Gallery of models

A model is a representation and an abstraction that can be used in investigating and understanding how things work.

This is the definition of “model” that Greg Hill and I use in our E&S paper.

Here are a few sources for this approach:

“Models describe how things work, whereas theories explain phenomena.” (Rapoport 1985, as cited in Berkes and Folke 1998)
“[A model] is an illustration describing how something works by showing its elements in relationship to one another.” (Friedman 2005)
“Models are representations and models are compressions.” (Letiche et al. 2011)
“A model is a work object… A model is worked, and it does work.” (Haraway 2016)

: Peter Checkland: Knowledge production

: Parts and wholes

: Deductive, inductive, abductive syllogisms

: Dynamics of systemic social innovation

: Herman Daly: Ecosytem and economy

: Zones of proximal learning and unlearning

: Valerie Brown: Knowledge cultures as a nested system

: Political entrenchment as path dependence

: Four rationalities of cultural theory

: On René Thom, attractors, and metaphors

: Domains of learning: Bloom and Warfield

: School of Military Studies: Four big ideas of design

: Panarchy of adaptive cycles

: Chris Argyris: Single- and double-loop learning

: John Adams: Risk thermostat

I like to pair the famous quip by Box and Draper (1987), “all models are wrong, but some are useful,” with a counterpoint by Holling et al. (2002) that mental models are “not wrong, just incomplete.” Similarly, Leonard and Clemson (1984) wrote, “Any two different perspectives (or models) about a system will reveal truths about that system that are neither entirely independent nor entirely compatible.”
With regard to the word “representation,” in the definition at top, “a model is a representation and an abstraction,” I’m thinking also of fictional representation or even misrepresentation. See, for example, Frigg (2010) Models and Fiction (pdf).
This gallery is a work in progress. Your favorite model missing? Other thoughts? Please get in touch: howard AT solvingforpattern DOT org or in the comment thread below.
These images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Many of them are by me; some of the better ones are by design friends Wade Larsen and Andrew Fuller.
My shortlist of additional references on models:
- - Frigg, R. and S. Hartmann. 2012. Models in science. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  - Holland, J. H., et al. 1987. Induction: processes of inference, learning, and discovery.
  - Page, S. E. 2014. Model thinking. Coursera.
  - Rosen, R. 1991/2005. Life Itself. Columbia University Press.
  - Zellmer, A. J., et al. 2006. The nature of ecological complexity: A protocol for building the narrative. Ecological Complexity (pdf).