RE: "Empirical Observation" - spin-off to "The Deming Guide to Quality and Competitive Position"?

["Jonathan Siegel" <jmsiegel.info.research@worldnet.att.net>]

I certainly agree with what you say, and you have summarized Dr.
Deming's points very well. Having gone back to graduate school where I
can be (comparatively) safe in bed, I am not where you are now Perhaps
someone like C.I. Lewis seems out of place in a time of such great risk
and intensity. 

But Dr. Deming did read him very closely. In 1992 I scribbled this
comment in the "Theory of Knowledge" section of my 4-Day Quality Seminar
notebook after a footnote about CI Lewis' Mind and the World Order: "Dr.
Deming said Walter Shewhart read it 14 times before he understood it"
(Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position, Indianapolis, IN,
August 11-14 1992). 

Maybe it was a mistake to try and give my own thoughts about why C.I.
Lewis's ideas might be relevant. Maybe I'd be better off just admitting
that I don't understand C.I. Lewis. I haven't read him 14 times, and I'm
not Walter Shewhart. But Dr. Deming did think he was important. And I do
suspect Dr. Deming was on to something on this one.

I suspect Lewis is one of those thinkers who kind of grows on you. Dr.
Deming used to warn against people who can be too easily understood. If
everything they say is currently in our grasp, they aren't giving us any
new ideas. "A hack speaks your language." Some undertakings require a
lot of work before there is any payoff. 

There is so much that needs to be done right NOW, and yet Dr. Deming
never stopped stressing the need to think, and think carefully, about
the future. He talked about practical action all the time, and yet kept
trotting out thinkers who seem so intellectual, academic.  Somehow Dr.
Deming managed to find a balance between the two. I suspect we each have
to do so, in our own ways.

Dr. Deming wanted a greater partnership between thinkers and doers. If
the two aren't able to walk in each other's shoes, the respect necessary
for that to happen won't be possible. 

Jonathan Siegel