The Development Of English Thought: A Study In The Economic Interpretation Of History

by Simon Nelson Patten

At the time of original publication in 1904, Simon Nelson Patten (1852-1922) was Professor of Political Economy at the Wharton School of Finance and Economy at University of Pennsylvania. He also served as the President of the American Economics Association. He introduced the concept of the "consumer surplus" into modern economic theory. His other books include The New Basis of Civilization, The Social Basis of Religion, and Culture and War. "If the term be taken in a general sense, Mr. Patten's Development of English Thought is a working out of a materialistic conception of history, although his "materialistic conception" is not nearly the same as that to which Marx and Engels gave a vogue in socialistic circles. It is needless to say that it is a marked advance over the somewhat crude form in which the great socialists left their fundamental concept. While they were content with an appeal to class interest and antagonism as a sufficient explanation of the control of cultural development through the economic situation, Mr. Patten's modern scientific animus leads him to look more closely into the causal relation between the economic situation and the resulting culture. The resulting theory is not a doctrine of a class struggle. In Mr. Patten's view the economic situation shapes culture by shaping human character and habits of thought. It does this somewhat directly, through a process of habituation as well as through a concomitant process of selection between habits and between different styles of temperament. The causal relation between the situation ("environment") and the cultural outcome, therefore, lies through the psychological development of the individuals who are exposed to this environment." - Thorstein Veblen

444 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004