Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aipna!cam From: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Emergent Properties Keywords: chaos, science, prediction Message-ID: <3383@aipna.ed.ac.uk> Date: 29 Oct 90 01:38:29 GMT References: <1990Oct12.214636.7945@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <30@tdatirv.UUCP> <1990Oct19.201604.7280@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <3369@aipna.ed.ac.uk> <1990Oct26.214354.11063@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> Reply-To: cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) Organization: Dept of AI, Edinburgh University, UK. Lines: 119 In article <1990Oct26.214354.11063@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> fostel@eos.ncsu.edu (Gary Fostel) writes: >I said: > > The purpose of science is (I thought) to search for descriptions > of the world, to be offered in terms of defined quantities, and > then to test those descriptions for adequacy. > >And Chris Malcom, at Edinbourough, replied: (Chris Malcolm at Edinburgh, actually.) > That is a simplified rational reconstruction of science .... > it bears little > resemblance to the way they [scientists] actually work. > >Perhaps I am still a teenage wannabe scientist. I am rather familar with >the work habits of "scientists" -- the good and the bad. I had thought I >was talking about an issue of how one ought to proceeed, not how people >often do, for a variety of oft pressing pragmatic reasons. You mistake the seriousness of my point. I did not mean that scientists for "oft pressing pragmatic reasons" take short-cuts and fail to conform to the proper letter of the scientific method, but rather that only a limited amount of science can actually be done according to your description (above). Your description applies to a particular phase in a particular kind of science, e.g., looking for a new planet, hypothesized according to the Newtonian paradigm to explain observed orbital perturbations. >There was a >time when scientists studied the philosphy of science as part of their >training; this is less common these days. It shows. Ah, so you didn't recognise the Lakatosian undertones behind what I was saying? Of course not, since your initial description (quoted above) sounds a rather Baconian or Humean view of science -- though that is perhaps a cruel generalisation from a rather small sample, which could be generously read as Popperian. >If AI people are "scientists" than there may well >be some serious methodological weaknesses in current work -- weaknesses >that are perhaps strengths if one relables the method. Bad technique in >science may be excellent philosophy, mathematics, or, esp. engineering. >A few words, brutally quoted out of context from Malcom's note, >help make my point: "constructing", "building", "inventor". These are >terms drawn from engineering, not science. Don't be silly. They are terms which apply in general to making things. What distinguishes engineers from scientists is not WHAT they make but WHY they make it. Some of the largest and most expensive "constructions" in the world were "invented" and "built" by physicists to study sub-atomic particles. >There are sciences, especially biological, in which enourmous effort is >put into "building a system" in order to use it to study a problem. However, >once the system is built, it is subjected to rigourous examination, >usually called "characterizing" the system so that the REAL work of science >can then be done: performing well controlled experiments in a well understood >setting to prove or disprove theories about the elements involved in that >system. The situation in AI ... and other branches of Computer "Science" >as well ... is quite different, AI is a relatively young discipline, and has not yet become properly institutionalised in the bricks and mortar of our Universities, and so it happens that it is pursued in such convenient host departments as CS, EE, Philosophy, Linguistics, Psychology, etc.; but if you, Gary, really seriously think that AI is _properly_ a part of Computer Science then I'd be interested to hear why. For my part I think considering AI to be a branch of CS is as silly as considering Astronomy to be a branch of Optics. >Malcom confirms [Gary's view that AI is not a science] when he says: > It is not uncommon > for a good research prototype to be the subject of heated debate over > precisely what it exemplifies for a number of years. The final > interpretation is sometimes -- even in the eyes of the inventor -- quite > different from the original intention. One of the distinguishing > features of a good research prototype is just this long-term > fruitfulness. > >The "long term fruitfullness" of the "research prototype" comes from the >"heated debate" not from the specific well controlled experiments performed >using this prototype. The difference is quite clear. This is not to say >that everyone doing AI should pack it up, but it does suggest that if AI >comes under criticism for not being a proper scientific discipline, AI >people should not deny that such is the case. Unless of course the criticism comes from people with a naively Procrustean view of what properly constitutes a science. >If someone suggests that >more rigourous scientific methods might provide long term benifits to the >field, this should not be refuted by claiming that such methods are already >being applied. Well, I don't see why it shouldn't; but as it happens I'm refuting it by attacking your view of science. >Rather, it might >be the case that the scientific method simply can not be applied or would >not be fruitful, and that can be the basis for defending the status quo in AI. Here you seem to suggest that there may actually be domains of enquiry better investigated by methods other than scientific! Really? Does this not rather suggest a view of the scientific method so narrowly dominated by the particular practices of a few sciences as to condemn those too different to the status of non-sciences? Some psychologists were foolish enough to heed the advice of such narrowly educated philosophers of science, and as a consequence nearly flushed their discipline down the toilet in a spasm of physics envy. Do you, Gary, really think that there are matters-of-fact in the Universe to the discovery of which other methods than the scientific are best fitted? -- Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.aipna 031 667 1011 x2550 Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University 5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK