Arthur F. Bentley

The son of Charles Frederick Bentley (1843–1908), and Angeline Alice Bentley (1845–1911), née Dreisbach, Arthur Fisher Bentley was born at in Freeport, Illinois on 16 October 1870. He married Anna Harrison (1868-1924) in 1899.

He received his Bachelor of Arts in 1892 and his Ph.D. in 1895 from Johns Hopkins University.

He taught at the University of Chicago for one year (1895-1896) and then decided to become a reporter. Later, he transitioned into editorial work at two Chicago papers, the Times-Herald and the Record-Herald. He left Chicago and life as a reporter in 1911, claiming poor health, and moved to a farm near Paoli, Indiana, where he lived for the rest of his life. The son of a successful banker, Bentley was able to finance his life as a scholar without having to work for an income.{{Cite journal |last=Ratner The Journal of Philosophy |first=Sidney |date=1958 |title=Arthur F. Bentley, 1870-1957 |journal=The Journal of Philosophy |volume=55 |issue=14 |pages=574}} He was the second person to win the American Humanist Association's Humanist of the Year Award, in 1954.{{cite web|title=Humanists of the Year|url=http://americanhumanist.org/AHA/Humanists_of_the_Year|work=Humanist Network News|publisher=American Humanist Association|accessdate=October 16, 2013|archive-date=November 28, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151128162005/http://americanhumanist.org/aha/humanists_of_the_year|url-status=dead}} His later work was shaped by a close collaboration with John Dewey.

Bentley held that interactions of groups are the basis of political life, and rejected statist abstractions. In his opinion, group activity determined legislation, administration and adjudication. These ideas of process-based behavioralism later became central to political science. His tenet that "social movements are brought about by group interaction" is a basic feature of contemporary pluralist and interest-group approaches.{{Cite web|title=Arthur F. Bentley {{!}} Encyclopedia.com|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/social-sciences-and-law/sociology-biographies/arthur-f-bentley|website=www.encyclopedia.com|access-date=2020-05-04}}

The Process of Government, first published in 1908 and still in print today, had much influence on political science from the 1930s to the 1950s.Although initially not of consequence, it influenced other groups such as the Chicago School who also tried to develop objective, value-free analyses of the political field. This influence is still felt decades on (1983 : Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Grenoble, Mémoire "Décision Groupale et Réalité Démocratique dans The Process of Government", P. Chabal).{{Cite web|title=The Process of Government — Arthur F. Bentley, Peter H. Odegard {{!}} Harvard University Press|url=https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674733657|website=www.hup.harvard.edu|access-date=2020-05-04}} "The Human Skin: Philosophy's Last Line of Defense" was published in Philosophy of Science (Bentley, 1941). In 1949, he co-authored Knowing and the Known, a series of papers on epistemology, with John Dewey.

Bentley's papers, including his correspondence with Dewey, are kept in archives at Indiana University.{{Cite web |title=Finding aid |url=https://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/findingaids/view?brand=general&docId=InU-Li-VAB8750&doc.view=print |access-date=May 8, 2023 |website=Archives Online at Indiana University}}

• 1893: The Condition of the Western Farmer as Illustrated by the Economic History of a Nebraska Township.
• 1908: The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures.{{cite magazine |url=http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/08/11/080811crat_atlarge_lemann |title=Conflict of Interests | accessdate=Aug 15, 2011 | magazine=The New Yorker | first=Nicholas | last=Lemann | date=August 11, 2008}}{{Cite journal|last=Taylor|first=Richard W.|date=1952-06-01|title=Arthur F. Bentley's Political Science|url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/106591295200500202|journal=Western Political Quarterly|language=en|volume=5|issue=2|pages=214–230|doi=10.1177/106591295200500202|s2cid=154537968|issn=0043-4078}}
• 1926: Relativity In Man And Society.
• 1932: Linguistic Analysis of Mathematics.
• 1935: Behavior, Knowledge, Fact.
• 1949 (with John Dewey): Knowing and the Known.
• 1954: Inquiry Into Inquiries: Essays in Social Theory.

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• [https://ia800902.us.archive.org/30/items/conditionofweste00bentrich/conditionofweste00bentrich.pdf Bentley, A.F. (1893), The Condition of the Western Farmer as Illustrated by the Economic History of a Nebraska Township, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press.]
• [https://ia800901.us.archive.org/34/items/unitsofinvestiga00bent/unitsofinvestiga00bent.pdf Bentley, A.F. (1895), The Units of Investigation in the Social Sciences, Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University.]
• [https://ia800302.us.archive.org/11/items/processgovernme00bentgoog/processgovernme00bentgoog.pdf Bentley, A.F. (1908), The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.]
• Bentley, A.F. (1926), Relativity In Man And Society, New York, NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
• [https://ia601909.us.archive.org/13/items/linguisticanalys00bent/linguisticanalys00bent.pdf Bentley, A.F. (1932), Linguistic Analysis of Mathematics, Bloomington, IN: The Prinicipia Press, Inc.]
• [https://archive.org/download/dli.ernet.862/862-Behavior%20Knowledge%20Fact.pdf Bentley, A.F. (1935), Behavior, Knowledge, Fact, Bloomington, IN: The Principia Press.]
• Bentley, A.F. (1938), "Physicists and Fairies", Philosophy of Science, Vol.5, No.2, (April 1938), pp.132-165. {{JSTOR|184627}}
• Bentley, A.F. (1941), "The Human Skin: Philosophy's Last Line of Defense", Philosophy of Science, Vol.8, No.1, (January 1941), pp.1-19. {{JSTOR|184360}}
• Bentley, A.F. (1945a), "On a Certain Vagueness in Logic: I", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.42, No.1 (4 January 1945), pp.6-27. {{JSTOR|2020062}}
• Bentley, A.F. (1945b), "On a Certain Vagueness in Logic: II", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.42, No.2 (18 January 1945), pp.39-51. {{JSTOR|2019728}}
• Bentley, A.F. (1946), "Logicians' Underlying Postulations", 'Philosophy of Science, Vol.13, No.1, (January 1946), pp.3-19. {{JSTOR|184237}}
• Bentley, A.F. (1947), "The New 'Semiotic'", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol.8, No.1, (September 1947), pp.107-132. {{JSTOR|2102919}}
• Bentley, A.F. (1949), "Signs of Error", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol.10, No. 1, (September 1949), pp.99-106. {{JSTOR|2103249}}
• Bentley, A.F. (Ratner, S. ed.) (1954),Inquiry Into Inquiries: Essays in Social Theory, Boston: The Beacon Press.
• Bentley, A.F. (Ratner, S. ed.) (1969), Makers, Users, and Masters, Syracuse, NY.: Syracuse University Press.
• Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1945a), "A Search for Firm Names", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.42, No.1, (4 January 1945), pp.5-6. {{JSTOR|2020061}}
• Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1945b), "A Terminology for Knowings and Knowns", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.42, No.9, (26 April 1945), pp.225-247. {{JSTOR|2019897}}
• Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1945c), "Postulations", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.42, No.24, (22 November 1945), pp.645-662. {{JSTOR|2020339}}
• Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1946), "Specification", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.43, No.24, (21 November 1946), pp.645-663. {{JSTOR|2020010}}
• Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1947), "'Definition'", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol.44, No.11, (22 May 1947), pp.281-306. {{JSTOR|2019188}}
• [https://ia601603.us.archive.org/22/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.188277/2015.188277.Knowing-And-The-Known.pdf Dewey, J. & Bentley, A.F. (1949), Knowing and the Known, Boston: The Beacon Press.]

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Category:American political scientists

Category:American semioticians

Category:1870 births

Category:1957 deaths

Category:People from Paoli, Indiana

Category:Johns Hopkins University alumni

Category:People from Freeport, Illinois

Category:Columbia University faculty

Category:University of Chicago faculty

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