Toward a technology of human behavior for defense use.

Project Camelot and the 1960s Epistemological Revolution

“…Just as research in the natural sciences and engineering had improved DOD's 'sophistication and inventiveness about the production of physical objects', research in the social sciences would presumably improve the military's 'sophistication and inventiveness about people'. 24 In speaking of a 'technology of human behavior', Bray drew upon a pervasive postwar rhetoric that portrayed social science as a junior -but rapidly maturing -colleague to natural science within a unified scientific enterprise. Disciplinary histories suggest that a pronounced emphasis on proper methodology during these years was often considered by social scientists to be the key to making social inquiry truly 'scientific'.…”

“…That is to say, it is not only tested but it is quantitative information that is needed'. 33 To take just one specific, salient case, in the early development of operations research and systems analysis, mathematicians, engineers and physical scientists led the way. As the historian of technology Thomas Hughes has pointed out, 'from operations research, systems analysis borrowed holistic, transdisciplinary characteristics and the reliance on natural scientists and scientifically trained engineers and their methods'.…”

Behavioral Science in the Army: A Corporate History of the Army Research Institute

“…The description of these promising, ready research areas constituted a selected review of several new and significant but small demonstration programs initiated in the 1950s (Smithsonian, 1960). Our brief outline of these efforts is intended to give a notion of the rapidly changing military programs, particularly in the mid-to late-1950s, and follows Bray's summary of the larger report (Bray, 1962).…”

The solution of simple and compound word problems

“…Davis Miami University' ROBLEM-SOLVING, like learning and the P other higher cognitive processes, is not directly observable. This circumstance, in addition to the absence of a true task taxonomy (Bray, 1962), has perhaps contributed to the slow development of problem-solving theory. Some difficulties in learning theory, stemming in part from the '5nvisibility" of the underlying mechanisms, have been successfully attacked by the use of mathematical models.…”