I'll use the break in the more interesting discussion, then, to answer Len.
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Originally Posted by Len Moran
This word "model" certainly seems to causing some problems that I'm not entirely sure are fully justified, so would it be worth getting back to basics? The dictionary defines the word as "a simplified description, esp. a mathematical one, of a system or process, to assist calculations and predictions."
I think of the "system" as being our macroscopic reality, so from that perspective, the scientific model is a simplified description of that reality that allows us to understand nature in an objective manner.
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Notice that the scientific model is a
description of something, but a description is not a substitute or stand-in for for that something. It's that notion of duality that I think is being philosophically imposed on us without justification.
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If we understood everything about nature then that understanding would not be a model, it would be the "system"...
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No, and this is the core issue I disagree with. As our golfer improves his putt, he does not become the putt. He just gets better at doing something. Knowledge and understanding are also constituted by doing something well. The difference between description and reality is not the same as between a plastic model of the solar system and the solar system. Refinements in scientific description do not move us closer to reality. That is just a metaphor. Rather, we get better at achieving something. We can make something happen in our lives that we could not do before.
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So if I suggest that science simplifies, then according to the dictionary definition Newton's laws and GR are both a model of the gravitational "system".
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We simplify by acting simply. We use one approach with Newton's recipes and another, more involved process, with Einstein's. We deal with the world in either case; we just take different actions and get different results with each theory.
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Now this seems fairly uncontroversial to me, so is it the case that you don't see science as simplifying anything about our reality, or is it solely your dislike of the word "model" seeming to invoke a notion of underlying or distant reality as being distinct from a simplified scientific representation?
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I see science not as creating a simpler version of reality, but as discovering the simpler aspects of reality. An elliptical planetary orbit has circular aspects. Science discovers those and teaches us how we can in some circumstances treat an elliptical orbit as a circular one.
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Our science at the quantum level takes the form of predictive observations, not events - there is no "particle" prior to a measurement/observation. The predicted observation of a particle is clearly a simplified description of "something" within the "complex system" that consists of us as observers and a reality that is mind independent and inaccessible. That we are forced to acknowledge an element within the "system" that is outside of our knowledge, reinforces (for me) the dictionary definition of a model as a simplified representation since we have no possibility of ever reaching this element of mind independent reality. Again, in this context, the use of the term "model" to me seems fairly uncontroversial.
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I don't know enough about QM is know what you mean by “predicted observations of a particle.” I thought QM did a sum-over-histories type of statistical prediction. I thought that QM specifically did not speak to any sort of underlying mechanism. “Shut up and calculate!” as they say.
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I'm trying to avoid repetition from my posts, but I apologize for seemingly going over the same ground, I am having some difficulty in seeing where the problem with the use of the term model lies, and where exactly you are coming from (and why). Perhaps if we try and clarify things from basics, it may help.
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Our differences consist in nothing more than you taking something literally that I take as a metaphor of speech.
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Incidentally, I am reading a book at the moment on Maxwell and there is a chapter entitled "spinning cells". It seems that Maxwell formulated a mechanical model to represent current flow, magnetic and electrostatic force and electromagnetic waves consisting of cells and wheels. He also derived the ratio of electrostatic and electromagnetic units of electric charge to give c from this model.
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Maxwell first learns to deal with cells and wheels, let's say. Later in life he learns he can successfully act in some of the the same ways with electrical devices. What exists here are: Maxwell, cells, wheels, and electrical devices. There is no model. Maxwell simply pretends that electrical devices are cells and wheels.