Mueller Science - model history cultural - use meaning concept synonyms classification representation

We are all surrounded by models and live in worlds of models and with models of worlds. We create and use models of various kinds, communicate with models and use, modify and respect models others have created.

The concept of model spans the whole cultural history of mankind from early man to cyberspace, from the Platonic ideas via serial production to space exploration. That means the history of “model” covers several million years (Fig. 01 and 02).

Since „model“ is a function everything can be a model or can be regarded as a model in some respect. Furthermore, there are many different possible functions (Fig. 03, 04, 05, 06 and 07). However, there is no use protesting over the multitude of uses, meanings and functions of „model“ or over the multitude of (partial) synonyms (see: The Concept of Model and its Triple History). Rather, we must try to handle the diversity by categorizing the vast number of models (Fig. 08, 09 and 10) and then looking at the specific meanings. This helps to broaden our horizon.

There is no science of models

There is no concise science of creativity or design, problem solving or innovation nor of methods and tools. And there is no science of models. Of all topics there are scarcely philosophies, perhaps some partial doctrines and directives. All are transdisciplinary.

Of course there is creativity in science as in all other human endeavors. And of course cognitive sciences and learning psychology, epistemology and complexity theory, art history, design and visual arts as well as history of technology and engineering study the construction and use of models. But the range of models is to big.

The multitude of uses and synonyms is not new

According to the four keys of a scientific description we can approach the theme „model“ from four sides:

· from the history of concept (form);

· from the history of the denoted objects (content);

· from the history of consciousness (appeal); and

· from the history of – mostly – partial theories (context)

– see Fig. 11).

It is important to bear in mind the following differentiations:

1) The history of a word is not the same as the history of the named object (viz. form and content). Both histories are not at all easy to determine.

2) Many very different objects can be denoted by the same word.

3) Sometimes the same Greek or Latin word has been absorbed several times into the modern languages with slightly different wordings.

4) Often there are considerable synonyms and other words used for the same object.

5) The same object or phenomenon is differently named in each language, e. g. Greek: phantasia; Latin: imago; Scholastics: imaginatio; English: idea; French: idée; German: Einbildung.

6) We can be aware that we use these things and can reflect about that (consciousness).

7) About some of the things theories are developed (context). And there are many parallel theories.

For instance we note that "Collins English Dictionary and Thesaurus" (1993) has quite a few synonyms of “model”:

1. copy, dummy, facsimile, image, imitation, miniature, mock-up, replica, representation

2. archetype, design, epitome, example, exemplar, gauge, ideal, lodestar, mould, norm, original, par, paradigm, paragon, pattern, prototype, standard, type

3. poser, sitter, subject

4. mannequin

5. configuration, design, form, kind, mark, mode, stamp, style, type, variety, version.

The multitude of uses and synonyms of model is by no means new or trendy. As early as 1611 we read in Randle Cotgrave’s dictionary of French-English:

"Modeler: To modell, forme, fashion, plot, cast in a mould.

Modelle (f.): A modell, patterne, mould, plot, forme, frame.

Modulation (f.): Modulation, harmonie, musicall proportion, pleasant tuning.

Module (m.): A modell, or module; that whereby a whole worke is measured, proportioned or squared;

also, the measure, bignesse, or quantitie of a thing;

also, a certaine measure in conduits or conveyances of water;

also, modulation, melodie, or measure in Musicke.

Moule (m.): A mould (wherein a thing is cast, formed, or forged;)

also, a high shore, or strand by the sea side; or as Mole, a Peere, &c.

Bois de moule. Bellets, or logs, of a certaine size; or which have beene assized by the Mouleur.

Chandelles de moule. Candles made in moulds; (great) Christmas candles.

Moule de bois. A Wood-stacke, or pile of wood.

Moulé: m.ée. (f.) Moulded; cast, or framed in a mould.

Mouler. To mould, or cast in a mould; to frame, or forge by mould;

also, to appoint a mould for, prescribe a size unto.

Moulerie (f): A moulding; a forging by mould, a casting in a mould.

Moulle. as Moule.“

In the authoritative “Oxford English Dictionary” (1989) we find more than 110 different meanings of the substantive “model” and its four cognate words (without compounds) “mould” with “moulding”, “modulation”, “module” and “modulus”. Whoever complains about the multitude of functions and uses of the word model or tries to ban some meanings, fights against at least 450 years of multiple use of „model“ and its cognate words.

For other dictionaries and encyclopedias dealing with various kinds of models see:

Allgemeine Nachschlagewerke

The whole historical dimension of the use and construction of models had not got much attention. A rare exception is Roland Müller (1983; see also 1980, 2000, 2004).

For the history of some kinds of models see:

Modelle: Die 66 wichtigsten und informativsten Publikationen aus 6 Jahrhunderten

Literatur: Modell nach Sachgebieten

Today’s broad spectrum of uses and synonyms

· For the 1960 colloquium at Utrecht Patrick Suppes (1961, 163-164) quoted statements of seven different authors dealing with model.

· For the Congress in Stanford in the same year Yuen Ren Chao (1962, 558-566) reviewed 15 papers and some utterances of colleagues and other scientists and got 30 different synonyms and characterizations of „model“ as well as nine „non-synonyms“ of model.

· Wolfgang Brezinka (1984) describes eight general kinds of models and 15 others he found in pedagogical texts – but allows for pedagogy only one meaning: the teaching aid „ for the visualization or elucidation of an original” (1984, 354). In his eyes the other 14 uses are „useless”.

· In his extensive review of models in general and of models in geography Roger Minshull (1975, 24-25) lists 36 different definitions of model.

· Economist Dietrich Zschocke (1995, 221-226) lists 65 definitions of model mostly in the realm of representation.

· Tibor and Harmund Müller (2003, 1-26, 31-33) describe 19 kinds of models and some more.

· A very broad spectrum of 3D-models show the collection of articles in Chadar (2004) and the article of Jakob F. Dittmar (2005, 39 -72)

· Oliver Thomas (2005, 29-33) lists 35 definitions or descriptions of „model“ in the range of business informatics of the years 1990-2005 and adds two of 1974 and 1981.

Comprehensive classifications of models?

There are no comprehensive classifications of models. Each author has another one. Some early attempts are:

Ludwig Boltzmann (1892):
models for instruction:
calculating machines;
the models of theoretical physics;
in 1902 Boltzmann differentiates:
„a tangible representation ... of an object which is more either into actual existence, or hast to be constructed in facto r in thought“;
„a thing ... whose properties are to be copied“;
„aids in teaching and study“.

Joshua Craven Gregory (1927):
animate models;
mechanical models.

Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbert Wiener (1945):
material models;
formal or intellectual models.

Karl Wolfgang Deutsch follows (1951) Rosenblueth and Wiener and differentiates in addition (1949) between:
mechanistic models (since Newton and Hobbes); and
organismic models (since Rousseau and Burke);
furthermore he differentiates (1953) also four functions of models:
organizing;
heuristic;
forecast;
measuring.

C. West Churchman, Russell L. Ackoff, E. Leonard Arnoff (1957):
iconic models;
analogue models;
symbolic models (inventory, allocation, waiting-time, replacement, competitive).

Georg Klaus (1969) differentiates with respect to analogy with the original:
structural model;
function model;
behavioral model.

Herbert Stachowiak (1973):
graphic models;
technical models;
semantic models.

For an extensive overview on the classification of models see:

The Concept of Model: Definitions and Types – paragraph: Comprehensive classification of models

see also: Fig. 03, 04, 05, 06 and 07

And there are of course many different techniques to produce models (Fig. 12).

Few attempts to span all kinds of models and to work out a model theory

Despite this abundance – or perhaps precisely for that reason – there have been only two attempts to span all kinds of models:

· Russia’s Viktor A. Stoff: “Modellierung und Philosophie” (1969)

· Germany’s mathematicians Herbert Stachowiak: “Allgemeine Modelltheorie” (1973), unfortunately focusing on representation (see: Müller, 1976; 1977).

Despite the title of his widely used book on “Dimensional Analysis and Theory of Models” Henry L. Langhaar (1951) proffers no theory of models.

In contrast to its subtitle „An Outline of a General Theory of Models“, the book by the mathematician René Thom on „Structural Stability and Morphogenesis“ (1972) is rather a theory of catastrophes with respect to biological evolution. For a critique see Gilles-Gaston Granger et al. (1989).

Jean-Louis Le Moigne’s „Théorie de la modélisation“ (1977) stays in the range of a general systems theory.

In 1973 the mathematicians Chen Chung Chang - who spoke first, with Alfred Tarski, of a “theory of models” in 1954 - and Howard Jerome Keisler edited a comprehensive „Model Theory“. It dealt with the very specific function of “model” as an interpretation of a theory.

A further kind of model theory has been published in 1976 by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, “L’échange symbolique et la mort”, in which he explored the life of signs and “simulacra”.

Some of the best overviews for the topic of model are to be found in dictionaires and encyclopedias.

Why also „mould” and “moulding”, “modulation”, “modulus”, “modulo” and “module”?

In this paper we look after the whole range of „mould” (1225) and “moulding” (1327), “modulation” (1398), “modulus” (1563) and “modulo” (1887), “model” (1570) and “module” (1583 or 1586). This has various reasons:

1) The Latin word „modulus“ has been absorbed at five times in the Roman languages as well in the German language.

2) In addition the word „modulus“ itself was used in Latin and other texts until 1750. In English „modulus“ is still used today in physics and mathematics.

3) For centuries people have used the five words partly equally partly differently as today.

4) Most scientists use a good many other undefined words in place of model, such as reproduction and copy; analogy and interpretation or metaphor and archetype; concept or image and imagery; example and exemplar; icon and simulacrum, etc.

5) The use of model is often an attempt to visualize and idea or to make vivid (German: “anschaulich”) an abstract knowledge or law or invisible object. i. e. model and cognate words counterbalance formalization and mathematization.

6) Technology and engineering in particular have a variety of uses of model and its cognate words, which are concrete as well as abstract, mechanical as well as mathematical.

Old tradition – new fashion

Despite the old tradition of the word „model“ and ist cognates it is only since World War II that the use and construction of models as well as the theories and publications on models have spread explosively.

Other words to became rapidly popular were

· system and structure;

· function, process and behavior;

· information and communication, control and feedback;

· creativity, innovation, evolution, and development;

· technology, environment and resources;

· competence and fitness;

· dynamic, complex, interdependent;

· interdisciplinary, holistic and integrative;

· cognitive, etc.

For more than 24 theories of renowned scientists and philosophers on mind and world since 1950 see:

Mind and World

Mindless use of words

Sometimes authors use the word „model“ mindless, e. g.:

· Xiao-Yi Jiang: Ein modellbasiertes Erkennungssystem dreidimensionaler Objekte basierend auf Baumsuche und EGI-Vergleich. Diss. Univ. Bern 1990.

· Antje Korsten: Modelling the modelling language. Manchester: University of Manchester 1995.

· Raymund Werle, Christa Lang (Ed.): Modell Internet? Frankfurt: Campus 1997.

· Uwe Saint-Mont: Kontexte als Modelle der Welt. Subjektive Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorie. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2000.

Some authors have chosen as title: „Model(l)ing Nature“, e. g. Sharon E. Kingsland (1985), Richard J. Gaylord and Kazume Nishidate (1996), William A. Wallace (1996) and Margaret C. Morrison (1998).

Whilst Wolfgang Balzer (1982) likes to use simply „model“ without further specification to denote „structures in which also textual axioms are valid“, presumedly referring to Alfred Tarski, Carl F. Craver (2002) speaks of the „Model Model“ of Scientific Theories (MM), referring mostly to the „nonstatement view“ of Sneed-Stegmüller-Suppe.

„Model muddle“ and „crisis of representation“

As early as 1966 philosopher Max W. Wartofsky spoke of a „model muddle“ (1979, 1).

This muddle has at least three reasons:

1) Already in 1939 Rudolf Carnap stated:

“It is important to realize that the discovery of a model has no more than an aesthetic or didactic or at best a heuristic value, but it is not at all essential for a successful application of the physical theory” (1939, 68).

2) Despite the main title of his anthology of 18 essay from the years 1953-1978 („Models“) Wartofsky does not like the concept „model“. His solution reads as follows:

„I propose to collapse the distinction between models, theories, analogies, and to take all of these, and more besides, as species of the genus representation; and to take representation in the most direct sense of image or copy.“

That is a real mulligan.

3) Unfortunately most scholars today restricted their understandig of model to „representation“ (German: Abbild) – till Daniela M. Bailer-Jones (2003). Two of the few to critizise this narrowing of understanding very thoroughly have been Wilfried Neugebauer (1977) and Wolfgang Brezinka (1984, 837-838).

Model is by no means only associated with „representation“.

· There are a lot of objects serving as models being „originals“, e. g.

· Parents, teachers, pop idols, etc

· Artist’s models and sitters

· Fashion models and photographic models

· Decorative models in advertising

· Fetish objects as shoes and hair or commodities

· Organiszations, institutions, concepts to be imitated

· Samples, examples.

That means that there are considerable concepts which serve as models, including „originals“ or paragons; archetypes or ideals; abstraction or interpretation, etc. (Fig. 13).

A short collection of the use of the word „model“ for mental designs or constructions, patterns in the mind, visions or utopias - i. e. not representations - shows Fig. 14.

4) The range of theories to explain „model“ and cognates is spread out between realism and constructivism, imagery and connectivism, neopragmatism and empirism, hermeneutics and semantics

(for an overview of more than 24 theories see: Philosophy: Mind and World).

5) To avoid analyzing basically the meaning and use of “model” and to dispute on them most scholars evaded since 1960 to “representation” and “analogy”, “imagery” and “metaphor” (see Fig. 74, 57, 49 and 58 – see also below “pictorial turn”).

6) Most scholars rely on a triple relation of the object-subject-model (initiated by Klaus-Dieter Wüstneck 1963), which is seldom adequate to the whole situation resp. problem. More complicated approaches have been proposed among others by Wilfried Neugebauer (1977) and Bernd Mahr (2003, 2008).

7) In the introduction to their omnibus: “Models as Mediators”, the authors Mary S. Morgan and Margaret Morrison (1999, 8) confess, after ten years of intensive discussions with a group of colleagues and specialists:

"We have very little sense of what a model is in itself and how it is able to function in an autonomous way."

No wonder that in the 1990s a so-called „crisis of representation“ became manifest (Silja Freudenberger, Hans Jörg Sandkühler, 2003; Winfried Nöth, Christina Ljungberg 2003). Already in 1994 Michael Lynch considered: „Representation is Overrated“ (1994) and in 1999 Alexander Riegler et al. asked: „Does Representation Need Reality?“ (1999). Later Steven French tried a rather paradox „Model-Theoretic Account of Representation“ (2003).

In 2004 Giuseppe Lanzavecchia sketched in a short article on the one side the usefulness powers of models, on the other side he declares them – as the real practice of science shows – as unnecessary. For example he says that quantum mechanics is „a theory that does without a model“ (2004, 230).

In contrast Robert Franck 2002 edited a dozen articles in an anthology under the Title: „The Explanatory Power of Models.“

“Pictorial turn”

The time of prosperity for the development, use and discussion of models is between 1950 and 1980.

Then, parallel to the abasement of “model” there was a recovery of pictures in art history and ethnology. Inspired by the ethnologist Nils-Arvid Bringéus (1982) and the communications theorist Vilém Flusser (1983/85) some theoreticists detected a “pictorial turn” (William J. Thomas Mitchell, 1980, 1992) resp. “iconic turn” (Gottfried Boehm, 1994).

Mitchell (1994) tried to build up a “picture theory”; Klaus Sachs-Hombach aimed to establish a interdisciplinary “Bildwissenschaft” (science of image, 1998, 2003, 2006). Among others the Germans Hans Belting (“Bild-Anthropologie”, 2001), Gottfried Boehm (2002) and Thomas Hensel (2005) contributed some elements to it.

Nearby are attempts to deal with “Visual Culture” (Nicholas Mirzoeff, 1998, 1999), “Computational Visualistics” (Jochen Schneider et al., 2003; Jörg R. J. Schirra, 2005) and “Iconic Worlds” (Christa Maar, Hubert Burda, 2006).

The connections to research in the fields of creativity, imagination and mental imagery, symbol, icon and metaphor, representation, similarity and analogy, etc. are not very strong.

What do scientists really do?

It is not until recently scientists investigated empirically – i. e. by observation and interview - how other scientists use language and act in their laboratories really. Pioneers of such an approach were since 1975 Harry M. Collins, famous by his "Golem" books (1991, 1993) and Bruno Latour famous by his "Pandora" essays (1999). A comparative overview is given by Karin Knorr-Cetina (1999).

A vivid depiction how in the debate on two theoretical models of quantum theory the one „won“ is by Andrew Pickering in "Constructing Quarks" (1984). Similar descriptions proffers Peter Louis Galison (1997). A much more pictorial portrayal of scientific daily routine we find in the monumental omnibus he edited with Caroline A. Jones (1998). Amazingly the concept of model does not occur.

In April 2001 Daniela Bailer-Jones interviewed nine natural scientists of the Open University at Milton Keynes on their meaning and use of models (2002).

Another approach using cognitive psychology is provided by Nancy J. Nersessian (1992, 1993). Weekly labor meeting of molecular biologists and immunologists were analyzed by Kevin Dunbar (1995, 1997, 1999).

The genesis of molecular biology was carefully compiled by Horace Freeland Judson in ten years by means of more than hundred interviews with involved researchers as Max Perutz and Francis Crick (1979). "Doing Physics" commented Martin H. Krieger (1992) and Jed Z. Buchwald (1995).

Bibliography

Allgemeine Nachschlagewerke/ dictionaries and encyclopedias

model, modeling, modelling

Literatur zu Modellgeschichte ist Kulturgeschichte

modelling & Simulation

models in economy and econometry

representation/ mental representation

The „pictorial turn“/ „iconic turn“