Re: Explaining explain

["Bob Sciamanda" <trebor@velocity.net>]

Ludwig wrote:

> On Sun, 25 Jan 1998 09:51:47  Bob Sciamanda <trebor@velocity.net> wrote:
>
> > ... In all of this the criterion is not "truth", but usefulness for
> > describing/explaining reality in human terms (ie.; ultimately God and/or
> > other accepted notions/processes).  This includes both empirical and
> > conceptual usefulness.  Note that the usefulness criterion is not
> > fundamentally disturbed by the assertion that the axioms are
"unexplained".
> Yes, but the "truth" is a precondition of usefulness in science. How do we
> distinguish which reasonable conclusions are true and which are false?
> In the lab, you would probably say. Predictions based on the caloric theory
> (sorry for this skeleton but I can not think of a better example right now)
> are confirmed in the laboratory. Therefore it is a true and useful theory.
> It does explain one domain of reality in human terms. >
Ludwik Kowalski
>
A congenitally blind man and I will have very different conceptual models of
almost any thing or phenomenon that you might think of.  In fact we can
speak to each other about our conceptual models only by using limping
metaphors.  But we can agree literally and completely on the readings of
measuring instruments.

The empirical usefulness of a model is experimentally testable and once
verified it will remain; future empirical models of a wider scope will
include it as a special case.  However, the conceptual usefulness of a model
is intrinsically observer dependent and even a matter of personal and
institutional taste.  Among other things, it depends on just how weird you
are willing to get, and just what you mean by that word.

Bob Sciamanda   sciamanda@edinboro.edu
Dept of Physics   trebor@velocity.net
Edinboro Univ of PA  http://www.edinboro.edu/~sciamanda/home.html
Edinboro, PA   (814)838-7185

"Kepler's principal goal was to explain the relationship between the
existence of five planets (and their motions) and the five regular solids.
It is customary to sneer at Kepler for this. It is instructive to compare
this with the current attempts to "explain" the zoology of elementary
particles in terms of irreducible representations of Lie groups. "
- S. Sternberg