Although the idea of science as reverse engineering is intriguing, it does not fit my view of what science does when it is successful. Reverse engineering studies how something works in order to reproduce the function. It doesn’t necessarily, and usually does not, use the same causes: the reverse engineered program and the program that results from reverse engineering may well not have much at all in terms of common code (inferences). My understanding was that this is why reverse engineered programs don’t violate copyright.
Science, on the other hand, tries to find the actual causes. A common view of the relation between theory and reality (due to Hertz originally, but developed in detail by Robert Rosen) is that the logical structure of the theory should duplicate the causal structure of what the theory is about. This is a much tighter relationship than required for successful reverse engineering.
John Collier
Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Associate
University of KwaZulu-Natal
From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, 20 May 2016 6:28 PM
To: [email protected]
Cc: 'Peirce-L' <[email protected]>
Subject: Aw: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: 6 vectors and 3 inference patterns
List,
when I read about the comparison of science / mathematics with engineering, the term "reverse-engineering" comes into my mind. Perhaps a hypothesis in physics is an attempt to reverse-engineer an aspect of nature, and a mathematical hypothesis, to reverse-engineer an aspect of logic?
In creativity though, it is somehow different, say, in biological evolution and in arts: Here there is no reverse-engineering of something already existing, but the hypothesis is a hypothesis of viability: Might this or that new combination work out to be fulfilling (in evolution) a species members needs, conquer a niche, or, in arts, be esthetic, logical, or deliver an extraordinary view of some kind- or even an- even more viable- combination of the three, like a complex emotion. I think, Ezra Pounds parts of poetry (melopoeia, logopoeia, phanopoeia) apply to music and painting too: A picture can have a melody and a logic , a peace of music a logic (eg. Bach), or even paint something in the mind. So, abduction in this case is not only telling something about the origin of a sample of beans or something else, already existing, but to create something new. This new thing though must fit somehow into old schemes, otherwise it would not be regarded as viable or extraordinary. But, once established, it changes or widenes the old schemes. This evolutionary thing, maybe, is the uniqueness of abduction?
Best,
Helmut
Gesendet: Freitag, 20. Mai 2016 um 15:45 Uhr
Von: [email protected]
An: 'Peirce-L' <[email protected]>
Betreff: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: 6 vectors and 3 inference patterns
Jon,
Ben’s post has said a lot of what I would have said, so I’ll just add a few notes by insertion here …
From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 19-May-16 09:13
Gary F., List:
Gf: Science as a discipline of engineering? That’s too much of a stretch for me ... It would be like claiming that mathematics is a discipline of physics. Only more so. J
Js: Well, I acknowledged that it is a provocative notion. The point is that science is pursued with the same basic motivation--transforming dissatisfaction into satisfaction--as engineering and any other human endeavor.
Gf: Now I’m seeing the limitations of your hypothesis that ALL human endeavor is rooted in dissatisfaction. It seems to ignore more positive motivations such as curiosity, participation and playfulness in all its forms. The quest for knowledge can be much more than an escape from a state of dissatisfaction. Peirce’s dictum would, I suppose, portray not yet possessing the object of one’s quest as a “state of dissatisfaction,” but that’s only one perspective on the questing tendency.
Gf: Engineering, as I understand it, always involves some technology, some manipulation of the physical world for some conscious purpose other than discovery of its nature.
Js: Why should discovering the nature of the physical world be privileged over all other conscious purposes?
Gf: It isn’t, except by a physicist per se. But discovery of principles in nature — including the nature of conscious purposes as a specialized subset of final causes, or natural purposes — is, for any philosopher, ethically privileged over manipulation of any kind, because self-control depends on it. It is also privileged over “Practice,” according to Peirce, because for Science, “Nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real,— the object of its worship and its aspiration. It therein takes an entirely different attitude toward facts from that which Practice takes” (EP2:55).
Gf: The conception or selection of that purpose, of the end to which the engineering project is the means, is the job of the normative sciences, which are themselves only part of science in the Peircean sense.
This reflects the status of engineering as almost purely instrumental--clients and managers dictate what engineers do, rather than engineers themselves. My writings on engineering ethics attempt to explore whether and how engineers might someday escape this "social captivity," as Steven L. Goldman has called it.
Gf: The status of engineering as a profession (as opposed to a discipline) is a sociological issue, and I wasn’t trying to say anything about that. There’s nothing in the nature of the discipline that stops a professional engineer (or a client, or a manager!) from taking a scientific or philosophical approach to the matter at hand.
Gary f.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
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