[From Bill Powers (941226.0820 MST)]
Bill Leach (941225.1753 EST(EDT)) --
Eastern Standard AND Eastern Daylight Time?
You raise an important point:
However, as a tool of science, simulation was a means of developing
and refining understanding BUT such knowledge was always still subject
to the acid test of observations in nature.
I neglected to say that simulations qualify as explanations, but the
explanations are considered right _only_ if the stimulation fits
observations of real systems! What a simulation tells us by itself is
only that we have stated a theory in complete enough form that we can
actually make a model based on it run and produce simulated behavior.
The theory itself could be completely wrong, in which case this nice
simulation would happily run along producing behavior that has nothing
to do with any real behavior.
However, if you have a theory that isn't stated completely enough to
allow simulations, there's no way to test it against observation.
Simulation is just a way of producing predictions of behavior. A theory
that can't make predictions is only descriptive.
ยทยทยท
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Best,
Bill P.