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Brian Wood (Oregon State University)
| Speaker: |
Brian Wood (Oregon State
University)
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| Date: |
Friday June 19, 2009
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| Title: |
Modeling,
measurement, and interpretation: Epistemological questions arising in
research on multi-scale systems
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Abstract
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One
conventional perspective for modeling continuum physical system is one
in which the effort is divided into two, nearly independent, portions:
(1) theory development, and
(2) experimental measurement that seeks to validate (or invalidate) the
theory.
One of the problems with this perspective is that experiments are
rarely designed to measure what is predicted by theory, and theoretical
developments rarely consider the influence of the experimental process
in terms of how it filters information. Some resolution to this problem
might be attained by the following:
(1) representing the measurement process itself in
the development of balance laws, and
(2) recognizing that such theories, like the
measurements themselves, are band-limited, and thus 'lossy'.
This brings up questions as to what is measurable and what is not
measurable in a multi-scale system, and that has some important
implications for representation of such systems.
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