Paul von Lilienfeld

Who was Paul von Lilienfeld?

Paul von Lilienfeld was a statesman and social scientist of imperial Russia. 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, and then in German as Gedanken über die Socialwissenschaft der Zukunft. 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, then president, of the Institut International de Sociologie [International Institute of Sociology] in Paris.