Herbert Simon: A Hedgehog and a Fox

Abstract

If as Archilochus’ famous fragment goes ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing’ then Herbert Simon is, at face value, a star example of a fox. Popularized by Isaiah Berlin (1978), the fox-hedgehog distinction has been interpreted (overly simplistically as Berlin acknowledged) in terms of mutually exclusive or ideal types. Hedgehog-type intelligences are motivated by an overarching grand idea or scheme that they then apply to — or through which they filter — everything else. By contrast, fox-type intelligences are highly adaptive and come up with new ideas more suited to a specific situation or context. We are of the view that the supposed hedgehog-fox dichotomy is way too trite and one-dimensional an assessment of Simon. If there were a golden thread to Simon’s work it would be the development of a more adequate theory of human problem-solving and derivatively (but no less deeply) his interest in the computer simulation of human cognition — all in the service of the former (Frantz and Marsh, 2014). The upshot is that Simon made significant contributions to economics, political science, epistemology, sociology, cognitive science, philosophy, public administration, organization theory, and complexity studies (and more besides); and while ascriptions of ‘polymath’ and ‘Renaissance man’ are not without merit, they gloss over the distinctive quality of such a mind.