The picture above is merely one example of an early 19th century American settee (a.k.a. a “love seat”, i.e., a chair for more than one person) that I have posted for visitors who, like the curator of Economics in the Rear-view Mirror, might have had no image in mind of what a settee actually looks like.
Harvard President Charles William Eliot was amused by this felicitous metaphor used by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. to describe the breadth of his own professorial chair that covered the subjects of histology and pathology.
Eliot became president of Harvard in 1869 and saw the inherent problem in tasking a single professor with instruction in disparate disciplines. Alford Professor Francis Bowen, whose courses covered logic, metaphysics, ethics, and political economy, was Eliot’s poster-child for the lack of specialization resulting from spanning academic disciplines. Eliot appears to have been quite proud in the development of the department of Economics at Harvard that began with its first full-time professor of political economy, Charles Franklin Dunbar in 1871.
To be fair to Bowen, I thought it only right to first post a list of his book/pamphlet length publications to show that Eliot’s problem with Bowen was not so much one of Bowen being an unproductive scholar (in the bean-counting sense) but that economics apparently only accounted for a small share of Bowen’s scholarly attention. But in any event, Dunbar was definitely a big step up for Political Economy at Harvard.
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Books and articles
by Francis Bowen
1849. Lowell Lectures on the Application of Metaphysical and Ethical Science to the Evidences of Religion.
1850. The War of Races in Hungary [The first of two controversial articles regarding Hungary led to Harvard’s Board of Overseers not approving appointment of Bowen to the McLean professor of history. From The North American Review (January, pp. 78-136; April, pp. 473-520.]
1851. The Rebellion of the Slavonic, Wallachian, and German Hungarians against the Magyars [The second of Bowen’s articles on Hungary to displease the Harvard Board of Overseers. From The North American Review (January, pp. 205-249).]
1854. Documents of the Constitution of England and America from Magna Charta to the Federal Constitution of 1789. Compiled and edited, with notes by Francis Bowen.
1855. The Principles of Metaphysical and Ethical Science: Applied to the Evidences of Religion.
1877. Modern Philosophy from Descartes to Schopenhauer and Hartmann.
1880. Gleanings From a Literary Life.
1885. A Layman’s Study of the English Bible considered in its Literary and Secular Aspect.
Links to many other articles written by Francis Bowen at Gonçalo L. Fonseca’s History of Economic Thought website.
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From President Eliot’s remarks at the 11th annual dinner of the Harvard Club of Fall River, Massachusetts
…I know most of you keep the warmest spot in your hearts for the college. Let me point out what has happened there. When I went back, I found one man, Professor Bowen, occupying the chair of political economy, philosophy and civil polity, and, as Dr. Holmes said, that “chair” should have been called a “settee.” Now there are four full professors of political economy, four in philosophy, with five or six instructors and as many assistants in each subject. That’s the change. Professor Bowen was not productive except of one book, naively called “American Political Economy”. All the professors of political economy are now productive. They belong to the advanced lines. Two have recently rendered important services to country and State, in the matters of currency and taxation….
Source: Fall River Evening News (Massachusetts), February 24, 1898.
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Oh, that Dr. Holmes
…Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was professor of anatomy and physiology in Harvard University down to 1871; and he really taught, in addition to these two immense subjects, portions of histology and pathology. He described himself as occupying, not a chair, but a settee. The professorship in Harvard University which was successively occupied by George Ticknor, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell is the Smith professorship of the French and Spanish languages and literatures. In many American colleges we find to-day the same professor teaching logic, metaphysics, ethics, and political economy. Indeed, this was the case in Harvard College down to 1871, except that moral philosophy and Christian ethics were detached from the Alford professorship from and after 1860. The specialization of instruction is by no means completed in American colleges….
Source: Charles William Eliot’s “The Unity of Educational Reform” before the American Institute of Instruction at Bethlehem, New Hampshire, July 11, 1894 in his Educational Reform: Essays and Addresses (1898). pp. 330-1.
Image Source: Settee from Salem, Massachusetts, ca. 1820. From the (sold) inventory at the Thistlethwaite Americana website.