PHYSICS: Practice, Representation and rules of correspondence

The practice of physics cannot get off the ground without essential agreement among the practitioners as to what they are about, how to go about it, and what constitutes progrees in their common effort. We adopt David McGoveran’s modeling methodology 11). Thii has three critical elements: (1) an ep%stemologkal framework (‘E-frame”), which is a set of loosely defined agreements made explicit by those injecting information into the model formulationGefwert (21 would call this a pructicul under&wading of physics; (2) a’representational framework (‘R-framen), which is an abstract formalism consisting of a set -of symbols and a set of rules for manipulation -to formulate such a frame is, for Gefwert, to practice syntaq (3) a procedural framework (“P-hame-), which is an algorithm that serves to establish rules 01 correspondence between the observations agreed on in the E-frame and the symbols of the R-frame. Gefwert would describe this activity as the practice of scmcmtics. Through recursion, the P-frame serves to modify the rules of correspondence, the Reframe and the R-frame, until a sufficient level of agreement concerning accuracy is achieved-or the model fails. Kuhn 131 would call such a failure a “crisis,” which in the fullness of time could lead to a “paradigm shift.” Note that we halt the infinite regress of the analysis of terminology in constructive modeling by recognizing the epistemology. We deny the validity and the value of any attempt to analyze Yheoryladen” language. Such an analysis lies outside our task when we engage in generating a specific model. Attempting to make such an analysis would require us to generate a model which would contain the specific model as an instance. We connot do so within our methodology. Analysis of that sort would involvenonconstructive methods: the analyst must work from a specific model by generalization-having failed to construct the general model first. The methodology implies iteration in the EPR or ERP sequence, or any interleaving of such sequences. Comparison with our diagram showing how the purticiputor engages in a research program in physics (41 is given in Fig. 1. The comparison with McGoveran’s modeling methodology is supposed to bring out the fact that the possible legal walks of the diagram are the same, but that the research program is contained within the methodology and that the methodology contains routes (arrows)that are outside the program. Thus the entry of the participator from a direction outside the box, and of the empirical confrontation (represented by Posiden’s pitchfork U) from a different direction, remain the same; so does the fact that corroboration leaves the participator inside, while falsification takes him outside, in yet another direction. The practitioner (and hopefully the reader of this volume) should therefore ask how far we have gone toward meeting his problems with contemporary physics. We assume that we agree on the following criteria: 1. agreement of cooperative communications * commonly defined terms as fundamental * fundamental VB. derived terms * agreement of pertinence 2. agreement of intent 3. agreement on observations 4. agreement of explicit assumptions _ 5. The Razor * agreement of minimal generality * agreement of elegance * agreement Of parsimony