P hilosophers who think about science are in trouble nowadays. The pragmatist in all of us recoils from a controversy about the obvious. That is enough truth for most people, including most scientists. But within the academic disciplines that study science, much that is new and interesting about how science works has made it possible to challenge simplistic notions of what constitutes truth.
Scientists often talk about an ideal world where laws uniformly apply.
The slip between the cup of the prototype and the lip of its analogue is where Giere wants to situate his philosophical position. Giere wants science to proceed without the Procrustean bed of laws which, he argues, pertain to the prototypes and not to the reality of the everyday models. This way of posing the question makes it less easy to forget that making maps is a cognitive and social activity of humans. It is as if Giere wants to make the Creator's wisdom, the actual world out there, a matter for Him alone to know. When a discipline resorts to common sense in order to find its moorings, then it may be time to question the enterprise.