Keith Beven, Hydrology and Fluid Dynamics, Lancaster University. Professor Beven is perhaps the leading scientist writing on the philosophy of environmental modeling. His scientific research focuses on the development and use of hydrological models, including models of rainfall-runoff, flood inundation, and pollutant transport. In several stimulating papers on the philosophy of modeling, he has argued persuasively that environmental models are flawed by “equifinality” –-the fact that several different model constructions may produce the same empirical output--and that there is no unproblematic way to know which model realization is closer to nature.
- Beven, Keith (2001). How far can we go in distributed hydrological modelling? Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 5(1), 1-12.
- Beven, Keith (2002). Towards a coherent philosophy for
modelling the environment. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A (2002) 458, 1–20 - Beven, Keith (2003). On environmental models of everywhere on the GRID. Hydrol. Process., 17,
- Beven, Keith (2005). A manifesto for the equifinality thesis. Journal of Hydrology, 20, 1-19.
Richard Iverson, a senior research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cascades Volcano Observatory, is a theoretical and experimental geoscientist who has developed and tested mathematical models for forecasting behavior of landslides, debris flows, rock avalanches, and extrusion of volcanic lava domes. He co-edited Prediction in Geomorphology (American Geophysical Union, 2003), a volume of papers that examine the philosophical and methodological underpinnings of models of landscape-forming processes.
- Iverson, R.M., 2003, How should mathematical models of geomorphic processes be judged?, in Prediction in Geomorphology, Geophysical Monograph 135, P.R. Wilcock and R.M. Iverson, eds. American Geophysical Union, Washington, D.C. pps. 83-94.
- Iverson, R.M., 1997, The physics of debris flows: Reviews of Geophysics, v. 35, 245-296.
Susan G. Sterrett , Department of Philosophy, Duke University. Professor Sterrett has authored several papers on models, scientific representation, and scientific inference. She has also published on the use of analogical reasoning in science by scientists such as Darwin, Mach, and Einstein. Her recent book Wittgenstein Flies A Kite: A Story of Models of Wings and Models of the World examined the history of the formalization of the methodology of experimental engineering scale models, and its implications for philosophy of language.
- Sterrett, Susan G. (2001) Physical Models and Fundamental Laws: Using One Piece of the World to Tell About Another. Version based on talk at Univ. of Pavia. Final version published in Mind and Society Vol. 5 No. 3 (2003).
- Sterrett, Susan (2005) Models of Machines and Models of Phenomena. Version based on talk at PSA 2004. To appear in International Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.