Friday, 5 November 2004
Who is a Modeler?
Michael Weisberg
University of Pennsylvania
12:05 pm , 817R Cathedral of Learning
Abstract: Standard accounts of the nature
of scientific theories ignore a crucial distinction between modeling
and other types of theory construction. This conflation badly distorts
important contrasts among the goals, products, and practices of
modelers and non-modelers. We can see this difference intuitively
when we consider the approaches of theorists such as Vito Volterra
and Linus Pauling on one hand, and Charles Darwin and Dimitri Mendeleev
on the other. Volterra and Pauling were modelers; Darwin and Mendeleev
were not. This paper develops an account of theory construction
capable of capturing this distinction. This account distinguishes
between modeling and non-modeling along two dimensions: the nature
of the theory--world relationship and the norms which govern the
construction of theoretical representations. By differentiating
modeling from other forms of theorizing, we can gain greater insight
into the process of theory construction, effective strategies of
idealization, and what is really at issue in certain debates between
theorists and experimentalists.
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