Learning is any change in a system that produces a more or less permanent change in its capacity for adapting to its environment.
Herbert SimonRead
Human knowledge has been changing from the word go and people in certain respects behave more rationally than they did when they didn't have it. They spend less time doing rain dances and more time seeding clouds.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Knowledge evolves and allows people to act more rationally and effectively.
Herbert Simon's quote highlights the transformative power of knowledge throughout human history. As our understanding of the world has grown, so too has our capacity to engage in more rational behaviors, moving away from superstitious practices like rain dances to more practical approaches such as cloud seeding, which reflects progress in science and rationality.
Themes
KnowledgeRationalityProgressScienceHuman Behavior
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about innovation, this quote can emphasize the importance of scientific progress.
More from Herbert Simon
All quotes →Mathematics is a language. We want scientists to be able to read it, speak it, and write it. But we are are not training them to be grammarians.
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The proper study of mankind is the science of design.
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What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
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