HISTORY 7B Lecture Notes - American Social Science Association, William Graham Sumner, Progress And Poverty
Document Summary
The idea that there is a science of society as opposed to religious explanations. Not only the idea that you could use science to understand society but that you should use it and that you could use it to shape responses, esp public policy. People who believed in this lived in cities, urban, middle-class, well- educated, usually republican (though not exclusively). Special interests no one is getting anywhere: natural laws worked out in a super elitist ways. (eg. farmers wanted to regulate the rrs with granger laws which were supposed to regulate rates and stop discriminating blahh. Liberalists were like, this is class legislation; supply and demand! Farmers asked why workers had such power because they organized to have more bargaining power. : the idea of natural law v class legislation was really in the eye of the beholder. Evolution charles darwin 1859 origin of species.
