Re: Nulls, integrity, the closed world assumption and events

Marshall wrote:
> On Jan 14, 12:46 pm, "dawn" <dawnwolth..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> > Marshall wrote:
> > > On Jan 14, 10:32 am, "dawn" <dawnwolth..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > JOG wrote:
> > > > > However, I am a firm believer that an elegant
> > > > > theory will lead to good practice.
> >
> > > > Any elegant theory? That has surely steered us wrong in the past.
> >
> > > That's a clear an anti-theory statement as I expect to see.
> > > Since you are anti-theory, why are you in a theory newsgroup?
> > Come on, Marshall, you know that there can be an elegant mathematical
> > theory that should not be applied to this or that.
>
> I know that we don't apply the theory of evolution to arithmetic, or
> game theory to naval architecture, but otherwise I don't know
> what you mean. Theories are intimately connected to their area
> of applicability.

I guess you would say Newton's laws (and GR and QM for that matter) are relevant (and intimately connected) to a game of baseball, but are hardly being (directly) applied by the players.

> > When we are talking
> > about applying theory, rather than advancing the theory in and of
> > itself, there is an additional factor that it needs to be useful. On
> > top of that, there might be another elegant theory that is more useful,
> > so just because a theory is elegant and useful does not make it the
> > best choice.
>
> What do you think a theory is, that it can fail to be useful? A theory
> with no utility is immediately discarded. Utility isn't an "additional"
> factor; it's how we evaluate theories. Elegance can be seen as
> an aesthetic response to a theory with a high ratio of utility to
> complexity.

In a particular application domain a theory may be elegant, intimately related yet not practical. For example, General Relativity was overkill for the Apollo missions.

On another note, some scientists regard string theory as being outside science because it not clear whether it can be subjected to empirical study. Far fewer doubt its internal elegance however. Received on Mon Jan 15 2007 - 07:05:37 CET