Technology
TECHNOLOGY  Macronow Library
TOPIC HOBBES GO ERNST CASSIRER GO JOSEPH A. SCHUMPETER GO W. EDWARDS DEMING GO KARL R. POPPER GO PETER F. DRUCKER GO DAVID ALLAN BROMLEY GO
Technology
Science
Theory
Experience
Observation
Knowledge
Research and
  Development
Invention
Innovation
Discovery
Entrepreneurs
Education
Skills
Progress
Wealth
  Creation
Industry
Management
Finance
Economics
Litigation
Human Nature.

"Experience concludeth nothing universally. . . But by this it is plain, that they shall conjecture best, that have most experience . . .  "1a

The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.

" . . . [T]he scientific value of a formula consists not only in its summing up of given empirical facts but in its power . . . to call forth new facts. The formula states relationships, connections, series which far outdistance direct observation. It becomes one of the most outstanding instruments of what Leibniz called the 'logic of discovery,' the logica inventionis."1a

"The true standard for the evaluation of a physical hypothesis . . . can never be sought in its intuitive reference but only in its efficacy. It is not the simplicity of the image that is decisive, but the unity of the explanation, the subsumption of the totality of natural phenomena under supreme comprehensive rules."1b

Business Cycles.

" . . . [C]apitalism is that form of private property economy in which innovations are carried out by means of borrowed money . . . "1a

"It was the financing of innovation by credit creation . . . which is at the bottom of that 'reckless banking.'"1b

" . . . [W]ithout innovation, no entrepreneurs, without entrepreneurial achievement, no capitalist returns . . . "1c

Out of the Crisis.

"What is the world's most underdeveloped nation? With the storehouse of skills and knowledge contained in its millions of unemployed, and with the even more appalling underuse, misuse, and abuse of skills and knowledge in the army of employed people in all ranks in all industries, the United States may be today the most underdeveloped nation in the world."1a

"Experience alone, without theory, teaches management nothing about what to do to improve quality and competitive position, nor how to do it. . . Experience will answer a question, and a question comes from theory."1b

"Deadly diseases afflict most companies in the Western world. An esteemed economist (Carolyn A. Emigh) remarked that cure of the deadly diseases will require total reconstruction of Western management."1c

"Mathematics, economics, psychology, statistical theory, theory of law, yes, but most studies of accounting, marketing, and finance are skills, not education; most use of computers for paperwork likewise."1d

 

 

The Poverty of Historicism.

"How could we arrest scientific and industrial progress? By closing down, or by controlling, laboratories for research, by suppressing or controlling scientific periodicals . . ., by suppressing Universities . . . , by suppressing books, the printing press, writing, and, in the end, speaking."1a

Technology Management and Society.

"Education has moved, from having been an ornament, if not a luxury, to becoming the central economic resource of technological society."1a

"In government, modern technology and the modern economy founded on it have outmoded the national state as a viable unit."1b

"Aware that we are living in the midst of a technological revolution, we are becoming increasingly concerned with its meaning for the individual and its impact on freedom, on society, and on our political institutions. Side by side with messianic promises of utopia to be ushered in by technology, there are the most dire warnings of man's enslavement by technology, his alienation from himself and from society, and the destruction of all human and political values."1c

"To take risk is . . . the essence of economic activity."1d

"Managers today cannot take the time to understand, because they don't have it."1e

The President's Scientists.

" . . . [W]hile American industry was spending about $76 billion each year on research and development as of 1992, the National Association of Manufacturers estimated that this same industrial sector was spending $118 billion on outside legal services. . . If we continue to pay roughly one and one-half times as much on litigation as we do on the creation of new wealth in American industry - in other words, research and development - we are on a trajectory to economic disaster."1*

* Italics in the original. 1 Thomas Hobbes. Human Nature and De Corpore Politico. Edited with an Introduction by J.C.A. Gaskin, 1994. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1994.
a Part I: Human Nature. Of the Several Kinds of Discursion of the Mind, at 33.

1 Ernst Cassirer. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Volume 3: The Phenomenology of Knowledge. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Introductory Note by Charles W. Hendel. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957, 1985.
a The Foundations of Scientific Knowledge, at 440.
b The Foundations of Scientific Knowledge, at 463.

1 Joseph A. Schumpeter. Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process (1939). Abridged, with an Introduction, by Rendigs Fels. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1964. (Reprinted 1989 by Porcupine Press, Inc., Philadelphia PA.)
a Capitalism defined, at 179.
b "Reckless banking," at 197.
c The great source of investment opportunity, at 405-406.
1 W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993). Out of the Crisis. W. Edwards Deming, 1982, 1986. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1989.
1 Karl R. Popper (1902-1994). The Poverty of Historicism. Karl Raimund Popper, 1957, 1960, 1961. London, UK: Routledge, 1994.
a The Institutional Theory of Progress, at 154.
1 Peter F. Drucker (b. 1909). Technology Management and Society: Essays. Peter F. Drucker, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1970. New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1977.a Ch. 5: Technology and Society in the Twentieth Century, at 82. Reprinted from Technology in Western Civilization, vol. II, edited by Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., Regents of the University of Wisconsin, 1967.
b Ch. 5, at 90.
c Ch. 7: The First Technological Revolution and Its Lessons, at 117. Presidential address to the Society for the History of Technology, December 29, 1965; First published in Technology and Culture, Spring 1966.
d Ch. 8: Long-Range Planning, at 132. Reprinted from Management Science, vol. 5, no. 3 (April 1959); based on a paper given before the Fourth International Meeting of the Institute of Management Sciences, Detroit, October 17-18, 1957.
e Ch. 10: The Manager and the Moron, at 175. First published in The McKinsey Quarterly, Spring 1967.
1 D. Allan Bromley. The President's Scientists: Reminiscences of a White House Science Advisor (Yale University Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994. Rebuilding the Office of Science and Technology Policy, at 48.