biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1841–1913)
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| biography:
| Sociologist and geologist, born in Joliet, Illinois, USA. Raised on the frontier, he briefly attended the Susquehanna Collegiate Institute in Towanda, PA before serving in the Union army during the Civil War (1862–4). While working for the US Treasury Department (1865–81), he earned three degrees at Columbian College (now George Washington University), and then worked for the US Geological Survey (1881–1905) as a geologist, biologist, and palaeontologist. While working as a scientist, he was caught up in the current debate over evolution and the conflict between science and religion. Increasingly more concerned with social issues, he published Dynamic Sociology (1883), the first of his several once influential texts on sociology. He spent his final years as a professor of sociology at Brown University (1906–13). Liberal, humanitarian, and democratic in his ideals, he saw education, economics, and government actions as the key to most of society's problems. His ‘mental autobiography’, Glimpses of the Cosmos, was published posthumously (6 vols, 1913–18). |
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