Theories and models

This chapter discusses the question of how models and theories relate. Its main contention is that there is no such thing as “the” relation between models and theories: models can stand in a multiplicity of relations to theories. After a brief review of how the relation between models and theories is analysed in the Syntactic View and the Semantic View of theories, the chapter discusses cases in which models are independent from theories, designed to explore properties of theories, live in a symbiotic relation with theories by completing them, aid the application of abstract theories to concrete target systems, and serve as mediators between theory and the world. The chapter then discusses where the line between models and theories should be drawn, and it ends with a short conclusion.