Models of the world...

Continuing the earlier theme of a sociology of models, I have just read an interesting paper from the Georgia Journal of Ecological Anthropology. The specific discussion here is about the relationship between anthropology and different models of scientific enquiry and understanding. There are many tidbits throughout that would provide interesting jump-off points for a discussion, but I will limit myself to one quotation from a footnote on page 10, which the author leaves tantalizingly undeveloped:

"It is impossible to begin any human activity without models of the world."

The context here was a brief discussion of a particular reference, but the implications are obviously much broader. If we accept this idea, then of course the question of whether or not models are appropriate for use in problem solving no longer makes any sense. Instead, the interesting questions are which models, and why? It also forces us to recognize that any information should be regarded as resulting from some model of the world that is purely socially constructed.

The article begins with an account of C. S. Hollings "two streams of science": the mainstream experimental and reductionist; and the lesser known (but growing in popularity?) interdisciplinary, integrative etc. The dominance of the former as a mental model for how knowledge should be generated has of course been extremely important to scholarship, politics, policy making, and decision making in general. Perhaps we are beginning to see a shift toward the latter, which not only brings about new frameworks for addressing problems, but gives new life to disciplines (like anthropology, the author argues), that already have extensive experience in this realm.