Paul Frommhold Ignatius von Lilienfeld-Toal (; ; 1829–1903) was a Baltic German politician and social scientist of imperial Russia.The Bibliothèque nationale de France gives Lilienfeld’s date of birth as 1828 instead of 1829; 1829 may be found in e.g. Capozzi (2004: 92), the Library of Congress, Reinert 2003: 7, Philo 19, Лилиенфельд-Тоаль, Павел Фёдорович (Russian Wikipedia article), and Paul von Lilienfeld (German Wikipedia article). He was governor of the Courland Governorate from 1868 till 1885. During that time, he developed his Thoughts on the Social Science of the Future, first in Russian as Мысли о социальной науке будущего (Mysli o sotsial'noi naukie budushchego; 1872), and then in German as Gedanken über die Socialwissenschaft der Zukunft (1873–1881). Lilienfeld's thoughts, which he later articulated in compressed form in both French and Italian, laid out his organic theory of societies, also known as the social organism theory, organicist sociology, or simply organicism. He later became a senator in the Russian parliament, as well as vice-president (1896), then president (1897), of the Institut International de Sociologie (International Institute of Sociology) in Paris.
Political career
Capozzi (2004: 92) describes Lilienfeld as "a Russian functionary who occupied himself with sociology as a form of intellectual diversion,"Capozzi (2004: 92): "un funzionario russo che si occupa di sociologia come svago intellettuale." while Ward (1897: 260, 264) refers to him as "Senator Lilienfeld," and Worms (1897: 657) qualifies him as a sénateur de l’Empire russe. Gerschenkron (1974: 435, footnote 24) calls him "a Balto-Russian," while Barberis (2003: 69) says he "descended from Swedish nobility, held important Russian judicial posts, was governor of Kurland for 17 years and ultimately became a senator of the Russian Empire." Lilienfeld, in fact, was governor of the Courland Governorate from 1868 till 1885, and in the same year in which he put out Social Physiology (1879), his brother, Baron Otto Friedrich von Lilienfeld, on either the 16 or 22 May, founded a seaside town along the banks of the Saka River on Courland’s far western Baltic coast, naming it Pāvilosta (Paulshafen) after his sociologist sibling.Pavilosta Regional Studies Museum; Pāvilosta - Pāvilostas Novadpētniecības muzejs; Pāvilosta – Vikipēdija Lilienfeld, who had studied at the Lycée Alexandre in Saint Petersburg,Лилиенфельд-Тоаль, Павел Фёдорович - Википедия was awarded many honors in recognition for the services he performed for the empire; it would seem, however, that the aspect of his political career for which he felt most proud was his collaboration in the emancipation of Russia’s serfs (Worms 1903: 265)."M. Paul de Lilienfeld-Toal était issu d’une famille de vieille noblesse suédoise depuis longtemps au service de la Russie. Lui-même entra dans l’administration de cet empire et y fit une brillante carrière. Il fut gouverneur de la province de Courlande pendant dix-sept ans, puis se vit appelé au Sénat impérial, où il siégea durant de longues années et jusqu’à sa mort. Dans ces postes élevés, il sut concilier, avec son attachement à la dynastie, une honorable indépendance. Titulaire des distinctions les plus enviées de son pays, il préférait, aux grands cordons de ses multiples ordres, la simple médaille qu’il avait reçue, il y a bien longtemps, comme collaborateur de l’émancipation des serfs" (Worms 1903: 265).
Scientific career In parallel with his administrative duties, Lilienfeld was "a tireless worker, always able to find room for scientific research" (Worms 1903: 265). Lilienfeld's research leaned towards social philosophy in general, and to speculations about the organic theory of society in particular (Worms 1903: 265), the first outlines of which he began to sketch, in Russian, in his Elements of political economy of 1860 and his Mysli of 1872, and to develop more fully in German as his Gedanken of 1873–1881 (Lilienfeld 1894: 825; Lilienfeld 1896b: xiii–xiv). Lilienfeld later served as both vice-president (1896) and president (1897) of the Institut International de Sociologie, which had been founded by René Worms in 1893 (Worms 1895: 881; Worms 1897: 657; Barberis 2003: 54–55).At the Second Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, which took place in Paris from 30 September to 3 October 1895, Lilienfeld, who did not attend the congress in person, was one of four vice-presidents elected to the Institute for the year 1896 (Worms 1895: 876, 879, 881). The other three vice-presidents were Gumersindo de Azcárate, deputy of the Spanish Cortes Generales and professor at the University of Madrid; Sir Leonard Courtney, member of the English House of Commons; and Carl Menger, professor at the University of Vienna (Worms 1895: 881). Furthermore, Worms (1895: 881) seems to contradict the statement by Barberis (2003: 55) that Lilienfeld served as vice-president of the Institute for the year(s) 1893–94. In addition, although Lilienfeld’s first publication in the Institute’s Revue appeared in the volume for 1894, his name did not appear among the list of the journal’s collaborators until 1895 (see covers for Revue 1894, 1895).
Organic theory of societies Lilienfeld's main work, Gedanken über die Socialwissenschaft der Zukunft (Thoughts on the Social Science of the Future), was issued in five volumes over eight years: I, Die menschliche Gesellschaft als realer Organismus [Human society as real organism] (1873); II, Die socialen Gesetze [The laws of society] (1875); III, Die sociale Psychophysik [Social psychophysics] (1877); IV, Die sociale Physiologie [Social physiology] (1879); and V, Die Religion, betrachtet vom Standpunkte der realgenetischen Socialwissenschaft, oder versuch einer natürlichen Theologie [Religion considered from the viewpoint of the real genetic social science, or attempt at a natural theology] (1881).
An anonymous reviewer in Mind noted that the first three volumes
start with the conception of Society as a real organism, and attempt to work out this point of view upon the methods proper to the Natural Sciences. The treatise commences with a demonstration that Society consists of individuals in the same manner as the physical organism is made up of cells, and that the one is real in the same sense as the other. With this idea the author seeks to exhibit a thorough-going identity between the laws of Nature as they exist in the case of its highest development, Society, and in its lower stages, including the individual human being.... The first three parts are worked out with great minuteness, the connecting thread being the conception of a real analogy between the individual and the social group as the essential foundation of the Social Science of the future (Anonymous 1878: 152).
Lilienfeld's fourth volume dealt with "the establishment and elucidation of the Laws of Development of the Social Organism from the physiological point of view" (Anonymous 1880: 298).
What precisely Lilienfeld meant by his term "real analogy" puzzled more than one other social scientist, including Lester F. Ward, writing in the pages of the American Journal of Sociology:
What is an analogy? In biology, which is the standpoint of [Lilienfeld] and of all defenders of the social organism theory in whatever form, this word has a very definite meaning — a technical usage — viz., physiological without anatomical similarity. It is contrasted with homology, which is anatomical similarity irrespective of function. If this is all [Lilienfeld] mean[s] by the analogy between society and an organism, there seems to be no objection to pursuing it to its utmost extent and determining how far social functions resemble organic functions, recognizing all the time that there is no real morphological or structural resemblance any more than there is between the wing of a bat and that of a bird. What, then, does Senator Lilienfeld mean by his oft-repeated expression, "real analogy"? Does he mean that here are homologies? It seems difficult to interpret him otherwise. Ward 1897: 260).
In 1896, Lilienfeld published summaries of his ideas in both Italian and French. Reviewing Lilienfeld's version of the social organism theory as well as the concurrent articulation of it by René Worms, Ward wrote:
Not only in the present treatise, but throughout his great five-volume work, and, later than either, in a pamphlet recently issued, he denies that society can properly be called a superorganism, as Mr. Spencer proposes, and insists that it is in very truth an organism. But what manner of organism does he make it out to be? An organism consisting entirely of a "social nervous system" and "social intercellular structure." Is there any such animal or plant as that? How much of the body of an animal consists of "intercellular structure"? Is not this expression to the biologist a contradiction of terms? What is "structure" in biology? Is it not wholly cellular (or vascular, in which the most highly developed cells are differentiated into vessels)? It is true, there are fluids of various kinds flowing through the animal body in various physiological capacities, but the blood is full of corpuscles, i. e., cells, and the lymphatics and secretions are not "structures." There are also some structures in the animal body that for physiological reasons are devoid of sensitive nerves, but they are all made up of cells. Lilienfeld and Worms both agree that individual men constitute the cells of the social organism, and both take this in a literal biological sense, that they represent the "real" cells as made known by Schleiden and Schwann. But the first of these authors maintains that the individual men in society taken together only constitute the nervous system of society, and that society is devoid of all the other systems of the animal body. In their stead we have the intercellular structure, which, as he says, is produced by the nervous system, or, as the biologists would say, secreted by it. And what is this intercellular structure of society? As I understand him it consists chiefly of the material (and perhaps spiritual) capital of society, the product of human labor and thought. Sometimes he seems to give it somewhat the scope that Mr. Spencer gives to society itself, as including the soil, water, air, flora, and fauna, in short, the environment of society. But if this is all intercellular structure and is only the product of the nervous system and not part of that system itself, where is the consistency in speaking, as both our authors do, of telegraph lines as analogues of nerves? (Ward 1897: 260-261).