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[Forwarded on behalf of Roy Weintraub. -- RBE] 
 
> 4. Revised Schulz question/assertion: Given that a case can be  
> made that simplifying assumptions such as perfect information are 
> needed for modelling efforts to make progress, there is the following 
> very serious pitfall:  as the modelling assumption simplification 
> becomes second nature, those "later generation modellers"using it, 
> especially those whose focus is on technique, tend to forget the 
> reason the original "big thinkers" adopted the simplification, and 
> forget that the idea is to figure out how to generalize away from that 
> simplification. (Some of them even come to believe the simplification 
> approximately holds!!!)   
>  
> Do people find this claim plausible, wrong-headed, or what? Would 
> Schulz buy it???    
>  
 
I submit that the issue of "modelling" as here used itself is  
problematic. Referring to Mary Morgan and Margaret Morrison's  
recent book _Models as Mediators_ (Cambridge, 1999), I think that  
using phrases like "for modelling efforts to make progress" are  
worse than unhelpful if they are taken to be understood by us all  
without scare quotes. May I ask "Just what might you mean by  
progress when you use it in in this sentence?"   
 
E. Roy Weintraub 
Duke University 
 
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