What is it about?
Far from universally recognized the diversity of models is still seen as something to be avoided, raising more problems than it solves. In this paper, I shall argue that the inverse is true: model pluralism solves a variety of old philosophical problems surrounding the use and misuse of highly abstract and idealized models. More so, I argue that model pluralism is an unavoidable feature of model-based science and should be wholeheartedly embraced
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Why is it important?
Over the last 50 years, the philosophy of science has increasingly shifted its trajectory from a focus on theories and laws to a focus on models.4 This shift in attention unsurprisingly coincides with the evidentially ever-growing use by scientists of the words ‘model’ and ‘modeling’ to describe their work. However, hardly any term has been more contested in the philosophy of science than the term ‘model’.5 Many philosophers of science seem to be under the impression that once we figure out what ‘models’ are and how they work, we can finally get a handle on all the other pressing questions in the philosophy of science. I argue that this way of thinking about models is grounded in a mistake. In this, I am echoing a worry the eminent evolutionary biologist and modeler John Maynard Smith once expressed when asked about Popper and the philosophy of science.
Perspectives
Once model pluralism is taken seriously there is, in fact, no substitute for accepting methodological diversity. The epistemic roles of particular models can only be understood against their scientific context and history, often including quite large sets of other models. One may even alternatively label it model holism. Far from over, philosophers working on models have a behemoth of work in front of them, with economics providing an elegant field of investigation. The widespread criticism of economics has led to the discovery of an unavoidable feature of science. If what I suggested in this paper is correct, economics will serve as a highly attractive field of investigation for philosophers of science. After all, it very much stands or falls with the strength of model pluralism. Rather than showing that economics is an inherently flawed discipline, philosophers and methodologists of economics may have found the very key to understand the success of science. Hence, I suggest that philosophers of science should turn more of their attention towards both the social sciences and the philosophy of the social sciences, a historical omission that if my argument is correct and model pluralism is unavoidable, may have provided a misguided understanding of how science works. To conclude: model diversity is a feature, not a bug. In order to understand science, the philosophical analysis of models, modeling, and model-based science must focus on sets of models, their multiplicity of functions within science, and their scientific context and history
Walter Veit
Carnegie Mellon University
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This page is a summary of: Model Pluralism, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, December 2019, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0048393119894897.
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