Beyond reduction and emergence: a framework for tailoring multiscale modeling techniques to specific contexts

Abstract

This paper analyzes three multiscale modeling techniques that are commonly used in biology and physics and uses those cases to construct a normative framework for tailoring multiscale modeling techniques to specific modeling contexts. I argue that the selection of a multiscale modeling technique ought to focus on degrees of relative autonomy between scales, the measurable macroscale parameters of interest, indirect scaling relationships mediated by mesoscale features, and the degree of heterogeneity of the system’s mesoscale structures. The unique role that these features play in multiscale modeling reveals several important methodological, epistemological, and metaphysical questions for future philosophical investigations into multiscale modeling.