TR,

I noticed you got stuck on my comment above ignoring other examples I gave like Turkey.
I would agree with George is his last comment: if the conquest is for people to become better human beings then their beliefs are tools of guidance to get them there. A follower of Islam or christianity who dispises others is no different than an atheist acting in the same manner.
Which beliefs you follow are your business. What matter is if it getting you where you want to go: a better human being that is.

Peace as always,

Dear TR,
I am sure it would not be a hard exercise for you to replace just a few words in your post to get a “justification” for an islamist’s anti-Western (instead of anti-religious) fanaticism. Most Christians, Muslims, or non-religious will share your feelings about 9/11, but do you really think you can exorcise fanaticism through fanaticism? Do you think the only way to fight rape is to “lampoon, criticise, ridicule, and kick in the shins” sex just because without sex there would be no rapists?

Oliver, thank you for commenting further. So after all, I did not express myself clearly enough. What I was saying was that the (pure) mathematics explaining the working of a string (like the one on your violin or guitar) resembles the mathematics of the new, “string theory” situation they were exploring. Thus “similarity of two mathematical models” and not "A model of a model. :)”.

Also, one does not speak of correct or incorrect models: the relation to truth (about our physical world) is much more complicated. One can only compare two models of the same set of phenomena as to which one is “more correct”, or “more useful” etc. When talking about our galaxy, the model of Earth as a geometric point is more useful than that of a rotational ellipsoid, which is also less useful than the flat Earth model when dealing with a local only map. In these trivial examples the question of correctness is simple; not so when talking about fundamental properties of matter, gravity, space-time etc. If there is ever a ToE, it should be “more correct” than any other model of our physical world, but probably useful only in very extreme situations.

Here Kuhn is of interest mainly as a view from the “outside”, by a historian or social scientist. He is the “innocent” father (and Polanyi perhaps an even more innocent grandfather) of the “social constructivist” views of science, leading to “science wars” I referred to before.

Hello George,

No concerns able your explanation. You are an very able writer. More likely any misunderstandings are mine. However, on this occasion, our views might not be so far apart. That is, the guitar sting is a metaphor (a model) of the equation (a further model) of a deeper reality or quasi-reality.

Also,I agree concurrent models do exist and one needs to pick and choose, according to one's goal. A medical doctor treating a burn is prabably not concerned with the chemical reaction creating the burn.

Any ToE, I posit, requires a mental model of change:

At the macro-level, we need to appreciate, if we wind back time, there are changes in the effects of thermodyndamics and enthropy. Atoms that commonly exist now, could not have existed under the ultra-excitation states near the creation.

At the micro-level, quantun uncertainties have implications for contra determinant and indeterminant realms.

The solution to the ToE cannot exist in today's observable physics.

Moreover, the ToE solution, if within our intellectual capacity or constructionist's reach (if there is enough evidence), is outside the space-time that serves us so very well in today's domain of reality [our senses, our size), and, the ToE now can only exist (subsist?) as a model [mathematical/geometric?) created via our intellectual or another intellect's [A future species or ETs] mental model. Trying not be anthropomorphic, here. :).

Else stated, if some orginal design/state(s) caused cosmological events and quantum events to converge, it could prove futile to search in the here and now.

Herein, particle accelerators might be biased, as to domain, not being able to similtaneouly create cosmological and quantum states. Also "today's "accelerator itself intrudes, as a moderator/observer, to past-time experiment.

Original design is elusive, perhaps, meaningless to this universe. Where the universe came from has maybe as much meaning as asking, into what does the universe expand? We might see the blurr of the first state, but its precursor. What is the before causation? This is a problematic question.

Oliver, thank you for your interest (and comments on matters that are, I am afraid, beyond both of us).

“the guitar sting is a metaphor (a model) of the equation (a further model) of a deeper reality or quasi-reality.”
I think we have two different understandings of the term “model”: The miniature thing on your desk representing the actual building you want to study (or build) is a model of that real thing, not the other way around. Like a piece of self-contained mathematics (often containing equations but an equation on its own cannot be a model) that you can study sitting at your desk can be a model of some “real thing”, not the other way around. The real thing is a realisation of your model. [One should not confuse this with the use of model in mathematical logic]

So mathematics can model reality, for instance,
(a) the vibrations of your guitar string: you can study them using a suitable mathematical model, however you can also see the string or touch it with your finger, and you do not need mathematics for that;
(b) the basic “building blocks” of matter: you can neither see nor “touch” them, so you need mathematics not only to study them but to be able to say anything about them.

However, I think we have already deviated too much from the article we were supposed to comment on

Else stated, if some orginal design/state(s) caused cosmological events and quantum events to ---converge---, it could prove futile to search in the here and now. OOps. Diverge. Sorry. Changes the meaning somewhat.

George,

I will read and have a think about your comments and come back. I think Marvin Minsky looked at Mental Models

MODELS

George,

I don't disagree with you, but suspect you disagree with me. Strange? Not really, I suspect I have a wider accemptance about what I will call a model, a reproduction [a miniture], a representation [an architect's model of a building, a posit [conceptual model, or, a simulation [using a wind to test (a) a car and (b) the ability to achieve a low coefficient of aerodynamic penetration.

Jurgen Renn of the Max Planck Institute applied Minsky's mental models to modelling [ahem] how Einstein bridge Special Relativity to General Relatity. The former interpreted from classic physics and the latter requiring the resoluion of three paradoxes:

- Missing knowledge
- Deceitful heuristics
- Discontinous progress

Too complex [space] for the Fourum but the essay deals questions such as "how could have Einstein formulated the criteria for a gravitational field equation years before finding a soloution? Herein, a metal model allows for the "simulation of anticipation of real models despite the lack of full and unequivocal information".

The internal architecture of has "terminals" open for specifying the model via accepting supplemental information stuctured into a "frame", which maintain the entities of internal structure. Herein, the model has default settings [later changable) in response to new information...

/CONT.