According to an adequacy-for-purpose view, models should be assessed with respect to
their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Such a view has been advocated by …

Models matter. Scientists spend much effort on constructing, improving, and testing models,
and countless pages in scientific journals are filled with descriptions of models and their …

We critically engage two traditional views of scientific data and outline a novel philosophical
view that we call the pragmatic-representational (PR) view of data. On the PR view, data are …

Science provides us with representations of atoms, elementary particles, polymers,
populations, pandemics, economies, rational decisions, aeroplanes, earthquakes, forest …

Definitions are crucial for institutional analysis. This article explains the nature of taxonomic
definitions, with particular attention to their use in economics and other social sciences …

Agent-based simulations have become increasingly prominent in various disciplines. This
trend is positive, but it comes with challenges: while there are more and more standards for …

Chemistry is experiencing a paradigm shift in the way it interacts with data. So-called “big
data” are collected and used at unprecedented scales with the idea that algorithms can be …

The description of how individual models in families of models are related to each other is
crucial for the general philosophical understanding of model-based scientific practice. We …

This paper starts with an evaluation of three common arguments against pluralism in
economics:(1) the claim that economics is already pluralist,(2) the argument that if there was …

In this paper, we ask one fairly simple question: to what extent can biorobotics be sensibly
qualified as science? The answer clearly depends on what'science'means and whether …