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What do all representations seem to have in common?

To many philosophers, our science is intended to represent reality. For example, some philosophers of science would say Newton’s theory of gravity uses the theoretical terms ‘center of mass’ and ‘gravitational force’ in order to represent how a solar system of planets behaves—the changing positions and velocities of the planets but not their color changes. However, it is very difficult to give a precise account of what scientific representation is. More precisely, though, scientific representation is the important and useful relationship that holds between scientific sources (for example, models, theories, and data models) and their targets (for example, real-world systems, and theoretical objects). There is a long history within philosophy of describing the nature of the representational relationship between concepts and their objects, but the discussion on scientific representation started in the 20th century philosophy of science.

There are a number of different questions one can ask when thinking about scientific representation. The question which has received the most attention, and which will receive the most attention here, is what might be called (following Callendar and Cohen 2006, 68) the “constitution question” of scientific representation: “In virtue of what is there representation between scientific sources and their targets?” This has been answered in a wide variety of ways, some arguing that it is a structural identity or similarity which ensures representation while others argue that there is only a pragmatic relationship. Other questions about scientific representation relate more specifically to the ways in which representations are used in science. These questions are more typically asked directly about certain sorts of representational objects, especially scientific models, as well as from the perspective of sociology of science.

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