Redistributing the Resources for Intellectual Work: Ernest Solvay's Energetic Sociology and the Call for Inheritance Taxation

Since the establishment of the laws of thermodynamics, the allocation and efficient use of energy resources has not only been a major topic for the physical labor of man and machine. Around 1900, the efficient use of energetic resources presented an equally important issue for establishing techniques and policies fostering mental and intellectual labor and thus for advancing science and innovation in society. One of the proponents promoting research on the energetic conditions of mental labor was the inventor and entrepreneur Ernest Solvay. Besides his well-known institute of physiology, Solvay also founded the Institut des Sciences Sociales in Brussels in 1894 which was succeeded by the Institut de Sociologie in 1902. Based on empirical research both institutes were meant to develop measures and legislative policies against social inequality. One crucial field of research was the role of progressive inheritance taxation in redistributing the resources of wealth and in this way changing the future opportunities of intellectual work. The paper will relate the small-scale perspective of the physiological research on the energetic conditions of individual mental labor at Solvay's institutes both to his activities in promoting the social sciences as a big-scale perspective on "social energeticism" and to his political advocacy of redistributing the resources for intellectual work on the long term by means of progressive inheritance taxation.