Re: TDD: Test-Driven Design or Test-Driven Development?

From: Phlip (phlip_cpp_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 03/05/04 

Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2004 19:40:20 GMT

Nick Landsberg wrote:

> One can develop a set of equations using almost anything as the
> central point of reference. With certain points of reference
> the equations get downright "ugly". For example, one could
> develop a set of equations in which the whole Sun
> revolves around a grain of sand on Laguna Beach.
> This would be an "ugly" set of equations to use to compute
> the position of, e.g. Phobos in relation to anything
> else.
>
> Thus, using Occam's Razor in principle, one would claim
> that the simpler the equation to describe the behavior,
> the closer it comes to help us describe what is really happening.

UB and SW like to discuss this philosophical dead-end. Not wise to get
between them.

The classical naked-eye cosmology put the planets near invisible crystal
"spheres", centering on the Earth. This fails to explain some points:
Mercury and Venus never get far from the Sun, and Mars, Jupiter & Saturn go
"retrograde" once a year - they move backwards. We might explain that as
Earth's faster orbit "overtaking" the slower planets.

The ancients added to the planetary cycles an "epicycle", meaning Mars
orbits an invisible spot, and that spot orbits the Earth.

If, at this point, you simulate the system and stand on the simulated Sun,
Mars is obviously orbiting it, while two big cams describe its relation to
Earth. But the ancients didn't give a darn, because - back then - the actual
model was not important.

Ancient power structures combined religion with agriculture to form
"calendar worship". He who owns the calendar, and employs smart priests to
keep astronomic records, gets to tell the masses when to plant their crops,
and makes them pay for the service. So maintaining power intertwines with
saying magic things about the stars and planets.

Telescopes required more careful measurements of planetary positions, and
these systems discovered orbits are not circles but ovals. The heliocentric
model required more little epicycles, added to Mars's orbit, to account for
Mars's eccentricities, and another little epicycle to account for Earth's.

"Adding Epicycles" means disobeying Occam's Razor to make a model of a
system more complex than a simple alternate model. But public Renaissance
orators held their position by saying simple things as complicatedly as they
possibly could. To describe how the Roman Catholic was in charge of Europe,
for example, they would drag in flowery language describing the Sun
revolving around the Church. And, at this time, mentally ill people liked to
decry the Church by spouting countering flowery language. The math model
they used to predict planetary locations was irrelevant to both themselves
and the Church, who simply executed them as heretics.

Galileo broke with tradition not by declaring the heliocentric model as
simpler, but by writing a book about it that used clear simple prose. The
book did not try to baffle readers with confusing flowery language. He only
got in trouble by modeling the "Idiot" character in the book after the Pope.

So, out of this silly tale of people bickering over the verbiage used -
ultimately - to promote calendar worship, we have the modern fable that
Galileo promoted heliocentrism and got in trouble with an evil cranky Church
for it. 

-- 
  Phlip
    http://www.xpsd.org/cgi-bin/wiki?TestFirstUserInterfaces

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