If you want to understand something, try to locate it.
February 25, 2009 4:41 PM   Subscribe

Who said/wrote "If you want to understand something, try to change it?"

Wherever I've searched, people usually ascribe this quote to Kurt Lewin (died in 1947), but nothing I've found offers a citation to where Lewin actually said/wrote it.

Uri Bronfenbrenner, in "The Ecology of Human Development", published in 1979, ascribes it to his grad. school mentor Walter Dearborn "forty years ago", placing the quote around 1939, when Lewin was still active.

And, evidently, Woodrow Wilson said, "If you want to make enemies, try to change something"; he died in 1924. So, my sense is that this is a quote that's been played with over time.

And so, hive mind, I ask you, what is the first recorded instance of someone saying "If you want to understand something, try to change it?"
posted by rbs to Science & Nature (2 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Here is a link to a page with the following quotation by Mao Zedong, which is somewhat similar to what you're asking for. Unfortunately there is no date for it, but you might be able to find one by looking around more thoroughly than I did.

"If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience."
posted by number9dream at 7:56 PM on February 25, 2009 [1 favorite]


Interesting bit from Mao, but I understood this more as when you try to change something, that which resists the change will do everything possible to try and persuade you that it doesn't need changed.
posted by jellywerker at 12:46 AM on February 26, 2009


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