Re: CHAT: models and miniatures

----- Original Message -----
From: J Matthew Pearson <pearson@...>

> Sally, are you taking notes for your book?  :-)
>
> Matt.
You bet, Matt!  :-)   And have been!  I agree with you
completely about the use of the term "model" and size.
Models don't always have to be smaller than their originals.
You mention "model skeletons"; I think of "model houses,"
on display.  And then there are automatons, a notion along
with conlangs and concultures that has fascinated me since
I was very small.  A robot or an android is a "model human."
(in the virtual, not the "virtuous" sense!)  It is a replica made
by humans of themselves, something that heretofore only
occurs in nature.  So many of our stories and films about
humanoid robots explore this very problem of complexity,
simplicity, and human design inherent in the model.
Data is a unique being and a complex one, but a
simplification of a human.  Anybody catch A.I.?  This conundrum
lies at the very heart of this disturbing movie (I wish it hadn't
gone all schmaltzy at the end).  How interesting that the
NPR segment should bring up the issue of Descartes and
invented languages.  Descartes earned a chilling posthumous
legend that he had replicated his five-year-old daughter in
the form of an automaton that he carried around in a packing
case on his voyages until the Captain uncovered it and threw
it in a panic into the sea.  Descartes used the model of a
machine to try and explain the human body.  He lived at a
time where automatons and mechanical toys were becoming
wildly popular.  So, too, was the notion of a philosophical,
or model, language.

Sally