ABSTRACT
Just as we use natural language to communicate verbally or in writing, we use models as a form of scientific language to communicate about the world. Models are more compact than natural languages, and tend to be more structured using mathematical expressions, diagrams, or analog machinery. Morgan and Morrison (1999) underscore the relevance of models in theory construction as being vital to science: models mediate between humans and phenomena. We begin the study of dynamic models with a brief historical review of the word “model” and then we continue with an overview of “dynamic model” as a subtype. Hodges (2005) provides a concise description of how the word originated as well as different uses for the word:
In late Latin a modellus was a measuring device, for example to measure water or milk. By the vagaries of language, the word generated three different words in English: mould, module, model. Often a device that measures out a quantity of a substance also imposes a form on the substance. We see this with a cheese mould, and also with the metal letters (called moduli in the early 17th century) that carry ink to paper in printing. So model comes to mean an object in hand that expresses the design of some other objects in the world: the artist’s model carries the form that the artist depicts, and Christopher Wren’s module of St Paul’s Cathedral serves to guide the builders.
