What Knowledge is Useful? > Industries and Context
George Lombard on Melvin Copeland
Transcript
But I think there was a time when some of the senior men here felt that it was really a sin to be trying to develop theories. In fact, Copeland told me that once. Not quite those words, but close to it. That that wasn't what he felt was the task of the School, the task of the Division of Research, or of course development, or that he wouldn't be doing his role here at the, performing his role here at the School.
He wasn't playing around, doing theory-building, like those villains across the river. It just wasn’t the way you went at it. I think we’ve got a much better perspective on that now, than we had then. But it’s not an easy one to maintain—a foot in both camps, where you can work back and forth from practice—what’s actually going on—to ideas of generalizing about that.
George F. Lombard