what I am trying to formulate is (01)
calculus yields a model based on quantifiable factors (02)
reality is made of quantifyiable and not quantifiable subsets
therefore (03)
a better (less fictional) model of reality would include the product
of calculus, as well as some representation of what cannot be
quantified and a possible model of the interaction between the two (04)
does this make sense?
PDM (05)
On 8/16/07, Duane Nickull <dnickull@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Couldn't this be summed up as:
>
> Bridges fall down when:
>
> a. those building them do not build the necessary level of structural
> integrity for the given set of requirements; or
> B. the requirements for which the bridge have been designed/built did not
> accurately capture the minimal structural requirements; or
> C. an event happened for which the bridge was never designed to withstand
> (larger earthquake, level 5 hurricane, fire/heat etc).
>
> Codifying knowledge is important to capture requirements.
>
> /d
>
>
>
> On 8/16/07 9:02 AM, "Ed Barkmeyer" <edbark@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > I only want to take up John Sowa's point about building bridges.
> >
> >> Engineers regularly build bridges that don't fall down.
> >
> > This is so because we have codified "knowledge" about the mechanics of
> > structure that has been validated mathematically and by physical experiment,
> > and has been accepted as "generally perceived truth" since about 1860. We
> > also "know", from Einstein's work, that that codified knowledge is not
> > entirely accurate, but it is accurate enough for the mechanics of bridges.
>It
> > is not "reality"; it is a *model* of reality that has been proven to work.
>In
> > fact, we can now reliably bound the difference between the model and the
> > possible realities it represents.
> >
> >> Sometimes engineers build bridges that do fall down.
> >
> > This is so because there is more to the stability of a bridge than the
> > mechanics of its structure. There is also the quality of the building
> > materials and the nature of the terrain on which the bridge is being built,
> > and the behavior of that terrain in times of varying natural phenomena.
> > Bridges fall down because engineers don't always know enough about the
>actual
> > materials and terrain and climate. And the famous Seattle bridge disaster
> > occurred because of an acoustical phenomenon -- the wavelength of the
> > vibration of the bridge in a high wind -- that had never previously been
> > studied.
> >
> > So bridges stand because we have a certain amount of useful "knowledge" and
> > they fail because we are not omniscient.
> >
> > When we build ontologies for public use, we have a responsibility to codify
> > the knowledge that has been validated by theory and experiment, and to label
> > that knowledge as such. It may not be "truth", but it represents a level of
> > comprehension of our world that human experts accept and use, and we can
> > hardly do better than that. Ontological engineering is not epistemology,
>and
> > it is not metaphysics. But we do need a means of separating the "good"
>models
> > (that generally produce results that can be validated by experiment) from
>the
> > "bad" ones (that often produce nonsense).
> >
> > Finally, the bridge-building example teaches us that no ontology or
> > combination of ontologies, no matter how well-founded, can be guaranteed to
>be
> > *sufficient* for any given task. What you don't know can *always* hurt you.
> >
> > -Ed
> >
> > P.S. The World Trade Center is another example of the success of accepted
> > knowledge and the disaster from the missing information. The impact of a
> > jetliner at 480 knots did not bring down the twin towers -- one of the
> > buildings swung 6 degrees off of vertical from the impact, but because it
>had
> > been built to withstand earthquakes and hurricanes, it swung back to
>upright!
> > What brought the towers down was the fact that the particle wind from the
> > disintegrated aircraft stripped the heat insulation off the lateral
>supports,
> > and the heat from the slow-burning office furniture then weakened the
>supports
> > -- a combination of bizarre factors for which we only made the predictive
> > model after the fact.
>
> --
> **********************************************************************
> "Speaking only for myself"
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>
>
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> (06)
--
Paola Di Maio
School of IT
www.mfu.ac.th
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