“Economists and technologists bring the "bits", but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the "wits."”

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in Michael H. Prosser, K. S. Sitaram (1999) Civic Discourse: Intercultural, International, and Global Media. p. 11
1990s and attributed

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Kenneth E. Boulding 163

British-American economist 1910–1993

William Barrett (philosopher) book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Five, Christian sources, p. 105

“What expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 79

“The general systems movement has taken up the task of helping scientists unravel complexity, technologists to master it, and others to learn to live with it.”

Gerald M. Weinberg (1933–2018) American computer scientist

Source: Introduction to General Systems Thinking, 1975, p. 3; Quote in: Dieter Spath, Walter Ganz (2008) The Future of Services: Trends and Perspectives. p. 226

“Socialism would bring him back from contract to status.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Junior Imperial League (3 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 225.
1924
Context: We want to help to better the conditions for our own people. We want to see our people raised, not into a society of State ownership, but into a society in which, increasingly, the individual may become an owner. There is a very famous sentence of Sir Henry Maine's, in which he said that the progress of our civilisation had been of recent centuries a progress on the part of mankind from status to contract. Socialism would bring him back from contract to status.

“I understood the requirement of being "objective" for a scientist, but this is a most naive concept in social sciences as we are finding out.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

Be Here Now (1971)
Context: Before March 6th, which was the day I took Psylocybin, one of the psychedelics, I felt something was wrong in my world, but I couldn't label it in any way so as to get hold of it. I felt that the theories I was teaching in psychology didn't make it, that the psychologists didn't really have a grasp of the human condition, and that the theories I was teaching, which were theories of achievement and anxiety and defense mechanisms and so on, weren't getting to the crux of the matter.
My colleagues and I were 9 to 5 psychologists: we came to work every day and we did our psychology, just like you would do insurance or auto mechanics, and then at 5 we went home and were just as neurotic as we were before we went to work. Somehow, it seemed to me, if all of this theory were right, it should play more intimately into my own life. I understood the requirement of being "objective" for a scientist, but this is a most naive concept in social sciences as we are finding out....
Something was wrong. And the something wrong was that I just didn't know, though I kept feeling all along the way that somebody else must know even though I didn't. The nature of life was a mystery to me. All the stuff I was teaching was just like little molecular bits of stuff but they didn't add up to a feeling anything like wisdom. I was just getting more and more knowledgeable.

“There were many Hayeks: Hayek, the political scientist; Hayek, the economist; Hayek, the philosopher of social science; Hayek, the psychologist. Even in these different roles, he played many parts.”

Mark Blaug (1927–2011) British economist

Hayek revisited (1993)

“Joseph Brodsky, writing about Mandelstam, called lyricism the ethics of language. Larkin's wit is the ethics of his poetry. It brings his distress under our control. It makes his personal unhappiness our universal exultation. Armed with his wit, he faces the worst on our behalf, and brings it to order.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'On Larkin's Wit'
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)

“This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers…. the most striking growth will be in “knowledge technologists:” computer technicians, software designers, analysts in clinical labs, manufacturing technologists, paralegals…. They are not, as a rule, much better paid than traditional skilled workers, but they see themselves as “professionals.” Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social and political force in the 20th century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominant social—-and perhaps also political—-force over the next decades.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

"The next society" Economist.com http://www.economist.com/ (November 2001)
1990s and later

“There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, The economics of knowledge and the knowledge of economics, 1966, p. 1

“The really deep divergence between the humanistic and scientific sensibilities is one of temporality. Very nearly by definition, the scientist knows that tomorrow will be in advance of today. A twentieth-century schoolboy can manipulate mathematical and experimental concepts inaccessible to a Galileo or a Gauss. For a scientist the curve of the future is positive. Inevitably, the humanist looks back.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"Tomorrow".
In Bluebeard's Castle (1971)

“Economists and technologists bring the "bits", but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the "wits."”

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Kenneth E. Boulding 163

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