Flynn HistorySocialSciences 1974
Flynn HistorySocialSciences 1974
Flynn HistorySocialSciences 1974
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GEORGE Q. FLYNN
Texas Tech University
Mr. Flynn is Associate Professor of History at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.
He received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 1966 and has taught previously
at Seattle University, Indiana University, and the University of Miami in Florida. He is
the author of American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency, 1932-1936, has com-
pleted a manuscript on "American Catholics and U.S. Foreign Policy, 1936-1945," and is
currently working on a study of manpower mobilization during World War II.
434
' Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York, 1970), has already gone through over fifteen
printings. Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America (New York, 1970) is doing almost as
well.
" Walsh, Philosophy of History, 56; Hughes, "Historian and the Social Scientist,"
22; R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York, 1956), especially part V.
12 Quoted by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "On the Inscrutability of History," as excerpted
in Robin Winks (ed.), The Historian as Detective (New York, 1968), 524-25.
"3 Lipset, "History and Sociology," 22, 23; Samuel P. Hays, "New Possibilities for
American Political History: The Social Analysis of Political Life," in Lipset and
Hofstadter (eds.), Sociology and History, 222; Eisenstadt, "American History and Social
Science," 122; Walsh, Philosophy of History, 21.
1' I find myself qualifying the argument of Schlesinger that only responsible opinion
interest historians. To the degree that irresponsible opinion leads to action, which it may
if perceived as important by a responsible actor, it is a proper subject of study. Se
Schlesinger, "Humanist Looks," 769.
19 Margaret Mead, "Anthropologist and Historian: Their Common Problems,
Amertcan Quarterly, III (September 1951), 12-13.
"2 Hughes, "The Historian," 20; and for a more elaborate discussion of the same
point, see his History as Art and as Science (New York, 1964).
" Hughes, "The Historian," 20.
"4 Schlesinger, "Humanist Looks," 770.
" See especially John Higham, History (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965), 141-
144.
"2 Note the provocative distinction between existential history and symbolic history
made by Page Smith, The Historian and History (Vintage, 1966), 202-209.