All scientific models/theories tend to lie on a plane with the axes "accuracy" and "ease of use". Explicability is also there, roughly aligned with "ease of use".
Basically we should only keep those theories/models that lie on the Pareto front, and discard those that are dominated. This is why we still keep Newtonian gravity, even though it is less accurate than GR (ie falsified), but discard the Ptolomaic system. Cheers. On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 03:42:19PM -0800, Glen E. P. Ropella wrote: > > Anyway, I definitely agree that it's a "mistake" in some sense to > discard all but the best projections. However, in cases where a limit > _exists_ (and it is reasonable to believe it exists), then it's not a > mistake at all. Preserving an erroneous model when much more accurate > models are at hand would be perverse (or evidence that one should be a > historian rather than a scientist). I'm not talking about the type of > preservation that allows us to think back and learn from previous > events. I'm talking about someone _sticking_ to and/or regularly > relying on a "bad" model even when they know it's wrong. > -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
