Sorokin, P A

Sorokin, P(itirim) A(lexandrovitch)

(born Jan. 21, 1889, Turya, Russia—died Feb. 10, 1968, Winchester, Mass., U.S.) Russian-born U.S. sociologist. Appointed the first professor of sociology at the University of Petrograd in 1919, he was exiled in 1922 for anti-Bolshevism. He immigrated to the U.S., where he founded the sociology department at Harvard University. He distinguished two kinds of society, the sensate (empirical, supportive of natural sciences) and the ideational (mystical, anti-intellectual, dependent on authority), and believed that the study of altruistic love as a science was necessary to avert worldwide chaos.