Kenneth Ewart Boulding (; January 18, 1910 – March 18, 1993) was an English-born American
economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics.
The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
, educator, peace activist, and interdisciplinary philosopher.
[David Latzko]
Kenneth E. Boulding Comments
at personal.psu.edu. Accessed 24 April 2009. Boulding was the author of two
citation classics: ''The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society'' (1956) and ''Conflict and Defense: A General Theory'' (1962). He was co-founder of
general systems theory
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or artificial. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its struc ...
and founder of numerous ongoing intellectual projects in
economics
Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...
and
social science
Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...
. He was married to sociologist
Elise M. Boulding.
Biography
Early years
Boulding was born and raised in
Liverpool, England
Liverpool is a port city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population of (in ), Liverpool is the administrative, c ...
, the only child of William C. Boulding and Elizabeth Ann Boulding. His father was a gas fitter and a lay preacher in the
Wesleyan Methodist Church,
[Ross B. Emmett (ed.), "BOULDING, Kenneth Ewart (1910–1993)," ''Biographical Dictionary of American Economists,'' London: Thoemmes, 2006, pp. 73–79.] and his mother was a housewife. Boulding's middle name ''Ewart'' came from
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British politican, starting as Conservative MP for Newark and later becoming the leader of the Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party.
In a career lasting over 60 years, he ...
, of whom his father was a great admirer.
In his adolescent years Boulding became interested in
pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ...
and joined the
Religious Society of Friends
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...
.
[Joseph Edward De Steiguer (2006). ''The Origins of Modern Environmental Thought.'' p. 88]
After attending
Liverpool Collegiate School
Liverpool Collegiate School was an all-boys grammar school, later a comprehensive school, in the Everton, Liverpool, Everton area of Liverpool.
Foundations
The Collegiate is a striking, Grade II listed building, with a facade of pink Woolton s ...
on a scholarship, Boulding won a chemistry scholarship to
Oxford University
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...
at
New College in 1929. He soon transferred to
Philosophy, Politics and Economics
Philosophy, politics and economics, or politics, philosophy and economics (PPE), is an interdisciplinary undergraduate or postgraduate academic degree, degree which combines study from three disciplines. The first institution to offer degrees in P ...
.
His economics tutors were
Henry Phelps Brown, and Maurice Allen (1908–1988), who would become a director of the
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the Kingdom of England, English Government's banker and debt manager, and still one ...
in the late 1960s. Boulding obtained a
First in economics in 1931. In his last year he wrote "The Place of the 'Displacement Cost' Concept in Economic Theory", which was accepted and published in ''The Economic Journal,'' after extensive comments by its editor
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist and philosopher whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originall ...
.

On a small university scholarship Boulding spent another year at Oxford doing graduate work, which resulted in a thesis on capital movements. While he was turned down for a fellowship for
Christ Church, Oxford
Christ Church (, the temple or house, ''wikt:aedes, ædes'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by Henry V ...
, in 1932 he did win a Commonwealth Fellowship to the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
. En route he became "quite well acquainted" with
Joseph Schumpeter
Joseph Alois Schumpeter (; February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an Austrian political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at Harvard Unive ...
.
On the fellowship from 1932 to 1934, Boulding continued his economics studies at Chicago and at Harvard University.
Although
Jacob Viner
Jacob Viner (3 May 1892 – 12 September 1970) was a Canadian economist and is considered with Frank Knight and Henry Simons to be one of the "inspiring" mentors of the early Chicago school of economics in the 1930s: he was one of the leading fi ...
encouraged him to focus on his PhD work, he studied with Schumpeter, took classes from
Henry Schultz
Henry Schultz (September 4, 1893 – November 26, 1938) was an American economist, statistician, and one of the founders of econometrics. Paul Samuelson named Schultz (along with Harry Gunnison Brown, Allyn Abbott Young, Henry Ludwell Moore, F ...
and
Frank Knight
Frank Hyneman Knight (November 7, 1885 – April 15, 1972) was an American economist who spent most of his career at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the founders of the Chicago School.
Nobel laureates Milton Friedman, George S ...
, and wrote some of his own articles. At Chicago, he became friends with another graduate student,
Albert Gailord Hart.
His studies with Schumpeter
were interrupted by a
spontaneous pneumothorax ('collapsed lung'). After recovery he spent the last six months of his Commonwealth Fellowship in Chicago, writing articles on
capital theory.
Two of those articles, "The Application of the Pure Theory of Population Change to the Theory of Capital", and "The Theory of a Single Investment", were published in ''
The Quarterly Journal of Economics
''The Quarterly Journal of Economics'' is a Peer review, peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Oxford University Press for the Harvard University Department of Economics. Its current editors-in-chief are Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Kat ...
'' in 1934–1935, and were the topic of
Frank H. Knight's reflection the next year. After returning to the UK for three years, Boulding settled in the U.S. He was granted citizenship in 1948.
University of Edinburgh
Under the terms of his Commonwealth Fellowship Boulding returned to the UK in the summer of 1934, and obtained a three-year position in economics at the
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...
.
Debora Hammond
Debora Hammond (born 1951) is an American historian of science, former Provost and Professor Emerita of Interdisciplinary Studies of the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies at the Sonoma State University. She is known as author of the 2003 book ' ...
. ''The Science of Synthesis'', 2011. p. 250 Academic life at the university seemed very dead to him, and he made himself unpopular with a speech to students that was published in ''
The Scotsman
''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact (newspaper), compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until ...
'' with the headline, "Scottish University Sitting on Haunches for the last Fifty Years."
In those days Boulding was actively involved in the Quaker community, writing a pamphlet on nonviolent methods in 1936 and drafting a letter for the Friends to the prime minister, asking Britain to disclaim the "war guilt" clauses in the Treaty of Versailles and move toward a more just peace.
During this period Boulding learned about
Paton's (1922) ''Accounting Theory'' and the (1916) ''Principles of Accounting''. He was influenced by Paton's approach and this led him to view the
firm
A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of legal people, whether Natural person, natural, Juridical person, juridical or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members ...
as "governed by a principle that might be called the
homeostasis
In biology, homeostasis (British English, British also homoeostasis; ) is the state of steady internal physics, physical and chemistry, chemical conditions maintained by organism, living systems. This is the condition of optimal functioning fo ...
of the constant changing balance sheet". Boulding (1989) explained that: "In the short run, the firm simply responded to changes in the balance sheet resulting from purchases. When customers purchased finished goods, inventory went down, cash went up, and the cash would be spent on labour and materials to make more finished goods. This equilibrium balance sheet, however, would be constantly changing as technologies, new goods, and new enterprises came into play."
In 1935, in his second year in Edinburgh,
Frank H. Knight published an article on his work, entitled "The theory of investment once more: Mr. Boulding and the Austrians," in ''The Quarterly Journal of Economics''. This brought Boulding at the age of 24 to prominence as a notable intellectual in the social sciences.
[ Singell, Larry D. "Kenneth E. Boulding, President-Elect of the AAAS." ''Science'' 200 (21 April 1978): 289–290.]
US academic life

In the summer of 1937 Boulding returned to the US to attend a world congress of Quakers in Philadelphia. He obtained a faculty position in upstate New York at
Colgate University
Colgate University is a Private university, private college in Hamilton, New York, United States. The Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college was founded in 1819 as the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York ...
.
From 1937 to 1941 he taught economics there. Fontaine (2010) summarized his stay:
In a state of spiritual crisis Boulding managed to finish his textbook, ''Economic Analysis'', which he had started in the free summer semesters at Colgate in the previous two years. This work would become a bestseller
and earned him even more respect in the field of economics.
From 1942 to 1943, Boulding taught at
Fisk University
Fisk University is a Private university, private Historically black colleges and universities, historically black Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1866 and its campus i ...
, a
historically black school in Nashville, Tennessee. From 1945 to 1949 he was a faculty member of Iowa State College, now
Iowa State University
Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricult ...
, and from 1949 to 1967 he was a faculty member of the
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...
. In 1967 he joined the faculty of the
University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a Public university, public research university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a Federated state, state, it is the fla ...
, where he remained until his retirement.
A number of national and regional scholarly societies elected Boulding as their president, including the
American Economic Association
The American Economic Association (AEA) is a learned society in the field of economics, with approximately 23,000 members. It publishes several peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Review, an ...
in 1968–69, the
Society for General Systems Research
The International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) is a worldwide organization for systems sciences. The overall purpose of the ISSS is: to promote the development of conceptual frameworks based on general system theory, as well as their i ...
, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...
(AAAS) in 1980, the
International Studies Association
The International Studies Association (ISA) is a US-based professional association for scholars and practitioners in the field of International relations, international studies. Founded in 1959, ISA has been headquartered at the University of Con ...
, the Peace Research Society, and the Association for the Study of the Grants Economy.
In 1978 Larry D. Singell stated:
Boulding was nominated for the Nobel Prize at different times for both peace and economics.
He was an elected member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
(1957), the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
(1960), and the United States
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...
(1975).
Religious Society of Friends
Boulding, with his wife
Elise, was an active member of the
Religious Society of Friends
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...
, or Quakers. He took part in Quaker gatherings, served on committees, and spoke to and about the Friends. The two were members of meetings in Nashville, Ann Arbor, and Boulder. Although he usually stuttered, when he ministered at a Friends meeting, he spoke fluently.
Kenneth Boulding was instrumental in organizing the first
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
teach-in at the University of Michigan in March, 1965. He later spoke on the steps of the Hatcher Graduate Library at the university and was pelted with snowballs by a group of disagreeing students.
In March 1977, he conducted a silent vigil at the headquarters of the
American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia to protest what he considered its distancing itself from Quakers. He penned the widely circulated "There is a Spirit", a series of sonnets he wrote in 1945 based on the last statement of the 17th century Quaker
James Nayler.
Work
Boulding was widely recognized in academia as a prolific writer and an integrator of knowledge. For Boulding, economics and
sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...
were not social sciences— rather, they were all aspects of a single social science devoted to the study of human persons and their relationships (organizations). Boulding spearheaded an evolutionary (instead of equilibrium) approach to economics.
Boulding emphasized that human economic and other behavior is embedded in a larger interconnected system. To understand the results of our behavior, economic or otherwise, we must first research and develop a scientific understanding of the
ecodynamics of the general system, the global society in which we live, in all its dimensions spiritual and material. Boulding believed that in the absence of a committed effort to the right kind of social science research and understanding, the human species might well be doomed to extinction. But he was optimistic, believing our evolutionary journey had just begun.
''Economic Analysis,'' 1941
Boulding's first major work in economics was his introductory textbook, entitled ''Economic Analysis''.
It was written when he was an instructor at Colgate University in the late-1930s and first appeared in 1941 from
Harper & Brothers
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship Imprint (trade name), imprint of global publisher HarperCollins, based in New York City. Founded in New York in 1817 by James Harper (publisher), James Harper and his brother John, the compan ...
in single-volume and two-volume editions.
The book was augmented and republished in four editions, the last in 1966. In a 1942 book review,
Max Millikan pointed out that the book was published at the right time and the right place.
According to Millikan:
Millikan concluded that Boulding's work had filled the gap "neatly and effectively... material is organized by tools of analysis and the problems in the solution of which those tools are useful rather than in the conventional manner".
In the preface Boulding had explained that the book was "intended as a text from which the student can learn and the teacher can teach the methods and results of economic analysis. It also seeks to be a contribution to the development and systematization of the body of economic analysis itself."
Looking back in 1989, Boulding explained, that "the first edition fundamentally followed
Irving Fisher
Irving Fisher (February 27, 1867 – April 29, 1947) was an American economist, statistician, inventor, eugenicist and progressive social campaigner. He was one of the earliest American neoclassical economists, though his later work on debt de ...
and Keynes's ''Treatise on Money''. Even though I had read Keynes's ''General Theory'' by that time, I think I had not really understood it. I am not quite sure that I do now. The second edition, however, in 1948, was a thoroughly Keynesian general theory."
The first edition was published at the outbreak of World War II and did not sell well, but the second revised edition did and became "one of the core textbooks used in college in the United States (and eventually around the world)."
Evolutionary economics
Boulding was an exponent of the
evolutionary economics
Evolutionary economics is a school of economic thought that is inspired by evolutionary biology. Although not defined by a strict set of principles and uniting various approaches, it treats economic development as a process rather than an equil ...
movement. In his "Economic Development as an Evolutionary System" (1961, 1964), Boulding suggests a parallel between economic development and biological evolution.
''The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth,'' 1966
Following the publication of
Rachel Carson
Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservation movement, conservationist whose sea trilogy (1941–1955) and book ''Silent Spring'' (1962) are credited with advancing mari ...
's ''
Silent Spring
''Silent Spring'' is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. Published on September 27, 1962, the book documented the environmental harm caused by the indiscriminate use of DDT, a pesticide used by soldiers during World War II. Carson acc ...
'' in 1962, the developing environmental movement drew attention to the relationship between economic growth and development and environmental degradation. Boulding in his influential 1966 essay "The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth" identified the need for the economic system to fit itself to the ecological system with its limited pools of resources.
[Blewitt, John (2015). ''Understanding Sustainable Development'' (Second ed.). Routledge., pp. 6–16]
Publications
Boulding published some thirty books and more than eight hundred articles.
Books
;1940s to 1960s
* 1941, ''Economic Analysis'', Harper & Brothers
3rd single edition, 19554th ed. part II, 1966
* 1942, ''A Peace Study Outline: The Practice of the Love of God'', Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Book Committee
* 1945,
The Economics of Peace
', Prentice Hall.
* 1945, ''There is a Spirit: The Nayler Sonnets'', Fellowship Publications.
* 1950,
A Reconstruction of Economics
', J. Wiley.
* 1953, ''The Organizational Revolution: A Study in the Ethics of Economic Organization'', Harper & Brothers.
* 1956, ''The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society'', University of Michigan Press.
* 1958, ''The Skills of the Economist'', Cleveland: Howard Allen.
* 1958, ''Principles of Economic Policy'', Prentice-Hall, 1958.
* 1962,
''Conflict and Defence: A General Theory''
', Harper & Bros.
* 1964, ''The Meaning of the Twentieth Century: the Great Transition'', Harper & Row.
* 1966 ''The Impact of the Social Sciences'', Rutgers University Press
* 1966, "The Economics of Knowledge and the Knowledge of Economics". ''American Economic Review'', Vol. 56, No. 1/2, March 1, 1966: 1–13
* 1968, ''Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, Religion, and Ethics'', (University of Michigan Press)
* 1969, "The Grants Economy", ''Michigan Academician'' (Winter)[Reprinted in Collected Papers of Kenneth Boulding: Vol. II: Economics. Ed. Fred R. Glahe. Boulder, CO: Colorado Associated University Press, 1971: 177–185.]
;1970s
* 1970, ''Economics as a Science'', (McGraw-Hill, 1970).
* 1970, ''A Primer on Social Dynamics: History as Dialectics and Development'', (Free Press, 1970).
* 1971, ''Economics'', Colorado Associated University Press, 1971.
* 1973, ''Political Economy'', Colorado Associated University Press, 1973.
* 1973, ''The Economy of Love and Fear: A Preface to Grants Economics'', Wadsworth.
* 1974, ''Toward a General Social Science'', Colorado Associated University Press.
* 1975, ''International Systems: Peace, Conflict Resolution, and Politics'', Colorado Associated University Press.
* 1975, ''Sonnets from the Interior Life, and Other Autobiographical Verse'', Colorado Associated University Press.
* 1978, ''Stable Peace'', University of Texas Press.
* 1978, ''Ecodynamics: A New Theory of Societal Evolution'', Sage.
;1980s to 1993
* 1980, ''Beasts, Ballads, and Bouldingisms: A Collection of Writings'', Transaction Books.
* 1981, ''Evolutionary Economics'', London: Sage.
* 1981, ''A Preface to Grants Economics: The Economy of Love and Fear''. New York: Praeger.
* 1985, ''Toward the Twenty-First Century: Political Economy, Social Systems, and World Peace'', Colorado Associated University Press.
* 1985, ''Human Betterment'', Sage.
* 1985, ''The World as a Total System'', Sage.
* 1986, ''Mending the World: Quaker Insights on the Social Order'', Pendle Hill Publications.
* 1989, ''Three Faces of Power'', Sage.
* 1992, ''Towards a New Economics: Critical Essays on Ecology, Distribution, and Other Themes'', Edward Elgar.
* 1993, ''The Structure of a Modern Economy: the United States, 1929–1989'', Macmillan.
Selected articles
Some of his most cited works:
* Boulding, Kenneth E
''Management Science'' 2.3 (1956): 197–208; Online at panarchy.org, 2000–2017.
* Boulding, Kenneth E. "National images and international systems", ''Journal of Conflict Resolution'' 3.2 (1959): 120–131.
* Boulding, Kenneth E
"The economics of the coming spaceship earth" ''Environmental Quality Issues in a Growing Economy'' (1966).
* Boulding, Kenneth E. "Economics as a moral science", ''The American Economic Review'' 59.1 (1969): 1–12.
* Boulding, Kenneth E. "Evolutionary economics", ''Journal of Business Ethics'' 2 (2):160–162 (1983).
See also
*
Holism in science
Holism in science, holistic science, or methodological holism is an approach to research that emphasizes the study of complex systems. Systems are approached as coherent wholes whose component parts are best understood in context and in relation to ...
*
Loss of Strength Gradient
*
Spaceship Earth
References
Further reading
*
Dopfer, Kurt. "Kenneth Boulding: A founder of evolutionary economics." ''Journal of Economic Issues'' 28.4 (1994): 1201–1204.
*
Keyfitz, N.br>
"Kenneth Ewart Boulding: January 18, 1910 – March 18, 1993" National Academy of Sciences: Biographical Memoirs at ''nasonline.org''.
*
Knight, Frank H. "The theory of investment once more: Mr. Boulding and the Austrians." ''The Quarterly Journal of Economics'' 50.1 (1935): 36–67.
* Tandy, Charles
''Educational Implications of the Philosophy of Kenneth Boulding'' UMI: Ann Arbor. (1993 PhD dissertation: UMI Publication Number 9412524).
*
Wright, Robert. ''Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information''. HarperCollins, 1989. Profiles of Edward Fredkin, Edward O. Wilson, and Kenneth Boulding.
External links
Kenneth Ewart Boulding Papers: 1880–1968at Bentley Historical Library
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boulding, Kenneth E.
1910 births
1993 deaths
20th-century American economists
20th-century Quakers
Academics from Liverpool
Alumni of New College, Oxford
American Christian pacifists
American Quakers
British Christian pacifists
20th-century British economists
English emigrants to the United States
British Quakers
British systems scientists
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellows
Christian Peace Conference members
Distinguished fellows of the American Economic Association
Ecological economists
Environmental economists
People associated with criticism of economic growth
People from Everton
Presidents of the American Economic Association
Quaker writers
University of Michigan faculty
Members of the National Academy of Medicine
Presidents of the International Society for the Systems Sciences
Members of the American Philosophical Society
Presidents of the International Studies Association