PowerLine:
The point is so elementary that it should not be necessary to state: a model is not evidence. It is a theory expressed in arithmetic terms. A theory is either validated or disproved by observation. A model that is contradicted by experience is simply wrong, and is useless. History is littered with theories that sounded plausible at the time, but were invalidated by experience.
He's right, it shouldn't be necessary to state, but evidently it's necessary to go outside and shout it every day.
"The map, is not the terrain".
ReplyDeleteHistory is littered with theories that sounded plausible at the time, but were invalidated by experience.
ReplyDeleteHistory also is littered by theories that gave perfectly fine explanations for relationships and flows, at least for the times, until they were superseded by other theories that gave better, more efficient explanations. Insofar as we understand "better" and "more efficient."
Better maps, though, still aren't the terrain.
Eric Hines
You guys should really read that dwarf story.
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying the dwarf story, even though I can't follow the mathematics.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the problem with looking at models in history is that we, in the present, know the fate of them, but the people at the time didn't.
At the time, when experience contradicted a model, the people who used the model started fiddling with it to see how they could change it to make it fit. You just don't toss out a model that has been useful and start over; you begin where you are, with the known faulty model, and try to make better.
When we do see a genuine revolution -- old models tossed out whole and completely replaced by new ones -- it takes place over a generation or three.
So, while it takes us an hour or so to read the history of such a revolution, it took decades or a century for it to happen in real time.
I personally think we are close to such a revolutionary inflection point in physics, which will necessarily cause downstream revolutions in fields like climate science that depend on physics, but who knows? It might not happen in my lifetime and yet be a historically "short" revolution.
And obviously those historians are not doing their jobs. I blame the field's leftward turn. If more Tea Partiers were in the discipline, all that litter would have been picked up by now. :-)
ReplyDeleteReading more closely, the models in question aren't even theories. They're hypotheses. Pfft.
ReplyDelete