Sun Tzu or Sun Zi was a Chinese mathematician, flourishing between the third and the fifth

century AD.

Interested in astronomy and trying to develop a calendar, he investigated Diophantine equations.

He is only known for authoring Sun Tzu Suan Ching 孙子算经 (pinyin: Sun Zi Suan Jing;
literally, "Sun Tzu's Calculation Classic"), which contains the Chinese remainder theorem.

Sun Tzu or Sun Zi was a Chinese mathematician, probably from a time somewhere between the
third to fifth century CE.

Interested in astronomy and trying to develop a calendar, he investigated Diophantine equations.

He is only known for authoring Sun Tzu Suan Ching (pinyin: Sun Zi Suan Jing; literally, "Sun
Tzu's Calculation Classic"), which contains the Chinese remainder theorem.

Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856–March 21, 1915), widely known as F. W. Taylor,
was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is
regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants.
[1]

Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly
conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era.

Work
Taylor was a mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. Taylor is
regarded as the father of scientific management, and was one of the first management consultants
and director of a famous firm. In Peter Drucker's description,

Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of
systematic observation and study. On Taylor's 'scientific management' rests, above all, the
tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses
in the developed countries well above any level recorded before, even for the well-to-do. Taylor,
though the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work, laid only first
foundations, however. Not much has been added to them since - even though he has been dead
all of sixty years.[7]

Taylor was also an accomplished tennis player, who won the first doubles tournament in the
1881 U.S. National Championships, the precursor of the U.S. Open, with Clarence Clark.[8]

Scientific management
Taylor believed that the industrial management of his day was amateurish, that management
could be formulated as an academic discipline, and that the best results would come from the
partnership between a trained and qualified management and a cooperative and innovative
workforce. Each side needed the other, and there was no need for trade unions.

Future U.S. Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis coined the term scientific management in the
course of his argument for the Eastern Rate Case before the Interstate Commerce Commission in
1910. Brandeis debated that railroads, when governed according to the principles of Taylor, did
not need to raise rates to increase wages. Taylor used Brandeis's term in the title of his
monograph The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911. The Eastern Rate Case
propelled Taylor's ideas to the forefront of the management agenda. Taylor wrote to Brandeis "I
have rarely seen a new movement started with such great momentum as you have given this
one." Taylor's approach is also often referred to, as Taylor's Principles, or frequently
disparagingly, as Taylorism. Taylor's scientific management consisted of four principles:

1. Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a scientific study of the
tasks.
2. Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than passively leaving them
to train themselves.
3. Provide "Detailed instruction and supervision of each worker in the performance of that
worker's discrete task" (Montgomery 1997: 250).
4. Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so that the managers apply
scientific management principles to planning the work and the workers actually perform
the tasks.

Managers and workers

Taylor had very precise ideas about how to introduce his system:

It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements
and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. And the
duty of enforcing the adoption of standards and enforcing this cooperation rests with
management alone.[9]

Workers were supposed to be incapable of understanding what they were doing. According to
Taylor this was true even for rather simple tasks.

'I can say, without the slightest hesitation,' Taylor told a congressional committee, 'that the
science of handling pig-iron is so great that the man who is ... physically able to handle pig-iron
and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to
comprehend the science of handling pig-iron.[10]

The introduction of his system was often resented by workers and provoked numerous strikes.
The strike at Watertown Arsenal led to the congressional investigation in 1912. Taylor believed
the labourer was worthy of his hire, and pay was linked to productivity. His workers were able to
earn substantially more than those in similar industries and this earned him enemies among the
owners of factories where scientific management was not in use.

Propaganda techniques

Taylor promised to reconcile labor and capital.

With the triumph of scientific management, unions would have nothing left to do, and they
would have been cleansed of their most evil feature: the restriction of output. To underscore this
idea, Taylor fashioned the myth that 'there has never been a strike of men working under
scientific management', trying to give it credibility by constant repetition. In similar fashion he
incessantly linked his proposals to shorter hours of work, without bothering to produce evidence
of "Taylorized" firms that reduced working hours, and he revised his famous tale of Schmidt
carrying pig iron at Bethlehem Steel at least three times, obscuring some aspects of his study and
stressing others, so that each successive version made Schmidt's exertions more impressive, more
voluntary and more rewarding to him than the last. Unlike [Harrington] Emerson, Taylor was not
a charlatan, but his ideological message required the suppression of all evidence of worker's
dissent, of coercion, or of any human motives or aspirations other than those his vision of
progress could encompass.[11]

Management theory

Taylor thought that by analyzing work, the "One Best Way" to do it would be found. He is most
remembered for developing the time and motion study. He would break a job into its component
parts and measure each to the hundredth of a minute. One of his most famous studies involved
shovels. He noticed that workers used the same shovel for all materials. He determined that the
most effective load was 21½ lb, and found or designed shovels that for each material would
scoop up that amount. He was generally unsuccessful in getting his concepts applied and was
dismissed from Bethlehem Steel. It was largely through the efforts of his disciples (most notably
H.L. Gantt) that industry came to implement his ideas. Nevertheless, the book he wrote after
parting company with Bethlehem Steel, Shop Management, sold well.

Relations with ASME

Taylor was president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) from 1906 to
1907. While president, he tried to implement his system into the management of the ASME but
was met with much resistance. He was only able to reorganize the publications department and
then only partially. He also forced out the ASME's long-time secretary, Morris L. Cooke, and
replaced him with Calvin W. Rice. His tenure as president was trouble-ridden and marked the
beginning of a period of internal dissension within the ASME during the Progressive Age.[12]

In 1912, Taylor collected a number of his articles into a book-length manuscript which he
submitted to the ASME for publication. The ASME formed an ad hoc committee to review the
text. The committee included Taylor allies such as James Mapes Dodge and Henry R. Towne.
The committee delegated the report to the editor of the American Machinist, Leon P. Alford.
Alford was a critic of the Taylor system and the report was negative. The committee modified
the report slightly, but accepted Alford's recommendation not to publish Taylor's book. Taylor
angrily withdrew the book and published Principles without ASME approval.[13]

niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian
philosopher/writer, and is considered one of the main founders of modern political science.[1] He
was a diplomat, political philosopher, musician, and a playwright, but foremost, he was a civil
servant of the Florentine Republic. In June of 1498, after the ouster and execution of Girolamo
Savonarola, the Great Council elected Machiavelli as Secretary to the second Chancery of the
Republic of Florence.[2]

Like Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli is considered a good example of the Renaissance Man. He
is most famous for a short political treatise, The Prince, written in 1513, but not published until
1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. Although he privately circulated The Prince among
friends, the only work he published in his lifetime was The Art of War, about high-military
science. Since the sixteenth century, generations of politicians remain attracted and repelled by
the cynical approach to power posited in The Prince and his other works.[3] Whatever his
personal intentions, which are still debated today, his surname yielded the modern political word
Machiavellianism—the use of cunning and deceitful tactics in politics.

Works
The Prince

Realism

The Prince's contribution to the history of political thought is the fundamental break between
political Realism and political Idealism. Niccolò Machiavelli’s best-known book exposits and
describes the arts with which a ruling prince can maintain control of his realm. It concentrates on
the "new prince", under the presumption that a hereditary prince has an easier task in ruling,
since the people are accustomed to him. To retain power, the hereditary prince must carefully
maintain the socio-political institutions to which the people are accustomed; whereas a new
prince has the more difficult task in ruling, since he must first stabilize his new-found power in
order to build an enduring political structure. That requires the prince being a public figure above
reproach, whilst privately acting amorally to achieve State goals. The examples are those princes
who most successfully obtain and maintain power, drawn from his observations as a Florentine
diplomat, and his ancient history readings; thus, the Latin phrases and Classic examples.

The Prince does not dismiss morality, instead, it politically defines “Morality”—as in the criteria
for acceptable cruel action—it must be decisive: swift, effective, and short-lived. Machiavelli is
aware of the irony of good results coming from evil actions; notwithstanding some mitigating
themes, the Catholic Church proscribed The Prince, registering it to the Index Librorum
Prohibitorum, moreover, the Humanists also viewed the book negatively, among them, Erasmus
of Rotterdam. As a treatise, its primary intellectual contribution to the history of political thought
is the fundamental break between political Realism and political Idealism—thus, The Prince is a
manual to acquiring and keeping political power. In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, a Classical
ideal society is not the aim of the prince’s will to power. As a political scientist, Machiavelli
emphasises necessary, methodical exercise of brute force punishment-and-reward (patronage,
clientelism, et cetera) to preserve the status quo.

Satire?

As there seems to be a very large difference between Machiavelli's advice to ruthless and
tyrannical princes in The Prince and his more republican exhortations in Discorsi, many have
concluded that The Prince is actually only a satire. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for instance, admired
Machiavelli the republican and consequently argued that The Prince is a book for the republicans
as it exposes the methods used by princes. If the book were only intended as a manual for
tyrannical rulers, it contains a paradox: it would apparently be more effective if the secrets it
contains would not be made publicly available. Likewise, Antonio Gramsci argued that
Machiavelli's audience for this work is the common people because the rulers already knew these
methods through their education. This interpretation is supported by the fact that Machiavelli
wrote in Italian, not in Latin (which would have been the language of the ruling elite). Although
Machiavelli is supposed to be a realist, many of his heroes in The Prince are in fact mythical or
semi-mythical, and his goal (i.e. the unification of Italy) was essentially utopian at the time of
writing.

"Machiavellian"

Sixteenth-century contemporaries adopted and used the adjective Machiavellian (in the sense of
devious cunning), often in the introductions of political tracts offering more than government by
“Reasons of State”, most notably those of Jean Bodin and Giovanni Botero. Contemporary,
pejorative usage of Machiavellian (or anti-Machiavellism in the 16th C.) is a misnomer
describing someone who deceives and manipulates others for gain; (personal or not, the gain is
immaterial, only action matters, insofar as it affects results). The Prince does not have the
moderating themes of his other works; politically, “Machiavelli” denotes someone of politically
extreme perspective;[8] however Machiavellianism remains a popular speech and journalism
usage; while in psychology, it denotes a personality type.

Discorsi

Sebastiano del Piombo,1516,"Cardinal Bandinello Sauli, His Secretary, and Two Geographers." Which is
often mistaken for Machiavelli (center right) depicted: (left-right) Cesare Borgia, Pedro Luis de Borja
Lanzol de Romaní, and Don Micheletto Corella

The Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy comprises the early history of Rome. It is a
series of lessons on how a republic should be started and structured, including the concept of
checks and balances, the strength of a tri-partite political structure, and the superiority of a
republic over a principality.

From The Discourses:

 “In fact, when there is combined under the same constitution a prince, a nobility, and the power
of the people, then these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check”.
Book I, Chapter II
 “Doubtless these means [of attaining power] are cruel and destructive of all civilized life, and
neither Christian, nor even human, and should be avoided by every one. In fact, the life of a
private citizen would be preferable to that of a king at the expense of the ruin of so many
human beings”. Book I, Chapter XXVI
 “Now, in a well-ordered republic, it should never be necessary to resort to extra-constitutional
measures. . . . ” Book I, Chapter XXXIV
 “. . . the governments of the people are better than those of princes”. Book I, Chapter LVIII
 “. . . if we compare the faults of a people with those of princes, as well as their respective good
qualities, we shall find the people vastly superior in all that is good and glorious”. Book I,
Chapter LVIII
 “For government consists mainly in so keeping your subjects that they shall be neither able, nor
disposed to injure you. . . . ” Book II, Chapter XXIII
 “. . . no prince is ever benefited by making himself hated”. Book III, Chapter XIX
 “Let not princes complain of the faults committed by the people subjected to their authority, for
they result entirely from their own negligence or bad example”. Book III, Chapter XXIX [9]

Other works

Peter Withorne’s 1573 translation of the Art of War

Besides being a statesman and political scientist, Machiavelli also translated classical works, and
was a dramaturge (Clizia, Mandragola), a poet (Sonetti, Canzoni, Ottave, Canti carnascialeschi),
and a novelist (Belfagor arcidiavolo).

Some of his other work:

 Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa (1499)

 Del modo di trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati (1502)
 Del modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nell’ ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, etc.
(1502) — A Description of the Methods Adopted by the Duke Valentino when Murdering
Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, the Signor Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina Orsini
 Discorso sopra la provisione del danaro (1502) — A discourse about the provision of money.
 Decennale primo (1506), a poem in terza rima.
 Ritratti delle cose dell’ Alemagna (1508–1512) - Portrait of the affairs of Germany.
 Decennale secondo (1509), a poem.
 Ritratti delle cose di Francia (1510) — Portrait of the affairs of France.
 Andria (1517), a Classical comedy, translated from Terence.
 Mandragola (1518) — The Mandrake, a five-act prose comedy, with a verse prologue.
 Della lingua (1514), a dialogue about the language.
 Clizia (1525), a prose comedy.
 Belfagor arcidiavolo (1515), a novel.
 Asino d’oro (1517) — The Golden Ass is a terza rima poem, a new version of the Classic work by
Apuleius.
 Dell’arte della guerra (1519–1520) — The Art of War, high military science.
 Discorso sopra il riformare lo stato di Firenze (1520) — A discourse about the reforming of
Florence.
 Sommario delle cose della citta di Lucca (1520) — A summary of the affairs of the city of Lucca.
 Vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca (1520) — The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca, a
biography.
 Istorie fiorentine (1520–1525) — Florentine Histories, an eight-volume history book of the city-
state, Florence, commissioned by Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici, later Pope Clement VII.
 Frammenti storici (1525) — Fragments of stories.