Lester Ward
From Philosopedia
Ward, Lester Frank (18 June 1841 - 18 April 1913)
Ward was an American botanist, sociologist, and paleontologist.
One of the first and most important of American sociologists, he developed a theory of planned progress, called telesis, whereby man, through education and development of intellect, could direct social evolution.
According to William F. Ryan, Ward
- was one of the first theorists to state that the female sex had preceded the male on this planet, and that women were in several ways superior to men, especially in prehistoric times.
Ward, an agnostic, viewed Christianity as a calamity.
From Washington, DC, he edited Iconoclast (1870–1871).
His Applied Sociology (1906) had a wide audience. By some he has been called the father of American sociology.
Ward was wounded during the Civil War, after which he became librarian of the United States Bureau of Statistics and later curator of botany and fossil plants in the national museum.
(See entry for Emily Cape.)
{BDF; CE; CL; EU, William F. Ryan; FUS; JM; RAT; RE; TYD}
