Table Of ContentPHILOSOPHY, HISTORY AND SOCIAL ACTION
BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Editor
ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University
Editorial Advisory Board
ADOLF GRUNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh
SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University
JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University
MARX W. WARTOFSKY, Baruch College of the City University of
New York
VOLUME 107
PHILOSOPHY,
HISTORY AND
SOCIAL ACTION
Essays in Honor of Lewis Feuer
With an autobiographical essay by Lewis Feuer
Edited by
SIDNEY HOOK
Dept. of Philosophy, New. York University, and the Hoover Institution
WILLIAM L. O'NEILL
Dept. of History, Rutgers University
and
ROGER O'TOOLE
Dept. of Sociology, University of Toronto
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
DORDRECHT I BOSTON I LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Philosophy, history, and social action : essays in honor of Lewis
Feuer : with an autobiographical essay by Lewis Feuer 1 edited by
Sidney Hook, William L. O'Neill, and Roger O'Toole.
p. em. - (Boston studies in the philosophy of science: v.
107)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN-l3: 978-94-010-7793-4 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-2873-2
DOl: 10.l007/978-94-009-2873-2
1. Philosophy. 2. History - Philosophy. 3. Social sciences
-Philosophy. 4. Social action. 5. Feuer, Lewis Samuel, 1912-
I. Feuer, Lewis Samuel, 1912- . II. Hook, Sidney, 1902-
III. O'Neill, William L. IV. O'Toole, Roger, 1942- . V. Series.
Q174.B67 vol. 107
[B29]
320.5--dc19 87-36905
eIP
Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
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All Rights Reserved
© 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 15 t edition 1988
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editorial Preface vii
Editors' Foreword ix
LEWIS S. FEUER / A Narrative of Personal Events and Ideas 1
List of Published Writings of Lewis Feuer 87
WILLIAM J. BAUMOL / On the Reality of Economic
Illusion 103
WILLIAM BREIT / Institutional Economics as an
Ideological Movement 119
WILLIAM H. DRAY / Generalization, Value-Judgment
and Causal Explanation in History 137
ABRAHAM EDEL / Theory and Practice: An Unsteady
Dichotomy? 157
ROBERT G. GILPIN / Development and Underdevel-
opment: Conflicting Pespectives on the Third World 173
ELI GINZBERG / Occupational Mobility: A Personal
Perspective 209
CHARLES HANLY / From Animism to Rationalism 221
SIDNEY HOOK / Toward Greater Equality 235
IRVING LOUIS HOROWITZ / Left-Wing Fascism and
Right-Wing Communism: The Fission-Fusion Effect
in American Extremist Ideologies 245
MILTON R. KONVITZ / The Nature of Bronson Alcott 267
PAUL KURTZ / Is Marxism a Religion? 275
v
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
THELMA Z. LA VINE / Judaism in the Culture of
Modernism 297
GEORGE S. N. LUCKYJ / Panteleimon Kulish - A
Ukrainian Romantic Conservative 313
CZESLAW MILOSZ / Idea (English and Polish Versions) 323
ROGER O'TOOLE / Organizational Weapons and
Political Sects 325
RICHARD H. POPKIN / Millenarianism in England, Holland
and America: Jewish and Christian Relations in
England, Holland and Newport, Rhode Island 349
SIDNEY RATNER / John Dewey's Philosophy of War and
Peace 373
VERA COOPER RUBIN / To L.F. from V.C.R., 1984 391
HAROLD Z. SCHIFFRIN / China Today: Retreat from Mao
and Return to Marx? 395
HAROLD ISSADORE SHARLIN / Life and Work: A
Biography of Lord Kelvin Reconsidered 405
JOSEPH ~KVORECKY / The Case of Lewis S. Feuer,
Crime Writer 419
STEPHEN J. WHITFIELD / After Strange Gods: Radical
Jews in Modern America 425
DENNIS H. WRONG / The Concept of Alienation
Revisited 461
List of Contributors 475
Index of Names 479
EDITORIAL PREFACE
Two articles by Lewis Feuer caught my attention in the '40s when 1
was wondering, asa student physicist, about the relations of physics to
philosophy and to the world in turmoil. One was his essay on 'The
Development of Logical Empiricism' (1941), and the other his critical
review of Philipp Frank's biography of Einstein, 'Philosophy and the
Theory of Relativity' (1947). How extraordinary it was to find so
intelligent, independent, critical, and humane a mind; and furthermore
he went further, as I soon realized when I looked for his name on other
publications. I recall arguing with myself over his exploration of
'Indeterminacy and Economic Development' (1948), and even more
when I read his 'Dialectical Materialism and Soviet Science' (1949).
More papers, and then the fascinating, sometimes irritating, always
insightful, books.
His monograph on Psychoanalysis and Ethics 1955, the beautiful
sociological and humanist study of Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism
(1958), his essays on 'The Social Roots of Einstein's Theory of
Relativity' (1971) together with the book on Einstein and the Genera
tions of Science (1974), the splendid reader from the works of Marx
and Engels, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy (1959) which
was a major text of the '60s, the stimulating essays on the social
formation which seems to have been required for a modern scientific
movement to develop, set forth most convincingly in The Scientific
Intellectual (1963). These are my choices; the reader will want to read
and meditate on many others from the impressive bibliography in this
book. Lewis Feuer has never avoided controversy nor abandoned
either intelligence or courage. Agree with him or not, every reader will
find his writings not only pungent but also powerful, critical but also
admirably steeped in humane values. As one of his admirers, Sidney
Hook, has written of Feuer's article 'Noumenalism and Einstein's
Argument for the Existence of God' (1983): "1 believe Einstein would
have welcomed Feuer's argument which will impress even those who
like myself remain unconvinced by it but in consequence are less sure
of their own negations".
Centre for Philosophy and History of Science ROBERT S. COHEN
Boston University
April 1988
LEWIS S. FEUER
EDITORS' FOREWORD
For more than half a century the writings of Lewis S. Feuer have made a
unique and provocative contribution to many branches of scholarship.
Resistant to the tides of academic over-specialization and disciplinary
isolation, Feuer has been an intrepid, astute, and often iconoclastic
explorer of such topics as intellectual authoritarianism, the ideas of
Spinoza and Dewey, the life and work of Karl Marx, the religious
context of seventeenth century science, the generational basis of student
revolt, the social roots of Einstein's theories, Jewish contributions to
American life, and the social psychology of imperialism. Writing with
verve, simplicity and impeccable scholarship, he has sought to relate
and properly delimit the psychological and sociological components of
discovery in a broad range of intellectual enterprises.
The contributions assembled in this volume have been especially
written by many distinguished scholars in order to pay tribute to the life
of thought and action recounted by Professor Feuer in his autobio
graphical essay. The collection honors Feuer both by exemplifying
qualities characteristic of his work and by reflecting the immense variety
of his scientific and literary interests. Besides admiring Lewis Feuer,
most of the contributors are his friends too and have welcomed this
opportunity to acknowledge his warmth, generosity and many acts of
kindness rendered by him over the years.
We are grateful to Kathryn Feuer for generously responding to all our
requests for information. In addition to writing articles some contribu
tors assisted us in other ways, and we wish especially to thank Irving
Louis Horowitz, Paul Kurtz and Sidney Ratner for their aid and counsel.
This book would not exist save for the efforts of Robert Cohen, to
whom we extend our gratitude, as also to Mrs. J. C. Kuipers of Kluwer
Academic Publishers for her editorial support. Most of all we would like
to thank the contributors for what has been an impressive display of
patience on their part.
SIDNEY HOOK
WILLIAM L. O'NEILL
ROGER O'TOOLE
lX
LEWIS S. FEUER
A NARRATIVE OF PERSONAL EVENTS AND IDEAS
I was born in New York City's Lower East Side in December 1912, in a
tenement house on 5th Street off Avenue C; until I was almost thirteen
years of age, my family lived longest in a house on that Avenue
between 8th and 9th Streets. I still remember riding on the horse
drawn street car through 3rd Street toward Avenue C. Several cultures
competed and commingled in the setting of my formative years; the
earliest was the Orthodox Jewish. At home, we observed strictly the
dietary laws; our mother lit and blessed the Friday night candles; we
knew Saturday's taboo against writing, we were happy at Passover
feasts, and gloomy on the Day of Atonement. For seven years I
attended classes during the late afternoon or evening at the Downtown
Talmud Torah at Houston Street, and later the Hebrew High School.
The peddler's push carts lined our avenue, and five days a week I woke
to the sounds of peddlers screeching their wares in Yiddish, beseeching,
supplicating, uttering challenges, insults, flatteries; on wintry days, they
would burn wood and oil lamps to keep warm, and they feared the
policemen's clubs; they were mostly bearded, and wore strange hats.
This Yiddish culture was quite different from the Hebraic one that I
received at the Downtown Talmud Torah, where a group of young
gifted teachers, in their early twenties, and working their way through
college, read with us the books of the Bible; several of them later
became noted scholars and public personalities: Oscar Janowsky, Fre
deric Ewen, Simon Rifkind.
During the days, however, I was a cheerful pupil at Public School 64,
a school famed for its principals who encouraged some daring exper
imentation in education (Irwin and Marks, 1924). At P.S. 64, an
experiment had been inaugurated, the 'Terman classes' they were
called, thus named after the famous Stanford psychologist. Through
psychological and physical tests, given throughout the East Side's schools,
several small groups of boys and girls were selected to enjoy special
curricula with specially chosen able teachers. That is how it happened
that I was advanced rapidly, so that I entered college at the age of
fourteen. The 'skippings', however, were an ordeal especially when I
was jumped past a year of arithmetic; also there was a later social
1
S. Hook, W.L. O'Neill and R. OToole (eds.), Philosophy, History and Social Action,
1-85. © 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers. All rights reserved.
