Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 71.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 07:07:45 +0100
From: lachance@origin.chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
Subject: Re: 17.063 an engineer's understanding
Willard,
I think that the passage you quote has three terms in play: "system",
"machine" and "equivalent". Having followed your meditations on models
(and their purposes), I think I might be able to translate your three
questions into one: how is it that a model which ostensibly represents a
pattern of experience (history of a system) comes to be used as an
instrument to discover novelty (limits of a system)? My transaltion asks
you if your question is indeed: How is a model to serve a mode of
exploration? Is there an answer in the practice of question-making and
testing the adequacy of the equivalency or model. And is not such a
practice a dialogical enterprise? And if so, the "we" is split between the
articulators and the non-articulators : some of us formulate models; some
of us formulate the naive questions. Or read literally "an engineer
understands _ellipsis_" and interpret modelling as akin to a poesis of
difference :)
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 63.
> Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
> www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
> Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
>
>
>
> Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2003 07:13:00 +0100
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
> >
> Armand de Callatay, in "Computer Simulation Methods to Model
> Macroeconomics", states that, "An engineer understands... a real system
> when he can design a (virtual) machine that is functionally equivalent to
> this system" (The Explanatory Power of Models, ed. Robert Franck, Kluwer
> 2002, p. 105).
>
> Three questions: (1) Is this a correct and complete description of what it
> means to understand something from an engineering perspective? If so, then
> (2) are we to articulate our complete understanding of a real system, such
> as a tool, at least in part by simulating it? (3) If the artifacts of
> engineering comprise an intellectual tradition, as I think Eugene Ferguson
> has argued in Engineering and the Mind's Eye (MIT, 2001), then would it not
> follow that within the tradition only a machine is a proper response to a
> machine -- and not words, however many, however apt? And does this not
> have strong implications for how we write a history of our technology?
>
> Yours,
> WM
>
>
> Dr Willard McCarty | Senior Lecturer | Centre for Computing in the
> Humanities | King's College London | Strand | London WC2R 2LS || +44 (0)20
> 7848-2784 fax: -2980 || willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
> www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
>
-- <sigilla> <civic.name>François Lachance</civic.name> <self.desig>Scholar-at-large</self.desig> <activity>Actively visiting <?insert URN?></activity> <motto><w corresp="grok">gork</w> structure, savour <w corresp="peace">content</w>, <s ana="play-with-piece">enjoy form</s></motto> </sigilla>
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