CCOCKERHAM.ALTENBERG@BIONET-20.ARPA (Lee Altenberg) (07/13/87)
This discussion has brought to my mind the question of undecidability
in cellular automata, as discussed by S. Wolfram. For some rules and initial
sequences , the most efficient way of finding out how the automaton will behave
is simply to run it. Now, what is the status of knowledge about the
behavior of automata and the process of obtaining this knowledge? Is it a
science or not?
Invoking some of the previous arguments regarding AI, it could be
said that it is not a science because knowing something about an
automaton tells one nothing about the actual world. That is why mathematics
has been called not science.
Yet, to find out how undecidable automata behave one needs to
carry out experiments of running them. In this way they are just like a
worldly phenomenon where knowledge about them comes from observing them.
One must take an empirical approach to undecidable systems.
But there is another angle of evaluation. Naturalists have been
belittled as "not doing science" because their work is largely descriptive.
Does science consist then in making general statements? Or to be more precise,
does science consist of redescribing reality in terms of some general
statements plus smaller sets of statements about the world, which when combined
can generate the full (the naturalists's) description of reality? If this
is to be the case, then all examples of undecidable (and chaotic, I would
guess) processes fall outside the dominion of science, which seems to me
overly restrictive.
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