This quotation from Crutchfield seems to me to be relevant to this
debate:
...the epistemological problem of nonlinear modeling can be crudely
summarized as the dichotomy between engineering and science. As long as
a representation is effective for a task, an engineer does not care what
it implies about underlying mechanisms; to the scientist though the
implication makes all the difference in the world. The engineer is
certainly concerned with minimizing implementation cost ... but the
scientist presumes, at least, to be focused on what the model means
vis-a-vis natural laws. The engineering view of science is that it is
mere data compression; scientists seem to be motivated by more than
this. (J. P. Crutchfield, 1992: p. 68)
CRUTCHFIELD, J. P. (1992) 'Knowledge and Meaning: Chaos and Complexity'
in L. Lam and V. Naroditsky (editors) Modelling Complex Phenomena. New
York: Springer-Verlag.
I think it interesting that the term law seems missing (may be wrong)
from this argument. Nota Bene - I am not proposing we go looking for
laws - as a critical realist I regard knowledge as contingent and
contextually bounded, but we do have to recognize that the establishment
of laws has been the traditional basis for prediction.
David Byrne
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