ABSTRACT
We can learn from the past only if we are able to recognize similarities between our past experience and our present situation. All forms of learning based upon feedback require that we link patterns from the past with those cues which might alert us to related patterns in the foreseeable future. In many fields of industrial engineering we have become skilled at making such links, with the result that thousands of routine industrial operations can now be carried out much more safely than they were 50, 20 or even 10 years ago. Where we are less skilled is in learning fully the lessons offered to us by major failures in largescale complex systems.
