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James Gardner March: I know who I am

H/T Brendan Markey-Towler for bringing this obituary to my attention. His seminal book, Organizations, written jointly with Herbert A. Simon in 1958 . . . In an October 3 memoriam published in Le Monde Thierry Weil asserts that many believe March should have shared the 1978 Nobel Prize for Economics with Herbert Simon for the theories…

Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are

Published today — this should get some regressive knickers in a twist. In the past century, the tradition of Freudian psychology popularized the idea that our psychological dispositions could be traced to formative childhood experiences. In many areas of modern academic sociology and psychology this belief is still widespread, though it has been extended to…

Robert Musil on stupidity

A recent freely available article by sociologist Bo Isenberg entitled “A modern calamity – Robert Musil on stupidity” in Journal of Classical Sociology. This voluntary subordination might be dispassionate or fanatical and relates to not only collective ideologies, nationalism and totalitarianism but also excessive rationalism. To Musil, nationalism and totalitarianism are manifestations of the most treacherous forms…

Raymond Aron

Born on this day. Below is Daniel J. Mahoney’s entry in the Encyclopedia of Modern Political Thought. Raymond Aron (1905–83) was a distinguished French philosopher, political thinker, social scientist, and journalist. He wrote influential columns for Le Figaro (1947–77) and L’Express (1978–83) and played a major role in shaping moderate and conservative opinion in France in…