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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:55 2006 |
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----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
[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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