Ann Racuya-Robbins wrote: > Using your traditional description of modeling "Modeling, > traditionally, consists of taking one concrete thing, in all its > particular gory detail, and studying it side-by-side with some other > concrete thing, in all its gory detail." What is a concrete thing? I > guess by concrete thing you do not mean a living individual.
No, a living individual is a concrete thing. In fact, living individuals are the hardest things to abstract. Hence, they are the _most_ concrete, more concrete than, say, rocks, or chairs, or even mountains and coast lines. By "concrete" I basically mean "riddled with niggling details" or "not removable from its context" or "not amenable to abstraction". Some concrete things (e.g. rocks) are more easily removed from their context. They are "context sensitive", but not "embedded" or deeply context dependent. But, for example, a flower, is much more concrete and is not only context sensitive, it's down right context dependent. > In this > traditional sense of model is there anything that is not a model? > Probably not. Yes. By definition, a model must have a referent. So, if there's no observer to _assign_ the model to its referent or if the model is so excruciatingly concrete that it can't be used to model anything else, then it would not be a model. An example of the latter might be, say, the universe. it's not clear what the universe could model, since there's nothing else to which it can refer. (And it can only be a model of itself in the most degenerate sens of the word "model".) Another example would be something that is obviously unique. Something so bizarre and pathological that it just isn't similar to anything else. I'm not suggesting that, practically, there is any real thing that cannot be used as a model. Our ignorance is boundless. So, a very clueless person can use, say, a coffee mug to model an earthworm if he wants to. But such a practice probably wouldn't last very long in a competitive environment. > But comparing a living individual to a non living model > of a individual highlights the exact divide...life. Compressing the > model it seems to me would not overcome this difficulty in anyway. I > think with living individuals "all its gory details" becomes all its > glorious detail, as many a film/video or novel teaches. Compressing > the model, or a process that results in the compression of the model > does make the model more alive. Biomimicry changes that formulation > so that rather than compressing or simplifying it does not take a > stand of power relations between the two comparitants. The > possibility of Biomimicry itself is the result of using compassion to > understand two living individuals beginning with oneself. I agree completely. Compression and simplification are a tiny component to a successful model. And, mostly, the compression and simplification are used to aid in communication rather than as an aid to practice. Compressions and simplifications are used for indoctrination of the uninitiated. The initiated are chock full of exceptions and caveats that apply when any simplification is applied/used. Compressions and simplifications are also used as a "jargon" between the initiated so they can communicate more efficiently. But even amongst those who use them as jargon they still fully decode them into context when they interact with the real world. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com ============================================================ 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
