ABSTRACT
Generally speaking the tendency in deductive building of temporal models has been to move from fixed to floating time and from global to process-specific models. Models used inductively to progress towards a theory are often used as explanatory models for the original data; sometimes even without the development of any theoretical considerations. It has to be admitted that the subdivision of qualitative models is here based on different criteria to that of all temporal models, though the same criteria could also be used for deterministic and stochastic models. The idea of time required, but independent of a fixed time scale of events, is generally characteristic of models in which the process or assemblage of processes and corresponding forms are assumed to be poised in some condition of dynamic stability or equilibrium over the particular period of observation, or observed on a time scale so short that trends, which would imply relative position, are not observable or are unimportant.
