Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

wanted, it was of the economist, and not the philosopher; a man %y
tusns'a student of practice and a thinker," in touch w ith the realities
, of business arid government, and yet not identified with either, but close
to both and capable of analyzing them objectively and accurat~ly.
Hg spoke of the advzntages the Institute could offer the man
who %my elect to study thorny and contentious financial business or
social problems; he can take his time...Whatever hts conclusions, his
intellectual integrity is not likely to be impaired or impugned. On this
basis alone can a university or institute be in the world and of the
world...znd yet preseme its absolute independence and freedom of thought
and speech,"
As has been said, Mr. Frankfurter had expressed his agreement
with Flexnervs choice of mathatics and econmics, differing with his
attributing to mathematics what mtherraticians were fond of clzirning fox
their discipline -- fts stfmlation of music, poetry, philosophy and the
other hmanities. That with other similar criticism of his draft"caused
Flexner to revise it, so that as presented it claimed for mathematics
only that it was the foundation of modern science.
I4he.n he met Welter Stewart, he found the man who extmpliffed
almost precisely the qualities he sought. He had had acedmic experience.
He had then inaugurated the system of statistfcs and econamic analyses
most relied upon by the gowrrmrent. He was nw in business. Thus he
was conversant with business and government at high levels; familiar too
with the economic theories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
and aware the twentieth was st511 trying to get along on outmoded general-
izations on the nature of the phenomena it sought to understand. Them