Disproportionate Contribution of the Jews

Veblen in 1919

In 1919, American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen published a remarkable essay titled "The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe" in the Political Science Quarterly. Writing during a time of growing Zionist movements and before the establishment of Israel, Veblen explored a phenomenon that few could deny but many struggled to explain: the disproportionate contributions of Jewish thinkers to European intellectual advancement.

"How does it happen that the Jews have so many men of note in the modern intellectual world?" Veblen asked. His answer wasn't about inherent abilities, but about social position.

Veblen's analysis, though expressed in language reflecting his era's limited understanding of cultural and ethnic dynamics, contains insights that transcend its dated terminology. His observations on Jewish intellectual contributions connect to broader discussions on identity, assimilation, and cultural hybridity that continue to resonate today, even as our understanding of these issues has evolved significantly.

Key Elements of Veblen's Analysis

Examining Veblen's arguments through a contemporary lens, several important observations emerge:

· Disproportionate Contribution: Veblen observed that Jewish people made remarkably significant contributions to European intellectual and scientific advancement, noting their substantial presence among academic and scientific leaders.

· Cultural Distinctiveness with Diversity: He suggested Jewish communities possessed distinctive intellectual traditions while benefiting from diverse heritage resulting from centuries of geographical dispersion and cultural exchange across many regions.

· Intellectual Range: This cultural and intellectual diversity, Veblen proposed, created a broader range of perspectives and approaches within Jewish communities compared to more homogeneous populations.

· Cross-Cultural Bridge-Building: A central thesis is that Jewish intellectual contributions flourished particularly when individuals engaged across cultural boundaries, effectively becoming bridge-builders between different intellectual traditions.

· Moving Between Multiple Frameworks: Innovative Jewish thinkers developed critical analytical perspectives necessary for scientific advancement partly because they moved between different cultural frameworks, maintaining connections to Jewish traditions while also engaging with broader European intellectual movements.

· Unique Perspective on Modernity: When educated individuals from Jewish backgrounds encountered modern scientific thinking, they could approach it with distinctive perspectives, neither fully bound by traditional frameworks nor uncritically accepting conventional wisdom of European society. This cognitive flexibility made them particularly receptive to empirical evidence over inherited assumptions.

· Potential Loss Through Isolation: Perhaps most provocatively, Veblen speculated that if the Zionist movement succeeded in establishing a culturally isolated Jewish homeland, intellectual contributions might become more self-referential and traditional rather than maintaining the boundary-crossing innovation that had characterised contributions to European scientific advancement.

Decoding Outsider Advantage

In essence, Veblen's insight is powerful in its simplicity: being an outsider provides unique advantages for critical thinking and intellectual innovation.

Have you ever noticed how a fresh pair of eyes often spots what long-time insiders miss? This outsider advantage operates through several mechanisms:

· Cognitive Liberation: When thinkers move beyond their traditional communities but aren't fully assimilated into mainstream society, they become free from the constraints of either cultural rulebook, enabling novel patterns of thought.

· Habitual Questioning: Moving between different worlds naturally fosters a questioning mindset, for instance when I was first in South Africa I would question "Why do locals call traffic lights robots?" (the answer became obvious within a few days). But the point here is that this questioning creates precisely the sceptical orientation necessary for scientific advancement.

· Fresh Perspective: Standing slightly apart from mainstream society allows one to notice cultural assumptions and practices that insiders take for granted. Think of how West Indian visitors to Britain question our obsession with queueing while Brits never think twice about it.

· Direct Empirical Engagement: Without complete commitment to established interpretive frameworks, these boundary-crossing thinkers can approach phenomena directly, seeing "what is" rather than "what tradition says should be."

Think about your own life - when have you experienced this? Perhaps while travelling abroad, or when joining a new professional community, or even shifting between different social circles? That momentary disorientation often leads to your most perceptive insights.

Testing Veblen's Hypothesis: The Israeli Case Study

Veblen's speculation creates a good test case that has now played out for decades. Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, Jewish people have created a nation where they constitute the dominant majority, the precise scenario Veblen wondered about.

Has this shift from outsider to insider status affected intellectual innovation as he predicted? I find the evidence complex and disentangling it is not easy.

Evidence Against

· Israel ranks consistently among global leaders in scientific publications per capita.

· The country produces extraordinary numbers of patents and startups.

· Israeli universities maintain world-class research outputs across disciplines.

· The nation leads in specific fields like cybersecurity, agricultural technology, and medical research.

Supporting Evidence

· Much Israeli innovation occurs through continued international collaboration

· Israeli society maintains significant internal diversity (secular/religious, Ashkenazi/Sephardic/Mizrahi)

· Many leading Israeli intellectuals maintain connections to diaspora communities

· The national security situation creates its own form of outsider perspective within global politics

This suggests that rather than Veblen's prediction of intellectual decline through insider status, Israel has instead developed new forms of insider-outsider dynamics that continue to foster innovation while creating different tensions than those experienced in diaspora communities.

Consider Israeli cybersecurity, would this field have developed so rapidly without the unique pressures of the geopolitical situation, creating a different kind of outsider perspective within global technology development?

Beyond the Jewish Experience: Wider Applications

Veblen's framework extends far beyond its original context. Modern research on innovation increasingly confirms the value of diverse perspectives and cross-boundary thinking:

· Immigrant entrepreneurs found a disproportionate number of Silicon Valley startups. Did you know that over half of America's billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants?

· Academic research shows more diverse teams produce more innovative solutions. One study found that papers written by diverse teams receive more citations and have higher impact.

· Creative breakthroughs often occur at the intersection of different disciplines. Steve Jobs credited his calligraphy class, seemingly irrelevant to computer science, as pivotal to the Mac's revolutionary design.

Companies increasingly seek "T-shaped" professionals with depth in one area and breadth across others, recreating at the individual level what Veblen observed at the cultural level.

The pattern Veblen identified, intellectual innovation emerging from those who stand between worlds, appears to be a recurring phenomenon across cultures and contexts. What might this mean for how we structure our educational institutions or innovation hubs?

Power and Perspective: A Different Lens on Conflict

When we shift our attention from intellectual innovation to contemporary geopolitics, Veblen's framework raises different but equally provocative questions.

The devastating humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza, with thousands of civilian casualties from persistent bombing, represents a deep ethical challenge requiring careful examination on its own terms. Military conflicts stem from complex historical, security, political, and ideological factors so here, I am not going to reduce the issue to questions of cultural positioning alone. Yet there is a thread worth exploring - how does a society's transition from historical outsider to regional power affect its capacity for empathy and perspective-taking?

This question isn't unique to Israel. Throughout history, groups that have experienced marginalisation have sometimes reproduced problematic power dynamics when their own position shifted. From colonised peoples who adopted colonial practices to revolutionary movements that recreated the oppressive structures they once fought against (think of Nicaragua today), the challenge of maintaining moral perspective amid changing power relations appears universal. It's obviously difficult to see the label from inside the jar, so when any group moves from margin to centre, from outsider to insider, what mechanisms might help preserve the ethical insights that their previous position afforded them?

Relevance of Veblen's Framework

Veblen's century-old insights invite us to consider the following questions:

1. Intellectual Innovation: How might we deliberately cultivate the cognitive benefits of "outsider perspectives" within educational systems and research institutions? Could sabbaticals, exchange programs, and interdisciplinary training be more than just enrichment, but essential to breakthrough thinking?

2. Cultural Exchange: What structures best foster meaningful exchange across cultural boundaries without erasing distinctive traditions? The most vibrant intellectual communities often exist not within monocultures but at cultural crossroads, from ancient Alexandria to medieval Baghdad to modern New York.

3. Empathetic Understanding: How can societies maintain the ability to see themselves through others' eyes, even when they hold dominant positions? What practices might institutionalise this capacity for perspective-taking within governance structures?

4. Ethical Considerations: What responsibilities come with transitions from historical outsider status to positions of power? How might awareness of this transition inform more humane exercises of newfound influence?

Veblen's analysis reminds us that human thought flourishes most vibrantly at cultural crossroads, in those liminal spaces where different traditions meet, question each other, and create something new. In our fragmented age, where many retreat into ideological bubbles and cultural silos, where in the UK we have moved from rivers of blood to an island of strangers - this insight offers both challenge and hope: that our greatest innovations, intellectual and ethical, may emerge not from isolation, but from thoughtful engagement across the boundaries that both connect and divide us.

Source: Veblen, T. (1919). The intellectual pre-eminence of Jews in modern Europe. Political Science Quarterly, 34(1), pp.33-42. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/