Alfred Sloan Quotes

I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not.

Arthur Compton became my graduate advisor. He was the ideal graduate advisor for me: he came into my research room only once during my graduate career and usually had no idea how I was spending my time.

There is no certain way of telling in advance if the day- dreams of a life dedicated to the pursuit of truth will carry a novice through the frustration of seeing experiments fail and of making the dismaying discovery that some of one's favorite ideas are groundless.

Good follow-up is just as important as the meeting itself. The great master of follow-up was Alfred Sloan, the most effective business executive I have ever known. Sloan, who headed General Motors from the 1920s until the 1950s, spent most of his six working days a week in meetings—three days a week in formal committee meetings with a set membership, the other three days in ad hoc meetings with individual GM executives or with a small group of executives. At the beginning of a formal meeting, Sloan announced the meeting’s purpose. He then listened. He never took notes and he rarely spoke except to clarify a confusing point. At the end he summed up, thanked the participants, and left. Then he immediately wrote a short memo addressed to one attendee of the meeting. In that note, he summarized the discussion and its conclusions and spelled out any work assignment decided upon in the meeting (including a decision to hold another meeting on the subject or to study an issue). He specified the deadline and the executive who was to be accountable for the assignment. He sent a copy of the memo to everyone who’d been present at the meeting. It was through these memos—each a small masterpiece—that Sloan made himself into an outstandingly effective executive.

To make good decisions, CEOs need the courage to seek out disagreement. Alfred Sloan, the longtime CEO and chairman of General Motors, once interrupted a committee meeting with a question: “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here?” All the committee members nodded. “Then,” Sloan said, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what this decision is about.

Alfred P. Sloan, the legendary builder of General Motors, once said to a meeting of one of his top committees, 'Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here?' Everyone around the table nodded. 'Then,' Sloan continued, 'I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about

I am often asked, 'What made you become a scientist?' But I can't stand far enough away from myself to give a really satisfactory answer, for I cannot distinctly remember a time when I did not think that a scientist was the most exciting possible thing to be.

Is common failing ... To fall in love with a hypothesis and to be unwilling to take no for an answer. A Love affair with a pet hypothesis can waste years of precious time. There is very often no finally decisive yes, though quite often there can be a decisive no.

Conservatives concerned about the “creeping socialism” of the welfare state under Truman were emboldened by the Republican gains in the midterm elections of 1950. In an upbeat letter to Alfred Sloan, the head of General Motors and an ardent supporter of his work, Fifield reflected on the recent returns. “We are having quite a deluge of letters from across the country, indicating the feeling that Spiritual Mobilization has had some part in the awakening which was evidenced by the elections,” he wrote. “Of course, we are a little proud and very happy for whatever good we have been able to do in waking people up to the peril of collectivism and the importance of Freedom under God.” But the battle was far from won. “I do not consider that we can relax our efforts in any way or at any point,” Fifield noted. “It is still a long road back to what was and, please God, will again be America.”47

For these reasons a young scientist must not be disheartened if he does not become the eponym of a natural principle phenomenon or disease. Although the importance of discoveries maybe overrated no young scientists need think that he will gain a reputation or high performant merely by compiling information particularly information of the kind nobody really wants. But if he makes the world more easily understandable by any means whether theoretical or experimental he will learn his colleagues gratitude and respect.

Robert Oppenheimer used to tell of the pioneer mysteries of building reliable Geiger counters that had low background noise. Among his friends, he said, there were two schools of thought. One school firmly held that the final step before one sealed off the Geiger tube was to peel a banana and wave the skin three times, sharply to the left. The other school was equally confident that success would follow if one waved the banana peel twice to the left and then, once, smartly to the right. (My counters were unbelievably bad because I didn't use either of these techniques.)

efore the Alfred P. Sloan

We are all Expressionists part of the time. Sometimes we just want to scream loudly at injustice, or to stand up and be counted. These are noble motives, but any serious revolutionist must often deprive himself of the pleasures of self-expression. He must judge his actions by their ultimate effects on institutions.

Articulate each meeting’s purpose (Making an announcement? Delivering a report?). Terminate the meeting once the purpose is accomplished. Follow up with short communications summarizing the discussion, spelling out new work assignments and deadlines for completing them. General Motors CEO Alfred Sloan’s legendary mastery of meeting follow-up helped secure GM’s industry dominance in the mid-twentieth century.

Around the lab I heard that publicity was measured in an absolute unit, the "kan". That unit was too large for ordinary application and a practical unit one one-thousandth of the size served in its place, the "millikan".

Another little rule (for medical scientists especially) is that mice, rats, and other laboratory animals should never be injected. Few hypodermic needles are large enough for even the smallest mouse to pass through, especially if it is injected with something. ("Mice were injected wiht rabbit serum albumin mixed with Freund's adjuvant," we read. "Ah, but what into?" the cry goes up.)

But what will a scientist do to resolve his problem? Something of which he can be quite certain is that no more compilation of factual information will serve his purpose. No new truth will declare itself from inside the heap of facts. It is true that Bacon and Comenius and Condorcet too sometimes wrote as if they believed that the collection and classification of empirical facts would lead to an understanding of nature but in taking this view they were guided by a rather special consideration they felt under a strong obligation to refute the idea that deduction was an act of mind that could lead to the discovery of new truth that an act of mind alone could enlarge the understanding. The the philosophic and scientific writing of the 17th century particularly the writing of Bacon, Boyle, and Glanville for example is full of dismissive references to Aristotle's way of thinking in the tradition of which they had all grown up.

It is not methodologically an exaggeration to say that Fleming eventually found penicillin because he has been looking for it... Good luck is almost always preceded by an expectation that it will gratify. Pasteur is well known to have said that fortune favors the prepared mind, and Fontenelle observed, 'Ces hasards ne sont que pour ceux qui jouent bien !

There’s a famous story in the business world about Alfred P. Sloan, the CEO of General Motors. “I take it we’re all in complete agreement on the decision here,” Sloan once said, looking around a conference table at the members of one of his top committees. Everyone looked back and nodded. “Then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting,” he continued, “to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain understanding of what the decision is all about.

Alfred Sloan summed up decades of experience at General Motors by saying, “Good management rests on a reconciliation of centralization and decentralization.” Or, we might say, on a balancing act to get the best combination of responsiveness and leverage.

Benzer düşünceler, aceminin haftalar veya aylarını 'literatüre hakim olma'ya harcaması için de sözkonusudur. Kitap öğretisine aşırı bağımlılık hayal gücünü sınırlayıcı ve köstekleyici bir etki yapar. Başkalarının yaptığı araştırmalar üzerinde durmaksızın kafa yormak bazen, psikolojik açıdan, bizzat araştırma yapmanın yerini tutmaktadır; tıpkı roman okumanın, gerçek hayatta yaşanılacak romanların yerini alması gibi.

Ben zekaya ve zeka yeteneğindeki kalıtımsal farklara inanırım. Ancak, zekanın bir tek sayı ile -I. Q. (zeka testi) sonucu gibi- ölçülebilecek basit bir yetenek olduğuna inanmıyorum. Bu ölçümlemeyi kabul eden psikologlar o kadar tutarsız beyanlarda bulunmuşlardır ki bunu konularını zedelemek için bilerek yaptıklarına inanmamak çok zor oluyor.

Hatalı bilimsel varsayımlar, sonradan yerlerine doğrularının konulabileceği düşünüldüğünde mazur görülebilirler; ancak, çalışmalarını ona inanmaya devam ederek sürdürenlere çok zarar verebilirler. Çünkü, teorilerine aşırı hayran olan bilimciler deneylerin ortaya koyduğu 'hayır' yanıtını kabul etmekten de aşırı ölçüde kaçınırlar. Bazen de bilimciler teorilerini sınamaya tabi tutmak yerine çevresinde oyalanır; yalnız ikinci derece sonuçları test eder, doğrudan ilgili olmayan ikincil konularla uğraşırlar; hipotezlerini çürütebilecek bir sonucun riskini göze alamazlar.

Özetin yazılması, yazarın kavrama ve dengeleme yeteneğini -neyin gerçekten önemi olup neyin atlanabileceğini takdir yeteneğini- ortaya koyar. Özet kendi sınırları içinde eksiksiz olmalıdır. İncelenen hipotezin belirlenmesiyle başlayıp değerlendirilmesiyle bitebilir.

Nobel kazananlardan bazıları araştırmayı bırakır ve vaktini dünyayı dolaşıp değişik toplantılara katılarak geçirir. Bazen de, Bilim, İnsanlık, Değerler, İnsan Çabası veya buna benzer soyut sözcüklerden oluşan) konularda konferans verir. Bu saygın kişilerin egoları, kendilerine imza için sunulan bir sürü manifesto ile daha da kabarır; çünkü, imzaları bu manifestoların lehine büyük ağırlık koyacaktır. Bir örnek: "Dünya ulusları bundan böyle dostluk ve uyum içinde yaşamalı ve politik anlaşmazlıkları çözmek için savaş araçları kullanmaktan vazgeçmelidir.

Genç bilimciler işlerin yürütülmesinde yeterince söz sahibi olmamaktan yakınıp, sonra da onlara bu hakları kullanabilecekleri komitelerde görev verildiği zaman bundan şikayet etme yoluna gitmemelidirler.

Olaylara ve onlara dayalı hesaplamalarla uğraşan soğuk, ciddi, "bilimci" tipi, yoksul, hırpani, dağınık, belki de veremli olup zaman zaman şiirsel cinnete yakalanan şair tipinden aşağı kalır bir karikatür değildir.

Bilimsel araştırma, sonuçları açıklanmadan önce bitmiş sayılmaz.

Okul çocuklarına ders anlatmaya vakit ayıran her bilimci, dinleyicilerine hakim olup olmadığını hemen anlar. Çocuklar sessizce oturmaz ve eğer sıkılırlarsa kıpırdanmaya başlarlar. Hoca bazen tarla dolusu fareye hitap ettiğini sanır. Ama ilgi duyduklarında minikler sakin sakin otururlar.

Sonuç olarak bilim, doğal dünyanın neye benzediği hakkındaki en son düşüncelerimizi temsil eden, birbirine mantıkla bağlanmış teoriler ağıdır.

Alfred P. Sloan, the former CEO of General Motors, presents a nice contrast. He was leading a group of high-level policy makers who seemed to have reached a consensus. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here….Then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.” Herodotus, writing in the fifth century B.C., reported that the ancient Persians used a version of Sloan’s techniques to prevent groupthink. Whenever a group reached a decision while sober, they later reconsidered it while intoxicated.

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and the Royal Society of London. His most recent award was a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015. He is the author of From Eternity to Here and

Bilim açısından sakıncalı bir başka görüş de, astlarına emirler verip onların etrafta koşuşturarak emirleri yerine getirmelerinin bilimsel araştırma yapmak olduğu sanısıdır.

Kültür konusunda kendini küçümsenmiş ve yetersiz hisseden bir bilimci, klasik edebiyat ve güzel sanatlar dünyasından tamamen uzaklaşarak teselli bulur. İncinmiş bir ruh için başka bir deva da 'çokbilmiş' olmaktır. Bu durumda çevresindekiler, o günlerin gözde senaryoları, yorumları, Gödel teoremi, Chomsky'nin dilbilimi kavramı, güzel sanatlarda Rosicrucian'cı etkiler konularındaki göz kamaştırıcı konuşmaları karşısında şaşkına dönecektir. Bu, gerçekten korkunç bir intikam; ancak, eski dostlarının onu görünce kaçışmaları ile sonuçlanır. Çokbilmiş konuşma biçiminde en sık olarak kullanılan şudur: "x diye bir şey yoktur; herkesin x dediği şey gerçekte y dir." Burada x, insanların inandığı herhangi bir şey olabilir; örneğin Rönesans, romantizmin yeniden canlanışı veya sanayi devrimi; y ise işçi sınıfının gönlünde yattığı söylenen en önemli şey. Yine de çokbilmişlik bilimcilerin meslek hastalıklarından sayılmaz. Benim tanıdığım en kötü çok bilmişlerin ikisi de ekonomistti.

İşbirliği biraz ruh cömertliği gerektirir ve bir genç bilimci kıskançlığa benzer bir huy fark eder, arkadaşlarını kıskandığını hissederse başkaları ile çalışmaya girmemelidir.

A formal paper should therefore begin with a paragraph of explanation that describes the the problem under investigation and the main lines of the way the author feels he has been able to contribute to its solution. Great pains should be taken over the papers summary which should make use of the whole of the journey's ration of space 1/5 or 1/6 off the length of the text as the case may be

...today, a young hopeful attaches himself as a graduate student to some senior scientist and hopes to learn his trade and be rewarded by a master's degree or doctorate of philosophy bad evidence that he has done so.

... but conventional wisdom frowns upon it and is greatly opposed to young graduates continuing in the same department; lips are pursed, the evils of academic inbreeding piously rehearsed, and sentiments hardly more lofty or original than that "travel broadens the mind" are urged upon any graduate with an inclination to stay put. .... Inbreeding is often the way in which a great school of research is built up. If a graduate understands and is proud of the work going on in his department, he may do best to fall into step with people who know where they are going. A graduate student should by all means attach himself to a department doing work that has aroused his enthusiasm, admiration or respect; no good will come of merely going wherever a job offers, irrespective of the work in progress.

No, the problem ( necessary to achieve important scientific discoveries) must be such that it matters what the answer is- whether to science generally or to mankind.

Isolation is disagreeable and bad for graduate students. The need to avoid it is one of the best arguments for joining some intellectually bustling concern.

I mean application, diligence, a sense of purpose, the power to concentrate, to persevere and not be cast down by adversity_by finding out after long and weary inquiry, for example, that a dearly loved hypothesis bis in large measure mistaken.

... It is my recollection of these bad times that accounts for the earnestness of my advice to young scientists that they should have more than one string to their bow and should be willing to take no for an answer if the evidence points that way.

A novice must stick it out until he discovered whether the rewards and compensations of a scientific life are for him commensurate with the disappointments and the toil; but if once a scientist experiences the exhilaration of discovery and the satisfaction of carrying through a really tricky experiment- once he has felt that deeper and more expansive feeling Freud has called the "oceanic feeling" that is the reward for any real advancement of the understanding- then he is hooked and no other kind of life will do.

... the satisfaction of Knowing that something is known..

A good tutor taught the whole if his subject and not just that part of it in which he himself happened to be especially interested or proficient; to 'teach' did not, of course, mean to 'impart factual information,' a relatively unimportant consideration, but rather to guide thought and reading and encourage reflection.

Yet an understanding of the scientific enterprise, as distinct from the data and concepts and theories of science itself, is certainly within the grasp of us all. It is, after all, an enterprise conducted by men and women who might be our neighbors, going to and from their workplaces day by day, stimulated by hopes and purposes that are common to all of us, rewarded as most of us are by occasional successes and distressed by occasional setbacks. It is an enterprise with its own rules and customs, but an understanding of that enterprise is accessible to any of us, for it is quintessentially human. And an understanding of the enterprise inevitably brings with it some insight into the nature of its products.

Too much reading may crab and confine the imagination.

Too much reading may crab and confine the imagination... The beginner must read, but intently and choosily and not too much.

It is psychologically most important to get results, even if they are not original. Getting results, even by repeating another's work, brings with its great accession of self-confidence: the young scientist feels himself one of the club at last, can chip in at seminars and at scientific meetings with "My own experience was..." Or "I got exactly the same results" or "I'd be inclined to agree that for this particular purpose medium 94 is definitely better than 93", and then can sit down again, tremulous but secretly exultant.

As they gain experience scientists reach a stage when they look back upon their own beginnings in research and wonder how they had the temerity to embark upon it considering how thoroughly ignorant and and equipped they were. That may well have been so; but fortunately their temperaments must have been sufficiently sanguine to assure them that they were not likely to fail where so many others not very unlike themselves had succeeded, and sufficiently realistic, too, to understand that their equipment would never be complete down to the last button- that there would always be gaps and shortcomings in their knowledge and that to be any good they would have to go on learning all their lives.

.. I have described the art of research as 'the art of the soluble' ... Making a problem soluble by finding out ways of getting at it. To quantify is not to be a scientist, but goodness, it does help.

... broken English is the international language of science. In international congresses the nations are distinguished not by styles of scientific research but by the emergence of different national styles in the delivery of scientific papers.

There is no quicker way for a scientist to bring discredit upon himself and on his profession than roundly to declare- particularly when no declaration of any kind is called for- that science knows or soon will know the answers to all questions worth asking...

.. science and civilization stand shoulder to shoulder in a common endeavor to work for the betterment of mankind.

It is, in the planning stage, anyway, more like a session of gag writers, for although each one knows, as all scientists know, that having an idea - a brainwave- can be only a personal event, each also knows that an atmosphere can be created in which one member of the team sparks off the others do that they all build upon and develop each other's ideas. In the outcome, nobody is quite sure who thought of what. The main thing is that something was thought of. A young scientist who feels a strong compulsion to say " That was my idea, you know," or "Now that you have all come round to my way of thinking..." is not cut out for collaborative work, and he and his colleagues would do better if he worked in his own.

After graduate students have taken their phd's they must or no account continue with their are PhD work for the remainder of their lives easy and tempting though it is to type up loose ends and wonder down attractive byways.

The number and complexity of the techniques and supporting disciplines used in research are so large that a novice may easily be frightened into postponing research in order to carry on with the process of 'equipping himself'. As there is no knowing in advance where a research enterprise may lead and what kind of skills it will require as it unfolds, this process of 'equipping oneself' has no predeterminable limits and is bad psychological policy, anyway; we always need to know and understand a great deal more than we do already and to master many more skills than we now possess.

Whatever may be thought about the Ph.D. treadmill, this new postdoctoral revolution is an unqualifiedly good thing, and it is very much to be hoped that the patrons and benefactors if science will not allow it to languish.

A scientist soon discovers that he has become a member of the cast of them in the context "What mischief are they up to now?" Or "They say we shall colonize the Moon in fifty years.

Ralph Gomory, the President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, proposes a tripartite division of science: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. The known is taught in the schools and universities and is exhibited in the science museums. But scientists are excited by the unknown. Parenthetically, artists go to art museums to learn; scientists do not go to science museums because those museums act as if it's all known and preordained. That may be changing; exemplars are the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the American Museum of Natural History. Gomory's tripartite division proposes three distinct areas: the known, the unknown which may someday become known, and the unknowable, which will never be known. The unknown and the unknowable form the boundary of science. Here are examples of questions for which the answers are today unknown.

Ralph Gomory, the President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, proposes a tripartite division of science: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. The known is taught in the schools and universities and is exhibited in the science museums. But scientists are excited by the unknown. Parenthetically, artists go to art museums to learn; scientists do not go to science museums because those museums act as if it's all known and preordained. That may be changing; exemplars are the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the American Museum of Natural History. Gomory's tripartite division proposes three distinct areas: the known, the unknown which may someday become known, and the unknowable, which will never be known. The unknown and the unknowable form the boundary of science. Here are examples of questions for which the answers are today unknown.

efore the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation series of books began to appear in 1979, the scientific autobiography was a largely unfamiliar genre. One recalls Cajal's extraordinary Recollections of My Life, translated into English in 1937, and the little gem of autobiography written by Charles Darwin for his grandchildren in 1876. One supposes that this form of scientific writing is scarce because busy scientists would rather continue to work on scientific problems than to indulge in a retrospective exercise using a writing style

Alfred P. Sloan’s magisterial memoir, “My Years with General Motors,