[From Bruce Gregory (960511.1205 EDT)]
(Bill Powers 960430.1700 MDT)
Nice distinction, but you got it backward, Rick and I are the Hard School,
Peter is describing the Soft school.
Perhaps a more useful distinction would be between the Method of Models, and
the Method of Analogies. The Soft school invokes analogies and the Hard
school presses for models. Rick tries to keep us on track by tenaciously
reminding us that without a model we are likely to adopt, in Einstein's
words in a letter to Schroedinger, a "tranquilizing philosophy -- or
religion? -- so delicately contrived that for the time being, it provides a
gentle pillow for the true believer from which he cannot easily be aroused.
So let him lie there." (Quoted in _The Shaky Game: Einstein Realism and the
Quantum Theory_, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1986. A book that I think Bill
would like if he could ever find the time to read it.)
Bill's intellectual honesty reminds me a great deal of Einstein's. Einstein
never allowed his dissatisfaction with quantum theory to drive him to
embrace an alternative (such as Bohm's) that did not meet his (Einstein's)
vision of what a theory could and should be. Also Einstein's view of reality
is very much in tune with Bills. In Einstein's words, "Das Wirkliche ist
uns nich gegeben, sondern aufgegeben (nach Art eines Ratsels" (The real is
not given to us, but put to us by way of a riddle.)
Regards,
Bruce G.