ABSTRACT
Science, we are told, is (or at least aspires to be) a mirror of nature. It provides (or hopes to provide) complete, accurate, distortion-free representations of the way the world is. This familiar stereotype is false and misleading. It gives rise to a variety of unnecessary problems in the philosophy of science. It makes a mystery of the way scientifi c models function and intimates that there is something intellectually suspect about them. Models simplify and often distort. The same phenomena are sometimes represented by multiple, seemingly incongruous models. The models that scientists work with often fail to match the facts they purport to account for. These would be embarrassing admissions if models were supposed to accurately refl ect the facts. But they are not. Science is not, cannot be, and ought not be, a mirror of nature. Rather, science embodies an understanding of nature. Since understanding is not mirroring, failures of mirroring are not necessarily failures of understanding. Once we appreciate the way science affords understanding, we see that the features that look like fl aws under the mirroring account are actually virtues. A fi rst step is to devise an account of scientifi c representations that shows how they fi gure in or contribute to understanding.
