Jumbo, Thanks for the stimulating post. It encouraged me to go back and re-read that section of Whispering.  I'm going to read the full article that you linked to later this week. I find it fascinating how a "learned" professor will critique a small part of a field and take that small part to represent the entire field. Perhaps we should teach him about part-whole relationships? He might benefit from actually using the distinctions as opposed to talking about them. What do you think? -------------------- Mark wrote: "…the comments about the "Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)", in some sort of relationship to the "Peripheral Nervous System (PNS)". I know almost nothing about these systems, and think it would be interesting stuff to do some research into…" Mark - Useful subject, but I haven't quite wrapped my brain around the matter yet…. will try to put something up in a week or so. I hope others do too. ------------------------ Jerry wrote: "Of what is science a model?" Jerry - I'd say take your pick, although, perhaps it might be better for us to say "sciences" as so many researchers make different assumptions and use different methodologies. How about physics or astronomy? Scientists take some clue like cosmic radiation and galaxy movement (or whatever) and try to create a map of how the universe evolved/evolves/changes. That's a type of model, right? Certain psychology researchers study the dynamics of mother and infant relations and then attempt to model the development of…. (take your pick) attention, emotion, movement etc. I'm sure we could sit down and come up with hundreds of models. "And in what way is your answer to my question related to that which science models?"  Yes, that's the $10,000 question, isn't it? Ptolemy modeled the universe as planets moving on giant spheres around each other. That was taken as "truth" and people used the model for hundreds of years. However, it didn't really have much relationship to the thing modeled did it? I suspect many of our models today will be found lacking as well.  Anyone care to comment?     Ryan Actually one more thing - I'd say that we in the NLP community are more aware that out models are simply that - models. While researchers often unwittingly take their models to be "reality" I certainly know a number of Fruedian psychologists who do, as did Ptolemy above. Anyone have other examples?