Ken, Lubomir, et al,
Just one point about organizing science around 'problems'.
I've always taken the goal science as the understanding of the
'physical' realm. If this is anywhere near right, then what exactly is
a 'problem'?
It seems to me that nature has no 'problems'. It just is. The problems
are ours. If anything, the basic problem of science is a lack of
understanding about some phenomenon. There are secondary problems that
arise from the inadequacy of some of our explanations/understandings of
those phenomena, but we really wouldn't care about them if it weren't
for the fundamental problem of lack of understanding.
So organizing science around problems seems to me to be organizing it
around how we think *now*. As our understanding changes over time, we
might find the structure of the organization to be 'wrong'.
So the question I have is: if we were to try organizing science around
problems, how would we generate a framework to ensure that the
organizing structures are flexible enough to adapt to our changing
understanding?
Cheers.
Fil
--
Filippo A. Salustri, PhD, PEng
on sabbatical until 17 August 2007 at:
Engineering Design Centre, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: [log in to unmask]
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