ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we examined the economic ideas of the Physiocrats, stressing the fact that in carrying out their investigation of the French economy they constructed and employed an explicit ‘model’ of economic processes. Since then the practice of constructing analytical models has steadily developed and, although models are more common in economics than in the other social sciences, no branch of the subject is today without its models, and the attempt to construct new models of social processes is one of the most flourishing branches of social science. The term ‘model’ is, however, rather vague. It is used in a variety of different ways by social scientists and, in addition, it is a common-speech term with a variety of different meanings. The object of this chapter is to clarify the concept of ‘model’ by noting some of the main common features and differences in the types of models used by social scientists.
