and then at 09.37 -0700 97-09-04, he explained his concern:
>One can use the models as metaphors (to aid the imagination)
>or one can create parameters with them and even give these parameters
>meaning. But unless one also defines ways of testing these parameter
>values outside of the situation that generated them, the values are just
>reifications with the same potential for destructiveness as IQ scores.
>Providing the way of testing parameter values is not just a shift of
>frame, it makes a clearer separation between reality and imagination.
Indeed, there is a strong social pressure built into the educational
systems of today towards cost-effective ways of testing//sorting
individuals (pupils, students, teachers, schools. So working against handy
but destructive assignments of properties to individuals on the basis of
tests abducted from their domain of validity is certainly a respectable
occupation for a developmental modeller.
Eva