You are walking along, letting your mind wander as you wander with me when you say, “Just for starters, consider this: Can you make a model of your life? Wouldn’t know where to start? I’m with you. When I look back, I see so many intricate connections and so many unknowns, that I can’t think how I would model my own life. And here I am, just a single small being. Imagine, then, the difficulty of modeling Earth systems. How could you get a handle on all of them, their interactions, and both their causes and effects? Models are easy when you can build them with Legos or model kits, but when you try to build them with formula and algorithms, something strange happens. You don’t know all that needs to be included; and you have to admit that any model isn’t the ‘real thing,’ rather just a representative of it. And computers don’t guarantee the correctness of the model, especially if you want to use the model to predict what a person or a planet might do next. I’m thinking of something Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan wrote in Doubt and Certainty: ‘A theory has few assumptions; a model has many additional assumptions as necessary to produce an answer’(p. 11).”*
Thinking your comment is a challenge and wanting to show that I would know “where to start,” I say, “Wait a sec.” I stop at the Walmart, disappear inside, and emerge with some glue and sticks. You watch me for twenty minutes as I sit on a park bench until I triumphantly hold up a little wooden structure that is a cross between a “stick figure” and a model airplane as I say, “There, that kinda looks like my life.”
“Are you kidding?” you say. “That’s a bunch of popsicle sticks glued together. It doesn’t represent you any more than twisted pipe cleaners or bread-bag ties make a Rodin.”
“Well, I just wanted to get the gist. Yes, I left some things out, like my interactions with my grandmother or my brief encounters with store clerks—oh! And that girl I liked in the fourth grade.”
“You see,” you continue, “that’s the problem with trying to model a single human life. Where to start? How much to include? Where to end?—especially if the person is still alive. And that’s where I have problems with modeling even more complex systems, such as a planet. We might get the ‘gist,’ as you say, but how does all the work put into a ‘gist-model’ really reveal reality? And how many assumptions did you include just to get the product you originally sought. Models of real people and models of whole planets require, as Rothman and Sudarshan write, ‘as many additional assumptions as necessary to produce an answer.’”
“I guess I misunderstood and took your opening comment as a challenge to build a model of my life. Maybe popsicle sticks and glue made a bad choice of materials. What about a Venn Diagram? How about a graph, possibly a pie graph? If you want me to aim for more specificity, I could write a poem, a novel, or a very detailed autobiography. Wouldn’t those meet your objections? They’re not mathematical, I confess, but aren’t they acceptable ‘models’ of life? Or what about a painting? I’m thinking of Martin Heidegger’s analysis of Vincent van Gogh’s 1886 painting entitled A Pair of Shoes. I think, if I recall properly, Heidegger says the painting captures the essence of the woman peasant who would have worn the shoes. It’s a simple painting, just a pair of clod-hoppers with partially unlaced strings and scuffed leather and broken backs. Basically, he thinks the artist modeled the woman’s life in the painting. Wouldn’t my popsicle-stick figure be just as suitable a model? Couldn’t I...er...Would a psychological profile help? Don’t’ you think any of those might serve as predictors of my future? And about that thing you mentioned about modeling Earth systems; wouldn’t some mathematical or computer model give us a pretty accurate representation of Earth, even one that we could use to predict Earth’s future, you know, like the models that the IPCC relies on to predict sea-level change or climate change?”
You counter, “Again, I have to say with Rothman and Sudarshan that models include assumptions that modelers need to get the results that they want. You think your popsicle-stick model of your life has sufficient assumptions behind its construction to make me understand your life or your potential? You know, Heidegger’s interpretation of A Pair of Shoes isn’t the only interpretation. A guy named Meyer Schapiro, an historian, wrote that the shoes in the painting were probably van Gogh’s, and they, therefore, didn’t depict the hard life of a woman who worked long hours in fields. What if I look at some of the IPCC models to find that either there were ‘included assumptions’ necessary to reach the conclusions or ‘included data’ that were just convenient for the model’s construction and the desired prediction?”
“I think I get what you are saying. You want me to be cautious in accepting any kind of model because of the ‘included assumptions’ that the modeler has chosen. I guess that works for psychological profiles as well as for a big planet with complex interrelationships among its solids, liquids, and gases, all processed and re-processed by cycles, super-cycles, and external influences like the Sun. I wish you hadn’t brought this up. Now, I have to rethink how I could model my life or think about whether or not any life could be modeled. And I have to ask myself whether or not I know what kinds of assumptions others, like the IPCC people or psychologists, include in their models, especially when I hear or read 'the model predicts.' And with regard to the former group, those predictors of climate, I guess I should consider their massive modeling problem. The American Meteorological Society online includes the problem of ‘Connecting the Tropics to the Polar Regions.’* The opening statements on the site acknowledge that 'the relative roles of local versus remote forcings in causing the changes are being debated…the time is ripe for a detailed look at how the tropics and the poles are coupled climatically.' Now, I think it’s really interesting in light of your comments to look at what the news media and politicians keep telling us with such surety. It’s like watching a debate between Heidegger and Shapiro over the real meaning of A Pair of Shoes.”
*Rothman, Tony and George Sudarshan, Doubt and Certainty. Perseus Books. Reading, MA, 1998.
** https://journals.ametsoc.org/topic/connecting_tropics_to_polar
Thinking your comment is a challenge and wanting to show that I would know “where to start,” I say, “Wait a sec.” I stop at the Walmart, disappear inside, and emerge with some glue and sticks. You watch me for twenty minutes as I sit on a park bench until I triumphantly hold up a little wooden structure that is a cross between a “stick figure” and a model airplane as I say, “There, that kinda looks like my life.”
“Are you kidding?” you say. “That’s a bunch of popsicle sticks glued together. It doesn’t represent you any more than twisted pipe cleaners or bread-bag ties make a Rodin.”
“Well, I just wanted to get the gist. Yes, I left some things out, like my interactions with my grandmother or my brief encounters with store clerks—oh! And that girl I liked in the fourth grade.”
“You see,” you continue, “that’s the problem with trying to model a single human life. Where to start? How much to include? Where to end?—especially if the person is still alive. And that’s where I have problems with modeling even more complex systems, such as a planet. We might get the ‘gist,’ as you say, but how does all the work put into a ‘gist-model’ really reveal reality? And how many assumptions did you include just to get the product you originally sought. Models of real people and models of whole planets require, as Rothman and Sudarshan write, ‘as many additional assumptions as necessary to produce an answer.’”
“I guess I misunderstood and took your opening comment as a challenge to build a model of my life. Maybe popsicle sticks and glue made a bad choice of materials. What about a Venn Diagram? How about a graph, possibly a pie graph? If you want me to aim for more specificity, I could write a poem, a novel, or a very detailed autobiography. Wouldn’t those meet your objections? They’re not mathematical, I confess, but aren’t they acceptable ‘models’ of life? Or what about a painting? I’m thinking of Martin Heidegger’s analysis of Vincent van Gogh’s 1886 painting entitled A Pair of Shoes. I think, if I recall properly, Heidegger says the painting captures the essence of the woman peasant who would have worn the shoes. It’s a simple painting, just a pair of clod-hoppers with partially unlaced strings and scuffed leather and broken backs. Basically, he thinks the artist modeled the woman’s life in the painting. Wouldn’t my popsicle-stick figure be just as suitable a model? Couldn’t I...er...Would a psychological profile help? Don’t’ you think any of those might serve as predictors of my future? And about that thing you mentioned about modeling Earth systems; wouldn’t some mathematical or computer model give us a pretty accurate representation of Earth, even one that we could use to predict Earth’s future, you know, like the models that the IPCC relies on to predict sea-level change or climate change?”
You counter, “Again, I have to say with Rothman and Sudarshan that models include assumptions that modelers need to get the results that they want. You think your popsicle-stick model of your life has sufficient assumptions behind its construction to make me understand your life or your potential? You know, Heidegger’s interpretation of A Pair of Shoes isn’t the only interpretation. A guy named Meyer Schapiro, an historian, wrote that the shoes in the painting were probably van Gogh’s, and they, therefore, didn’t depict the hard life of a woman who worked long hours in fields. What if I look at some of the IPCC models to find that either there were ‘included assumptions’ necessary to reach the conclusions or ‘included data’ that were just convenient for the model’s construction and the desired prediction?”
“I think I get what you are saying. You want me to be cautious in accepting any kind of model because of the ‘included assumptions’ that the modeler has chosen. I guess that works for psychological profiles as well as for a big planet with complex interrelationships among its solids, liquids, and gases, all processed and re-processed by cycles, super-cycles, and external influences like the Sun. I wish you hadn’t brought this up. Now, I have to rethink how I could model my life or think about whether or not any life could be modeled. And I have to ask myself whether or not I know what kinds of assumptions others, like the IPCC people or psychologists, include in their models, especially when I hear or read 'the model predicts.' And with regard to the former group, those predictors of climate, I guess I should consider their massive modeling problem. The American Meteorological Society online includes the problem of ‘Connecting the Tropics to the Polar Regions.’* The opening statements on the site acknowledge that 'the relative roles of local versus remote forcings in causing the changes are being debated…the time is ripe for a detailed look at how the tropics and the poles are coupled climatically.' Now, I think it’s really interesting in light of your comments to look at what the news media and politicians keep telling us with such surety. It’s like watching a debate between Heidegger and Shapiro over the real meaning of A Pair of Shoes.”
*Rothman, Tony and George Sudarshan, Doubt and Certainty. Perseus Books. Reading, MA, 1998.
** https://journals.ametsoc.org/topic/connecting_tropics_to_polar
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