ABSTRACT
Edward L. Thorndike, identified as America’s most productive psychologist, was greatly influenced by Charles Darwin and his work helped make psychology more “genetic.” Psychological theories have been important for most of the social sciences. Science often begins by developing a set of concepts with which to organize a given field of study, and then also a collection of methods with which to approach this area. Wassily Leontief has proposed a model of science in which the various disciplines each include an explanation of part of reality. Great men in the history of science were able to achieve vast cross-disciplinary syntheses of existing knowledge which, by recasting what was previously “known,” had the effect of undermining previous work. John Lubbock, biologist and anthropologist, was one of Charles Darwin’s few proteges, and he applied Darwin’s theory in an effort to develop a theory of cultural evolution which had great impact upon English anthropology.
