MODELS AND THEORIES
The aim of the
course: In modern science, models and theories play an indispensable role. But what are they? How do they relate to one another? How do they represent their target system? By analogy, by similarity, by isomorphism? What is abstraction, approximation and idealisation? What is the inner structure of a scientific theory and what is the ontology of the models?
Course schedule:
- Models in Science: Introduction
- The Received View
- Models in the Received View
- Theoretical and Observable terms
- Explicit and Implicit Definitions
- The Model-Theoretical View
- Scientific Representation
- Munich Structuralism
- Analogies
- Abstraction, Approximation, Idealisation
- Limits
- The Ontology of Models
Literature:
- Roman Frigg, Models and Theories, London and New York, Routledge, 2023.
- Hans Halvorson, The Logic in Philosophy of Science, Cambigde, Cambridge University Press, 2019.
- Roman Frigg and Stephan Hartmann, Models in Science, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2020.
Lecture notes: here.