Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (6 August 1862 – 3 August 1932), known as Goldie, was a British political scientist and philosopher. He lived most of his life at Cambridge, where he wrote a dissertation on Neoplatonism before becoming a fellow. He was closely associated with the Bloomsbury Group. Dickinson was deeply distressed by Britain's involvement in the First World War. Within a fortnight of the war's breaking out, he drew up the idea of a League of Nations, and his subsequent writings helped to shape public opinion towards the creation of the League. Within the field of international relations, Dickinson is prominent for popularizing conceptions of the international system as being an international anarchy. In contrast to many of his contemporaries who attributed the causes of war to national and imperial expansion or to population growth, Dickinson argued that war was rooted in fear and suspicion caused by anarchy and arms races.