Abstract

In moments of daring, some physical scientists consider problems of social inquiry, hoping naively that the methods of physical inquiry will provide them with special insight. In my own work on problems of industrial production where I am searching for “practical” means for optimizing production in some socially satisfactory sense, I find that the physical scientist cannot escape the responsibility for social inquiry. So far as I can understand the nature of this work, it requires for its fruitful pursuit a methodology which leans heavily on the concepts of statistical control of Shewhart, of cybernetics of Wiener and of experimentalism of Singer, Churchman and Ackoff.