Science as a Model Building Enterprise

许多人认为科学提供了精确的规律，并努力完成一个客观给定世界的统一和精确的画面。在过去的十年里，一种与之竞争的观点将科学描述为为世界上有限的部分提供模型，而这些模型只能在有限的方面和有限的精确度上进行描述。许多研究人员先前的工作表明，这种“模型观”比传统的方法更准确地描述了科学的智力产品，因为它实际上是实践的。然而，许多人认为，模型观点仍然面临着严重的困难。这个项目将表明，当一个人将模型观点作为科学实际实践的智力产品的一种解释时，每个反对意见都可以得到满足或被证明是错位的。可以得出的结论是，作为对实践中的科学的描述，模型观比传统方法给出了更好的描述，传统方法将科学描述为为我们提供由精确定律组成的理论。模型观点也为我们提供了对科学（智力）目标的最佳描述，这一说法更具争议性。传统的方法支持“趋同现实主义”，这种观点认为，科学寻求对客观给定的世界进行越来越准确、全面和统一的描述。该项目将审查对这一传统观点的某些反对意见，并表明当这些反对意见得到满足时，模型观点也为科学的智力目标提供了最合理的图景。要提倡的观点认为，有限的模型给了我们真实和客观的，尽管总是有限的，对世界上有限部分的理解，我们合理地保持不可知论的观点，即客观存在的东西也可以被给予一个完全统一的和人类可理解的描述。

Many take science to provide exact laws and as striving to complete a unified and exact picture of an objectively given world. In the last decade a competing view describes science as providing models of limited parts of the world, where the models describe only in limited respects and with limited degrees of accuracy. Prior work by a number of investigators suggest that this "model view" gives a much more accurate account than do traditional approaches of the intellectual product of science as it is actually practiced. However, many believe that the model view nonetheless faces crippling difficulties. This project will show that when one takes the model view as an account of the intellectual product of science as it is actually practiced, the objections can each be met or shown to be misplaced. It will be concluded that as an account of science as practiced the model view gives a better account than traditional approaches which describe science as providing us with theories composed of exact laws. The claim that the model view also provides us with the best available account of the (intellectual) aims of science is more contentious. Traditional approaches endorse "convergent realism", the view that science seeks to fill in an increasingly accurate, comprehensive and unified description of the objectively given world. The project will examine certain objections to this traditional view and show that when they are met the model view also provides the most plausible picture of the intellectual aims of science. The view to be advocated maintains that limited models give us real and objective, though always limited, understanding of restricted parts of the world and that we reasonably remain agnostic about the idea that what objectively exists is something which also could be given a completely unified and humanly accessible description.