Commitment to Social Science

Samuelson's program was completed with a sequence of three courses on the history of the United States, from the arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean to events of the twentieth century.

Toward the end of his sophomore year, Samuelson began to keep a diary in which he made occasional entries reflecting on both his personal life and bigger issues on his mind? Perhaps significantly, its first word is “Science.”

Science is essentially the establishing of Cause and Effect relation­ships. This knowledge can be utilized in controlling causes to pro­duce desired effects. It is the realm of philosophy to decide what these objectives shall be, and that of science to achieve those decided upon.⁵1

This was the view to which he had been exposed at the start of the Biological Sciences course, and which would have been reinforced by his reading of Thouless's Straight and Crooked Thinking. Samuelson noted in his diary that there was a division of labor between philosophy and economics, the former deciding on objectives and the latter on how they should be achieved. He then reflected on the motivation for pursuing a career in science.

But men do not become scientists chiefly to benefit society—rather because there is a certain “aesthetic” pleasure in the solving of prob­lems. It is a battle of wits to find explanations of facts, observed uniformities, etc.⁵²

k. The study of horses and horsemanship.

l. In two years there were but nineteen entries. Given that many of his generation, coming to economics during the Great Depression, did so because they wanted to do something about unemploy­ment and the social problems with which they were surrounded, it is hard not to see this statement as autobiographical.

To illustrate this. Once Dr. Carlson, the physiologist, was discussing with me after class the hydrodynamics of the blood system. We were outside in sub-zero weather, and not till the end of our conversation did I notice that my nose was frozen.

Now is there anything admirable about this? No, I was not engaged in the pursuit of truth, or attempting to widen the vistas of human thought. It was merely a puzzle which I was engaged in solving, and because of my absorption in it, I did not notice the cold. Just so must Lord Sandwich have felt when, engaged in “breaking the bank,” he refused to leave the gaming table and took his meals in the then novel, but now common, form of “sandwiches.”⁵³

He concluded that scientists were merely “tinkerers who have been closed with an air of mysticism and awe by the admiring public.”

Elsewhere, he preferred to say he came to economics by accident or to imply that he was lured into it by the theorems lying around waiting to be discovered.⁵⁴ Referring to Director’s course in his freshman year, he wrote,

Even if I had had Mr. Squeers for a teacher, the first drink from the eco­nomic textbooks of Slichter and Ely would have been like the Prince’s kiss to Sleeping Beauty.

I was too young to know fear. It was as if, like a bird dog bred to point at hunt, my DNA was born to manipulate supply and demand curves. How could those upper-class fellow students be making heavy weather of what was so transparently simple?⁵⁵

To my surprise I could outstrive in class discussions those older members of the class who did not find economic theory to be as easy as I did. One tends to like what one does well. You are very lucky if early on you discover a research field that you like to do and that you are best fitted for.

This self-centered attitude, divorced from considerations of society, was to change in the 1940s when, under the tutelage of Alvin Hansen and know­ing that many of his friends were having to fight, he became politically engaged—but that was a decade away.

Samuelson’s second diary entry, on April 29, 1933, contained a clear eco­nomic opinion.

I object to the system of laissez-faire, not so much because it doesn’t accomplish what it is supposed to do (which it doesn’t) but chiefly because even if it worked perfectly, it would require an eternal vigi­lance by men over their economic interest, and preoccupation with material things—all of which I personally do not like.⁵⁶

Such a view was no doubt developed through his reading of Knight, who unlike many academic critics of socialist planning did so on ethical grounds rather than because it was inefficient. It certainly shows that he had absorbed the message coming from Gideonse and from Knight’s text that laissez-faire was not perfect. However, this remark about laissez-faire was not followed up in the diary. Instead, five days later, citing the famous Oxford Union debate,⁵⁷ he reflected on cowardice, clearly siding with the Oxford students against critics who accused them of being cowards by voting not to go to war. The remaining three entries in 1933 were exercises in poetry.

It was in this year that Samuelson committed to entering the Division of Social Sciences, his transfer from the College to the Division being made on March 10. In June he obtained As in all the courses he had taken, entitling him to the College Certificate that permitted him to proceed to more special­ized courses the following year. He claims there was one point during this year that he briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a sociologist. However, even if he was thinking of becoming an economist, at this point in his studies he was still being trained not as an economist but as a general social scientist. It would be another year before his specialization as an economist would be confirmed; before then, he had to take courses in all the main social science disciplines. Given Chicago’s preeminence in the social sciences at this time, this meant that he would be exposed to some of the leading social scientists of the day—in anthropology, sociology, and political science, as well as in economics.