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Robustness Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Michael Weisberg
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Abstract

Modelers often rely on robustness analysis, the search for predictions common to several independent models. Robustness analysis has been characterized and championed by Richard Levins and William Wimsatt, who see it as central to modern theoretical practice. The practice has also been severely criticized by Steven Orzack and Elliott Sober, who claim that it is a nonempirical form of confirmation, effective only under unusual circumstances. This paper addresses Orzack and Sober's criticisms by giving a new account of robustness analysis and showing how the practice can identify robust theorems. Once the structure of robust theorems is clearly articulated, it can be shown that such theorems have a degree of confirmation, despite the lack of direct empirical evidence for their truth.

Type
Strategies of Modeling in Biology and Chemistry
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 73 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2004 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers. Edited by Miriam Solomon , December 2006 , pp. 730 - 742
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I am grateful for the extremely helpful comments of Patrick Forber, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Richard Levins, Ryan Muldoon, Deena Skolnick Weisberg, Brian Skyrms, Elliott Sober, C. Kenneth Waters, as well as audiences in the Biology Department at Penn, the Philosophy of Science Association, and the International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology.

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