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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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lchic - 03:10pm Sep 4, 2002 EST (# 4176 of 4187)

Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001) Nobel laureate

Obituary
http://www.cmu.edu/home/news/herb_simon.html

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~earthware/Simon.html

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~mehta/readings/sciences.html ...

Essence of design
Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent - not with how things are but with how they might be - in short, with design.

Essence of science
The central task of a natural science is to make the wonderful commonplace.

Normative or descriptive
The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be - how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and to function … With goals and "oughts" we also introduce into the picture the dichotomy between normative and descriptive. Natural science has found a way to exclude the normative and to concern itself solely with how things are … Artificial things can be characterized in terms of functions, goals and adaptation.

Characteristics of artifacts
Fulfillment of purpose or adaptation to a goal involves a relation among three terms: the purpose or goal, the character of the artifact, and the environment in which the artifact performs.

Artifact as an "Interface"
An artifact can be thought of as a meeting point - an interface… - between an "inner" environment, the substance and organization of the artifact itself, and an "outer" environment, the surroundings in which it operates.

rshow55 - 03:32pm Sep 4, 2002 EST (# 4177 of 4187)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Beautiful.

On engineering, designing, and inventing:

Normative or descriptive
"The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be - how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and to function …

A related field is crypto - a goal seeking activity partly like science - much like engineering.

Medicine is a mixed field, too - with a need to understand linked to a wish to change outcomes.

To get from "oughts" to "izzes" (from hopes to reality) one has to apply knowledge in ways that work. A lot of senior people, back in the 60's (Edward Teller was one - and Clarence Johnson was another - and there were many) felt that there were some basic problems in the application of science to the complexities of technology. I got involved with that.

Steve Kline was a fairly pure type of an academic engineer who did science - using all the scientific and mathematical tools anybody had, and any abstractions that could be usefully brought to bear - for technical purposes.

lchic - 03:37pm Sep 4, 2002 EST (# 4178 of 4187)

|> OUT - will delete

will put up Dasguta's model re creativity later

(9 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense