ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to foster a constructive interaction between philosophers of science and educational scientists in regard to the study of models. Not that such interactions would be entirely absent. To the contrary, in the works of several educational scientists, one finds quite a few references to the recent philosophical debates about models. 2 Sometimes these citations are emblematic, but in other cases educational scientists have undertaken detailed empirical studies into questions that are close to the philosopher’s heart, among them Kuhnian gestalt switches in the history of models, the role of models in Lakatosian research programs, or a model’s representative features. It is thus unfortunate that there is less transfer of ideas in the other direction, if only to argue that educational scientists, in the theoretical analysis of their empirical findings, might profit from a somewhat broader perspective that includes recent debates in philosophy of science. What is more, educational scientists’ findings may shift philosophers’ focus from issues of representation to an epistemic dynamics of models.
