Models and type-hierarchies
cognitive foundations of iconic thinking
pp. 97-111
in: Ray Paton, Irene Neilson (eds), Visual representations and interpretations, Berlin, Springer, 1999Abstract
In the sciences there are two main devices that are used for iconic thinking, graphical representations and models. Though models can appear in different modes of expression, from pictures to bench-top gadgets, they are abstractions from, idealisations of and/or analogues of those "matters' which they represent, which we shall call their 'subjects". In thinking about some subject matter with the help of models we thinking about something other than the model, what it represents, stands for or in place of. Model-thinking is thus a species of Polanyi's proximal/distal principle, thinking of something through something else [1].