"Operations research has many precursors and allied fields, including Taylorism , scientific management and management science, industrial engineering and systems analysis. As one early textbook explained, the roots of OR "are as old as science and the management function. Its name dates back only to 1940" . Certainly its practitioners have expended much energy and ink in search of an acceptable definition of OR. Morse tried unsuccessfully to halt the debate by declaring OR to be 'the activity carried on by members of the Operations Research Society' But his colleagues were not so easily dissuaded from debate. Much of the concern with definition focused on the sometimes elusive distinctions between OR and neighbouring fields; the attempt to define, or redefine, OR was also born of the desire to allow the subject to evolve beyond the orthodoxy of wartime experience. Crucial considerations included the balance between model and application, and the complexity of the mathematics involved."

Ivor Grattan-Guinness Mathematics See all quotes by Ivor Grattan-Guinness →

React to this quote

More by Ivor Grattan-Guinness

“From the 3rd century onwards, orthodox Christianity, based on a Hebrew story and worshipping the Jew Jesus, also led many campaigns of anti-Semitism.”

“It would be ranked among the most famous achievements of the entire century, but up to 1860 the interest was rather slight.”

“The teaching of axioms should come after conveying the theory in a looser version.”

“In addition, the teaching of theories from axioms, or some close imitation of them such as the basic laws of an algebra, is usually an educational disaster.”

“Mathematics occupies a peculiar position in cultural life today. 'Everybody knows' that it is one of the most basic, and also ancient, types of knowledge; yet it is not part of normal cultural discourse, and few people know much about its historical development, or even that it has a history.”

“Encomium at Mathematical Sciences Foundation.”

Resonant Thoughts

"In science, wherever politics got involved, the results were deplorable."

— Marek Sanak

Science1958

#science

"My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the n…"

— Freeman Dyson

Science1923–2020

#knowledge

"The statistical study presented in the following pages may be best defined as an attempt to construct, on the basis of available statistical materials, a of the United States for 1919 and 1929. One hu…"

— Wassily Leontief

Economics1906–1999

#time

"I don’t believe in identity politics in literature—or in life much, either. Indeed the current scholarly enchantment with identity politics strikes me as a more intellectual version of the warning oft…"

— Maureen Corrigan

Literature1955

#books