The Return of the Ghost of Utilitarianism

George C. Homans and Talcott Parsons had remarkably similar careers, and yet failed to communicate on friendly terms or appreciate each other’s thinking. In addition, both spent their entire academic careers at Harvard University, and they were contemporaries for some four decades there. Homans became a participant in the Harvard Pareto Circle at about the same time that Parsons joined that illustrious seminar (Heyl 1968). Both published on Vilfredo Pareto in the 1930s when one of their academic mentors was the physiologist cum self-styled sociologist Lawrence J. Henderson (Homans and Curtis 1934; Parsons 1936; Nichols 2006). Homans and Parsons, in the early 1950s, each published a masterpiece that became a classic of sociological theory: Homans The Human Group (1950), Parsons The Social System (1951). ¹ Finally, both were elected President of the American Sociological Association, Parsons in 1949, and Homans in 1964.