Re: Objects, Models, Theories

Post   : Objects, Models, Theories : 3
URL    : http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/11/21/objects-models-theories-3/
Posted : November 21, 2013 at 11:30 am
Author : Jon Awbrey

Re: Tom Gollier
At: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/11116

Tom,

Here my task is to build bridges between several different classical and contemporary uses 
of the word “model”, so I don't have the luxury of complete control over the words in play 
but have to start from the customary senses in the various communities of interpretation. 
Of course I'm slyly working from a sign-relational backdrop, but I have to be sleight-handed 
about that and not hit people over the head with it.

You can probably guess that I'm using “object” to cover sign-relational objects, and 
“theories” are clearly syntacked together from complexes of sign-relational signs, so all we 
have left to pin down is where the various kinds of “model” sit at the table set with the 
labels of Object, Sign, Interpretant.

In its theoretical sense, a model of a theory is anything the theory is true of, anything 
that satisfies the theory.  In that sense, a model is very like an object.  It is whatever 
the theory is talking about.  In the order of nature, indeed, models come before theories. 
But there is another order, the order of art, and one may construct artificial models out of 
almost any stuff, even the stuff of signs.  So you see the kind of wiggle room we have to 
work with.

Things are easier outside of logic, in applied mathematics and the special sciences, where 
models are just things like analogues, icons, simulations, and similar representations of 
objects.  But that makes them objects serving as signs of other objects, and so you may find 
some semiotic subtlety lurking there.

Well, enough for now …

Jon

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