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C. West Churchman

67 quotes

“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 (1913–2004) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 57; as cited in: Carolyn Merchant (1982) "Isis' Consciousness Raised", in: Isis, Vol. 73, No. 3. (1982), pp. 398-409
“For the goal planner, reality stops at the boundaries of the problem. For the objective- planner, it stops at the boundaries set by feasibility and to some extent by responsibility. For the ideal-planner, there are no "real" boundaries.”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1913–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Suppose we consider, not the rationality of holism, but its spirituality. Holism traditionally says that a collection of beings may have a collective property that cannot be inferred from the properties of its members.”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 212; cited in Janet Judy McIntyre-Mills (2003) Critical Systemic Praxis for Social and Environmental Justice. p. 65
“I am often inclined to put the implementation questions first, ie, "Can anything be changed?" Should the implementation question not accompany the whole process from its very beginning to its very end?”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: C. West Churchman (1979, p. 21) as cited in: Interfaces (1982) Vol 12, p. 12
“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 (1913–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the story of my early years with Russ sound like they were years of battle, then the sound is correct.”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: C. West Churchman (1990, p. 130) cited in: Magnus Ramage, Karen Shipp (2009) Systems Thinkers. p. 140
“Everybody's daily life consists of problems arising from what you decided yesterday. Managers understand that. Mathematicians want to solve a theorem, publish the results and walk away clean. Managers never walk away clean. The real world is a very dirty place. Clarity is supposed to be the objective of science. I disagree. I think the objective of science is confusion, because confusions carries you into problems.”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: C. West Churchman cited in: Peter R. Horner (1993). "TIMS Turns 40," in: OR/MS Today, Vol. 20, No. 2, p. 40-43
“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 (1913–2004) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: C. West Churchman "Guest editorial: what is philosophy of science" In: Philosophy of Science Vol. 61, No. 1 (Mar., 1994), p. 132-141
“[ Wicked problems are ] social problems which are ill formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision-makers with conﬂicting values, and where the ramiﬁcations in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 141 cited in: John Mingers (2011) "Introduction to the Special Issue: Teaching Soft O.R., Problem Structuring Methods, and Multimethodology" in Informs, Vol. 12, No. 1, September 2011, pp. 1–3
“One cannot help but be struck by the diversity that characterizes efforts to study the management process. If it is true that psychologists like to study personality traits in terms of a person's reactions to objects and events, they could not choose a better stimulus than management science. Some feel it is a technique, some feel it is a branch of mathematics, or of mathematical economics, or of the "behavioral sciences," or of consultation services, or just so much nonsense. Some feel it is for management (vs. labor), some feel it ought to be for the good of mankind — or for the good of underpaid professors.”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The systems approach to problems does not mean that the most generally formulated problem must be solved in one research project. However desirable this may be, it is seldom possible to realize it in practice. In practice, parts of the total problem are usually solved in sequence. In many cases the total problem cannot be formulated in advance but the solution of one phase of it helps define the next phase. For example, a production control project may require determination of the most economic production quantities of different items. Once these are found it may turn out that these quantities cannot be produced on the available equipment in the available time. This, then, gives rise to a new problem whose solution will affect the solution obtained in the first phase.”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is only natural to expect that improvement can occur in certain sectors of the system without our having delved deeply into the characteristics of the whole system. Thus, for example, there is a tradition in Western thought that parts of the whole system can be studied and improved more or less in isolation from the rest of the system. So deeply ingrained is this concept of social improvement in Western thought that we naturally think it proper to subdivide our society into functional elements. We think it proper that each element develop its own criteria of improvement and that the elements be as free as possible from the interference of the other parts of the social structure... Men have neglected a very serious problem in defining improvement. The problem is very simple: How can we design improvement in large systems without understanding the whole system, and if we the answer is that we cannot, how is it possible to understand the whole system?”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 2 as cited in: John P. van Gigch (1991) System Design Modeling and Metamodeling. p. 145.
“The theory of the nature of mathematics is extremely reactionary. We do not subscribe to the fairly recent notion that mathematics is an abstract language based, say, on set theory. In many ways, it is unfortunate that philosophers and mathematicians like Russell and Hilbert were able to tell such a convincing story about the meaning-free formalism of mathematics. In Greek, mathematics simply meant learning, and we have adapted this... to define the term as "learing to decide." Mathematics is a way of preparing for decisions through thinking. Sets and classes provide one way to subdivide a problem for decision preparation; a set derives its meaning from decision making, and not vice versa.”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: C. West Churchman, Leonard Auerbach, Simcha Sadan, Thinking for Decisions: Deductive Quantitative Methods (1975) Preface.
“The enemies will be asking reasonable questions, like Isn't politics the way matters are really decided, and isn't the rational systems approach simply one political device, to be used when politically expedient? Or isn't morality essentially inexpressible in terms of concepts and words, and doesn't this essentially ineffable quality of our lives lead us humans to decide the way we do? Or, isn't religious imagery really the basis of all our perspectives and concepts, including the perspective of the systems approach? And what is it that carries the values we humans cherish? It is not the ego or the mind, but, say our basic aesthetic feeling, which cannot be conceptualized. And finally, and most generally, why is a rational, holistic approach desirable for the human species, especially since it so often gets out of hand, missing the vital essence of the specific and individual, the here and now, encompassing "everything" to the exclusion of every thing?”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 145; cited in C. WEST CHURCHMAN: CHAMPION OF THE SYSTEMS APPROACH, 2004-2007 Case Western Reserve University
“The design of my philosophical life is based on an examination of the following question: is it possible to secure improvement in the human condition by means of the human intellect? The verb 'to secure' is (for me) terribly important, because problem solving often appears to produce improvement, but the so-called 'solution' often makes matters worse in the larger system (e.g., the many food programs of the last quarter century may well have made world-wide starvation even worse than no food programs would have done.) The verb ‘to secure' means that in the larger system over time the improvement persists. I have to admit that the philosophical question is much more difficult than my very limited intellect can handle. I don't know what 'human condition' and 'human intellect' mean, though I've done my best to tap the wisdom of such diverse fields as depth psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, public health, management science, education, literature, and history. But to me the essence of philosophy is to pose serious and meaningful questions that are too difficult for any of us to answer in our lifetimes. Wisdom, or the love of wisdom, is just that: thought likes solutions, wisdom abhors them.”
C. West Churchman (1913–2004) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 19; cited in Werner Ulrich (1998) '" C. West Churchman-75 years". in: Systems practice. December 1988, Volume 1, Issue 4, pp 341-350