3 ms·

Your approach of the problem, while theoretically correct (world is infinitely complex, therefore no model can encompass it, news at 11), is of zero practical u

Your approach of the problem, while theoretically correct (world is infinitely complex, therefore no model can encompass it, news at 11), is of zero practical use. As a matter of fact, IIRC, the Chinese around the 11th century walked the exact same intellectual path, which led them to conclude that trying to model the behavior of the natural world was a waste of time, and made them completely abandon the idea of simplified, yet predictive and therefore useful models. The net result was: they killed their then budding tech/science endeavors in the egg. In other words, your take does not seem to be particularly fruitful.

mjburgess 3y ago
It's descriptive, not normative. Engineers build "useful models", scientists as a matter of fact, build explanations. Whether those explanations prove useful is always an open question; newton's took centuries to have much of an engineering use. Engineering is a kind of pseudoscience justified by its utitility -- if it's undertood to be mere utility, it's fine. But "engineering thinking" has taken over large areas of thinking, and it's a catastrophe. You cannot build really new things by engineering. Engineering is just "statisticalisation" of new science; a simplification, an eloration, a proceduralisation. The science must come first.
- defrost 3y ago
  > You cannot build really new things by engineering. [..] The science must come first. Which came first, man made winged objects that flew, or the equations of winged flight?
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    Yes, there is a dynamical equilibrium between engineering and science; with "analogical engineering" often occurring before "direct explanation". So, accidental discoveries -> lenses -> optics -> telescopes -> theory of gravity -> etc. The full picture is here is very subtle. The idea is that we are in the world as animals engaged in a protoypical science in every action we perform: we interpret causes, take goal-directed actions, refute universals, etc. Our conscious mind is a kind of "local, heuristical science" of our own bodies and how we relate to our environments. This "native science" gives rise to a "naive engineering" where we play around with possible tools and see what they do. You then bootstrap those tools to do non-naive science. Science, in the sense I mean of mechanistic explanation involving making claims about stuff that exists, how it works, how it interacts etc.... must necessarily proceed engineering (in the sense of "utility of coincidences"). But it's an incredibly naive science of basic animal intelligence at first -- a science of one's body hurting finding out why, etc. -- you need to supplement this with iterated engineering-science loops to "get to the stars". The problem with Hume, and the sceptics in this thread, is they either have this backwards; or have no science at all in the picture. Hume just assumed science is impossible because we were just "engineers of images in our heads", rather than "scientists of our bodies"
  - mannykannot 3y ago
    In the specific case you have chosen as an exemplar, George Cayley established some important principles before the Wrights (as the latter acknowledged), and they themselves succeeded where others failed by doing the science that they needed to cross the threshold. Subsequent development often followed from advances in the science of aeronautics, sometimes in very counter-intuitive ways - for one example, look up Whitcomb's area rule.

mjburgess 3y ago

It's descriptive, not normative. Engineers build "useful models", scientists as a matter of fact, build explanations. Whether those explanations prove useful is always an open question; newton's took centuries to have much of an engineering use. Engineering is a kind of pseudoscience justified by its utitility -- if it's undertood to be mere utility, it's fine. But "engineering thinking" has taken over large areas of thinking, and it's a catastrophe. You cannot build really new things by engineering. Engineering is just "statisticalisation" of new science; a simplification, an eloration, a proceduralisation. The science must come first.

defrost 3y ago
> You cannot build really new things by engineering. [..] The science must come first. Which came first, man made winged objects that flew, or the equations of winged flight?
- mjburgess 3y ago
  Yes, there is a dynamical equilibrium between engineering and science; with "analogical engineering" often occurring before "direct explanation". So, accidental discoveries -> lenses -> optics -> telescopes -> theory of gravity -> etc. The full picture is here is very subtle. The idea is that we are in the world as animals engaged in a protoypical science in every action we perform: we interpret causes, take goal-directed actions, refute universals, etc. Our conscious mind is a kind of "local, heuristical science" of our own bodies and how we relate to our environments. This "native science" gives rise to a "naive engineering" where we play around with possible tools and see what they do. You then bootstrap those tools to do non-naive science. Science, in the sense I mean of mechanistic explanation involving making claims about stuff that exists, how it works, how it interacts etc.... must necessarily proceed engineering (in the sense of "utility of coincidences"). But it's an incredibly naive science of basic animal intelligence at first -- a science of one's body hurting finding out why, etc. -- you need to supplement this with iterated engineering-science loops to "get to the stars". The problem with Hume, and the sceptics in this thread, is they either have this backwards; or have no science at all in the picture. Hume just assumed science is impossible because we were just "engineers of images in our heads", rather than "scientists of our bodies"
- mannykannot 3y ago
  In the specific case you have chosen as an exemplar, George Cayley established some important principles before the Wrights (as the latter acknowledged), and they themselves succeeded where others failed by doing the science that they needed to cross the threshold. Subsequent development often followed from advances in the science of aeronautics, sometimes in very counter-intuitive ways - for one example, look up Whitcomb's area rule.