Isabelle F. Peschard and Bas C. van Fraassen (Eds.): The Experimental Side of Modeling
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Isabelle F. Peschard and Bas C. van Fraassen (Eds.): The Experimental Side of Modeling (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol 21). University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, 2018, 336 pp., $ 40,00 (Paperback), ISBN: 978-1-5179-0534-7 Adrian Currie1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Over the last 30 years, philosophical action has shifted from a focus on general theories towards a fragmented grab-bag of epistemic products and practices. Or, at least, that is one way of telling the philosophy of science’s recent history. If we think general theories are where the action is, then it is natural to read scientific activity as directed towards such theories: experiments aim to probe and test theories; models and other theoretical tools are representations of theories. However, awhile ago scholars began noticing that experimental practices go far beyond theory-testing, indeed, a story can be told of many sciences in terms of experimental traditions (Hacking 1983; Galison 1987; Franklin 1989). Similar was noted of models. Even when models aim to draw empirical consequences from theories—mediating between theory and world—models are often autonomous, forming traditions and becoming objects of study in their own right (Morgan and Morrison 1999). This shift in philosophical action tracks methodological changes, from examining scientific products to the practices and processes that give rise to them. Instead of studying experiments, models and theories then, philosophers increasingly ask after experimentation, modeling and theorizing. In light of these shifts in topic and methods, various discussions about experimentation and various discussions about modeling developed more or less independently of one another. Why, for instance, are simplified, idealized—false— models so ubiquitous in the apparently reality-directed practices of science (Weisberg 2012; Toon 2012; Potochnik 2017)? How, for instance, do scientists project the results of highly controlled experiments into a complex world (Cartwright 1999; Weber 2004)? Recently, some philosophers started also asking after the relationship between experiments and models themselves. Do they differ? Have they the same epistemic properties (see Mäki 2005; Morgan 2005; Parker 2009; Parke 2014; Currie and Levy 2019)? Undoubtedly experiments and models are interwoven through various scientific practices (Morrison 2015), so what is achieved by distinguishing them? Isabelle Peschard and Bas van Fraassen’s edited collection The Experimental Side of Modeling promises to make some progress on the project of comparing and contrasting * Adrian Currie [email protected] 1
Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
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these two central scientific activities. The chapters each explore some issue arising from the philosophy of experimentation, the philosophy of modeling, or the interaction between the two. The basic question—how do models and experiments relate?—is taken in dramatically different directi
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