No science of any kind can be divorced from ethical considerations... Science is a human learning process which arises in certain subcultures in human society and not in others, and a subculture as we seen is a group of people defined by acceptance of certain common values, that is, an ethic which permits extensive communication between them.
Kenneth E. Boulding[The consumer is] the supreme mover of economic order... for whom all goods are made and towards whom all economic activity is directed.
Kenneth E. BouldingThe world moves into the future as a result of decisions, not as a result of plans. Plans are significant only insofar as they affect decisions.
Kenneth E. BouldingConventions of generality and mathematical elegance may be just as much barriers to the attainment and diffusion of knowledge as may contentment with particularity and literary vagueness... It may well be that the slovenly and literary borderland between economics and sociology will be the most fruitful building ground during the years to come and that mathematical economics will remain too flawless in its perfection to be very fruitful.
Kenneth E. BouldingIn any evolutionary process, even in the arts, the search for novelty becomes corrupting.
Kenneth E. BouldingA second possible approach to general systems theory is through the arrangement of theoretical systems and constructs in a hierarchy of complexity, roughly corresponding to the complexity of the "individuals" of the various empirical fields... leading towards a "system of systems." [...] I suggest below a possible arrangement of "levels" of theoretical discourse...(vi) [...] the "animal" level, characterized by increased mobility, teleological behavior and self-awareness...
Kenneth E. Boulding