To confuse Deming with Taylor is on a par with confusing Jefferson with Marx. Taylor looked at the process, and the process only. In the classic Tayloristic industrial design people are required to conform to the machinery in the factory -- see the photos of children hired to work on the looms of textile factories prior to laws against child labor, for example. In a Taylorist factory, machines are used to impose regimentation leading, designers hoped, to quality, upon the workers.

In contrast, Deming starts with the understanding that the workers run the machines, or should, and asks questions about how better to design machines and tasks so that workers get human fulfillment and high achievement.

There were abuses of the quality tools Deming introduced. Those few abuses shouldn't be confused with what Deming actually urged.

And in any case, evolution study in biology is neither Taylorist nor TQMish. American distrust of science has a lot more to do with American distrust of all intellectuals and intellectual pursuits, and some hangover from Godzilla and "The Amazing Hulk" comics.

Creationism was cultured after 1925 outside of academia in thousands of churches and by major organizations that intentionally sought to avoid scrutiny of learned institutions and learned people. Only when it was challenged post-1957 by a new drive for science did it burst into public consciousness, and then only as a reaction to instruction in science. As biology has become more important to commerce and life, those who have chosen to put themselves on the opposite side of science have tried any number of tricks to preserve what they thought they had subverted before 1957.

Good grief! Where to begin, really!

Posted by: Ed Darrell at May 28, 2006 07:06 AM

To confuse Deming with Taylor is on a par with confusing Jefferson with Marx.

True enough, but I haven't. But thank you for pointing that out.

There were abuses of the quality tools Deming introduced. Those few abuses shouldn't be confused with what Deming actually urged.

OK, I think I can agree with that.

And in any case, evolution study in biology is neither Taylorist nor TQMish.

Alright, I think that's just silly. I never said any thing of the sort. If that's what it sounded like, where did I go wrong?

American distrust of science has a lot more to do with American distrust of all intellectuals and intellectual pursuits, and some hangover from Godzilla and "The Amazing Hulk" comics.

Which, as we all know, are cultural artifacts from the Gilded Age (hence, had made their effect felt by 1925). Sorry, I cannot accept the "Americans distrust intellectuals" as an explanation of anything. There's a common tendency to accept the innate stupidity of Americans as a given, and this among people who normally require naturalistic explanations of stuff. Social sciences are interested in explanatory hypotheses too, you know.

But thanks for stopping by.

Posted by: James R MacLean at May 28, 2006 07:58 AM