🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Cu2qs5.8r3@nntpa.cb.att.com>
rte@anchor.y17.ho.att.com (51324-R.EDWARDS(HOY002)1305) writes:
>
>In article <16FFBA1F7.3914MABE@vm1.ulaval.ca>,
>Marc A. Belanger <3914MABE@vm1.ulaval.ca> wrote:
>> In article <30jqdl$fl@Jester.CC.MsState.Edu>,
>
>Assuming you mean paleontology, one might well have predicted that if you
>look in the right place, you might find transitional forms between
>ungulates and whales.  Until recently, the absence of such forms
>was a source of amusement for troglodytes.  Unfortunately for them,
>such transitional forms were recently found.  Predictions about the
>past are only impossible if one assumes all information about the past
>is already known and not subject to reinterpretation using new analytic
>methods.
>
One can do the same thing with linguistics.
 
>>(or math) or by sciences having to cope with complex systems or non-
>
>The latter can make statistical predictions, or model chaotic processes,
>that is, show that apparently chaotic behavior can result from simple
>mechanisms.
 
But that is not prediction per se; it is statistical inferences on the
re-occurence of previously observed phenomena. The predictions talked
about were on yet unobserved phenomena (e.g. black holes for astro-
physics).
By the way, according the physicist friend of mine, physics is not
concerned with making predictions, but rather constructing models which
need not be consistent with the outside world.
Furthermore, it is my opinion that linguistics could be described as a
science having to cope with a complex system, for those of you out there
who (for some strange reason, maybe too much TGG) don't think it is
scientific; predictions are just hard to make.
 
                                          - Marc.