Thorstein Veblen's book "The Instinct of Workmanship"

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This starts a series of blog posts slowly exploring the "Instinct of Workmanship and the State of Industrial Arts" by Thorstein Veblen published in 1914.  We will explore the ideas discussed in this book and at times how they might apply to life and the economy in the 21st century.


Ch. 1 (pg 1-5)


Thorstein Veblen wrote “The Instinct of Workmanship” in 1914.  The book starts in chapter one with a laying out of the main ideas to be explored in much greater depth throughout the book.  We start with life and lief choices being set by: 1) instincts and 2) tropismatic aptitudes.  The second one is something we do not control or control very infrequently such as breathing.  The first one is something we have some discretion over and will be the main focus of the book that Veblen is writing.


Veblem then goes on to state that the word “instinct” has fallen out of favor with students of biology. He thinks this may partly be due to the idea of expanding beyond its original definitions and has perhaps become too bulky.  But then, Veblen turns course and states that his approach is different than in biology or psychology and decides to stay with the term instinct.


We also come to another  key point for Veblen, the growth of habits and conventions (institutions) is driven by the material environment and also by (innate and persistent) propensity of human nature. We will see several times where Veblen goes back and forth between the usage of the term instinct and propensity but he seems to indicate they mean the same thing.


Veblen writes that instincts will become the key unit of analysis for him especially in this book.  They can be distinguished based on the fact that each sek to achieve some set of ends in mind. With its end or purpose in mind, instincts do involve some degree of human discretion and thinking in considering how to adapt the means or tools at hand to achieve the objectives sought as specified by the instinct itself. 


Finally, in this subsection up to the end of page 5, Veblen  talks about the problems of making a distinction between instincts whereby some level of human consciousness is involved and those that are normally referred to as instincts where no discretion is involved.  He mainly remarks that these challenges have to be addressed on a case by case basis as best one can do.


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