Re: The intelligent agent philosophy of thinking

Responding to Hbe123...

I've made use of object-oriented programming in my coding life. But
this post isn't about that. Instead: recently I've begun to wonder if
thinking in object-oriented metaphors is negatively impacting
scientific explanations.

I am not sure the OO paradigm /should/ be used for scientific explanations. It is a software development paradigm, which is to say it is an engineering paradigm to manage complexity.

Specifically, my physics professor has been explaining Newton's laws by
saying things like: "the ball thinks: 'no one is pushing on me,
therefore...'"

No, the ball doesn't think.

The ball is not an independent agent.

In the end software exists to replace human activities. That means that we have to map human activities onto other constructs. The constructs that the OO paradigm employs are objects, which are abstractions of problem space entities. Alas, the most readily identifiable problem space entities are either inanimate objects or concepts, neither of which have intrinsic behavior or think. To provide the mapping of human activities to such objects we employ anthropomorphization -- the attribution of human qualities to non-human entities.

This sort of mapping is quite common and has simply been institutionalized by the OO paradigm in creating software to replace human activity. As a mode of communication it is essentially a form of analogy (e.g., "If I were a human, this is what I would do and how I would think"). Such thinking-by-analog is useful in an OO context because we manage complexity by focusing only on issues that are relevant to the problem in hand. IOW, we are not seeking Truth; we are seeking a useful solution to a specific problem. In such context analogies are quire useful.

We see analogies for science rather commonly in the popular press. If such analogies, particularly anthropomorphization, happen to provide a better way to understand science, then they work. Otherwise one needs to revert to some other communication mechanism. IOW, I think the utility of such analogues lies in the minds of the students, not the teacher. (In any case, I don't think such analogues are appropriate for /defining/ science simply because they are too imprecise, regardless of practical such approximations might be.)


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H. S. Lahman
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Pathfinder Solutions  -- Put MDA to Work
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