[Inquiry] Re: Prospects for Inquiry Driven Systems

[Jon Awbrey]

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PRO.  Note 45

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1.3.4.  Philosophy of Science

Continuing the angle of assault previously taken toward the
abandoned mines of intellectual history, there are many other
veins and lodes, subsided and shelved, that experts assay too
low a grade for current standards and practices of professional
work.  Yet many of these superseded courses and discredited vaults
of theory are worth retooling and remining in the shape of computer
models.  Computational re-enactments of these precept chapters in
human thought, not just repetitions but analytic representations,
could serve the purpose of school figures, training exercises
and stock examples, useful as instructional paradigm cases.

But there is a further possibly.  Many foregone projects were so complex
that not everything was understood about their implications at the time
they were rejected for some critical flaw or another.  It is conceivable
that new things might be learned about the global characters of these
precursory models from computer simulations of their axioms, leading
principles, and general lines of reasoning.  Even though their flaws
were eventually detected by unaided analysis, their positive features
and possible directions of amendment may not have been so easily
appreciated.  An extended reflection on the need for various kinds
of reconstruction in and of philosophy, and the conditions for
their meaningful application to unclear but present situations,
may be found in (Dewey, 1948).

A prime example of a project awaiting this kind of salvage operation is the
submerged edifice of Carnap's "world building" (1928, 1961), the remains of
a mission dedicated to "the rational reconstruction of the concepts of all
fields of knowledge on the basis of concepts that refer to the immediately
given ... the searching out of new definitions for old concepts" (1969, v).
The illusory stability of the "immediately given" has never been more
notorious than today.  But the relevant character to be appreciated
in this classical architecture is the degree of harmony and balance,
the soundness in support of lofty design that subsists and makes
itself evident in the relationship of one level to another.
Much that is toxic in our intellectual environment today
could be alleviated by a suitably analytic and perceptive
movement to recycle, reclaim, and restore the artifacts
and habitations of former times.

Jon Awbrey

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