From: "Hans-Cees Speel" <HANSS@sepa.tudelft.nl>
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 15:53:04 MET
Subject: Re: From Knowledge Animals to Information Beings
[quoting Bruce Buchanan]
> In _Alternate Realities: Mathematical Models and the Nature of Man_, John
> L. Casti summarizes some of the criteria by which science and pseudoscience
> may be identified. Among the conditions which I have noted in Onar's
> writings are the following, any one of which disqualifies a theory as
> science:
> - spurious similarities
> - research by literary interpretation
> - irrefutable hypotheses
> - refusal to revise.
> To these might be added idiosyncratic language that fails to support
> continuing communication with shared terms of meaning.
I would like to comment to this, and will do this to the list, but since my
messages do not work there at the moment, also to Bruce himself.
Dear Bruce,
I see your response as a good one, since it at least has an argument in
it. I do not agree however.
I think that science as a whole can be divided in some functions, and
some developmental different stages. A function is to speculate, to
theorize, to make hypothesis, and to test these and therefore to falsify
the hypothesis [usually not the theory].
In development it is clear that some theories are in stages according to
the functions [or any other subdivision] or that different parts of a
theory-network are in different stages.
I believe that all functions are necessary and crucial to science. I
would say that the theories of Onar [I have very often talked to him on
many aspects of it] are re-fraiming some known, or more unknown
parts of other theories into different classes, and concepts. I do not
know exactly where it is going, but have some faith in the arguments
that he uses in his discussions with me.
I think that multi-disciplinary science, dealing with real-life
human-problems, like policy-problems, etc needs views that are
general, and capable to view many aspects from many parts of
science.
Re-fraiming known fact and parts of theories in larger frameworks is
very usefull in some ways. We must not forget that all the beautifully
testable theories we have are often built on equally untestable
conceptual frameworks [remember the claim that fitness, one of the
central themes in evolutionary theory, is often a tautology]. These
fraimworks use other theories to ground it, etc. In short: EVERY
THEORY IS ON SOME LEVEL PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC .
These are the reasons why I very much apreciate his work, although I
do not at all like the language between him and Don.
Ps If you could forward this to the pcp-list I would be very gratefull,
greetings, hope to see you all in Brussels next week,
Theories come and go, the frog stays [F. Jacob]
-------------------------------------------------------
|Hans-Cees Speel School of Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and
management
|Technical University Delft, Jaffalaan 5 2600 GA Delft PO Box 5015 The
Netherlands
|telephone +3115785776 telefax +3115783422 E-mail hanss@sepa.tudelft.nl
HTTP://www.sepa.tudelft.nl/~afd_ba/hanss.html featuring evolution and memetics!
_____________________________________________________________________
Addendum by Bruce Buchanan:
I am pleased to forward this, as requested.
I might also say that I agree with the general point that Hans-Cees is making.
Yet it is part of the human condition that ideas and communications require
testing and discipline. This can be difficult to obtain for someone as
obviously knowledgeable and intelligent as Onar. I am interested to hear
that Onar is perhaps not the victim of hubris that his writing sometimes
suggests to me (as someone who does not have the knowledge, time, energy or
motivation to follow all his arguments, or who finds a disciplined attempt
to do so frustrating!)
Cheers.
Bruce B.