In disciplines ranging from physics to economics, scientists regularly use scientific models to explain various phenomena. However, that use of models is puzzling. Models involve all sorts of idealizations, abstractions, and omissions; meaning that they are not literally true descriptions of their targets. This project aims to develop and test a new model-based account of scientific explanation; it will show how and when such idealized models can nonetheless be properly used to produce scientific knowledge. The project focuses on how idealized models are used to explain phenomena in geomorphology (the study of physical structures on the surface of the earth and how they evolve) through a detailed examination of scientific case studies.
Intellectual Merit
This project will significantly advance our understanding of the nature of scientific explanation and the nature of scientific modeling. It will also articulate a number of novel theses including the different kinds of explanations in geomorphology, the different roles robustness analyses play in evaluating explanatory models, and the relevance of model lineages to the problem of model validation.
Broader Impacts
The results of this project will be disseminated in the form of a book, which will be the first book in a new subfield, the philosophy of geomorphology. The book will facilitate the building of new bridges between philosophers of science and researchers in the Earth sciences. More broadly, this project will be important for the public's perception of science. Many of the claims, predictions, and explanations offered by climatologists regarding global climate change are dismissed by skeptics on the grounds that they are derived from incomplete models that make idealized assumptions. This project will highlight the pervasiveness of such models in science and it will give an account of how such models can nonetheless generate true predictions and explanations. As a result, it will be of wide significance.
More and more citizens are encountering the results of idealized models in geomorpholgy as they try to understand how their homes and properties might be affected by swelling rivers, changing coastlines, or landslides. Geomorphology, which is the study of how landscapes change over time, requires synthesizing information from many different fields, including geology, hydrology, biology, geochemistry, oceanography, climatology, etc. Landscape change also involves processes occurring across a vast range of spatial and temporal scales, from ripples forming in the sand over the timescale of seconds to the evolution of national coastlines on a temporal scale of thousands of years. For these reasons, geomorphologists must use idealized models in their explanations of why landforms have the characteristics that they do and in their predictions of how they might change in the future. The goal of this project in the philosophy of science was to take a broader look at the scientific methodology being used in geomorphology, and come to a deeper understanding of how idealized models are being used to explain complex phenomena in this field. This goal was achieved through the following three results: First, this project developed a model-based account of scientific explanation that accounts for the sort of explanations one finds in fields such as geomorphology. Second, it articulated and analyzed some of the challenges facing the evaluation and validation of these model-based explanations; and third, it outlined some of the ways these challenges could be addressed. As such, this project contributed to our understanding of how, despite their simplicity, these idealized models can begin to explain our complex and ever-changing world.
