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title: |
    *From*: "Modeling: A Study in Words and Meanings" by Willard McCarty
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author: 
date: \today
bibliography: biblio.bib
csl: cms-fullnote.csl
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>> Out on site, you were never parted from your plans.
They were your Bible. They got dog-eared, yellowed,
smeared with mud, peppered with little holes from
where you had unrolled them on the ground. But
although so sacred, the plans were only the start.
Once you got out there on the site everything was
different. No matter how carefully done, the plans
could not foresee the *variables*. It was always
interesting, this moment when you saw for the first
time the actual site rather than the idealised
drawings of it.

>> Kate Grenville, *The Idea of Perfection*
(Sydney: Picador, 1999): 62–3


# Introduction

The question of modeling arises naturally for
humanities computing from the prior question
of what its practitioners across the disciplines
have in common. What are they all doing with
their computers that we might find in their
diverse activities indications of a coherent or
cohesible practice? How do we make the best,
most productive sense of what we observe? There
are, of course, many answers: practice varies 
from person to person, from project to project, 
and ways of construing it perhaps vary even more. 
In this chapter I argue for modeling as a model 
of such a practice. I have three confluent goals: 
to identify humanities computing with an intellectual 
ground shared by the older disciplines, so that we 
may say how and to what extent our field is of as 
well as *in* the humanities, how it draws from and 
adds to them; at the same time to reflect experience 
with computers "in the wild"; and to aim at the
most challenging problems, and so the most
intellectually rewarding future now imaginable.

My primary concern here is, as Confucius almost 
said, that we use *the correct word* for the 
activity we share lest our practice go awry 
for want of understanding (*Analects 13.3*). 
Several words are on offer. By what might be 
called a moral philology I examine them, arguing 
for the most popular of these, "modeling." The 
nominal form, "model", is of course very useful 
and even more popular, but for reasons I will 
adduce, its primary virtue is that properly 
defined it defaults to the present participle, 
its semantic lemma. Before getting to the 
philology I discuss modeling in the light of 
the available literature and then consider 
the strong and learned complaints about the 
term.

# Background

Let me begin with provisional definitions[^1]. 
By "modeling" I mean *the heuristic process of 
constructing and manipulating models*, a "model" 
I take to be either *a representation of something 
for purposes of study*, or *a design for realizing 
something new*. These two senses follow Clifford 
Geertz's analytic distinction between a denotative 
"model *of*" such as a grammar describing the 
features of a language, and an exemplary "model 
*for*" such as an architectural plan
[@geertz_interpretation_2017, 93][^2]. In both 
cases, as the literature consistently emphasizes, 
a model is by nature a simplified and therefore 
fictional or idealized representation, often taking 
quite a rough-and-ready form: hence the term 
"tinker toy" model from physics, accurately suggesting 
play, relative crudity, and heuristic purpose 
[@cartwright_how_1984, 158]. By nature modeling 
defines a ternary relationship in which it mediates 
epistemologically, between modeler and modeled, 
researcher and data or theory and the world 
[@morgan_models_1999]. Since modeling is 
fundamentally relational, the same object may 
in different contexts play either role: thus, 
e.g., the grammar may function prescriptively, 
as a model for correct usage, the architectural 
plan descriptively, as a model of an existing style. 
The distinction also reaches its vanishing point in 
the convergent purposes of modeling: the model of 
exists to tell us that we do not know, the model 
for to give us what we do not yet have. Models 
*realize*.

[^1]: My definitions reflect the great majority of 
the literature explicitly on modeling in the history 
and philosophy of the natural sciences, especially 
of physics. The literature tends to be concerned 
with the role of modeling more in formal scientific 
theory than in experiment. The close relationship 
between modeling and experimenting means that the 
rise of a robust philosophy of experiment since 
the 1980s is directly relevant to our topic; see 
[@hacking_stability_1988]. Quite helpful in 
rethinking the basic issues for the humanities 
are the writings from the disciplines other 
than physics, e.g., [@clarke_models_2015] on 
archaeology; on the social sciences, the essays 
by de Callatay, Mironesco, Burch, and Gardin 
in [@franck_explanatory_2011]. For interdisciplinary 
studies see Shanin (1972) and [@morgan_models_1999], 
esp. "Models as Mediating Instruments" (pp. 10–37).

[^2]: Cf. Goodman's distinction between 
"denotative" and "exemplary" models, respectively 
(1976: 172–3); H. J. Groenewold's "more or less 
poor substitute" and "more or less exemplary ideal" 
(1960: 98). Similar distinctions are quite common 
in the literature.

# Bibliography

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