Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-07T14:44:48.503Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Toward a Philosophy of Operations Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Gerard Hindrichs
Gerard Hindrichs*
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University, Operations Research Office, Chevy Chase, Md.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

What is operations research? What is sufficiently new about it to constitute it a “new science”? And how is it related to philosophy?

1. What it is. MOR's definition, based on Kittel's, runs as follows:

Operations research is a scientific method of providing executive departments with a quantitative basis for decisions regarding the operations under their control (7: 1.)

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 1953 , pp. 59 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1953

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

∗

This paper draws exclusively on the “open literature” of operations research—that is, on what practitioners in the “new science” have got into print outside of military, industrial, and governmental security regulations; and within that limitation, on the periodical literature in which they report on and explain operations research to professional groups and to the general public—with one exception: Morse and Kimball's Methods of Operations Research (1950, revised 1951). This book, hereafter referred to as MOR, is the “Bible” of operations research. The references listed are selected. This paper was read substantially in its present form before the Southwestern Philosophical Conference, December 28, 1951, The Rice Institute, Houston, Texas.

References

(1) Goldsmith, Maurice, “What is Operational Research?” Discovery, IX, 1, 1948, pp. 11–14.Google Scholar
(2) Goldsmith, Maurice and Innes, Roy, “Operational Research,” Pilot Papers, II, 4, 1947, pp. 8–21.Google Scholar
(3) Joubert, Sir Philip, Air Chief Marshal, “Science and the Statesman,” London newspaper, Observer, December 16, 1945.Google Scholar
(4) Kittel, Charles, “The Nature and Development of Operations Research,” Science, CV, 2719, 1947, pp. 150–3.Google Scholar
(5) Levinson, Horace C. and Brown, Arthur A., “Operations Research,” Scientific American, CLXXXIV, 3. 1951, p. 15–7Google Scholar
(6) McDonald, John, “The War of Wits,” (Project RAND), Fortune, XLIII, 3, 1951.Google Scholar
(7) Morse, P. M. and Kimball, G. E., Methods of Operations Research. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and Cambridge: Technology Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(8) Parker, Lt. Col. David B., “Our Greatest Secret Weapon,” Sunday Supplement, This Week Magazine, August 5, 1951.Google Scholar
(9) Parker, Col. Edward M. and Parker, Lt. Col. David B., “Trial by Combat—Operations Research for the Army,” Combat Forces Journal, I, 10, 1951, pp. 13–17.Google Scholar
(10) Yahraes, Herbert, “The Mysterious Mission of ORO,” The Saturday Evening Post, CCXXIV, 34, April 23, 1952, p. 36, 1950, revised 1951.Google Scholar
(11) “Peacetime Implications of Operations Research,” The American Statistician, XI, 6, 1948, pp. 1, 17, 18.Google Scholar
(12) “Putting the OR in Victory,” The Baltimore Sun, June 3, 1951.Google Scholar
(13) “Scientific Research and Manpower,” Nature, CLXII, 4123, 1948, pp. 711–13.Google Scholar