Horgan's Heros

[Miles Parker]

>
>RS> Should reread my Horgan, ralf
>
AL> Surely you don't mean John Horgan?  Now there's my idea of an
>ontological hell: doomed to re-reading the `End of Science', again and
>again and again and again...

Amen. In a few years [or now] it would be fun to publish an article 'The End of 
Science...Not!" detailing all the major scientific advances and paradigm 
changes that have occurred since that book was published. The first time I read 
it, it ruined a perfectly good backpacking trip. ;-)

>RS>On another note, if there are errors that are more likely to be made
>by all human modelers (be it from quantum brain wiring or such), then
>surely all fitting models at least represent human understanding of
>the topic better than only one would?  Isn't this very similar to how
>scientic progress happens, in nat.sci anyway?  Several models are built
>until there's more data to kill the unfit ones.

Yea, this is probably why Horgan's book touched a chord at all. He sort of took 
advantage of our semi-concious view of scientific discovery as like painting a 
room; at some point you have everything done but just a little touch up work 
around the corners..and then you're left with the big unexplainable world 
outside that science will never touch. 

The problem with this view is that we may well keep making the same mistakes, 
and those mistakes become reinforced instead of challenged, until someone comes 
along and completely blows a hole in them...then you discover that you've just 
been toying around with an illusory model of the room, and then you discover 
that its not a room at all...I think we may well be poised for a breakthrough 
on that kind of level, but who knows..

Horgan is compelling on some level, it is interesting to think, 'what happens 
at the point where there is no longer anything left to discover that is 
discoverable?' but is way out on a limb in insisting that now is that time. In 
fact, I think it would be impossible to rigorously make that claim at any time, 
or even to make the claim that it would ever happen. Its seems analagous to the 
halting problem.

Anyway, I hope I'm right, becuse the alternative is somewhat dismal..

-Miles

[speaking for myself, natch]



Miles T. Parker
Software Engineer
The Brookings Institution  1775 Mass. Ave. NW  Washington, DC  20036
http://www.brook.edu/es/dynamics/models/ascape
mailto:address@hidden  voice 202.797.6136  fax 202.797.6319



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