question (Professor A. Hunter Dupree, History): I'd like to phrase this in the form of a statement and then a question. I may be the only one in the room (since I was not trained as a sociologist) who came to your written work--and it is stacked all around us on the tables--only after I had the good fortune to meet you personally. Therefore, I found that I had many guides, which clarified what your many works had to say, through the benefit of having had conversations with you beforehand.

Actually, this is a very old tradition. Leibnitz, writing to a friend in Venice in 1714, once made this statement: "It is good to study the discoveries of others in a way that discloses to us the source of their inventions, and partly renders them (in a sort) as our own. And I wish that authors would give us a history of their discoveries, and the steps by which they arrived at them." Now, Leibnitz's suggestion bore fruit, even in the early 18th century, in the autobiography of Giovanni Battista Vico. (Chuckling.) I hope some day to convince you to take a look at Vico.

In the meantime, we could all benefit very much if you would, in a sense, take up Leibnitz's challenge, and give us a review of how you came to some of the important discoveries which many now find in your books. It would be of great value if we could have the kind of explication from which I so benefitted, in hearing you discuss your work personally.