John,
"Isn't all speculation hot air at some stage?"
Suppose I say that every number except 0 has a factor of 1? That's true, but useful only in the sense that if it weren't true, we couldn't count (formally); we'd have no arithmetic. Suppose I speculate that no number has a factor of 1, tantamount to saying that all numbers are zero. I can't be dissuaded from this belief and I call it my model. When one suggests to me that it can't be a model, I reply -- "Do you deny that 0 = 0? Why can't you think outside the box? Why can't you refute my assertion? Why can't you see the evidence that every zero in the universe is identical to 0 = 0? What's wrong with my logic? My model is a true model of the universe, and you cannot refute it. Don't tell me that I need your mathematics to model the universe, I have all the mathematics I want or need."
It isn't that speculation is hot air at any stage; speculation is hot air at every stage if it starts with a false premise. If I want to defend my model that 0 = 0, and you persist, I will ask you to refute 0 0 = 0. Take that! When you point out that set theory includes the empty set {} = 0, and that {{}} = 1, I will tell you that my model isn't made of those "abstract math symbols," that 0 = 0 is obviously true, and that it's impossible for any zero to have a factor of 1.
"The whole risk/reward, trial and error thing, it seems like progress requires it. Unless of course, you prefer to stick to what has already been written in stone and not open to question. That tends to turn one's thought processes to stone as well, though."
Mine or yours?
"While I'm extremely grateful that you conduct these conversations with me, we have different views on what we are doing. I can understand that physics, as a profession requires standards, every profession does. And that it is very important to uphold those standards."
They are not professional standards, John. They are universal standards.
"But all disciplines, businesses, governments, institutions, etc. start out as a vision and end up being a management issue. When the situation is healthy, these two functions work together, but when there are divergences, which there naturally will be, sometime some degree of flexibility is helpful."
I'm being flexible. Refute the statement, 0 0 0 = 0! Ha! Can't do it, can you? Want me to be even more flexible? 0 X 0 = 0. Oh, and here's an even better example of my flexibility: sqrt0 = 0.
"Now I'm not saying whether or not there are conflicts between the vision of understanding physical reality and the mathematical and conceptual tools being used to accomplish this, but that as an outsider I am simply more interested in the vision aspect, as opposed to to the exact usage of all the terms which have evolved to understand all the various relationships."
The vision aspect doesn't include terms in relation?
"Not only can I not afford the time that someone actively engaged has, but the endless focus on detail often becomes a source of confusion in itself."
Granted, the search for the devil can make one crazy. Already being there, though, I guess I don't notice it so much.
"Which all goes to say that from my conceptually distant vantage point that what we think of as laws are faithfully repeatable patterns, based on coherent principles,"
True.
"... while models, whether it is my conventional view as a distinct set of patterns, or your more specialized solution to an equation, it is going to be a given order, used to frame and make sense of input, in order to determine output. If A, then B."
If 0, then 0. My model is infinitely flexible. :-)
Best,
Tom