Bert Baumgaertner (University of Idaho)
One picture of the roles of models in the sciences is that they are downstream of theory, i.e., that in some relevant sense theories comes first and models later. For example, we start with a theory of Newtonian mechanics and then create models to ultimately make predictions about how, e.g., a pendulum swings. This picture is skewed by an emphasis on examples from physics, engineering, and similar disciplines. The relationship between theory and modeling is often reversed in biology: models tend to guide theory development. Epidemiological models are a particularly salient case in point.
