Curriculum Vitae


Born: 1926, in Amsterdam, spent his youth form ‘32 to ‘47 in Switzerland and then returned to his native country.

Education: primary in German, secondary in French. Academic: after a year at the Technical University Delft, switched to and graduated in economics (general, business and quantitative) at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR)

Obsession: The seamless transition from world-war two into the cold war impressed on me the abysmal gulf between our technical  proficiency (the atom bomb)  and our evident impotence to solve even the most simple-looking problems of inter-human  relationships; I  switched to social science and the relevant fields of philosophy.

Professional career:

  • `Two years as co-assistant of the professor of mathematical economics and five  years as a full-time working student at the Central Bureau of Statistics,  department of economic research.
  • From 1959 until early retirement in1986 with Hunter Douglas Europe as manager of market research, forecasting, commercial planning and organizing and participating in the Europe-wide marketing plan discussions and troubleshooter for the marketing director.

Political activity:

  • Joined political party, D66, founded to improve the working of our political system, and served on the board of its Rotterdam district. See website,  Netherlands.
  • Five years a member of the committee on incomes policy of the Dutch SER  (Social and Economic Counsel)

Publications: articles in Dutch papers, see website, Netherlands.

Books:
- “Vooruitgang zonder Blauwdruk”, 1977. (Progress without Blueprint). At the time of  my graduation, science offered only the same scientific tools that gave us our technical proficiency. They are end-state oriented, aim at optimalization, and fail to explain and solve the paradoxes of social decision-making in a democracy. The clues to the solution were provided by the discoveries of molecular biology, as vulgarized in Jacques Monod’s essay “Le Hazard et la Nécessité”. This book presents a first sketch of its application to social science and an alternative, evolutionary, model for development. A digitalized version will be published on this website, see Netherlands. It concluded with an exhortation to scientists to explore the consequences of such a model in various fields of philosophical and scientific inquiry, which was totally ignored.

- “The Conceptual Foundations of Decision-making in a Democracy”, 2003.    See website, International.

Articles: All in Dutch, see Netherlands

Assorted comments and unpublished articles on website

Website: www.project-democracy.com