Imagination, anti-valentines etc.

[Avery Andrews 980305]
(From Bill Powers (980304.1730 MST))

Bruce Gregory (980304.1530)--

>It is difficult for me to imagine a network of physicists
>debating about who among them really understood Newtonian
>physics or the causal nature of action at a distance.

Try, however, imagining a networks of chemists and alchemists, and how
their debate might look.

Best,

Bill P.

It strikes me that one of the characteristics of established scientific
disciplines is that (a) nobody ever talks about the really fundamental
principles (b) relatively few people understand them. In fact discussion
of fundamentals seems to be rather actively discouraged, and maybe the
way these debates on CSGNET go are a pretty good illustration of why.
One of the hall marks of a science is that there's a bunch of methods
and ideas that ordinary joes can use to do the work and get results that
add up to something, without understanding much of anything about what they're
actually doing (kind of like the description of the Navy as a system
designed by geniuses to be run by idiots, tho the `idiots' who do the work in
a science are actually all pretty smart).

So I continue to think it's completely pointless to argue about whether
there is or isn't info in the error signal about the disturbance, or whether
EAB is isn't a valid way of repackaging some PCT ideas, whereas ideas about
how to find out what people are controlling for when they talk would be
something a lot more worth thinking about. And I'd like to add that there's
a lot of variation in the treatment of results of earlier phases of sciences,
for example Aristotle's biology is absolutely and completely useless in
every respect, whereas Babylonian and Meso-American astronomical observations
are still useful, I believe. So we can't pre-judge the future utility
of what's been done in psychophysics, EAB, linguistics, or anything else,
until we begin to have actual working models of talking, getting beers
out of the fridge, etc.

Avery.Andrews@anu.edu.au

[From Bruce Gregory (980305.1020 EST)]

Avery Andrews 980305

I'd like to add that there's
a lot of variation in the treatment of results of earlier phases of sciences,
for example Aristotle's biology is absolutely and completely useless in
every respect, whereas Babylonian and Meso-American astronomical observations
are still useful, I believe. So we can't pre-judge the future utility
of what's been done in psychophysics, EAB, linguistics, or anything else,
until we begin to have actual working models of talking, getting beers
out of the fridge, etc.

Talk about nit-picking (me that is). Aristotle's physics is
certainly useless, but my biologist friends say his
observations of living things are not. Many of them apparently
view him as a founder of their science. Nevertheless, I take
your point.

Bruce