Skip to content

For Stafford Beer, cybernetics was ‘the science of which operational research is the method’: ‘The representation and analysis of real world processes using logic, mathematics and computer science’, Operations Research (OR) and its offspring Systems Analysis (SA) transformed the manner in which war was prepared for, planned and imagined.

— Anthony Stafford Beer

Another quote →

Source, in full

“What Has Cybernetics to Do with Operational Research?”, Operational Research Quarterly10, no. 1 (1959), 1–21, as qtd. in Antoine Bosquet, [academia.edu “Cyberneticizing the American War Machine: Science and Computers in the Cold War”, pp. 88-89.

More quotes by Anthony Stafford Beer

A stochastic process is about the results of convolving probabilities-which is just what management is about, as well.

Management Science (1968)

The development of the Watt governor for steam engines, which adapted the power output of the engine automatically to the load by means of feedback, consolidated the first Industrial Revolution.

Management Science (1968)

The strategies that managers employ are at least as important as the facilities at their disposal.

Management Science (1968)

A slowly moving queue does not move uniformly. Rather, waves of motion pass down the queue. The frequency and amplitude of these waves is inversely related to the speed at which the queue is served.

Management Science (1968)

There is, then, a logical priority about the arrangements, and logic has nothing to do with time.

Management Science (1968)

All Anthony Stafford Beer quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Anthony Stafford Beer (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.