Patterns And Models
After my first Chemistry class in Year 8, I asked my teacher why the elements were so well ordered and organised and he said, “Well… they’re really not”. Recently I’ve been thinking about the patterns that are seen in nature, but also the patterns that humans impose on nature. The elements are amazingly predictable, but there is also a lot about them that is really not.
Chemistry also has a bunch of different models for the same things, most-often times as a way of stepping up to the next model. Is a model of a system still useful or even relevent if it needs to be innacurate to be understood? Does our fetish for patterns and order hinder accuracy in these models?
Good questions!
Certainly most of our models are only approximations. It might even be that ALL our models are only approximations, apart from very general statements like “evolution happens largely by natural selection”.
— I have thought about that too, as how do people know if a model is accurate or not. But even if you doubt it, it still works. When a model works, it can predict a thing or a pattern correctly, then that is an undoubted model. And most of our developed models do work, so I think they are not inaccurate, and yes, i agree they are approximations but not inaccurate. And i also agree human nature dose affect how we order or sort things, but they still do consider what happens in reality, they cant just put something in a series in order to make it looks more neat or accurate while it totally doesn’t have the chance to occur in reality. Just saying…haha Gigi
| I also think that our “fetish” for patterns and order affects the way in which we see and understand the universe. An example I remember reading about recently is scientists’ current examination of the structure of the large-scale universe, and their search for patterns within it. But maybe there aren’t any true patterns in this structure, and so our efforts to impose perceived patterns on it are ultimately incorrect and futile. |
| However I don’t think that just because a model is inaccurate (or in some cases incomplete may be a better way to phrase it) doesn’t mean we should discard it. For example, in terms of chemistry, imagine if you were taught the molecular orbital model of bonding straight off the bat - for most people starting out in chemistry this would be an incredibly complicated starting point well beyond their understanding. So models that are simple but less complete, like Lewis structures, are useful in terms of the education process. |
| From another perspective, we shouldn’t discard simpler models because in a lot of cases they make calculations easier, and on many everyday scales are accurate enough. For example, in physics, the energy of a moving particle is given by E^2 = p^2 c^2 + m^2 c^4. But in most situations it is easier and sufficiently accurate to use the approximation E=0.5mv^2. |
| Ellen Rykers |
Ooh, very good points Gigi and Ellen. Gigi, we’ll be looking at your idea in a later lecture under the name “instrumentalism”.
Jason
| sorry here, i want to ask another question but i am too lazy to open a new topic, so i will just use a little space here, hope you don’t mind. |
| From the tut, we had discussed the cat, and my very clever colleagues and Jason had come up this question about the existence of a being (or the cat) So Jason asked how do you even know if you exist to that cat. |
| And i thought say if a person is transparent, so assume others can’t see or hear or touch him, then does he exist? Moreover, if himself can’t touch anything (he will just go through it) or make any sound, has no influence what so ever on anything, then does he exist? From anyone’s perspective. Does someone only exist when he can be influent or when he receives feedback from others (means he thinks he exists because others give the confirmation of his existence). I dont know if you can understand what am i trying to say here, and it maybe a boring question (or not relevant), but i hope you can tell me if i had mistaken my logic or you can give me another point of view. Thanx. |
| Gigi |
That’s a very good question, Gigi.
Suppose you couldn’t influence anything, so nobody else could see you … wouldn’t you still feel yourself existing?
Jason
DeCarte would say that if s/he had consciousness then they exist. The question they might ask themselves would be if the world really existed? If you can’t effect anything at all you might be dreaming/imagining the world. We don’t know if the other entities in the world have consciousness, so maybe the individual exists and the world is just imagined.
Someone like Heidigger might say they exist, but don’t have being. Like a hermit that has no contact with other people they exist in a sense but are not effectively part of what’s going on.
I don’t know if this is supposed to be related to the ‘patterns and models’ tittle, but the ineffectual entity is something that would be left out of the model; even if noticed it would be labeled as irrelevant
Christopher Beaumont
u4744710On the scientific model debate, the comment about predicting results is important. An airtight and co-heriant theory is appealing, we are attracted to the consistency and pattern; but what I really find convincing is when the theory predicts something new that was not originally used to formulate the theory in the first place. This really starts to indicate that the theory/model is not just an explanation for what we have observed but actually a representation for what’s going on behind the observations. It starts to feel like detective work here.
What worried me is that a theory might be so airtight and internally co-heriant that it prevents us from seeing anything outside of the theory. We might need a complete paradigm shift to make any progress, and we might resist, or remain oblivious, to the possibility. If a great mind like Einstein resisted Quantum mechanics (even as he helped develop it) because he didn’t like the unpredictability then no-one is immune to this type of limitation. Instead of a stepping stone towards a better understand the model might block our progress.
Christopher Beaumont
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