Business rationalisation : its dangers and advantages considered from the psychological and social standpoints three lectures given at the London School of Economics, under the Heath Clark bequest to the National Institute of Industrial Psychology / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946.
Date:
1932
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Business rationalisation : its dangers and advantages considered from the psychological and social standpoints three lectures given at the London School of Economics, under the Heath Clark bequest to the National Institute of Industrial Psychology / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    one and the same single individual gathers his material, prepares it and distributes it. At the other extreme, we have the most highly organ¬ ised concern, divided into purchasing, producing and distributing “systems” or departments, and these further subdivided into smaller sections, each comprising a large group of individuals, and each group performing some particular special¬ ised function. The universe of living organisms is a two-fold one—comprising a universe of blind mechanisms and a universe of purposeful adaptation, recuper¬ ation, order, ends and values. The former is intrinsically blind to purpose, and involves a degradation of mechanical energy; the latter implies direction and is characterised by a purposeful building-up of more complex forms (physical and mental) from the simple, and by the differentiation of many clear-cut, apparently simpler forms from fewer, vaguer, complex ones. So far biological science, abstracting mechanical activity from this two-fold whole, has concerned itself solely with that activity; but it is becom¬ ing more and more widely recognised that there is nothing sw^^-natural in directive activity because it does not lie within the abstracted mechanical universe—however ignorant we are of its nature and however impotent we are to explain it. Biologists are beginning to realise that chance variations and their accidental suitability to the environment of the organism are insufficient to explain the evolution of living