04.04 Models as Epistemic Tools – Beyond Networks: The Evolution of Living Systems
Channel: Johannes Jaeger
Date: 2020-04-30

Module 4 of "Beyond Networks" asks what a system is and how we use models to study systems. In this lecture, I critically examine the idea that models should provide accurate representations of their target systems. I show that it is difficult to define exactly what "accurate representation" means. Instead, we need to the take the modeller and her aims, motivations, and questions into account. In such a pragmatist view of modelling, the scientist uses the model as an epistemic tool to gain a certain kind of knowledge about the target system. What that knowledge is, and whether the models succeeds, depends crucially on the purpose of the modelling activity. This explains why models often misrepresent by idealising, simplifying, or approximating aspects of a system. I argue that this is not a bug, but a feature of modelling. But care must be taken with our tools: if they are not properly maintained, or if they are used outside their domain of applicability, they may not work in the way we expect them to! 

This lecture gets right to the core of the whole series: networks are classical formal systems. They are best treated as tools to study systems such as organisms, rather than accurate representations. I'll develop this thought further in the following modules.

This lecture is based on the work by philosopher Tarja Knuuttila, in particular, her 2011 paper on "Modelling and Representing," published in "Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science," Vol. 42, p. 262.