Challenge to Reason

CHALLENGE TO REASON C. WEST CHURCHMAN lIJiiiversity of California, I3er1celo' I challenge C. WEST CHURCHMAN to University of California, Berkeley reason McGRAWHLLL BOOK COMPANY New York Sari Francisco St. Louis Toronto London Sydney Copyright © 1968 by McGraw-Hill, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the TO REASON prior written permission of the publisher. preface Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress catalog card number: 88-13513 ENGE LL 1234567890 PECZ 7543210898 CHA I first began thinking seriously about the theme of this book after undertaking a longer project to study "the design of inquiring systems." Instead of just asking the traditional ques- tion of how human minds come to learn from experience, this study asked how one could design a system that would learn from its experience in some "optimal" fashion. My plan was to translate some of the historical texts in the theory of knowledge into modern systems terminology, by assuming that the authors were discussing the components of a system design. As I was working over Leibniz's Monadology I was struck again by the fact that in his approach to the inquiring system he was insist- ing that a concept of the whole system was essential in under- standing how each "part" worked. This, of course, was a very common piece of sense, but in the context of inquiry its impli- cations were not so obvious. What Leibniz and other "design- ers" of the seventeenth century were claiming was that the inquiring system needed some guarantor—a God—in the management of its affairs, else sound control of the process was im- possible. Now in these days of rather intense study of systems and their management, few seem in the least concerned about such a guarantor, or indeed about the characteristics of the whole system in any but a very narrow sense. If Leibniz was right, then modern theories of system design and managerial Vi PREFACE PREFACE At control are sadly lacking in their reasoning. If Leibniz was wrong, Chapter eleven, "The Heroism of Applied Science," was a paper delivered we 'must know enough about the whole system to be able to show at the Department of Defense Logistics Research Conference in Airlie that no guarantor is needed. This is the "challenge to reason" that House, Warrenton, Virginia, May, 1965. confronts us. Chapter twelve, "The Humor of Science," was given at the New York Much of this book was written while I was working on research Chapter of TIMS in May, 1965 under the title of "The Humor of Manage- ment Science," sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA, under the wise guidance of its administrator James Webb, has Chapter thirteen, "Large Models of Systems," was presented at the Second Stony Brook Conference on Advances in Computing, Stony Brook, New given general grants to several universities to study both the manage- York, June, 1966, ment and the social impact of research and technology. At Berkeley, The poem on page 134 is from Dylan Thomas' "Collected a social science group in the Space Sciences Laboratory was formed. Poems," copyright 1946 by Dylan Thomas; reprinted by permission Some chapters of this book were reviewed by this group and by of New Directions Publishing Corporation. NASA personnel. I am grateful for all the comments and criticisms Permission to quote has been generously granted by the journals I received from both sources, and especially for comments from Pro- Management Science Management Technology, and by the Uni- fessor Samuel Silver, the director of the Space Sciences Laboratory. and versity of Pennsylvania Press. I am also grateful for the comments of Professor Thomas A. Cowan, The topic of the book is an extension of a lifetime's work with Dr. Frederick Betz, Dr. Ian Mifroff, Professor Philburn Ratoosh, Professor Russell L. Ackoff, though he is not responsible for the par- Professor Paul Lieber, and Dr. Helmut Krauch of Heidelberg, Ger- ticular direction of intellectual adventure that this book takes. Many many, all of whom discussed the topic of the book extensively with of the ideas contained in this book were discussed most fruitfully me. The last named and I have been experimenting on the "dialectic" with Sebastian B. Littauer, David B. Hertz, J. S. Minas, and Al H. mode of presenting management issues, a mode discussed at various Schainblatt. points in this book. As always, I enjoy the patience and thorough care of Alice Tabet The chapters in Part II were originally presented as lectures, or and the craftsmanship and attention of Phyllis Dexter. contributed to other volumes, as follows: Chapter seven, "Rational Decision Making," was given at the joint Cana- C. WEST CHURCHMAN dian Operational Research Society and The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS) meetings in Toronto, May, 1962, and appeared in Man- agement Technology, October, 1962. Chapter eight, "The X of X," was given at the Ninth Annual International meeting of TIMS, Ann Arbor, Michigan, September, 1962, and appeared in Management Science, vol. 9, no. 3, April, 1963. Chapter nine, "Science and Cod," was given at the Operations Research Society of America meetings under the title of "The Art of the State" in PROPERTY OF Washington, D.C., May, 1962. THE CONCORD COMMERCIAL Chapter ten, "Theoretical Management," appeared under the title of COLLEGE LIBRARY "Marketing Theory as Marketing Management" in S. J. Shapiro, (ed.), Theory in Marketing, 2d ed., University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadel- phia. the challenge of improvement 1 the myth of management 17 for SCIENCE the quality of science 30 AND TOM COWAN the idea of progress 46 who tells the best stories of all MANAGEMENT the role of the well-informed public 66 in praise of reason 81 rational decision making 95 the xofx 107 THE science and god 117 MAXIMUM the heroism of applied science 127 the humor of science 135 LOOP theoretical management 143 large models of systems 155 THE ETHICS realism and idealism 171 OF WHOLE the aesthetics of large systems 198 war and peace 206 SYSTEMS science part and management I R ONE the challenge E of improvement APT CH Man is an animal that can complain and praise, and fre- quently does both. He believes that the world he lives in can be described in terms of better and worse, in terms of good and evil, in terms of excellence and incompetence. Man is also one of those animals who lives in a system, that is, in an environment, various aspects of which are interrelated, and in which the whole complex of the interrelated parts is supposed to serve his fundamental purposes. How can the systems in which man lives be characterized in terms of better and worse, good and evil, excellence and incompetence? By what reasoning do we come to believe that one nation is a better "system" than another nation? Or, at a more mundane level, how do we reason that one traffic system, for example, air transportation, can be regarded as "better" than the old-fashioned system of horse-drawn vehicles? Not only do we assume that one system can be mean- ingfully regarded as better than another system, but in our praising and complaining we also assume that we can actually do something to improve the systems that we inhabit. Of course, this very important assumption is not one that all men will willingly accept. Many present-day philosophers believe that our technological systems are more or less determined and that their particular destructive effects on man will happen, 2 SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT• THE CHALLENGE OF IMPROVEMENT 3 whatever we do to change them. Yet most of us would not be in- health. In both these areas, surely, there has been a decided im- clined to arrive at so pessimistic a conclusion concerning our fate provement over the last few decades. In education, more people until we had tried to explore the more attractive assmuption that reach higher grades before terminating their formal education, the we have a certain inherent ability to change the world for the bet- materials presented are far more sophisticated, and the general level ter; else how can we justify our complaining and praising? of knowledge of the student in many cases is far superior to that Thus we wish to explore the assumption that man may con- of even two or three decades ago. In the area of health, more people sciously review the possibilities of change of his systems, and, in the survive to a later age, more people live lives in a less painful fash- light of his concept of improvement and deterioration, he can will- ion, more cures are effective and permit people to function in normal ingly select among the choices available to him. ways, than has ever happened before in the human race. Surely it If we do assume that we have the capability of improving sys- is reasonable to say that improvement has occurred in both educa- tems, then what do we mean by "improvement"? Much has been tion and health during the past few decades. Why can't we simply said on the meaning of this concept. Ever since the earliest days of say that society is to be divided into sectors, like education and intellectual history, philosophers have paid special attention to the health, and that appropriate measures of improvement are to be ideas of good and bad, or right and wrong, in the arena of human developed in each sector without requiring any deep analysis or conduct.

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