Jack, Nice comments on the history of science and the issue. I'd agree with the cladists that design does not reveal its provenance, but with the evolutionists that most differences in design arise from their provenance. So to me, looking at your evidence to see a) how to distinguish one pattern from another and b)where the differences came from, can both lead to methods that "give us greater or lesser purchase on given pragmatic objectives".
Since most ABM models are probably from one or another community of models, designed to use some common features as standard and others as experimental, one might ask the contributors of the model be published in the community 'cladogram' about that, but it's going to end up looking like a network history map, which is a hard thing to read and probably as much of a challenge to analyze... Phil Henshaw NY NY www.synapse9.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
