Science of War?

Then there was Warren Weaver, the eminence grise of Rockefeller and the OSRD, who was looking to preserve the wartime project of an across-the-board mathematical science of war. Weaver first coined the term “military worth” and pushed to have an interdisciplinary section structured around the concept. Weaver also articulated the notion that a “science of war” was really just a cyborg Theory of Everything in disguise: “The distinction between the military and the civilian in modern war is … a negligible distinction…. It may even be, for example, that the distinction between war and peace has gone by the board” (Weaver quoted in Collins, 1998, p. 253). Weaver imposed his objective of preserving the continuity of an independent site for development of OR by having RAND hire his protégé John Davis Williams54 from the Statistical Research Group, who then in tum became the contact for a veritable pipeline for recruits from the Columbia AMP and Princeton to Santa Monica, including Edwin Paxson, 55 Ed Hewitt, Olaf Helmer, 56 and Meyer Girshick. Helmer in particular signaled the beginning of a RAND practice of hiring formal logicians to do OR. When it came time to decide the composition of the “Evaluation of Military Worth Section” at RAND, Weaver was there closeted with Williams and Helmer in a December 1946 meeting, along with consultants Samuel Wilks and Frederick Mosteller (Jardini, 1996, p. 84). Not surprisingly, it was decided to model the unit upon the AMP. Weaver, in giving the plenary at the September 1947 RAND Conference of the Social Sciences, explained to the gathered handpicked group who were being looked over for potential recruitment what it was that he thought RAND would be doing. “I assume that every person in this room is fundamentally interested in and devoted to what can broadly be called the rational life,” he told them (Kaplan, 1983, p. 72). That suited some economists in the room just fine, Charles Hitch among their number; Hitch was tapped to head up the new economics department.

Mirowski, Philip (2001–12–03). Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science (pp. 210–212). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.