Bounded Rationality, Shared Experiences, and Social Relationships in Herbert A. Simon’s Perspective

In his autobiography, Herbert Simon writes: ‘The most important years of my life as a scientist were 1955 and 1956’ (1991a [1996], p. 189). In those years he published two important articles that laid the foundations of his theory of bounded rationality, ‘A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice’ (1955) and ‘Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment’ (1956). One year later, in 1957, Simon wrote a short story, ‘The Apple’, in which he presented in literary form the scientific results of his 1956 article.