Empirical modelling

Empirical modelling refers to any kind of (computer) modelling based on empirical observations rather than on mathematically describable relationships of the system modelled.

Empirical Modelling as a variety of empirical modelling

Empirical modelling is a generic term for activities that create models by observation and experiment. Empirical Modelling (with the initial letters capitalised, and often abbreviated to EM) refers to a specific variety of empirical modelling in which models are constructed following particular principles. Though the extent to which these principles can be applied to model-building without computers is an interesting issue (to be revisited below), there are at least two good reasons to consider Empirical Modelling in the first instance as computer-based. Without doubt, new technologies that are based on computers have had a transformative impact where the full exploitation of Empirical Modelling principles is concerned. What is more, the conception of Empirical Modelling has been closely associated with thinking about the role of the computer in model-building.

An empirical model operates on a simple semantic principle: the maker observes a close correspondence between the behaviour of the model and that of its referent. The crafting of this correspondence can be 'empirical' in a wide variety of senses: it may entail a trial-and-error process, may be based on computational approximation to analytic formulae, it may be derived as a black-box relation that affords no insight into 'why it works'.

Empirical Modelling is rooted on the key principle of William James's 'radical empiricism', which postulates that all knowing is rooted in connections that are given-in-experience. Empirical Modelling aspires to craft the correspondence between the model and its referent in such a way that its derivation can be traced to connections given-in-experience. Maing connections in experience is an essentially individual human activity that requires skill and is highly context-dependent. Examples of such connections include: identifying familiar objects in the stream of thought, associating natural languages words with objects to which they refer, and subliminally interpreting the rows and columns of a spreadsheet as exam results of particular students in particular subjects.

Empirical Modelling principles

In Empirical Modelling, the process of construction is an incremental one in which the intermediate products are artefacts that evoke aspects of the intended (and sometimes emerging) referent through live interaction and observation. The connections evoked in this way have distinctive qualities: they are of their essence personal and experiential in character and are provisional in so far as they may be undermined, refined and reinforced as the model builder's experience and understanding of the referent develops. Following a precedent established by David Gooding in his account of the role that artefacts played in Michael Faraday's experimental investigation of electromagnetism, the intermediate products of the Empirical Modelling process are described as 'construals'. Gooding's account is a powerful illustration of how making construals can support the sense-making activities that lead to conceptual insights (cf. the contribution that Faraday's work made to electromagnetic theory) and to practical products (cf. Faraday's invention of the electric motor).

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