After the Radiation Laboratory

By March 22, when he was busy drafting the report, Samuelson had com­pleted a year at the Radiation Laboratory, and on April 4, its director, Wheeler Loomis, wrote to ask him about extending his leave of absence from MIT.⁴⁶ Samuelson explained that he would prefer not to agree to this, on two grounds.

Shortly after the Bowman report had been transmitted to Bush, Samuelson had a conversation with Getting, and he decided he needed to clarify his situ­ation to Loomis.⁴⁸ He made it clear that, if his duty lay in continuing at the Radiation Laboratory, he would do so:

My previous letter to you reflected my belief that the day is approach­ing when it will no longer be in the national interest to convert a good economist into a mediocre mathematician. However, it is not up to

j. On the latter, see chapter 23 this volume. me to define when that day has arrived. It is my intention, therefore, in this letter to rescind my statement in the last letter. I am willing to continue on at the laboratory for as long as I am needed.

He then expressed a preference for any continuation to be on a three-month basis rather than for a longer period. There were two other considerations. The Economics Department had “a necessary project” that he alone could do— writing new materials for the introductory economics course.⁴⁹ However, in relation to the national emergency, this was not decisive.

My off-hand reaction [to Rabi's request] was that after four years of heavy load with no customary academic vacation the thought of taking on an entirely new job requiring creative energy was not an attractive one; that I should prefer to make my contribution to the war effort in the Radiation Laboratory where I am already familiar with the work.⁵¹

In addition, the war was nearing its end and he had no desire to embark on a project that would probably take a long time to complete.^k

Samuelson continued within the Radiation Laboratory until July 14, 1945, when he returned to his duties at MIT.⁵² In the first part of May, he was no doubt involved in the further revisions that needed to be made before the final version of the Bowman Committee report was sent to Bush.⁵³ By the middle of May, as the war was ending in Europe, this was completed, for on May 19, Bush's secretary congratulated Maclaurin on the “splendid job” they had done.^54,l

k. Even had he been interested, he would have known from Guerlac, the official historian of the Radiation Laboratory, about the difficulties involved in writing such a history. He may have been aware of the conflict Guerlac faced between the type of history he wanted to write, paying full attention to the social and political context of scientific developments, and the type of history his employers wanted him to write.

l. Beyond this work for the Bowman Committee, it is not clear what work, if any, Samuelson was doing for the Radiation Laboratory for the last two months.

Samuelson was presented with a further opportunity to become involved with scientists (and philosophers) when Leontief conveyed to him an invita­tion to join the Inter-Scientific Discussion Group.⁵⁵ This group was an part of the Unity of Science movement, which had come to be associated with Harvard, beginning with the Fifth International Congress for the Unity of Science, held there in 1939, and the move to Harvard of the exiled Austrian physicist-philosopher Philip Frank. The Inter-Scientific Discussion Group was a successor to the Science of Science Discussion Group that had met in the fall of 1940, organized by psychologist Stanley Smith Stevens. A com­mon theme among those behind the discussion group was an affinity with Bridgman’s operationalism, which Stevens had advocated in psychology, and the logical positivism of Rudolf Carnap, brought to Harvard by Willard Quine, and the Vienna Circle. Given Samuelson’s emphasis on operational- ism in his thesis and the book he was currently writing, it would be natural to deduce that it was these links that induced him to accept Leontief’s invita­tion by return post.

The first meeting he attended was on March 21, when George Wald, a biochemist who specialized in studying vision, spoke on “Biology and Social Behavior.”⁵⁶ It would have been a gathering of familiar faces, for not only were his teachers—Schumpeter, Leontief, and Haberler—present, but so too were John Edsall, working alongside him in the Bowman secretariat; Percy Bridgman, whose lectures on thermodynamics he had probably audited and whom he knew from his days as a junior fellow; and Norbert Wiener, in whose cybernetics seminar he had participated. Because of illness, he missed the meeting on April 18, at which a philosopher, Curt Ducasse, spoke on “What Is Science?”⁵⁷ He resumed his attendance on June 18, when Edsall was talking about “Stability and Flux in the Living Organism,” after which he attended no further meetings until February 1946, when the topic of discussion was von Neumann and Morgenstern’s The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1945), which brought out a large contingent of Harvard economists: Haberler, Leontief, Hans Staehle, and Richard Goodwin.

Samuelson was busy, but given his capacity for fitting commitments into his schedule, it is hard not to conclude that, despite his emphasis on operationalism in his thesis and in Foundations—the latter then in the hands of Harvard University Press—he had no deep interest in the philosophy of science.™ He attended the first meeting after his invitation, and after that appears to have attended only sessions on topics closely related to his own work. This strongly suggests that, although he chose to use the term Operationalism—rather than alternatives such as testability, refutability, or falsificationism—there is no evidence that he engaged seriously with the related philosophical issues. As with Henderson’s Pareto seminar almost a decade earlier, he sampled it and moved on.

The period covered in this chapter was very brief, and despite the demands made by the Radiation Laboratory, Samuelson’s commitment to natural sci­ence was never full time, as he kept working as an economist throughout. But even though it was only a small part of his life, it was very important to him. It was important to him that he worked on radar—something that was, without question, important for the war effort. This would have been consolation for any concerns he may have had that his unfinished work at the NRPB had not been successful. He had, of course, been teaching students for much of the war, including helping out in the Mathematics Department, but although teaching was important, its contribution to the war effort or the essential task of planning for peace was only indirect. As suggested earlier, he may have been inspired by E. B. Wilson’s successful move into aeronautics in the previous war. If so, the experience of working alongside some of the world’s leading scientists may have helped him confirm that he wanted to be an economist. However, even if he wanted to be an economist, and could be an outstanding one, it was undoubtedly very important to him to have rubbed shoulders with top scientists.

m. On Foundations, see chapter 22 this volume.