Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Bio-Social Characteristics of American Inventors

1937; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 2; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2084363

1939-8271

Sanford Winston,

Science Education and Perceptions

O NE OF the significant factors in the never ceasing changes in society is that of leadership. If one assumes that man is all important and that culture is largely an attendant phenomenon of his efforts, the importance of leadership is evident. If one takes the opposite position that cultural accumulation and cultural processes are inherently more powerful than men in producing changes, leaders of certain types acquire added significance as the ones who hasten or retard the processes of cultural change and give them direction. Most sociologists would probably adopt a middle-of-the-road point of view, analyzing cultural phenomena as products of the interplay of culture and man. In each of these approaches, a leader may well be defined as one who plays a vital part in the shaping of some part of the cultural pattern. Due to the comparative completeness of the life histories in the volumes of the Dictionary of American Biography, it is possible to make an objective study of certain bio-social characteristics of 372 inventors who have had much to do with determining various aspects of American culture. The term inventor is used in these biographies to mean an innovator of new combinations in the realm of the material rather than of the social, religious, or literary aspects of societal organization. In view of the large number of individuals who have been granted patents, this small group of persons forms a highly selected group, outstanding in the field of invention. Of the 372 individuals, four-fifths have been born since i8oo. Only i2 were born prior to I750. The members of the group may be characterized, therefore, as having lived during a period of rapid growth and expansion in American industry. The data obtainable are pertinent for the analysis of certain factors which throw light on leadership in general and on inventors in particular. At the outset, it is interesting to note that only one woman is listed among the 372 inventors. This is quite in line with the general cultural pattern and the specific patterns in the more restricted field of invention. Woman's place may have been in the home; it decidedly was not in the mechanical inventive field of past generations.' This one case has been omitted from consideration so that the following data deal with 37i eminent American male inventors whose lives have been completed. Place of Birth. A larger proportion of American inventors than of the comparable general population has been native born. Of the 371 inventors,