scientia media

Interesting little reference found in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy that has 5GW overtones:

Molina, Luis de (1535—1600). Jesuit theologian and philosopher, born in Cuenca, Spain.  He studied and taught at various leading Iberian universities. Molina is best known for his doctrine of middle knowledge (scientia media), expounded in Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis (1588).  This doctrine’s aim was to preserve human free will while maintaining the Christian doctrine of the efficacy of divine grace.  For Molina, although God has foreknowledge of what human beings will choose to do, neither that knowledge nor God’s grace determine human will.  Middle knowledge, God’s knowledge of what persons would do under any set of circumstances, enables God to arrange for certain human acts to occur by pre-arranging the circumstances surrounding a choice without determining the human will.  God’s grace is concurrent with the act of the will and does not predetermine it, rendering the Thomistic distinction between sufficient and efficacious grace superfluous.

[Prof. Jorge J.E. Gracia, State University of New York, Buffalo, and Elizabeth Millán.]

I suppose the usual EBO precautions will apply.  This also ties into some of my previous thoughts concerning the term free will, not to mention the issue of co-optation.

The idea of scientia media also reminds me of an interesting document I’ve neglected blogging.  While contemplating and researching a Waterfall Model of 5GW and Iterative Models (following up on Arherring’s work), I stumbled onto “The Chaos Model and the Chaos Life Cycle” (.wpd, 1999) by the pseudonymous Raccoon.  Some nuggets from that document:

1. “I believe that to truly understand software development, we must not only understand the flow of an entire project and how to write each line of code, we must also understand how one line of code relates to the whole project. It seems to me that we have studied each aspect of software development in isolation, not how all aspects fit together. The Waterfall model, defined by Royce, and the Spiral model, defined by Boehm, discuss management-level issues, such as phases and deadlines, rather than how to write one line of code or fix one bug. Programming methodologies show us how to solve technical problems, rather than how to solve users’ problems or to meet deadlines. In this paper, I use the principles of chaos (or fractals) as a metaphor to bridge the gap in our understanding of the relationship between one line of code and the entire project.”



2. “The Chaos model differs from other models in that it imposes little organization on the development process, rather, it allows many organizations to evolve. This allows the Chaos model to apply in many complex situations.”



3. “Levels are not independent. All levels of a project are connected by a web of influences that stretches between the ‘whole program’ level and the ‘one line of code’ level. Adjacent levels influence each other very strongly. Distant levels influence each other very weakly. “



4. “We can reinterpret the meaning of the ‘whole program’ level and the ‘one line of code’ level in terms of users and technologies. The ‘whole program’ level represents the users’ needs or the goals of the project. The goals of the project are defined by the users at the top level, so the goals must trickle down to the bottom level. The ‘one line of code’ level represents our technical resources or the smallest pieces of the solution. Developers write code one line at a time using established techniques on the bottom level, so the solutions must trickle up to the top level. In the middle levels, developers match up the users’ needs with the technical resources to satisfy them.”



5. ”Developers work on all levels of a project, but spend most of their time working on the middle levels. In the middle, developers match the pieces of a problem with chunks of code. The problems are small enough to be solved and the solutions are big enough to be useful. Every level of the project, every size of component, and every scope of decision is caught in the web of influences stretching between the users’ needs and the technical resources available to satisfy the users’ needs. Because the needs of the users strongly influence the upper levels of the project and the technical resources strongly influence the lower levels of a project, developers have the most influence in the middle levels.”



6. “So by transitivity, each phase is identical to every other phase. The phases blend into each other and the life cycle dissolves into an amorphous flow of emphasis. The distinctions that we make between phases become arbitrary and show our perspective on the project, rather than any essential truth about software development. When we say that a project is in one phase or another, it shows where we think we are, more than where we actually are.”

Pretty cool, huh?