Ugh! It's not defeatist at all! In fact, I tend to believe that until and unless we (most of us 6 bil ppl) have relatively accurate formalisms for handling ambiguity, we should embrace the poetry of natural language.
I.e. until we all are fluent in math, ambiguity will be (is) well-handled by natural languages in all their vagaries. Further, the ambiguities (e.g. double meanings, irony, satire, etc) are some of the best opportunities for synthetic beauty! That's not defeatist at all. As for Feynman's quote, there's nothing in that quote that contradicts the idea that scientific methods, including prosaic descriptions of models, can/should be ambiguous. In fact, most of science is unclear and ambiguous because science is primarily falsificationist, which by definition allows for multi-valence. Russ Abbott <[email protected]> wrote: >That seems so defeatist. When one can't be clear, there may not be anything >one can do about it at the time. But it seems to me that the positive arc of >science, technology, philosophy, politics, culture, etc. (and I think it has >been overall a positive arc) has been driven by the imperative to be as >clear as possible as much as possible. Feynman famously said "Science is >what we have learned about how not to fool ourselves about the way the world >is. " Are you really objecting to that as a goal? (It certainly won't work >as a software development strategy!) I would have thought that this list >especially would value clarity. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.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
