Evgeniy, I may be the one agreeing with your sentence 1Z did not hear so far. Maybe he is right. Let me try to explain why I am congruent with your suggestion: *Reductionism *(as I identify it, - not congruent with the classical definitions - is the process in which the ongoing conventional sciences consider "ALL" - i.e. the wholeness, the totality, - as the compendium of our yesterday's knowledge: the content of our so far accepted epistemic enrichment in the sciences (and the world in general). This is how conventional sciences draw conclusions further reaching than our present knowledge (in most cases not knowing about "the rest of the world" not yet provided by our epistemic enrichment). Think of the Flat Earth, of the 'veins' circulating air, the uncuttable 'atoms', the DNA-genetics, etc. etc., examples that changed the prior (scientific) knowledge by new leanings. You may think of neurology as well, explaining all mental effects upon the brain's so far learned characteristics as measured by the instruments of 2010 - which is more than how it was 25 years ago. It is still reductionist.
Engineering has to solve practical tasks in quantitative solutions and cannot resort to include 'maybe'-s for possible extensions of our scientific knowledge. So it takes the reductionist inventory and constructs brilliant contraptions upon 'yesterday's (reductionistic) knowledge that are *ALMOST*good. Almost? well, some airplanes fall off the skyies, some diseases strike, some wars break out, etc. etc., in spite of our incrredible technology we acieved by the results of engineering. The 'still?' unknown "rest of the world" has its influence in the overall complexity of the world upon those partially solved problems as well, and of course, nobody can include unknowable factors into any consideraton. We use what we know = reduced. *Brent* had a short remark recently to the H2O discussion: "2H2O = 2H2 + O2 - no problem". He stopped short at the reductionist formula and the conventional physical views of water, not extending the complexity of such situations into the 'potentials that are'. - formation of halos of diffusely disappearing hydration and similar hydrated/not hydrated (hydrophil/hydrophob) situations as result of the surrounding chemical(?) environment (unlimited???) - all not expressed in the conventional chemical formulae - or their physical calculations (so far). It is hard to transfer from the 'conventional' to the 'unlimited' because we have no knowledge about the 'rest of the world'. I claim my (scientific) agnosticism and say "I dunno". We use the 'reductionist' *MODELs* of the so far known in our calculations and work in equations (maybe not true ones). The 'engineering' style. Respectfully John M On 9/19/10, 1Z <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On 19 Sep, 07:30, Evgenii Rudnyi <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Well, I thought that reductionism could help an engineer. > > I don't think anyone said that > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<everything-list%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
