Martin If when you write, "...epistemology directly determines coding..." you intend to point out that the influence that the vocabulary selected exercises on the perceptual and notional activities of the modeler in phase 4, then I have no objection to your formulation - the initial coding you offer titters on the edge of the abyss of Cause-Effect. I agree that the issue of coding is an essential element of scientific activity and simulatneously poorly appreciated by its practitioners. The field of Transformational Grammar went through a period where much attention was placed on determining for competing models whether they were notional variants or substatively different. I will be interested in your characterization of the container concept of "state". You mention that strategies become epistemological when coded - I would broaden your claim that any phenomenon becomes epistemological when coded as the code reveals the epistemological underpinnings. Amusingly for me, in the case of strategies, their status in my opinion is that they are an artifact of the limitations (7 + or - 2) of consciousness. All representational systems are triggered simultaneously but our limited consciousness allows us (again, typically) to appreciate only one at a time. The classic NLP spelling strategy is a useful pedagogical tool for teaching people to spell (words already seen) but in fact, both the visual and kinesthetic representation are generated in parallel and then checked consciously in sequence. All the best, John