Instinct of Workmanship

Taking a long historical view, Veblen attempted a social-evoutionary analysis, carried to its deepest philosophical probings, of the stages preceding the emergence of modern society. He divided social evolution into the prehistoric "savage state" aand "predatory society"; the latter he further divided into "barbarism" and the postmedieval "pecuniary" age, emphasizing the wasteful nature of pecuniary institutions and their intrinsic tendency toward crisis and change. "Veblen's outlines of social evolution roughly parallel those of such later authorities as V. Gordon Childs and Leslie White." International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences