Meyer had pursued his doctoral studies at the University of Berlin, where his dissertation advisor, Max Planck, was destined to become one of the most celebrated physicists of all time. Planck insisted on the unity of the physical world and the discoverability of the natural laws that would disclose their secrets only through mathematical analysis, including the laws of human behavior. "The outside world is something independent from man, something absolute," Planck wrote. "The quest for the laws which apply to this absolute appeared… as the most sublime scientific pursuit in life." Meyer carried Planck's teaching into his quest for the principles that would finally elevate the study of human behavior to true scientific status.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1149