Scientific modelling
From Wikiquote
Scientific modelling is the process of generating abstract, conceptual, graphical and/or mathematical models. Science offers a growing collection of methods, techniques and theory about all kinds of specialized scientific modelling.
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- We have no idea about the 'real' nature of things ... The function of modeling is to arrive at descriptions which are useful.
- Richard Bandler and John Grinder. (1979) Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming. Moab, UT: Real People Press. p.7.
- The role of conceptual modelling in information systems development during all these decades is seen as an ap-proach for capturing fuzzy, ill-defined, informal "real-world" descriptions and user requirements, and then transforming them to formal, in some sense com-plete, and consistent conceptual specifications.
- Janis A. Burbenko jr. (2007) "From Information Algebra to Enterprise Modelling and Ontologies - a Historical Perspective on Modelling for Information Systems". In: Conceptual Modelling in Information Systems Engineering. John Krogstie et al. eds. p.1
- "Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term theory is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain how life evolves... "
- Neil A. Campbell, Biology 2nd ed., 1990, Benjamin/Cummings, p. 434
- The notion that "applied" knowledge is somehow less worthy than "pure" knowledge, was natural to a society in which all useful work was performed by slaves and serfs, and in which industry was controlled by the models set by custom rather than by intelligence.
- John Dewey (1916). Democracy and Education, section 17.
- My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
- Freeman Dyson (2007) "Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society", Edge, August 8, 2007.
- Start by eliminating the possibility of empty models by praying that Heaven will no longer put this invention of the Devil in our way. To do this, we add a constant c to our language ...
- Proof of the compactness theorem by Henkin's method
- Bruno Poizat and M. Klein, A Course in Model Theory: An Introduction to Contemporary Mathematical Logic, unidentified edition, page 52
- Any model or description that leaves out conscious forces ... is bound to be sadly incomplete and unsatisfactory ... This scheme is one that puts mind back over matter, in a sense, not under or outside or beside it. It is a scheme that idealizes ideas and ideals over physical and chemical interactions, nerve impulse traffic, and DNA. It is a brain model in which conscious mental psychic forces are recognized to be the crowning achievement of some five hundred million years or more of evolution.
- Roger Wolcott Sperry (1965). Mind, Brain, and Humanist Values
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- All models are false but some models are useful.
