David F. Prindle

This is a book well worth reading for anyone interested in Stephen Jay Gould's thinking. The author argues, and that understanding him requires realizing that his science and his politics formed a seamless garment. Gould made some remarks suggesting that he believed that to be true. Equally, Gould thought that the same was true for other people, as he attempted to prove in his some of his writings. In Wonderful Life, he tried to tie Charles Dolittle Walcott's analysis of the Burgess Shale to his social and political situation and beliefs. Gould failed dismally, in my opinion, but I think it is clear that he believed it himself. This part of the book is quite strong.

At the end of the book, I am not entirely certain whether the author believes the second proposition or not, which perhaps explains why he got the two apparently contradictory reviews on his book that he discusses. Since I am not sure what he means to say, it is a little hard to decide how well he said it, making this a difficult book to assign stars to. Actually, if I'm not sure what he's saying, I guess I can say that he didn't say it well. His discussion of how most scientists argued that science and politics should not and do not intertwine seems to suggest that he did agree with Gould on both points. But he himself provides examples of how scientists who disagreed vehemently with Gould's scientific ideas often had similar political views. So, if he intended to argue that politics generally affects individual scientific beliefs, he didn't make a good case.

So I would read this as a comment on Gould's thinking, which is after all its main purpose, but it is ambiguous, and perhaps ambivalent, about whether he was, in that regard, a typical scientist or an exception.… (mehr)

Review

"My hat's off to David Prindle. This work is graceful, authoritative, insightful, synthetic, shrewd, magisterial, and fun to read. Prindle leaps over the wall separating economics, politics, and legal thinking, writing a synthetic history that traces these three themes and -- crucially -- the many ways they have interacted with each other. An astonishingly ambitious and powerful study." -- James Morone, Brown University

Book Description

A truly interdisciplinary enterprise, The Paradox of Democratic Capitalism examines the interplay of ideas about politics, economics, and law in American society from the pre-revolutionary era to the eve of the September 11 attacks. David F. Prindle argues that while the United States was founded on liberalism, there is constant tension between two ideals of the liberal tradition: capitalism and democracy.

Tracing the rise of natural law doctrine from neoclassical economics, Prindle examines the influence of economic development in late medieval society on the emergence of classical liberalism in early America and likens that influence to the impact of orthodox economics on contemporary American society.

Prindle also evaluates political, economic, and legal ideas through the lens of his own beliefs. He warns against the emerging extremes of liberal ideology in contemporary American politics, where the right's definition of capitalism excludes interference from democratic publics and the left's definition of democracy excludes a market-based economy.… (mehr)