Re: Imaginary Worlds
Bill Hamilton (whamilto@mich.com)
Mon, 9 Sep 1996 19:18:04 -0400>
>article entitled "First Kill the Babies", Carl Zimmer writes regarding
> the work of Sarah Hrdy regarding the model she was putting together
> about why some animals kill their infants and young:
>
>
>
>(emphasis added)
>
>
>
>"She often describes her job as creating "imaginary worlds" that other
> scientists can then explore to see if they can help us understand the
> real one. "I see scientists working in different phases. Some people are
> better at one phase than the other. Theoreticians think of other people
> as technicians; technicians think of theoreticians as people in outer
> space, not connected to the real world. But for the whole process, you
> need these phases, and in the initial phase, you're selecting a project,
> YOU'RE COMING UP WITH ASSUMPTIONS, you're trying to model WHAT MIGHT BE
> TRUE and to generate the hypotheses that you want to look at. Then you
> have the actual collection of data and all the methodologies that go
> into that. Imaginary worlds have a place in science.""
>
>Hrdy is refreshingly honest. With the right selection of assumptions and
> methodology, one can develop an imaginary world.
Admittedly that is quite easily done -- if nothing constrains the
assumptions that can be made. That's one way a Christian who accpets
evolution is different from an atheistic evolutionist: Christian
principles constrain his/her assumptions.
Furthermore, constraints operate between Ms. Hardy's imaginary worlds and
the less forgiving worlds of the laboratory and academic discourse.
Assumptions that can't make the transition into these worlds don't have
much of a chance.
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William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
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