QUOTES FROM RUSSELL ACKOFF

Here are a number of quotes from Russell Ackoff's book Creating the Corporate Future, subtitled, Plan or be Planned for. They are all from Chapter One, Our Changing Concept of the World.

The emphasis in bold is Ackoff's, and that in bold italic is mine.

".… I believe we are leaving an age that can be called the Machine Age. In the Machine Age the universe was believed to be a machine that was created by God to do His work. Man, as part of that machine, was expected to serve God's purposes, to do His will. This belief was combined with another even more ancient in origin, man had been created in the image God. This meant that man believed himself to be more like God than anything else on Earth. This belief is reflected in the way God was depicted in the art of the age: in the image of a man. In a sense, men were taken to be 'demi-gods.'

"From these two beliefs - that the universe was created by God to do His work and that He had created man in His image - it obviously followed that man ought to be creating machines to do his work. The Industrial Revolution was a product of this inference. Not only did the idea of mechanization derive from the world view of the Machine Age, but all the important characteristics of the Industrial Revolution and the culture associated with it were derived from the methodology and basic doctrines on which this view rested." (Page 6)

"... The program directed at explaining all natural phenomena by using only the cause-effect relationship led to a series of questions whose answers provided the remaining foundations for the Machine-Age view of the world.

"First, the following question arose: Is everything in the universe the effect of some cause? The answer to this question was dictated by the prevailing belief in the possibility of understanding the universe completely. For this to be possible, everything had to be taken as the effect of some cause, otherwise they could not be related or understood. This doctrine was called determinism. It precluded anything occurring by either chance or choice.

"Now, if everything in the universe is caused, then each cause is itself the effect of a previous cause. If we start tracing back through the chain of causes do we come to a beginning of the process? The answer to this question was also dictated by the belief in the complete understandability of the universe. It was yes. Therefore, a first cause was postulated and taken to be God. This line of reasoning was called the 'cosmological proof of the existence of God.' It is significant that this proof derived from the commitment to the cause effect relationship and the belief in the complete understandability of the universe.

"Because God was conceptualized as the first cause, He was taken to be the creator. As we will see, not all concepts of God attribute this function to Him, or even individuality or "Himness" to Him." (Page 10)

"The Machine Age is largely history, but part of it still lives." (Page 12)

"... In Physics, Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle presented another such dilemma. He showed that within the prevailing paradigm in physics two critical properties of point particles could not be determined simultaneously; as the accuracy of the determination of one increases, the accuracy of the other decreases. This called into question the belief that the world is completely understandable, even in principle." (Page 13)

[Ackoff says that a New Age, which he calls the System Age, is emerging. This name is derived from Open Systems Theory. All this by way of introduction.]

"In systems thinking, increases in understanding are believed to be obtainable by expanding the systems to be understood, not by reducing them to their elements. Understanding proceeds from the whole to its parts, not from the parts to the whole as knowledge does.

"If the behaviour of a system is to be explained by referring to its containing system (the suprasystem), how is the behaviour of the suprasystem to be explained? The answer is obvious: by reference to a more inclusive system, one that contains the suprasystem. Then the fundamental question - Is there any end to this process of expansion? Recall that when corresponding question arose in the Machine Age - is there any end to the process of reduction? - the answer was dictated by the belief that, at least in principle, complete understanding of the universe was possible. In the early part of this century, however, this belief was shattered by such dilemmas as that formulated by Heisenberg. As a result, we have come to believe that complete understanding of anything, let alone everything, is an ideal that can be approached continuously but can never be attained. Therefore, there is no need to assume the existence of an ultimate whole which if understood would yield the ultimate answer.

"This means that we are free to believe or not in an all-containing whole. Since our understanding will never embrace such a whole, even if it exists, it makes no practical difference if we assume it to exist. Nevertheless, many individuals find comfort in assuming existence of such a unifying whole. Not surprisingly, they call it God. This God however, is very different from the Machine Age God who was conceptualized as an individual who had created the universe. God-as-the-whole cannot be individualized or personified, and cannot be thought of as the creator. To do so would make no more sense than to speak of man as creator of his organs. In this holistic view of things man is taken as a part of God just as his heart is taken as a part of man.

"Many will recognize that this holistic concept of God is precisely the one embraced by many Eastern religions which conceptualize God as a system, not as an element. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the past two decades many of the young people in the West - products of the emerging Systems Age - turned to religions of the East.

"The East has used the concept of a system to organize its thinking about the universe for centuries, but it has not thought about systems scientifically. There is some hope, therefore, that in the creation of system sciences the cultures of the East and West can be synthesized. The twain may yet meet in the Systems Age". (Page 19ff)