What's North of the North Pole?
It is a meaningless question. However, questions of this kind fascinated Percy Williams Bridgman. Born in 1882, he significantly influenced Dr. Edwards Deming. They were both physicists, but more importantly, Bridgeman's unique philosophy regarding measuring materials interested Dr. Deming in an area called Operationalism. Bridgeman won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1946 for his work on the physics of high pressures. He developed a technique for studying the effects of high pressure on materials. He extensively investigated materials' properties at pressures 100k times Earth's normal atmospheric pressure. In other words, that is equivalent to approximately 1.5 million pounds per square inch (PSI.) His studies include compressibility, electric and thermal conductivity, tensile strength, and viscosity of more than 100 different compounds. Bridgman has also contributed to crystallography, where he devised a method of growing single crystals.
Bridgman spent his entire academic career at Harvard, serving over 40 years as a professor and researcher. He was a brilliant tinkerer; Bridgman designed and built much of his equipment. He was among the first to exploit new high-strength alloy steels to contain immense pressures. Bridgeman made many discoveries in his lifetime. He pioneered techniques to measure material properties, including electrical resistance and volume changes. He first documented many pressure-induced phenomena with broad implications for physics and chemistry, including "hot ice," collapses in rock cavities, and irreversible transformations of explosives. His pressure "stretching" method enabled one-piece artillery gun manufacture. His research and developments in high-pressure physics laid foundational knowledge that later contributed to the synthesis of diamonds and other materials. The techniques and principles he developed were crucial in advancing the field, eventually enabling synthetic diamonds to be created.
Bridgman grew flowers and vegetables in the summer when he wasn't doing research. As a skilled amateur carpenter and plumber, he avoided calling professionals to fix household mechanical problems since he could handle them himself. Late in his life, he battled metastatic cancer. In his suffering, Bridgman's suicide note contained two sentences: "It isn't decent for society to make a man do this thing himself. Probably, this is the last day I will be able to do it myself." Bridgman's words have frequently been quoted in the debate on assisted suicide.
Bridgeman also made significant contributions to the philosophy of science through his methodological and philosophical writings, emphasizing the operational aspects of scientific concepts. Bridgmman is considered the father of Operationalism.
Dr. Deming was primarily interested in his contributions that clarified the philosophical foundations of scientific concepts and theories. Bridgeman advocated "operational analysis" based on concrete measurements and tests. Bridgeman illustrated the idea of a meaningless question. For example, the north of the North Pole cannot be analyzed operationally. In Bridgman's view, operational analysis of concepts, assertions, and questions was not limited to just physics. Thinkers in any field could use operational analysis to distinguish between facts firmly rooted in experience and pseudo-facts. These lessons have a universal application: what we do counts more than what we say. Bridgman believes language that fails to meet the operation test is spurious and meaningless. Bridgman's work developing high-pressure experiments led him to profound realizations about the value of these clearly defined concepts.
This idea of "operationalism" is that for a concept like a length of time to have meaning, how it is measured or "operated" must be rigorously defined. This perspective was shaped by Einstein's theory of relativity, which demonstrated that time depended on your frame of reference rather than being an absolute constant. Newton had assumed that we all knew what time was. According to Einstein, time depends on the relative speed of two travelers. Before Einstein, we relied on intuition. The concept of length and its definition also makes for a good example. We measure the distance to a location in miles or kilometers. In measuring a room, we use square footage. Measuring the distance of a planet is done in light years. The operational definition determines each of these measurements, not the abstract definitions. Bridgman said to find the length of an object, you have to perform certain physical operations. Bridgman said that length involves as much as and nothing more than the set of operations by which length is determined.
In his 1927 book "The Logic of Modern Physics," Bridgman argues for an operational approach to scientific concepts. He contends that rather than define concepts in terms of abstract properties, we should define them based on the operations and procedures used to measure and determine those concepts empirically. This operational perspective, as Bridgman calls it, has profound implications for understanding the nature of scientific knowledge. Basing concepts on operations rather than hypothetical properties puts science on firmer empirical ground. It ties concepts directly to concrete experience, measurements, and experiments. This aligns with the philosophical notion of posteriori knowledge, which depends on empirical evidence and inductive reasoning. As measuring techniques evolve, concepts naturally evolve along with them, rather than having to be radically revised, as sometimes when new experiments challenge abstract assumptions.
While Deming did not directly work with Bridgman, there are some relevant connections between their work:
Emphasis on operations/processes: Deming's teaching on quality and process improvement is understanding, improving, and reducing variation in production processes' specific steps and operations. This aligns well with Bridgman's focus on defining concepts regarding the operations/procedures used to measure and apply those concepts.
Statistical control: Deming promoted Shewhart's statistical process control techniques and analytical thinking in improving industrial processes. This ties to Bridgman's view that concepts are connected to the specifics of measurement procedures - the statistics of those measurement operations are essential.
Interconnection of system elements: Related to the previous point, Deming's view of organizations and production as systems emphasizes the interdependencies between components (i.e., systems thinking.) This resonates with Bridgman's observation that pushing concepts to limits causes them to fuse and simplify into fewer fundamental concepts.
Operational definitions enable optimization: By clearly and operationally defining processes/concepts, Deming argued you empower optimization, continuous improvement, and variation reduction. Bridgman similarly felt that precisely defined operational concepts would lead to more rigorous, optimized scientific thought.
Deming's 1993 book New Economics described an operational definition as a procedure agreed upon for translating a concept into a measurement. He further said that no true value of any characteristic, state, or condition is defined in measurement or observation. A carpenter's version of this is the saying measure twice, cut once, because a measurement operation will never be infinitely precise.
Deming said that an Operational Definition must have three elements.
1) A Specification (defintion.)
2) A criteria (judgment.)
3) A decision to determine if the specification meets the criteria.
Dr. Deming's book Out of the Crisis uses an example of a blanket that is labeled 50 percent wool. That is considered a specification. However, what is the criteria? Is it acceptable to produce a blanket where one half is wool and the other is cotton? It's more likely that the customer wants the blanket to have the wool and cotton dispersed so it isn't noticeable. For example, an operational definition might require 50 percent wool and 50 percent cotton per centimeter of the blanket. A 50 percent wool label is operationally defined based on specifications and criteria.
Bridgman's philosophy on Operational definitions played a significant part in Deming's System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK.). Like Deming, Bridgman was a student of Pragmatism, which is deeply rooted in epistemology. Deming's PDSA, at its core, is an inductive (i.e., a posteriori) idea ingrained in his Theory of Knowledge element of SoPK. Think of a specification as the "plan," the criteria as the "do," and the decision as the "study." The "act" is the feedback loop that is the Scientific Method."
So, while Deming's work was applied to industrial contexts and did not reference Bridgman specifically, the shared emphasis on defining and improving operations connects to Bridgman's thesis of redefining scientific concepts operationally rather than on abstract properties. Both helped establish foundations for improving systems and processes based on statistical evidence and operational clarity.
