QU684Y

Dart

Oetober 7, 1974

©

Dr. Judith Shklar, —
Department of Government

Harvard University
Cambridge, Mass. 02138

Dear Dr. Shklar,

I note your recent critique of Henry Adams in Daedalus.

Are you informed of the history of the idea of acceleration?*
I would have thought that exponential economic growth shaped by compound
interest went back to antiquity. But I have found little reference fo
idea that exponential * explosive before Malthus. And Adams seems to
have seized on the geometric series as if it were a new frame of
thinking in its application to human affairs.

Sincerely yours,
Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

*cf D. Bell, @146 in Sheldon and Moore, Indicators of Social Change, 1968.

cc: Daniel Bell, Dept. Sociology, Harvard

 

C “AUITFHS