Mauricio Suárez, Inference and Representation: A Study in Modeling Science Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024. Pp. 328. ISBN 978-0-226-83004-9. $35.00 (paper).
Year: 2024
Type: book-review
Abstract: Understanding scientific practice requires understanding the use of models as tools to represent objects of inquiry.This book is a captivating testament to over two decades of research on scientific models.It presents a compelling, well-argued and provocative defence of Suárez's inferentialist account of representation.Its main theoretical claims on inferentialism (Part 2) and argumentative structure mirror those of Suárez's seminal paper, 'An inferential conception of scientific representation' (Philosophy of Science (2004) 71); however the book has two further aims: tracing a historical thread that links the emergence of the modelling attitude in the late nineteenth century to the evolution of Suárez's inferentialism (Part 1), and extending the application of the inferential account of representation to the realms of art and scientific epistemology (Part 3).Inferentialismthe book's main takeawayis an account of representation that is minimal, widely applicable and compatible with scientific practice and its use of models.Much recent debate in philosophy of science has centred on models and representation.According to what Suárez calls the 'official story' (p. 2), a general shift to a semantic view of scientific theories, and its focus on Tarskian models, reignited the philosophical interest in models in science in the second half of the twentieth century.However, in the introductory Chapter 1, Suárez situates his work within a different narrative, rooted in pragmatic efforts to understand scientific practice.By discussing the works of James Clerk Maxwell, William Thomson, Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann, Chapter 2 makes a case for considering the core features of the modelling attitude of nineteenthcentury physics as historical antecedents of the minimal conditions for representation in Suárez's inferential account.While the range of literature surveyed is impressive, this breadth occasionally comes at the cost of the survey's depth.For instance, Alisa Bokulich's analysis (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (2015) 50) reveals that Maxwell might have held a more structuralist view of representation than Suárez's reading suggests.To complement this historical analysis, in Chapter 3 Suárez presents an inductive argument using a variety of case studies to show that 'all models function representationally' in a minimal sense (p.45).For example, the discussion of the 1890 model of the Forth Rail Bridge (featured on the book's cover) illustrates that one need only grasp the intended use of a model as a tool for informative inferences to understand its representational function.Chapter 4 begins the second part.Suárez distinguishes between substantive and deflationary accounts of representation.The former are reductionist: they reduce representation to some other constitutive relation between model and target.The latter
Authors: Matthew Brewer, Matilde Carrera
Institution: Boston University
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4404043776