Human Values, Systems Analysis, and the Environment
The Academy gathered together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to design a study of environmental decision-making that focused on the theoretical aspects of the process and examined policy analysis and decision-making.
At the heart of environmental decision-making lies the tension between economic growth and efficiency and values such as preserving nature, ecological balance, and the love of natural beauty and wilderness. The Academy gathered together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to design what project chairman Murray Gell-Mann described as “systems analysis with a heart.” The result was a study of environmental decision-making that focused on the theoretical aspects of the decision-making process, and examined policy analysis and decision-making in the particular case study of the Tocks Island Dam in New Jersey. As the project progressed, it became evident that issues of competing values were relevant to other major public policy decisions and that the resulting volumes would be useful to decision makers in other policy areas increasingly significant in our society, such as highway safety or health care.
Resulting Publications
- When Values Conflict: Essays on Environmental Analysis, Discourse, and Decision, eds. Laurence H. Tribe, Corinne S. Schelling, and John Voss. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1976. (out of print)
- Boundaries of Analysis: An Inquiry into the Tocks Island Dam (NJ) Controversy, eds. Harold A. Feiveson, Frank W. Sinden and Robert H. Socolow. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1976. (out of print)