Scholar's Award: The Branching Tree: Organization, Process, and Hierarchy in the 20th-Century Social and Behavioral Science

学者奖：分支树：20 世纪社会和行为科学中的组织、过程和层次结构

• 批准号: 0621232
• 负责人: Hunter Heyck
• 金额: $ 4.16万
• 依托单位: University of Oklahoma Norman Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-02-01 至 2010-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0621232&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Scholar; Award; Branching; Tree; Organization

Between 1925 and 1975, many leading figures in the social and behavioral sciences embraced a new perspective on both science and nature. These scientists saw the world as a complex, hierarchical system, and they redefined their sciences in terms of the study of the various subunits of that system. The goal of science, in this view, was to construct formal models of system behavior, and its chief method was to develop models that would enable one complex system, such as the digital computer, to simulate the behavior of another, such as the human mind. The science that flowed from this worldview was behaviorist and functionalist, and it was characterized by a fascination with organization and process, especially the organization and processing of energy (before WWII) and information (after WWII). I propose to explore the genesis and development of this new view, focusing on a set of influential thinkers on biology, science, and society who saw strong parallels between the physiology of living systems and the structures and functions of "social organisms." This group includes physiologists interested in extending their models of organic machinery to society (L.J. Henderson, Walter Cannon, Ralph Gerard), as well as leaders of the postwar "behavioral revolutions" in the social sciences, many of whom sought to ground their work in physiological analogies (J.G. Miller, Karl Deutsch, Talcott Parsons, Herbert Simon). Intellectual Merit: This project has four primary claims to merit: first, it will illuminate the connections among the various revolutions in the social sciences around mid-century, which have been treated separately in almost all previous works. Second, it will shed new light on the links between biological and social thought by exploring the emergence of a new understanding of living systems, an understanding that, I argue, was grounded in experiences with new organizational and informational technologies. Third, it will offer insight into the work of a set of extremely influential scientists who largely have escaped sustained historical analysis. Fourth, it links the worldview described above to the broader social changes associated with the "organizational revolution." Broader Impacts: This study will have broader impacts in three areas: first, this research will help us develop a more cohesive picture of the relations between the concepts and the contexts of 20th-century science, affecting the way we teach our undergraduate courses in the history of science. Second, this study will be of value to social scientists, management theorists, and biologists interested in the historical development of their own fields, helping make them aware of the sources of some of their basic assumptions and practices. Third, because a central feature of this study is its focus on the ways that organizational and informational technologies have been used as models and metaphors in biological and social science, it will help the educated layman understand how the technologies he/she encounters every day came to have their present forms and meanings.

1925年至1975年间，许多社会和行为科学领域的领军人物对科学和自然都采用了一种新的观点。这些科学家认为世界是一个复杂的等级系统，他们根据对该系统的各个亚单位的研究重新定义了他们的科学。在这种观点中，科学的目标是构建系统行为的正式模型，其主要方法是开发模型，使一个复杂系统（如数字计算机）能够模拟另一个复杂系统（如人类思维）的行为。从这种世界观中产生的科学是行为主义和功能主义，其特点是对组织和过程的迷恋，特别是对能源（二战前）和信息（二战后）的组织和处理。我建议探索这种新观点的起源和发展，重点关注生物学、科学和社会领域的一批有影响力的思想家，他们看到了生命系统的生理学与“社会有机体”的结构和功能之间的强烈相似之处。这一群体包括有意将他们的有机机械模型扩展到社会的生理学家（L.J. Henderson, Walter Cannon, Ralph Gerard），以及战后社会科学“行为革命”的领导者，他们中的许多人试图将他们的工作建立在生理类比的基础上（J.G. Miller, Karl Deutsch, Talcott Parsons, Herbert Simon）。知识价值：这个项目有四个主要的价值主张：首先，它将阐明本世纪中叶社会科学中各种革命之间的联系，这些革命在几乎所有以前的作品中都是分开处理的。其次，它将通过探索对生命系统的新理解的出现，为生物学和社会思想之间的联系提供新的线索，我认为，这种理解是建立在新的组织和信息技术的经验基础上的。第三，它将提供对一组极具影响力的科学家的工作的深入了解，这些科学家在很大程度上逃脱了持续的历史分析。第四，它将上述世界观与与“组织革命”相关的更广泛的社会变革联系起来。更广泛的影响：这项研究将在三个方面产生更广泛的影响：首先，这项研究将帮助我们对20世纪科学的概念和背景之间的关系形成更有凝聚力的图景，影响我们教授科学史本科课程的方式。其次，这项研究将对社会科学家、管理理论家和对各自领域的历史发展感兴趣的生物学家有价值，帮助他们了解他们的一些基本假设和实践的来源。第三，因为本研究的一个中心特征是它关注组织和信息技术在生物和社会科学中被用作模型和隐喻的方式，它将帮助受过教育的外行人理解他/她每天遇到的技术是如何形成其当前的形式和意义的。