Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 19:22:39 -0700 Subject: Re: science with a purpose On 17 July, Stuart A. Umpleby wrote: > >Is the aim of science to discover objective truths about nature or to >create knowledge that is useful for achieving human purposes? > ... I can think of two ways to answer this question. The first is: if we think _who_ brings purpose into usage of otherwise passive knowledge tools - and that can be only ourselves - then we'd agree that even if we aim at "discovering objective truths", it is only because we state it as a human purpose. The other is to look where the process is going. Modeling and interpretation of the environment originated long before there appeared humans or conscious formulation of purpose, and will continue long after both humans and all their concepts lose any relevance to universal processes of functional evolution. On one hand, humans and their aims are a small temporary part of the process, with very limited understanding of it; on the other, they are a part of objective reality that is building itself, and models of itself. Building is "technology"; studying is "science"; science is also *building* of models (= part of technology). I would also subdivide science into studies of unintentionally constructed things ("nature") and studies of intentionally constructed things. The first are limited and increasingly well-known, the latter seem potentially a lot richer. So it seems plausible that eventually virtually all scientific effort will be directed at studies of intentionally designed artifacts, which will squeeze the remnants of relevance out of the above question...