Models and Instruments

Response — Models and Instruments

Morrison and Morgan’s Models as Mediating Instruments argues that models mediate the conceptual divide between theory and the world.¹ They argue through a series of historic examples that models may be understood as tools or instruments from which we may learn through both construction and manipulation.² The model is composed of four basic inquiries or elements: construction, function, representation, epistemology.³ Like Popper, Morrison and Morgan also argue that models are approximations and do not satisfy all details of what is being modeled — they are simplifications that never tell the full truth.⁴ Furthermore, as discussed in our first session, models are independent and autonomous, being constructed from a “mixture of elements, including those from outside the original domain of investigation.”⁵ Models are not lower in hierarchy of theory and data, but are equal with them.⁶ Independence allow models to function as a tool for exploration, measurement, and intervention.⁷ A model’s simplification or abstraction limits its representation only a portion of the theory or the world.⁸ By not engaging in mimesis or reflection, they are able to function in particular ways that may not be observable in the world, or theorized. It is, however, in construction and in the use of the model that, Morrison and Morgan argue, teaches us most about what it represents.⁹ Karl Popper argues in Models, Instruments, and Truth, that the natural sciences and the social sciences can be understood to share their approach to the world. Popper’s method begins with problems, which lead to theories, resulting in new problems.¹⁰ It is the aim, then, not to establish truth, but to more closely approach it.¹¹ A model is constructed as part of such a search.¹² A remarkable trait of Popper’s methodology is that through a partial model, embodying incomplete information, the scientist/observer/theorist moves closer to truth.

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1. Morrison, M. and M. S. Morgan, “Models as Mediating Instruments,” in Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science. Vol. 52, Ideas in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 11. ↩︎

2. Morrison and Morgan, 12. ↩︎

3. Morrison and Morgan, 10. ↩︎

4. Morrison and Morgan, 16. ↩︎

5. Morrison and Morgan, 14. ↩︎

6. Morrison and Morgan, 18. ↩︎

7. Morrison and Morgan, 18–24. ↩︎

8. Morrison and Morgan, 28. ↩︎

9. Morrison and Morgan, 33. ↩︎

10. Popper, Karl. “Models, Instruments, and Truth.” In The Myth of the Framework: In Defence of Science and Rationality, 154-84. London: Routledge, 1994, 159. ↩︎

11. Popper, 159. ↩︎

12. Popper, 162; 165–169. ↩︎