Thanks for that, those are interesting points.

What I’m thinking of here is that the scientific model is an analogy; it’s one step removed from linguistic reference since it has to be couched in language in order to get going — it’s not an example of language but an application of it.

So yes, we have to be able to say “cannonball” and have it refer to some physical object as a prerequisite for making the model, but it looks to me as if the model also needs a notion of analogue that’s at a different level from linguistic reference.

So I think I agree with your inference — we’re using a set of things to refer to another, different set of things, not using language to refer to things. I’m not sure there’s a difference in kind here, I admit, so I wouldn’t want to push it too hard.

This isn’t, though, why I’d prefer not to think of scientific theories as “true”. That’s because there’s a mathematical sense of that word that’s well-defined, and that doesn’t apply here. The scientific sense isn’t well-defined as far as I know, and tends to create misapprehensions about what science does.

It doesn’t make much sense to me to say that because the cannonballs behave *like* the point masses the model is therefore *true*. I’m happy to say the model is “correct”, “right”, “accurate”, “good” (or their opposites) and so on; “true” just seems to me to slide over into its mathematical sense too easily, with confusing consequences.

I guess what I want to emphasise here is that this isn’t second best; it’s not that scientific models fail to be true in the mathematical sense, but that they were never supposed to be.

My use of “fiction” was a bit rhetorical — I meant to emphasise “story” rather than “untruth”. I want to suggest that we tell a story about cannonballs using mathematical objects to stand in for them, like puppets acting out a narrative.

Hope this makes sense. Let me know what you think — the linguistic point is probably worth pursuing but I’m chickening out a bit because I know it’s fairly intractable…

Rich