The religious grouping I belong to had cause to study/discuss this about 150 years back (concerning flocks of men not birds). The leader of the faction in opposition to mine (which means my faction vehemently disagrees with his view) had this to say
Source: http://books.google.com/books?id=6NkvMc41_0cC&; Title: "Great Men ..." (1868) (pg.8) Author : Keshub Chandra Sen "Great men are sent by Grod into the world to benefit mankind. They are His apostles and missionaries, who bring to us glad tidings from heaven ; and in order that they may effectually accomplish their errands they are endowed by Him with requisite power and talents. They are created with a nature superior to that of others, which is at once the testimonial of their apostleship and the guarantee of their success. They are not made great by culture or experience : they are born great. They are ordained and sanctified as prophets at their birth. They succeed, not because of any ability acquired through personal exertions, nor of any favorable combination of outward circumstances, but by reason of their inherent greatness. It is God's light that makes them shine, and enables them to illumine the world. He puts in their very constitution something that is super-human and divine ; hence their greatness and superiority. They are great on account of the large measure of divine spirit which they possess and manifest. It is true they are men, but who will deny that they are above ordinary humanity ? Though human, they are divine. This is the striking peculiarity of all great men. In them we see a strange and mysterious combination of the human and divine nature, of the earthly and the heavenly. It is easy to distinguish a great man, but it is difficult to comprehend him. A deep mystery hangs over the root of his life : the essence of his being is an inexplicable riddle. Who can solve it ? That some nations have carried their reverence for prophets so far as to deify them, and worship them as God, or rather God in human shape, does not in the least appear to me surprising or unaccountable, however guilty they may be of man-worship. For if a prophet is not God, is he a mere man ? That cannot be. Such an hypothesis would not adequately explain all the problems of his life. The fact is, as I have already said, he is both divine and human ; he is both God and man. He is a "God-man". " On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 10:43 PM, glen e. p. ropella < g...@agent-based-modeling.com> wrote: > > Although I tend to agree with you because I think validation and trust > are synonyms, I think it's too easy to cherry pick conclusions from > either article and say that their research is evidence for those > conclusions. > > The Nagy article merely gives evidence that particular birds may well > lead flocks, in general. (But remember that not all flocks are the > same. These are expert racing pigeons, after all. ;-) But it doesn't > demonstrate that flocking _always_ requires particular leaders. It's > sufficient but perhaps not necessary. > > And although the Quera article has validation problems, it might still > be taken for rhetorical evidence supporting the idea that, in some (real > world) flocks, perhaps leadership is emergent. I.e. it is _possible_ > that (real world) flocking doesn't require particular leaders. > > As Sarbajit was saying, any single research effort gives us only a tiny, > flawed, aspect of reality. So, while I also trust the data-based > modeling done by Nagy et al more, I wouldn't denigrate Quera et al as > pure fluff. I also wouldn't convict myself to only trusting data-based > rhetoric and disbelieving model-based rhetoric. But, obviously, that's > me. [grin] > > > Robert Holmes wrote circa 10-04-07 06:17 PM: > > A thoroughly neat synchronicity in the current research on flocking. > > > > Here's some > > science: > http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7290/full/nature08891.html(populist > > version here > > <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125665334>) > > > > And here's some fluff: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/13/2/8.html > > > > They come up with distinctly different conclusions. Guess which one I > trust. > > > -- > 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 >
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