C. West Churchman Quotes

52 Sourced Quotes

For the scientist a model is also a way in which the human though processes can be amplified. This method often takes the form of models that can be programmed into computers. At no point, however, the scientist intend to loose control of the situation because off the computer does some of his thinking for him. The scientist controls the basic assumptions and the computer only derives some of the more complicated implications.

C. West Churchman
The ultimate meaning of the systems approach, therefore, 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 his world and in an interaction between these different viewpoints.

C. West Churchman
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
O. R.'s initial development began in the United Kingdom during World War II and was quickly taken up in the United States. This start took place in a military context. After the war O. R. moved into business, industry and civil government. This movement was slower in the United States than in the United Kingdom but in 1951 industrial O. R. took hold in this country and has since developed very rapidly.

C. West Churchman
The religious Weltanschauung, … describes a certain kind of relationship – such as love, adoration and obedience – between men and other men, or between men and some superior being. or between men and "Nature".

C. West Churchman
C. West Churchman exposed the indifferentist position of some researchers — planners belonging to this school in the following terms:
And if our clients blow up the world, land us in starvation or totalitarianism, that is too bad, but we remained pure in heart to the last, didn't we?

C. West Churchman
Enemies are hostile, out to stop you, to eliminate you and your ideas; they are also to be loved, even as yourself.

C. West Churchman
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
The comprehensiveness of OR's aim is an example of a 'systems' approach, since 'system' implies an interconnected complex of functionally related components.

C. West Churchman
It is sheer nonsense to expect that any human being has yet been able to attain such insight into the problems of society that he can really identify the central problems and determine how they should be solved. The systems in which we live are far too complicated as yet for our intellectual powers and technology to understand.

C. West Churchman
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
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
Scientists whose work has no clear, practical implications would want to make their decisions considering such things as:
the relative worth of (1) more observations, (2) greater scope of his conceptual model, (3) simplicity, (4) precision of language, (5) accuracy of the probability assignment.

C. West Churchman
I was an Editor-in-Chief of Philosophy of Science during its early years. Now, over a half century later, I have to admit that I was not very clear what the journal was about, except that it tried to reflect on the meaning of science and its relation to other human activities. At this time I am even less sure of its purposes.

C. West Churchman
The systems approach goes on to discovering that every world-view is terribly restricted.

C. West Churchman
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.

C. West Churchman
The management of a system has to deal with the generation of the plans for the system, i. e., consideration of all of the things we have discussed, the overall goals, the environment, the utilization of resources and the components. The management sets the component goals, allocates the resources, and controls the system performance.

C. West Churchman
Operations research '(OR) is the securing of improvement in social systems by means of scientific method

C. West Churchman
Finally we should note the basic assumption of the classical laboratory-namely, that nature is neither capricious nor secretive. If nature were capricious, she would tell one observer one thing and another observer a quite different thing... Also nature is not secretive, in the sense that she will not forever hide certain aspects of her being...

C. West Churchman
To conceive of knowledge as a collection of information seems to rob the concept of all of its life. Knowledge resides in the user and not in the collection. It is how the user reacts to a collection of information that matters.

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

C. West Churchman
The problem of systems improvement is the problem of the 'ethics of the whole system'.

C. West Churchman
We are always obliged to think about the larger system. If we fail to do this, then our thinking becomes fallacious.

C. West Churchman
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
Inquiry is the creation of knowledge or understanding; it is the reaching out of a human being beyond himself to a perception of what he may be or could be, or what the world could be or ought to be.

C. West Churchman
The individuation process, as the way of development and maturation of the psyche, does not follow a straight line, nor does it always lead onwards and upwards. The course it follows is rather stadial, consisting of progress and regress, flux and stagnation in alternating sequence. Only when we glance back over a long stretch of the way can we notice the development. If we wish to mark out the way somehow or other, it can equally well be considered a spiral, the same problems and motifs occurring again and again on different levels.

C. West Churchman
The idea of a 'system approach' is both quite popular and quite unpopular. It's popular because it sounds good to say that the whole system is being considered, but it's quite unpopular because it sounds either like a lot of nonsense or else downright dangerous – so much evil can be created under the guise of serving the whole.

C. West Churchman
This text is oriented toward human organizations since this has been the emphasis in the practice of O. R. in business and industry.

C. West Churchman
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
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