On a Global Foresight thread Tom Abeles asked if scientific models, based on a reliable “bandwidth” for natural systems, might somehow have predictive properties. He noted:
The problem we have is exemplified by the poem, “The Theory that Jack built” which was published in an insightful set of “nonsense” poems called The Space Child’s Mother Goose: This is the theory that Jack built; this is the flaw, this is the constant covering the flaw; this is the “x” justifying the constant. . . und so weiter.
Tom,
That’s a great insight and question. Part of the paradox seems to be in the word “like”. It is exactly models made “like” the ones for deterministic systems that don’t work well at all to imitate accumulatively self-organizing systems.
For new “unlike” models to still be useful, I think we need to no longer use models only as something we build to independently represent nature. I think we also need to use models for the opposite,