C. West Churchman: Trending quotes

“Its roots are as old as science and the management function. It's name dates back only to 1940”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), p. 3; Partly cited in: Ivor Grattan-Guinness (2003) Companion encyclopedia of the history and philosophy of the mathematical sciences, Vol 1. p. 841
Context: No science has ever been born on a specific day. Each science emerges out of a convergence of an increased interest in some class of problems and the development of scientific methods, techniques, and tools which are adequate to solve these problems. Operations Research (O. R.) is no exception. Its roots are as old as science and the management function. It's name dates back only to 1940.

Science

“Knowledge is a potential for a certain type of action, by which we mean that the action would occur if certain tests were run. For example, a library plus its user has knowledge if a certain type of response will be evoked under a given set of stipulations.”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Design of Inquiring Systems (1971), p. 11

Knowledge

“This text grew from the lecture material for the "Short Course in Operations Research" which has been offered annually (since 1952) by Case Institute of Technology.”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), p. vii

“How can we design improvement in large systems without understanding the whole system, and if the answer is that we cannot, how is it possible to understand the whole system?”

C. West Churchman

C. West Churchman, Challenge to Reason (1968), p. 2; cited in '" C. West Churchman — 75 years" by Werner Ulrich, in Systems Practice (December 1988), Volume 1, Issue 4, p. 341-350
1960s - 1970s

Understanding

“The systems approach is not a bad idea”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. 232

Idea

“If the chance of error alone were the sole basis for evaluating methods of inference, we would never reach a decision, but would merely keep increasing the sample size indefinitely.”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Theory of Experimental Inference (1948), p. 255; cited in The Journal of the American Forensic Association. Vol 20-22 (1984), p. 180

Error , Decision , Chance

“There are no experts in the systems approach”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. 232

“Knowledge can be considered as a collection of information, or as an activity, or as a potential. If we think of it as a collection of information, then the analogy of a computer's memory is helpful, for we can say that knowledge about something is like the storage of meaningful and true strings of symbols in a computer.”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Design of Inquiring Systems (1971), p. 9; cited in Daniel J. Power (2004) Decision Support Systems: Frequently Asked Questions. p. 23

Knowledge , Thinking , Memory , Help

“A system may actually exist as a natural aggregation of component parts found in Nature, or it may be a man-contrived aggregation – a way of looking at a problem which results from a deliberate decision to assume that a set of elements are related and constitute such a thing called ‘a system.”

C. West Churchman

C. West Churchman, , I. Auerbach, and Simcha Sadam (1975) Thinking for Decisions Deduction Quantitative Methods. Science Research Associates. cited in: John P. van Gigch (1978) Applied General Systems Theory. Harper & Row Publishers
1960s - 1970s

Way , Nature , Problem , Decision

“The enemies will be asking reasonable questions, like Isn't politics the way matters are really decided, and isn't the rational systems approach simply one political device, to be used when politically expedient? Or isn't morality essentially inexpressible in terms of concepts and words, and doesn't this essentially ineffable quality of our lives lead us humans to decide the way we do? Or, isn't religious imagery really the basis of all our perspectives and concepts, including the perspective of the systems approach? And what is it that carries the values we humans cherish? It is not the ego or the mind, but, say our basic aesthetic feeling, which cannot be conceptualized. And finally, and most generally, why is a rational, holistic approach desirable for the human species, especially since it so often gets out of hand, missing the vital essence of the specific and individual, the here and now, encompassing "everything" to the exclusion of every thing?”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 69; As cited in: Book Review: The Systems Approach and its Enemies http://phd-take-2.wikispaces.com/The+Systems+Approach+and+its+Enemies

Way , Feeling , Question

“The concern of OR with finding an optimum decision, policy, or design is one of its essential characteristics. It does not seek merely to define a better solution to a problem than the one in use; it seeks the best solution… [It] can be characterized as the application of scientific methods, techniques, and tools to problems involving the operations of systems so as to provide those in control of the operations with optimum solutions to the problems.”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), p. 8, cited in: R.L. McCown (2001) "Learning to bridge the gap between science-based decision support and the practice of farming". In: Aust. J. Agric. Res., Vol 52, p. 560-561

Problem , Decision

“The systems approach goes on to discovering that every world-view is terribly restricted.”

C. West Churchman

C. West Churchman, (1970) cited in: Michael C. Jackson ( 1992) Systems Methodology for the Management Sciences. p. 137
1960s - 1970s

World

“What seems to emerge is not a moral reprimand of the management scientist, but rather a moral problem of the profession, a wicked moral problem.”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1960s - 1970s, Guest editorial: Wicked problems (1967), p. 142 cited in: Rob Hundman (2010) Weerbarstig veranderen. p. 38

Problem

“However a systems problem is solved—by a planner, scientist, politician, antiplanner, or whomever—the solution is wrong, even dangerously wrong. There is bound to be deception in any approach to the system.”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. 229; cited in Charles Smith (2007, p. 43)

Problem

“We must face the reality that the enemies offer: what's really happening in the human world is politics, or morality, or religion, or aesthetics. This confrontation with reality is totally different from the rational approach, because the reality of the enemies cannot be conceptualized, approximated, or measured.”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 53

World , Religion , Reality

“When one is considering systems it's always wise to raise questions about the most obvious and simple assumptions.”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. ix

Question

“Design, properly viewed, is an enormous liberation of the intellectual spirit, for it challenges this spirit to an unbounded speculation about possibilities.”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Design of Inquiring Systems (1971), p. 13; cited in Jong S. Jun, Frank P. Sherwood (2007) The Social Construction of Public Administration. p. 76

“Everybody's daily life consists of problems arising from what you decided yesterday. Managers understand that. Mathematicians want to solve a theorem, publish the results and walk away clean. Managers never walk away clean. The real world is a very dirty place.
Clarity is supposed to be the objective of science. I disagree. I think the objective of science is confusion, because confusions carries you into problems.”

C. West Churchman

C. West Churchman cited in: Peter R. Horner (1993). "TIMS Turns 40," in: OR/MS Today, Vol. 20, No. 2, p. 40-43
1980s and later

Life , World , Understanding , Problem

“It would be a good thing, if the systems planner's germination was moral outrage and not just a mild felt need. In other words, I do not think we should view the major problems of the world today with calm objectivity. We shouldn't first ask ourselves for a precise and operational definition of malnutrition. We should begin with 'kids are starving in great numbers, damn it all!”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1980s and later, Thought and Wisdom (1982), p. 17

World , Problem , Thinking

“The story begins with a somewhat disgruntled hero, who perceived of the world as populated with stupid people, everywhere committing the environmental fallacy. The fallacy was a case not merely of the “mind’s falling into error,” but rather of the mind leading all of us into incredible dangers as it first builds crisis and then attacks crisis.
Like all heroes, this one looked about for resources, for aids that would help in a dangerous battle, and he found plenty of support – in both the past and the present. It won’t hurt to summarize the story thus far. If the intellect is to engage in the heroic adventure of securing improvement in the human condition, it cannot rely on “approaches,” like politics and morality, which attempt to tackle problems head-on, within the narrow scope. Attempts to address problems in such a manner simply lead to other problems, to an amplification of difficulty away from real improvement. Thus the key to success in the hero’s attempt seems to be comprehensiveness. Never allow the temptation to be clear, or to use reliable data, or to “come up to the standards of excellence,” divert you from the relevant, even though the relevant may be elusive, weakly supported by data, and requiring loose methods.
Thus the academic world of Western twentieth century society is a fearsome enemy of the systems approach, using as it does a politics to concentrate the scholars’ attention on matters that are scholastically respectable but disreputable from a systems-planning point of view.”

C. West Churchman

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 145; cited in C. WEST CHURCHMAN: CHAMPION OF THE SYSTEMS APPROACH http://filer.case.edu/nxb41/churchman.html, 2004-2007 Case Western Reserve University

People , Stupidity , World , Error