Thus spake Russ Abbott circa 11/30/2008 09:31 PM: > It seems to me that most branches of modern science (particle physics, > astronomy, neuro-anatomy, ...) rely on tools to see what's real, and those > tools do not provide a variety of independent ways to access them. It feels > initially intuitively comforting to say that one wants a variety of > independent way to perceive something before deciding that it is real. But I > don't think that's how science works.
Speaking from ignorance, as I usually do, it strikes me that the concepts "robustness" and "consistency" are related. It sounds like that definition of robustness biases it toward the concept of consistency. I would accept "things are (relatively) consistent if they are accessible (detectable, ...) in a variety of independent ways." Formally, a stronger sense would be "things are consistent if they obtain regardless of the way they're accessed." There's part of the concept of robustness that is left out of that definition (which biases it toward consistency). I think that might be something more like "vigor" or emphasis -- the capability of surviving onslaught. And that sort of concept lends itself nicely to the type of technophilic scientific discoveries you refer to above. Even if there's only a single path to a result, if that result has intense meaning, emphasis, or "vigor" as a concept, then it is robust. E.g. a long sought after datum validating some old, accepted, but not yet validated theory. The problem is that this latter sense of robustness includes false memes that take hold and persist despite being proved false or overly simplistic. So a vigorously robust belief (like flying spaghetti monsters or gravitons) need not be true. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, 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
