Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine

This course is about models and simulations in science. Main topics will include the kinds, similarities, and differences among models and simulations; differences between models and idealizations; relationships among models and experiments; what kinds of explanations models and simulations offer; the role of representations in modeling; how scientists draw inferences from models and simulations; and the metaphysics of models. Historical and contemporary examples will be drawn from biology, data science (including artificial intelligence), Earth science (especially climatology), physics, and the mind sciences (especially the cognitive and neural sciences).