Is Herbert Simon the 20th Century’s Galileo?

In the mid-1980’s a journalist visiting Carnegie Mellon from France suggested that a statue of Herbert Simon should join those of Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Galileo, and Bach in front of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute. At the time, I considered this a bit of Gallic hyperbole but now I don’t.

Simon came to Carnegie Tech in 1949 along with some other future Nobel Prize winners to start a business school. They pioneered the scientific approach to business. When other universities got wind of this new approach, they raided the school’s faculty. Most left for the coasts, but Simon…