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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]