George Andrew Lundberg

Lundberg, George Andrew 

Born Oct. 3, 1895, in Fairdale, N.D.; died Apr. 14, 1966, in Seattle, Wash. American neopositivist sociologist and professor of sociology and statistics at the University of Washington (1945–53). President of the American Sociological Society (1943).

Proceeding from a subjective and idealistic position, Lundberg rejected the objective importance of law and causality and put forward the operationalist method of defining concepts in sociology. An adherent of behaviorism, he refused to acknowledge the conscious motives of people’s behavior. Since the stimulus and motive are identical with the sum of their consequences, the task of sociology, according to Lundberg, boils down to sorting out the features and characteristics of external behavior. Lundberg was an advocate of quantitative methods in sociology and the transference of the methods and models of natural sciences (particularly physics) to sociology.

WORKS

Trends in American Sociology. New York-London, 1929. (With R. Bain and N. Anderson.)
Leisure. New York, 1934. (With M. Komarovsky and M. Y. Mclnerny.)
Foundations of Sociology. New York, 1939.
Social Research [2nd ed.]. New York-London, 1942.
Can Science Save Us? New York-London, 1947.
Sociology. New York [1954]. (With C. Schrag and O. N. Larsen.)

N. V. NOVIKOV