Making Sense of Modeling and Experimenting: Beyond Representation

San Francisco State University, San Francisco CA

Investigators

Abstract

Introduction This project will examine closely the interplay between the theoretical, experimental, and normative elements involved in the process of clarifying data for scientific modeling. Scientific models form the basis of scientific understanding and interaction with the world. Since the targets of scientific modeling activity are initially ill-defined phenomena, it is crucial to determine how phenomena are clarified and stabilized in a scientific inquiry. That process involves settling the distinction between genuine information and noise so as to identify intrinsic features and the relevant parameters that produce those features. It has received little philosophical attention in the literature, though it is a crucial stage of scientific activity. It determines how the phenomena are finally categorized, the methods and focus of interaction, and the directions for further investigation. In addition, it is sometimes the object of longstanding controversies and fundamental re-evaluation. The upshot is that this project will yield substantial understanding about an underappreciated yet important scientific process. Intellectual Merit In this project, the main case study is Landau's model of the onset of turbulence, and in particular its use to study the wake that forms behind a cylinder that is perpendicular to a fluid flow; there is a long controversy over models of the wake of an obstacle in fluid flow. The modeling activity will be approached as situated within an epistemic network that contains theoretical and empirical informational resources as well as norms that guide and constrain the construction and the evaluation of models. How these informational resources and normative constraints interact in experimental investigation, as well as how experimentation and simulation activities are coordinated, are sometimes at the heart of scientific controversy. Here are some of the central issues to be addressed in the project: What counts as relevant parameter of the model of a phenomenon and as a measurement thereof; how activities of simulation and experimentation inform, guide, and constrain each other; and how the impact of a model on the dynamics of the network, as investigative instrument, contributes to its epistemic value. Potential Broader Impacts This project approaches scientific models in a new way. Unlike in more usual approaches, focus will be on the earlier stages of inquiry before model and experimental arrangement have become fixed or stabilized. A better understanding of the process of modeling, and of the characterization of phenomena that guides development of research programs in science, will thus be achieved. In particular, the results will provide a new form of interpretation of scientific conflicts and controversies, by bringing to light the role of judgments of relevance in the construction and evaluation of scientific models. This approach participates in a larger effort to foster constructive interactions between science and philosophy of science, and thus to facilitate the participation of philosophy of science in science policy debates concerning scientific development. Additionally, it will make philosophical study of science more attractive to philosophy students, and more relevant to science students, by uncovering the interactive and creative dynamics of scientific research.