On 27/07/2011 9:52 AM, AzamatAbdoullaev wrote:
On Wednesday, July 27, 2011 1:04 AM, Ron Wheeler wrote: "Not
sure which theories did not arrive in their current state by
trial and error mechanisms."
Most fundametal theories of unifying nature, employing
conceptual or mathematical models and high logical
abstractions, like in theoretical ontology, theoretical
physics, pure mathematics, mathematical physics, etc.
Pure math - perhaps.
Theoretical ontology - not any evidence in this forum for that
assertion :-) .
Everything proposed is thoroughly challenged with
Theoretical physics - full of trial and error
Trial and error also includes intellectual exercises wherein a
theory is proposed and then tried against known (or at least,
accepted) facts and observations.
Although, the interplay of theories and experiments and
observations are significant for scientific advance, in
many cases just following the standards of
conceptual/mathematical/logical validity/rigour resulted
with extraordinary discoveries. In theoretical physics,
special realitivy mostly came from the formal rules of Lorentz
transformation, ignoring Michelson-Morley experiments. In many
other cases, experimental results were in need of theoretical
foundation.
I'd say most breakthroughs are made by intelligent
intuition,creative insight and innovative imagination.
Sure but 1% inspiration 99% perspiration is more likely the rule.
Ron
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, July 27,
2011 1:04 AM
Subject: Re:
[ontolog-forum] intangibles (was RE: Why most classifications
are fuzzy)
On 26/07/2011 4:46 PM, AzamatAbdoullaev wrote:
RW: "I think that you are reading a whole lot of extra
things about truth, simplicity and beauty into the word
"theory"."
Indeed. Ideally, theories should comprise truth, good,
and beauty, giving the most accurate conceptual
representations/explanations/descriptions of things.
In theory, they should, but in practice they don't.
The issue is that empirical theories are evolving by
trial and error mechanisms as well. As a result, the cost in
human life is enormous, like with the medical theories.
Not sure which theories did not arrive in their current state by
trial and error mechanisms.
The theories about matter and space held by the ancient Greeks
and Romans were updated over time by a long series of mental and
physical experiments (trials) that forced their revision until
we reached our current understanding which is still under active
trial and error testing.
Just because we use space stations, multi-billion dollar space
telescopes and planets orbiting distant stars to run our
experiments does not change the fundamental nature of the
development of theories nor the limited time warranty that they
carry.
Ron
Azamat
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, July 26,
2011 10:01 PM
Subject: Re:
[ontolog-forum] intangibles (was RE: Why most
classifications are fuzzy)
On 26/07/2011 2:19 PM, AzamatAbdoullaev wrote:
RW: "The fact that theories are validated and
invalidated, extended and updated or even abandoned does
not mean that they are not theories."
Certainly, they are not all theories, as far as any
true theory describes the nature and causes of things,
some domain of the world, incorporating laws, facts and
proven hypothesis.
Theories are inventions of people not gods.
They are based on what people know at the time that they
make them up.
They are only proven within some scope of thought or
physical experiments.
All what is invalidated and abandoned or wrong
concern hypotheses, conjectures, opinions,
possibilities, beliefs, to be verified or falsified
according to the standard techiques and methods.
And theories.
We apply medical theories, as tested and proven, to
make people healthy; physical theories to create nuclear
weapons or build giant physical structures, chemical
theories to create chemical processes and chemical
weapons, etc.
The medical theories from 100 years ago look pretty silly
and I am pretty sure that a lot of the medical theories of
today will not survive the next hundred years.
The theories about physical structures, chemistry and
biology from 100 years ago were also incomplete and some of
them are laughable by today's standards.
OTOH, they were adequate to build weapons, cars, telephones
and lots of other neat things.
Academics and business people are inventing and testing new
theories everyday. Some will be useful, some will be found
lacking, some will turn out to be only variants of earlier
theories and some will be huge steps forward.
An example of such confusing is a political/social
hypothesis, the cause of unstable societies, having much
less validity than scientific theories, and trying to
survive experimental testing on human lives.
It is only a matter of degrees and opinions. Every theory
has its limit of the scope of predictions that it can make
and some degree of "scientificness".
The particle theory of light only explains part of the
behaviour of light.
I think that you are reading a whole lot of extra things
about truth, simplicity and beauty into the word "theory".
Azamat Abdoullaev
----- Original Message
-----
Sent: Monday, July
25, 2011 11:28 PM
Subject: Re:
[ontolog-forum] intangibles (was RE: Why most
classifications are fuzzy)
On 25/07/2011 4:00 PM, AzamatAbdoullaev wrote:
----- Original Message
-----
Sent: Monday,
July 25, 2011 8:54 PM
Subject: Re:
[ontolog-forum] intangibles (was RE: Why most
classifications are fuzzy)
On 25/07/2011 1:14 PM, AzamatAbdoullaev wrote:
JS: "The next step beyond predicting how to
place your foot on a slippery slope is to
design a wakway or a bridge to provide a more
secure footing. Primitive societies learned
how to develop that technology by a few steps
of cognitive reasoning beyond just trial and
error. Humans did it by thinking, and spiders
did it by genetic learning over millions of
years. But the fundamental principles are
*exactly* the same."
Indeed. We learn to do things by doing
things: we learn how to perceive by
perception/sensing, how to walk by walking,
how to communicate by communicating, how to
read by reading, by trial and error. You can
draw some analogies between doing physical
actions by trial and error and problem solving
by way of theories, where the hypotheses are a
sort of trial.
Still it's critical to draw a
distinction between the intellectual processes
of predictions or anticipations or forecast
and the physical interactions by
stimulus-response coordination mechanisms.
Why?
What is here questioned? That there are higher
cognitive processes (as knowing, search, deciding,
language, intellection, predicition) and basic
cognitive processes (sensing/perception, motor
actions).
I am questioning the necessity of drawing a sharp
distinction. There is much more evidence of a continuum.
When progressing from crawling and learning to cross a
street in a busy city, at what point does a child cross
the line from basic cognitive processes (trial and
error) to higher cognitive processes (traffic pattern
recognition, street lights, validity of crosswalks (I
live in Montreal where crosswalks are just convenient
landmarks for ambulances), acceleration capabilities by
type of vehicle, prediction of the humanity of strangers
,etc.).
Remember the mental "eye of the soul" with
intellectual intuition, and your unique
capacity to see ideas, to grasp the
essence of things. For instance, more reliable
economic forecasts are done not by various
statistical methods, supported by various
theories, but by the intellectual insight of
prevision.
You have got to be kidding!
AA: "The accuracy of economic forecasting has
been reduced by increased uncertainty in the
global and national economies snce the early
1970s... Some of the greatest contributions to the
economic forecasting ...come from economists who
have the insight to understand the changing
economy of today" (Britannica, Economic Growth and
Planning).
One is in need to create a whole taxonomy of
sources of errors in economic forecasting, global
and national: partial theories, ideologies,
personal judgments, biases, old or manipulated
statistics; no powerful machine is of any help
here.
The whole global crisis was just missed.
Only now a comprehensive/holistic approach,
named as the FCA and TBL, is getting recognition.
Any economic growth and planning economic changes
requests accounting not only economic factors, but
also ecological capital and social capital.
The fact that theories are validated and invalidated,
extended and updated or even abandoned does not mean
that they are not theories.
----- Original
Message -----
Sent:
Monday, July 25, 2011 6:15 PM
Subject:
Re: [ontolog-forum] intangibles (was RE: Why
most classifications are fuzzy)
Azamat,
No. I gave examples of short-term physical
predictions just to illustrate the point. But
every one of those examples can be extended at
any length of time whatever.
> IMO, moving in the physical world,
interacting with the world, manipulating with
the world's objects, processing the world's
instant representations, are hardly about
predictions, in the strict sense.
Predicting your next step on a walkway is of
*exactly* the same nature as predicting the
weather. Both of them depend on the same laws
of nature: gravity, the behavior of physical
objects in a force field, the relationships
among multiple competing forces acting on
matter, etc.
The next step beyond predicting how to place
your foot on a slippery slope is to design a
wakway or a bridge to provide a more secure
footing. Primitive societies learned how to
develop that technology by a few steps of
cognitive reasoning beyond just trial and
error. Humans did it by thinking, and spiders
did it by genetic learning over millions of
years. But the fundamental principles are
*exactly* the same.
The fact that the short-term interactions are
learned by trial and error rather than formal
lectures in a physics course is a trivial
difference from the point of view of
ontology. There is a continuum between a
child learning how to maintain balance while
walking and engineers using physics to predict
how the International Space Station will
interact in the gravitational fields of the
earth, sun, and moon.
As far as ontology is concerned, the child
and the engineer are learning about gravity
and how to maintain a desired position within
its range of influence. They're making the
same kinds of predictions for the same reasons
-- but at different levels of complexity on
the continuum.
John
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