Against models (essay)

In modern civilization, there are two perspectives on what the task and nature of science is. One perspective, which I will call the "identification perspective," is that the task of science is to identify facts of reality. Another perspective, which I will call the "model perspective," is that the task of science is to create a mathematical model, which models reality. My thesis is that the latter perspective, though it can have some limited successes, is fundamentally mistaken.

Identification perspective

This perspective is how people think about everyday things, like books and hair and wallets and the sun. Those are entities out there in the world, and we can identify facts about them: this book was published in 1957, that hair is being cut, etc.

This perspective is also how some people think about classical mechanics, though I believe it is uncommon.

All the mathematical concepts in classical mechanics refer to some concrete thing.

For example, when we talk about the position, we literally mean there's some entity in the world,

In this perspective, classical mechanics is not about modeling a ball as a point in a symplectic manifold, it is about saying: "This ball is at this location, and it has this orientation, and it will behave in such-and-such a way."

Model perspective

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Criticism of the model perspective

The model perspective is Kantian

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