C. West Churchman citations

Charles West Churchman, né le 29 août 1913 à Philadelphie et mort le 21 mars 2004 en Californie, est un philosophe et chercheur américain.

✵ 29. août 1913 – 21. mars 2004
C. West Churchman: 64   citations 0   J'aime

C. West Churchman: Citations en anglais

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

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
Contexte: 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.

“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, 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

“The systems approach is not a bad idea”

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

“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.”

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

“There are no experts in the systems approach”

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

“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, , 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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“The complete analysis of the methods of scientific inference shows that the theory of inference in science demands the use of ethical judgments”

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Theory of Experimental Inference (1948), p. 256; cited in Douglas, H.E. (2009) Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal

“Common to all these enemies is that none of them accepts the reality of the "whole system": we do not exist in such a system. Furthermore, in the case of morality, religion, and aesthetics, at least a part of our reality reality as human is not "in" any system, and yet it plays a central role in our lives.
To me these enemies provide a powerful way of learning about the systems approach, precisely because they enable the rational mind to step outside itself and to observe itself”

from the vantage point of the enemies
Churchman had identified four generic enemies: politics, morality, religion, and aesthetics.
Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 24; Partly as cited in: Reynolds, Martin (2003). "Social and Ecological Responsibility: A Critical Systemic Perspective." In: Critical Management Studies Conference 'Critique and Inclusively: Opening the Agenda'; in the stream OR/Systems Thinking for Social Improvement, 7-9 July 2003, Lancaster University, UK.

“The ultimate meaning of the systems approach... lies in the creation of a theory of deception and in a fuller understanding of the ways in which the human being can be deceived about (her) his world, and in the interaction between these different viewpoints.”

Variante: The ultimate meaning of the systems approach... lies in the creation of a theory of deception and in a fuller understanding of the ways in which the human being can be deceived about (her) his world, and in the interaction between these different viewpoints.
Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. 229; cited in Charles Smith (2007) "Deception Meets Enlightenment: From a Viable Theory of Deception to a Quirk About Humanity's Potential". In: World Futures Vol 63, p. 42

“There would be cases where we would not want to accept an hypothesis even though the evidence gives a high d. c. [degree of confirmation] score, because we are fearful of the consequences of a wrong decision.”

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Theory of Experimental Inference (1948), p. 256; cited in Sharyn Clough (2003) Siblings Under the Skin: Feminism, Social Justice, and Analytic Philosophy. p. 284

“An objective of O. R. as it emerged from this evolution of industrial organization, is to provide managers of the organizations with a scientific basis for solving problems involving the interaction of the components of the organization in the best interest of the organization as a whole. A decision which is best for the organization as a whole is called optimum decision.”

Source: 1940s - 1950s, Introduction to Operations Research (1957), p. 6; Partly cited in: Werner Ulrich (2004) " In memory of C. West Churchman (1913–2004) http://www.wulrich.com/downloads/ulrich_2004d.pdf." Journal of Organisational Transformation and Social Change. Vol 1 (Nr. 2–3) p. 210

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