Operations Research – Page 2 – Ether Wave Propaganda

Minor Reform and Epochal Narrative: Wartime Coordination of Research with Practical Needs

I am currently working more-or-less full time again on my book, which is about what I am now calling the “sciences of policy” (operations research, management science, systems analysis, decision theory….). But, while I was doing the spade work for my new project on experts in and around the British state (focusing initially on agricultural and food expertise), I found some interesting parallels between my old and new projects. I thought one of these parallels might make for an interesting post, since I am unlikely to put it into print anywhere else in the near future.

Some of the early parts of my book deal with what, in my present draft, I characterize as “a series of important, but ultimately minor bureaucratic reforms proposed by a small group of scientists and engineers between 1939 and 1941.” These reforms were the establishment of scientific advisory posts and “operational research” (OR) teams in the British Army’s Anti-Aircraft Command, the Air Ministry, and the Royal Air Force.

Decision, Risk, and Values: The Philosophy of Churchman and Ackoff

A couple of months ago, I suggested a possible conflict of interest between STS and the history of science. Effectively, the aspirations of STS to contemporary relevance is at least partially dependent on potential contributions arising from new research results. For these results to have impetus, conclusions should be novel. Historians of science usually see their own opportunities in confirming STS results by mining examples from history, which, as illustrative examples, are treated as effectively “lost” to the present.

However, novelty can be augmented by conveniently forgetting the history of the ideas underlying the conclusions on offer. By mining deep history for ideas that are, in some sense, to be considered “lost” (or by seeking evidence that the ideas have never existed at all), historians can inadvertently create an “anti-history” of the subsequent history of those ideas. A better opportunity, I would argue, is to be found in placing the claims of STS and philosophical peers within their historical traditions. Historians could keep track of who else is currently espousing these ideas based upon much fuller accounts of their history extending to the present.

Unfortunately, historians’ bookkeeping methodologies are woefully inadequate to this task. But it is still possible to fill in pieces of the history where the opportunity arises. This particular post is prompted by a recent post at The Bubble Chamber, which posits a recent move in the philosophy of science, which takes efficacy as a key criterion of knowledge. However, my own historical work on the figures of philosophers West Churchman and Russell Ackoff (who just died last year) suggests that the tradition is neither new nor lost — perhaps just misplaced by philosophers (though I trust philosophers can clarify this point). Neither was obscure: Churchman was actually editor of Philosophy of Science from 1948 to 1958. However, both turned from philosophy of science to operations research before ultimately winding up in the eclectic realm of “systems thinking”.

The 20th-Century Problem: Gowing and “Big” History

A rare but exciting event in researching the history of 20th-century science is when one finds other historians as historical actors. In researching World War II and operations research, Henry Guerlac has turned up as the official historian of the MIT Rad Lab. More surprising, Martin Klein, who just passed away this year, served in the U. S. Navy’s Operations Research Group when he was a physics grad student. I also found that eminent British historian of science, Margaret Gowing—best known for her work on the British nuclear program—was an early contributor to the Operational Research Quarterly (now Journal of the OR Society) back when it was essentially a newsletter publicizing non-R&D modernization strategies and techniques in state and industrial work.

“Historical Writing: Some Problems of Material Selection,” OR Quarterly 4 (1953): 35-36 briefly discusses Gowing’s experience as an official war historian in the employ of the War Cabinet. I don’t think any reference to this article will make it into my book on the subject, so I thought I would share it as part of this post series, to which it is well-suited. For Gowing, facing up to what I am calling the “20th-century problem” required a distinctly 20th-century historiography.