How can we design improvement in large systems without understanding the whole system, and if the answer is that we cannot, how is it possible to und… - C. West Churchman

[C. West Churchman exposed the indifferentist position of some researchers — planners belonging to this school in the following terms:] And if our clients blow up the world, land us in starvation or totalitarianism, that is too bad, but we remained pure in heart to the last, didn't we?

Inquiry is the creation of knowledge or understanding; it is the reaching out of a human being beyond himself to a perception of what he may be or could be, or what the world could be or ought to be.

Analysis of the mathematical form and underlying principles of games was made by von Neumann " as early as 1928. In this early work von Neumann was not so much interested in executive-type problems as he was in the logical foundations of quantum mechanics. It was not until 1944, when von Neumann and Morgenstern published their now well known Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, that the mathematical treatment of games "took fire."