For a charter of modelling honesty

Abstract

In a classic discussion of mathematical models in the social sciences, the philosopher Max Black describes models as metaphors, raising the fundamental, and long-debated, question of in what sense (if any) a metaphor can be 'true' or 'false' (Black 1962). Perhaps the most sensible answer to that question is by Clarke and Primo (2012), who view models in the social sciences as similar to maps - abstractions that describe relationships between entities in a defined space. As with maps, models are to be evaluated not by their inherent resemblance (or lack of it) to 'the original field of thought', but by their fitness for purpose: whether they help us get where we want to go.