ABSTRACT
Economics is one of the most quantitative social sciences. A fundamental belief in the anthropological perspective is the judgment that any society is as good as any other society and thus has a right to live according to its rules of the social game. Economics, however, assumes that human nature is the same everywhere: all peoples ultimately desire a higher standard of living. The major organization for economists in the United States, the American Economic Association, has more than 22,000 members. Intellectual historian Dorothy Ross considers economics, political science, and sociology the three “core” disciplines in the “Americanization” of the social sciences during the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the American Gilded Age an intellectual battle was waged concerning the proper scope and methods of the social sciences. The existence of universal human needs necessitates the creation of institutions to provide for those needs. High on the list of needs is a material means of subsistence.
