ABSTRACT
A combination of philosophy and temperament, his relativism resulted from the impact of a pragmatic conception of truth on a homeless spirit. George Burton Adams' outburst in 1908, the complaints of Jameson and Channing about the state of historiogra phy two years later, Robinson's strident tone, and Becker's disturbing questions came out of a common milieu. A demand for participation, for shaping a disordered world in a more active and willful way than the pallid social-science movement promised, released a fullfledged relativist movement. During the years at Columbia, where Beard developed from a protege to a partner of James Harvey Robinson, most of his teaching was on contemporary politics. Beard's pragmatism added to his difficulty in assimilating the ideas he borrowed from Europe. The Social Science Research Council was looking for some concerted strategy to bring history into closer relation to the other social sciences.
