[Inquiry] Purpose Of Scientific Inquiry -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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POSI.  Discussion Note 1

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John, Cybernetics List,

I hope you will excuse my downsizing your capitals --
it goes back to some childhood traumas with Fortran,
but that's another story ... and I could only speak
very tangentially with respect to Gibbs or Friedman --
but I have been spending a chunk of my waking and
dreaming life on the subject of inquiry, for the
last 15 years or so in a systems theoretic frame,
for example, this old dissertation proposal that
introduced some of my thoughts on the subject
of "Inquiry Driven Systems":

Jon Awbrey, "Inquiry Driven Systems", Short Version
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/inquiry.htm

Jon Awbrey, "Inquiry Driven Systems", Long Version
IDS.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-May/thread.html#1434
IDS.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-May/thread.html#1564
IDS.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-June/thread.html#1574

Jon Awbrey, "Introduction to Inquiry Driven Systems"
INTRO.  http://forum.wolframscience.com/showthread.php?threadid=598
INTRO.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-November/thread.html#1720

Jon Awbrey, "Differential Logic and Dynamic Systems"
DIF.  http://forum.wolframscience.com/showthread.php?threadid=636
DIF.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-December/thread.html#2042

Some earlier work on pragmatic and semiotic approaches to inquiry:

Jon Awbrey & Susan Awbrey, "Interpretation as Action: The Risk of Inquiry"
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html

Susan Awbrey & Jon Awbrey, "Learning Organizations, Integrative Universities"
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/integrat.htm

So there's some stuff to talk about here.
Will get back to your specific questions
later today or tomorrow.

Jon Awbrey

cc: Arisbe List, Inquiry List

John Warfield wrote:
>
> It was Willard Gibbs' view that the purpose to be attached to scientific inquiry was to find that point of view from which the
> subject could be understood in its greatest simplicity.  That is not of course the same as "simplistic".  But the way I interpret
> this is that when someone starts to construct models of some piece of the world or of the world itself, it is a good thing right
> away to begin to imagine as many isomorphs of whatever seems to be a way of modeling as possible with a constant eye out
> as to what particular isomorph might serve whatever sub-purpose and, in particular, the presentation of the subject in its
> greatest simplicity.  It's my view that one may interpret the latter always as lying outside the scope of the generating discipline
> because ultimately the merit of whatever is discovered ought to be in terms of its utility for humanity in general and not for a
> self-sealing discipline.
>  
> I realize that this is a sort of a selfish point of view.
>  
> Anyway in looking at George J. Friedman's constraint theory where he uses bipartite graphs to show that variables are
> connected through relationships, and is able to find a very wide variety of structural features enabling consistency to be
> determined by the structural features alone without resorting to the details of the relationships, I have urged him many times to
> consider the concept of tying the interpretation to the underlying lattice, where I felt the whole of constraint theory could be
> seen in its simplest point of view.  George either did not agree, or had too much else to do.  
>  
> In this respect I wonder if folks working on graphics in chemistry or Peirce-like graphics have sat down and looking at the
> foundational assumptions of their work and found them to lie outside the scope of elements and relationships.  I ask this
> knowing that virtually all scientific investigators have placed undue relationships on elements and always treated relationships
> as intuitive, not making the explicit, this being true from the time of Aristotle onward.
>  
> John Warfield

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