Organizations: Kenneth Ewart Boulding (/ˈboʊldɪŋ/; January 18, 1910 – March 18, 1993) was an English-born American economist, educator, peace activist, and interdisciplinary philosopher.

[2][3] Boulding was the author of two citation classics: The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society (1956) and Conflict and Defense: A General Theory (1962).

He was co-founder of general systems theory and founder of numerous ongoing intellectual projects in economics and social science.

[5] On a small university scholarship Boulding spent another year at Oxford doing graduate work, which resulted in a thesis on capital movements.

[7] Although Jacob Viner encouraged him to focus on his PhD work, he studied with Schumpeter, took classes from Henry Schultz and Frank Knight, and wrote some of his own articles.

Under the terms of his Commonwealth Fellowship Boulding returned to the UK in the summer of 1934, and obtained a three-year position in economics at the University of Edinburgh.

In those days Boulding was actively involved in the Quaker community, writing a pamphlet on nonviolent methods in 1936 and drafting a letter for the Friends to the prime minister, asking Britain to disclaim the "war guilt" clauses in the Treaty of Versailles and move toward a more just peace.

He was influenced by Paton's approach and this led him to view the firm as "governed by a principle that might be called the homeostasis of the constant changing balance sheet".

Boulding (1989) explained that: "In the short run, the firm simply responded to changes in the balance sheet resulting from purchases.

"[6]: 373–374 In 1935, in his second year in Edinburgh, Frank H. Knight published an article on his work, entitled "The theory of investment once more: Mr. Boulding and the Austrians," in The Quarterly Journal of Economics.

But from September 1939, the invasion of Poland and his home country's declaration of war on Germany caused increasing emotional distress and strong feelings of hate against the Germans.

His Quaker convictions were shaken until he had a mystical experience in May 1940 which restored his faith in pacifism...[12]: 223 In a state of spiritual crisis Boulding managed to finish his textbook, Economic Analysis, which he had started in the free summer semesters at Colgate in the previous two years.

In March 1977, he conducted a silent vigil at the headquarters of the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia to protest what he considered its distancing itself from Quakers.

He penned the widely circulated "There is a Spirit", a series of sonnets he wrote in 1945 based on the last statement of the 17th century Quaker James Nayler.

Boulding believed that in the absence of a committed effort to the right kind of social science research and understanding, the human species might well be doomed to extinction.

[22] According to Millikan: For some years there has been a yawning gap in the literature of economic theory between the very elementary text designed for beginning students and the clutter of specialized monographs and periodical articles accessible only to the fully trained economist.

[22] In the preface Boulding had explained that the book was "intended as a text from which the student can learn and the teacher can teach the methods and results of economic analysis.