The Experimental Side of Modeling

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An innovative, multifaceted approach to scientific experiments as designed by and shaped through interaction with the modeling process.

The role of scientific modeling in mediation between theories and phenomena is a critical topic within the philosophy of science, touching on issues from climate modeling to synthetic models in biology, high energy particle physics, and cognitive sciences. Offering a radically new conception of the role of data in the scientific modeling process as well as a new awareness of the problematic aspects of data, this cutting-edge volume offers a multifaceted view on experiments as designed and shaped in interaction with the modeling process.

Contributors address such issues as the construction of models in conjunction with scientific experimentation; the status of measurement and the function of experiment in the identification of relevant parameters; how the phenomena under study are reconceived when accounted for by a model; and the interplay between experimenting, modeling, and simulation when results do not mesh. Highlighting the mediating role of models and the model-dependence (as well as theory-dependence) of data measurement, this volume proposes a normative and conceptual innovation in scientific modeling-that the phenomena to be investigated and modeled must not be precisely identified at the start but specified during the course of the interactions arising between experimental and modeling activities.

Reviews

"Throughout, the various essays help provide substance to a bold new account of models: far from being mere representations in need of experimental validation, scientific models both shape and are shaped by experiment and data measurement."CHOICE

"A snapshot of the kinds of questions philosophers of science have begun asking since the philosophical shift from theories to practices."Journal for General Philosophy of Science

Author Bio

Isabelle F. Peschard is associate professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University.

Bas C. van Fraassen is McCosh Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Princeton University and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University.