Abstract
Operational Research has always been proud of its heritage in natural science. Many of its pioneers were Fellows of the Royal Society and they invented the subject by showing that their kind of scientific thinking could be usefully applied to one type of human situation, namely military operations. Since then most operational researchers have thought of themselves broadly as scientists, and it is noteworthy that the definition of OR which used to appear in every issue of the Journal of the OR Society (now wisely dropped) made three references to science and the method of science in five lines.
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© 1989 Plenum Press, New York
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Checkland, P.B. (1989). OR and Social Science: Fundamental Thoughts. In: Jackson, M.C., Keys, P., Cropper, S.A. (eds) Operational Research and the Social Sciences. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0789-1_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0789-1_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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