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Creating Models for Interpreting Data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2017

Roy E. Plotnick
Roy E. Plotnick*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 W. Taylor St. Chicago, Illinois 60607
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For many of us, the word model may trigger remembrances of long-ago afternoons spent painstakingly gluing a small plastic car or airplane model together (for others, it may conjure up images of a somewhat emaciated young woman staring out of the cover of Vogue or Elle). The model car is not the same as a real car; it is made of different materials; it has many fewer parts, and it does not move. Nevertheless, it resembles a real automobile sufficiently that we recognize it as a realistic representation. Similarly, scientists use the term model to refer to a reconstruction of nature for the purpose of study (Levins, 1966). In other words, in order to understand nature, one may not always want to study it directly. Instead, understanding may come from studying a facsimile of nature that captures what is perceived to be its essential properties. In the same way, a child may learn how a car is built by building a plastic model of it, even if this model contains no moving parts.

Type
Modeling Evolution
Information
The Paleontological Society Special Publications , Volume 9: Evolution: Investigating the Evidence , 1999 , pp. 343 - 358
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by The Paleontological Society 

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