1 - Introduction

Summary

Typically, the purpose of an introduction for an edited volume is to give the reader some idea of the main themes that will be explored in the various papers. We have chosen, instead, to take up that task in chapter 2. Here we want to simply provide a brief overview of the literature on models in the philosophy of science and economics, and to provide the audience with a sense of how issues relevant to modelling have been treated in that literature. By specifying a context and point of departure it becomes easier to see how our approach differs, both in its goals and methods, from its predecessors.

The use of models in scientific practice has a rich and varied history with their advantages and disadvantages discussed by philosophically minded scientists such as James Clerk Maxwell and his contemporaries Lord Kelvin and Sir George Francis FitzGerald. In fact, it was the use of mechanical models by British field theorists that became the focus of severe criticism by the French scientist and philosopher Pierre Duhem (1954). In Duhem's view models served only to confuse things, a theory was properly presented when cast in an orderly and logical manner using algebraic form. By contrast, mechanical models introduced disorder, allowing for diverse representations of the same phenomena. This emphasis on logical structure as a way of clarifying the nature of theories was also echoed in the early twentieth century by proponents of logical empiricism. This is not to suggest that their project was the same as Duhem's; we draw the comparison only as a way of highlighting the importance of logical form in philosophical appraisals of theories.