Ackoff's Best: His Classic Writings on Management

either we do not respond at all or we do not respond quickly enough or effectively enough to the changes occurring around us. He called our paralysis in the face of change-demanding change Future Shock. One of the objectives of this book is to overcome such paralysis.

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

Children given something they do not understand-a radio, a clock, or a toy-are almost certain to try to take it apart to see how it works. From an understanding of how the parts work they try to extract an understanding of the whole. This three-stage process-(1) taking apart the thing to be understood, (2) trying to understand the behavior of the p

If there are such indivisible parts and we come to understand them and their behavior, then complete understanding of the world is possible, at least in principle. Therefore, the belief in elements is a fundamental underpinning of the Machine-Age view of the world. The doctrine that asserts this belief is called reductionism:…

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Renaissance men confronted nature with awe, wonder, and childlike curiosity. They tried to unravel its mysteries much as…

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to say we are experiencing a change of age is to assert that both our methods of trying to understand the world and our actual understanding of it are undergoing…

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Some held that free will was an illusion granted to us by a merciful God who realized how dull…

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In every domain of inquiry men sought to gain understanding by looking for elements. In a sense, Machine-Age science was a crusade…

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Commitment to the analytical method induces observation and experimentation, which, in fact, brought about what we think of today as modern science. Over time, the use of this method led to a series of questions about the nature of reality,…

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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,…

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