Who is a Modeler? |
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| Authors: | Weisberg Michael |
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| Institution: | Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, 433 Logan Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA |
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| Abstract: | Many standard philosophical accounts of scientific practicefail to distinguish between modeling and other types of theoryconstruction. This failure is unfortunate because there areimportant contrasts among the goals, procedures, and representationsemployed by modelers and other kinds of theorists. We can seesome of these differences intuitively when we reflect on themethods of theorists such as Vito Volterra and Linus Paulingon the one hand, and Charles Darwin and Dimitri Mendeleev onthe other. Much of Volterra's and Pauling's work involved modeling;much of Darwin's and Mendeleev's did not. In order to capturethis distinction, I consider two examples of theory constructionin detail: Volterra's treatment of post-WWI fishery dynamicsand Mendeleev's construction of the periodic system. I arguethat modeling can be distinguished from other forms of theorizingby the procedures modelers use to represent and to study real-worldphenomena: indirect representation and analysis. This differentiationbetween modelers and non-modelers is one component of the largerproject of understanding the practice of modeling, its distinctivefeatures, and the strategies of abstraction and idealizationit employs. - 1 Introduction
- 2 The essential contrast
- 2.1 Modeling
- 2.2 Abstract directrepresentation
- 3 Scientific models
- 4 Distinguishing modeling from ADR
- 4.1 The first and secondstages of modeling
- 4.2 Third stage of modeling
- 4.3 ADR
- 5 Who is not a modeler?
- 6 Conclusion: who is a modeler?
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