Yearbook of the Artificial. Vol. 2

The Editor: Massimo Negrotti is Professor of Methodology of Human Sciences and Director of IMES-LCA at the University of Urbino. He has published several books about the artificial.

Models and theories are tools for scientific and technological investigations and projects. The relationship between theories and models is very complex. Models have become increasingly popular in our time, maybe due to the growing number of disciplines that try to understand, simulate or even reproduce very complex phenomena such as life, intelligence, organisms, brain processes, and social or economical systems.
The papers in this book deal with methodological and application problems which arise when models are compared to theories, or when theories are used to build models.

Contents: Robert Franck: Introduction. Modeling is the key to science - Massimo Negrotti: Models Thinking - Danila Bertasio: Representation and self-representation: the concept of model in the arts - Giovanni Boniolo: Theories and models: really old hat? - Mario Borillo: Technological risks or risks of reason? A reflection on cognitive technologies - Alessandro Bruschi: Logical models and the logical method - Luciano Celi: White bears and washing-machines: models (and theories) of concepts - Mariella Combi: Cultural models in anthropology - Luciano Floridi/Jeff W. Sanders: The Method of Abstraction - Giuseppe Lanzavecchia: Models in science are unnecessary but useful - Roland Müller: Model: The history of the concept and of its use in science - Giuseppe Padovani: An Implicit Model in Sociology: Raymond Boudon - Roberto Poli: Ontological Models - Antonino Porrello: Theory of the Simulative Models (TMS) - Fumihiko Satofuka: Paradigm shift of Kuhnian model to post-kuhnian one in the history of science, technology and art in Modern Japan - Andrea Sormano: Max Weber's Methodological Individualism as 'Sociological Grammar'.