The leading anglophone social theorist between about 1940 and 1965, Talcott Parsons (1902–1979), who was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on December 13, was a tireless synthesizer of ideas from classical social and economic theory, functionalist anthropology, psychoanalysis (in which he was trained), and psychology. Though he did not create pathbreaking scientific concepts or procedures, nor contribute formally to ethical reasoning, he did succeed in grafting a robust affection for scientific method (as his generation understood and venerated it) onto the massive edifice of classical social theory in a way that no one else had managed.

Parsons was the youngest child of an early feminist mother (who could trace her ancestry to Jonathan Edwards [1703–1758], the American "divine") and a Congregational minister who became president of Marietta College. Parsons first studied biology at Amherst College, then shifted to political economy of the German-historical type. After a year at the London School...