Subject: Re: HC selectivity ... was Re: Physiological models of cochlea activity - alternatives to the travelling wave From: Toth Laszlo <tothl@xxxxxxxx> Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:16:56 +0200 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>On Fri, 28 Sep 2007, Martin Braun wrote: > Dick, it simply is a waste of time to model impossibilities. The alchemists > of the Middle Ages had the most fantastic models of how to make gold from > other metals. There was no shortage of models. There was a lack of insight. Probably it's not the proper place to discuss the role and importance of modelling in scientific reasoning, but I simply feel that I have to protest against your argumentation against modelling in general. 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, and that's while I feel your example to be hostile. Modelling is the most basic tool of modern scinetific thinking, if used properly. Meanwhile I definitely agree with you that many researchers are inclined to forget about examining the data and instead focus too much on the model. In particular, I observe that behaviour with engineers very frequently. It's quite a typical situation when an engineer comes to me saying "I have a nice new mathematical construct, don't you have some signal processing problem that it would fit? :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory Laszlo Toth Hungarian Academy of Sciences * Research Group on Artificial Intelligence * "Failure only begins e-mail: tothl@xxxxxxxx * when you stop trying" http://www.inf.u-szeged.hu/~tothl *