Re: HC selectivity ... was Re: Physiological models of cochlea activity - alternatives to the travelling wave

["Richard F. Lyon" <DickLyon@xxxxxxx>]

At 4:16 PM +0200 9/28/07, Toth Laszlo wrote:
> According to its scientific definition, a good model "must accurately
> describe a large class of observations [..] and it must make definite
> predictions about the results of future observations" (S. Hawking).
> In that sense the alchemists' speculations could hardly be called models,
> ...

Actually, even the Alchemists' models, and early chemical models that 
caused Priestley to refer to Oxygen as "dephlogisticated air", were 
useful attempts at organizing the knowledge of that time.  They 
weren't "good" models by Hawking's definition, but they were the best 
they had come up with so far.  Eventually they were replaced by 
better model's (like Lavoisier's) that did a better job of explaining 
the observations.  One has to formulate the models in order to test 
the ideas, see if they work, form better ideas and better models, etc.

I think the cochlear models that many people use are similarly not 
"good"; but better ones do exist, and we need to continue to test 
them, to see what they explain and predict, do see which ones are 
best.  Martin has his own models, but he doesn't want to call them 
that.

Dick