Resumen

BENGOETXEA COUSILLAS, Juan Bautista. Scientific Models as Abstract Epistemic Tools for Learning how to Reason. Sophia [online]. 2025, n.38, pp.295-321. ISSN 1390-8626.  https://doi.org/10.17163/soph.n38.2025.09.

The variety of scientific methodologies aimed at obtaining knowledge, generating beliefs, and promoting action is very wide. Both philosophy of science and science education have been concerned with critically assessing the virtues of the various scientific methods, especially the inductive and deductive ones. However, the emergence of new procedures specific to non-academic sciences has encouraged the development of new reflective perspectives that can analyze those virtues. From randomized controlled trials to epidemiological or clinical procedures, the Philosophy of Science has been concerned with examining the virtues and also the defects of their practical set-up. The article assumes that modeling based on empirical evidence is a practice of high interest in linguistics. In order to substantiate this assumption, two philosophical approaches to scientific modeling distinguished by their respective research lines on the notion of representation are compared: the Representational and the Pragmatic. These accounts are then illustrated with a brief case taken from linguistics called “language parsing”, aimed at examining several particular samples collected as evidence in early stages of experimental modeling. By way of conclusion, it is emphasized that both philosophical accounts provide analytical elements that are relevant for the kind of scientific reasoning around models and whose scope in science education may be of great practical interest.

Palabras clave : Scientific Modeling; Representation; Language; Education; Pragmatics; Epistemic Tool.

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