Clarence Edwin Ayres (May 6, 1891 – July 24, 1972) was the principal thinker in the Texas school of

institutional economics Institutional economics focuses on understanding the role of the Sociocultural evolution, evolutionary process and the role of institutions in shaping Economy, economic Human behavior, behavior. Its original focus lay in Thorstein Veblen's instin ...

during the middle of the 20th century.

Life

Ayres was born in

Lowell, Massachusetts Lowell () is a city in Massachusetts, in the United States. Alongside Cambridge, It is one of two traditional seats of Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in 2020, it was the fifth most populous city in Massachusetts as of ...

, the son of a

Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compete ...

minister. He graduated from

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

in 1912, and received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1917. He taught at Chicago from 1917 until 1920, and then moved on to

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...

, in Massachusetts, where he taught until 1923. Following a year at

Reed College Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

, Ayres became associate editor of the New Republic, where he worked until 1927. In that year, Ayres joined the faculty at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, where he remained until his retirement in 1968. One of Ayres students during Ayres time at Amherst College was

Talcott Parsons Talcott Parsons (December 13, 1902 – May 8, 1979) was an American sociologist of the classical tradition, best known for his social action theory and structural functionalism. Parsons is considered one of the most influential figures in sociol ...

, the most famous of all American sociologists, who wrote two term-papers for Ayres's Philosophy III class. Another notable student of Ayres was

C. Wright Mills Charles Wright Mills (August 28, 1916 – March 20, 1962) was an American Sociology, sociologist, and a professor of sociology at Columbia University from 1946 until his death in 1962. Mills published widely in both popular and intellectual journ ...

. Ayres died on July 24, 1972 in

Alamogordo, New Mexico Alamogordo () is the seat of Otero County, New Mexico, United States. A city in the Tularosa Basin of the Chihuahuan Desert, it is bordered on the east by the Sacramento Mountains and to the west by Holloman Air Force Base. The population was ...

(Breit and Culbertson 1976: 3–22).

Ideas

Ayres is best known for developing an economic philosophy stemming from the works of

Thorstein Veblen Thorstein Bunde Veblen (July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism. In his best-known book, ''The Theory of the Leisure Class'' ...

and

John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...

. From Veblen, he took over the notion of the struggle with the so-called capitalist society as a (Darwinist) struggle between technology and ceremonial structure. Veblen had proposed an analytical dichotomy between the "instrumental" and the "ceremonial" aspects of culture. Ayres substituted the term "institutional" for the term "ceremonial" (although he continued to use the term "ceremonial" for some purposes). From Dewey he took over the concept of "

instrumentalism In philosophy of science and in epistemology, instrumentalism is a methodological view that ideas are useful instruments, and that the worth of an idea is based on how effective it is in explaining and predicting phenomena. According to instrumenta ...

," and particularly adopted as his own Dewey's theory of values, which he used to attack the notion of philosophical dualism . Ayres's attack on dualism and "higher values" was the key reason why his student

rejected his ideas.

Works

* 1917. ''The Nature of the Relationship between Ethics and Economics.'' Dissertation, University of Chicago. * 1927. ''Science: The False Messiah.'' Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. * 1929. ''Holier Than Thou: The Way of the Righteous.'' Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill * 1929. ''Huxley.'' New York: W. W. Norton. * 1938. ''The Problem of Economic Order.'' New York: Farrar and Rinehart. * 1944. ''The Theory of Economic Progress.'' Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. * 1946. ''The Divine Right of Capital.'' Boston: Houghton Miffin. * 1952. ''The Industrial Economy: Its Technological Basis and Institutional Destiny.'' Boston: Houghton Mifflin. * 1961. ''Toward a Reasonable Society: The Values of Industrial Civilization.'' Austin: University of Texas Press. * 1962. ''The Theory of Economic Progress, 2nd ed.'' New York: Schocken Books.

References

* Breit, William, and William Patton Culbertson, Jr. (1976). ''Science and Ceremony: The Institutional Economics of C.E. Ayres.'' Austin: University of Texas Press.

External links

The New School's profile of Ayres

University of Texas memorial biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ayers, Clarence Edwin 1891 births 1972 deaths Economists from New Mexico Amherst College faculty Brown University alumni Institutional economists Writers from Lowell, Massachusetts University of Chicago alumni Reed College faculty University of Texas at Austin faculty Economists from Massachusetts 20th-century American economists