Obviously to Simon and now to us, the two principles are mutually contradictory, and therefore by definition cannot be principles. This dilemma encompassed the whole of the management literature, including public administration, but it was never more than suspected of being so stark a case until Simon published his book.
By mid-century, the two defining pillars of public administration the politics/administration dichotomy and the principles of administration had been abandoned by creative intellects in the field. This abandonment left public administration bereft of a distinct epistemological and intellectual identity