This paper addresses a specific way of using representational models to construct other models, dubbed ‘generative constructive use’. This use is distinguished from other ways of using models to construct new models. In particular, the case study shows how the model, in coordination with its...

The Representational Theory of Measurement conceives measurement as establishing homomorphisms from empirical relational structures into numerical relation structures, called models. There are two different approaches to deal with the justification of a model: an axiomatic and an empirical...

It has recently been aptly emphasized that how models are used is essential to what scientific models are. But the explanations of why and how a model is used or why a model is scientifically valuable are still merely in terms of the relation between the model and its target, just as they were...

It has recently been aptly emphasized that how models are used is essential to what scientific models are. But the explanations of why and how a model is used or why a model is scientifically valuable are still merely in terms of the relation between the model and its target, just as they were...

Models are generally used by scientists to obtain predictions and to provide explanations about phenomena. Their predictive and explanatory power is generally thought of as depending on their representative power. It is still not clear, though, in virtue of which features models allow scientists...

Traditional accounts of explanation fail to illuminate the explanatory relevance of “models that are descriptively false” in the sense that the regularities they entail fail to obtain. In this paper, I propose an account of explanation, which I call ‘explanation by concretization’, that...

This paper argues that, for a prospective philosophical analysis of models and simulations to be successful, it must accommodate an account of mathematically rigorous results. Such rigorous results are best thought of as genuinely model-specific contributions, which can neither be deduced from...

In this paper, I would like to show that considering technological models as they arise in engineering disciplines can greatly enrich the philosophical perspective on models. In fluid mechanics, (at least) three types of models are distinguished: mathematical, computer and physical models. Very...