ABSTRACT
Thorstein Veblen's was both a logical and an abstract mind. Like Marx, he came to social science from philosophy, and he was at his best in uncovering the assumptions of another person, another epoch, or another social class. Veblen, like Kropotkin, was presenting a useful corrective to the prevalent competitive versions of Social Darwinism in his time. It is important to underscore the fact that Veblen's system of social science is as much biological as historical. This is true of the evolutionary methodology which Veblen took from Darwin and also of Veblen's heavy reliance on the concepts of instinct and race. Veblen himself, caught in the paradoxes of his irony, appears to be unsure what he is mocking and what he is glorifying. He faced analogous problems in deciding between an emphasis on the wholeness of human behavior and an emphasis on compartmentalization.
