I'll model your response :) You wrote: "What Carmen and I attempted in the epistemology that we developed for NLP in Whispering was to point out that it is not only social scientists that confront this issue but everyone - whether we are speaking of particle physics or "why" that neighbor of mine is so..." I totally agree, and I'm glad to read that.  I'm not far into the book yet (I just joined a small discussion group with some other grad students and Dr. Tom Malloy at the University of Utah), but I thought that was what you were suggesting.  On page 11 there is a distinction made between the patterns of NLP and the patterns of the physical world that made me wonder for a moment, but the intent was clearer when I got to the discussion on psychophysics. You wrote: "What do you understand to be the motivation of such social scientists?" I hope it is benign, but I'm not sure.  My brother's dissertation (English literature) attempted to take a fresh look at Ruskin's critique of science (particularly Darwinian science).  Part of what he implied was that science traditionally has sought to establish an (positivist) authority independent of the vicissitudes of human nature.  My brother seemed to be arguing, like you, that the nature of language made this "objective" scientific authority no more authoritative than any of the other ways of knowing.  A quote from Darwin illustrated the point nicely.  When he was confronted about the amiguity of the phrase "natural selection" (if "natural" implies the lack of human intervention and "selection" implies a selecting agent, critics argued, then the phrase is contradictory), Darwin replied that the difficulty would be forgotten in time and as the phrase gained familiarity.  My brother argued that while Darwin may have been right that the difficulty was in part forgotten, but the ambiguity remained; which ambiguity about the role of a selecting agent may have contributed to the atrocities of the eugenics movement.  Anyway, I hope social scientists don't have a diabolical intent.  I lean toward the positive intent assumption often posited in NLP circles.  But denying the ambiguity of language can have dire consequences when the authority of science goes unquestioned as a result. Thanks for your response. Mike.