Empirical modelling
Though the extent to which these principles can be applied to model-building without computers is an interesting issue (to be revisited below), there are at least two good reasons to consider Empirical Modelling in the first instance as computer-based.
The crafting of this correspondence can be 'empirical' in a wide variety of senses: it may entail a trial-and-error process, may be based on computational approximation to analytic formulae, it may be derived as a black-box relation that affords no insight into 'why it works'.
In Empirical Modelling, the process of construction is an incremental one in which the intermediate products are artefacts that evoke aspects of the intended (and sometimes emerging) referent through live interaction and observation.
The connections evoked in this way have distinctive qualities: they are of their essence personal and experiential in character and are provisional in so far as they may be undermined, refined and reinforced as the model builder's experience and understanding of the referent develops.
Following a precedent established by David Gooding in his account of the role that artefacts played in Michael Faraday's experimental investigation of electromagnetism, the intermediate products of the Empirical Modelling process are described as 'construals'.
The semantic framework shown in Figure 1 resembles that adopted in working with spreadsheets, where the state that is currently displayed in the grid is meaningful only when experienced in conjunction with an external referent.
Observables built into the environment include scalars, geometric and screen display elements: these can be elaborated using multi-level list structures.
In making construals, the primary emphasis is on the rich potential scope for interaction and perceptualisation that the computer enables when used in conjunction with other technologies and devices.
The principles by which James and Dewey sought to reconcile perspectives on agency informed by logic and experience play a crucial role in achieving this integration.
Making construals has also been proposed as a suitable technique to support constructionism, as conceived by Seymour Papert, and to meet the guarantees for 'construction' as identified by Bruno Latour.
The practical applications of Empirical Modelling to date suggest that making construals is well-suited to supporting the supplementary role the computer can play in orchestrating rich experience.
In particular, in keeping with the pragmatic philosophical stance of James and Dewey, making construals can fulfill an explanatory role by offering contingent explanations for human experience in contexts where computational rules cannot be invoked.
Special purpose software supporting the central concepts of observable, dependency and agency has been under continuous development (mainly led by research students) since the late 1980s.
The undergraduate and MSc module 'Introduction to Empirical Modelling' was taught for many years up to 2013-14 until the retirement of Meurig Beynon and Steve Russ (authors of this article).
The term has been adapted from its use by David Gooding in the book 'Experiment and the Making of Meaning' (1990) to describe the emerging, provisional ideas that formed in Faraday's mind, and were recorded in his notebooks, as he investigated electromagnetism, and made the first electric motors, in the 1800s.
