Doing Science [wasRe: Inequivalence of models]

[Jack Park <***>]

> JR: On the other hand, if we were to evaluate some new system pulled out of a glacier or something, never before seen by  humans of our time, and we want to know if it's alive or not... the thing my father would recommend is to look at the entailment patterns. Specifically, we would need to see if we could find out whether it is "self-entailed/entailing" or not. There's no way to do that just by looking at it and it might be unhelpful to try to do that by taking it apart. As he said, the relational models (for mechanism, for complex system, for organism) will extend regardless of "exotic chemistries" and configurations, etc. and will therefore be the only useful ones for dealing with extraterrestrial phenomena.
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JP:  In that paragraph, it is stated: "we would need to see if we could 
find out whether it is "self-entailed/entailing" or not. There's no way 
to do that just by looking at it..."

What the paragraph did not illuminate is the possibly many ways of 
determining if the object pulled from a glacier is 
self-entaile/entailing. I am saying: there must be a way to "do science" 
the Rosennean way, whatever that may be.  I am also saying that it is 
not presently clear precisely what that way of "doing science" really 
is. I mean, the paragraph suggests it might be unhelpful to try to do 
that by taking it apart.  Ok. Let's play off Steve's example of the dog. 
Suppose you pull something out of the ice that appears to be wrapped in 
some sort of covering. Heck, it could be a Honda, it could be a wooly 
mammoth, or something else. Without laying hands on it, given that it is 
something *you* have *never* seen before, and it appears, possibly, 
unlike anything you have ever seen before (you're the bird-like 
scientist from afar) (read: no preconceptions), how, and by way of what 
process or steps, are you to "do science" the Rosennean way? How, 
precisely, do you "look at the entailment patterns" without touching it?

Inquiring minds really want to know.
Jack