Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist
Source: "An Approach to a Theory of Bureaucracy," 1943, p. 50
Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 12 (p. 227)
Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist
Source: "An Approach to a Theory of Bureaucracy," 1943, p. 50
John Gall (1925–2014) American physician
Source: General systemantics, an essay on how systems work, and especially how they fail..., 1975, p. 33 cited in: Stanley A. Clayes, David Gelvin Spencer, Martin S. Stanford (1979) Contexts for composition. p. 94
Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America
Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three
Harvey Mansfield (1932) Author, professor
How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)
Context: The simplified notion of self-interest used by our political and social science cannot tolerate the tension between one’s own and the good, for that tension leaves human behavior unpredictable. One cannot penetrate into every individual’s private thoughts, and there is no clear way to judge among different conceptions of the good. So in order to overcome the tension, science tries to combine one’s own and the good in such a way as to preserve neither. It generalizes one’s own as the interest of an average or, better to say, predictable individual who lives his life quantifiably so as to make its study easier for the social scientist. And for the same purpose it vulgarizes the good by eliminating the high and the mighty in our souls (not to mention the low and vicious), transforming our aspiration to nobility and truth into personal preferences of whose value science is incognizant, to which it is indifferent.
“you can’t use logic on human behavior.”
Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter
Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter
Christopher Langton (1949) American computer scientist
Source: Artificial Life (1989), p.4-5 as cited in: Luis M. Rocha (2012) " The logical mechanisms of life http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/i-bic/lec02.html" on indiana.edu, August 27, 2012
Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior
Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 79; As cited in: Terry Winograd, Fernando Flores (1986) Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design. p. 21.
“How quickly expectations can change one’s behavior, she thought.”
David D. Levine book Arabella of Mars
Source: Arabella of Mars (2016), Chapter 16, “Passenger” (p. 231)