"A theory describes a hypothetical mechanism or hypothetical structure which stands for the unknown real structure of things and materials. The hypothetical structure is modeled on some real structure known to the scientist and his colleagues. We can speak of the hypothetical mechanism as a model of the real mechanism of nature, and as modeled on some real mechanism we know." (H Rom Harré, "Philosophical Issues and Conceptual Change", Theory Into Practice Vol. 10 (2), 1971)
"Science is the combined effort to find out what sort of
behavior ensues when various conditions are fulfilled. Chemistry is the study
of reactions, that is, of the behavior of different substances, combined with
the effort to discover their natures in virtue of which they behave as they do." (H Rom Harré, "Philosophical Issues and Conceptual Change", Theory Into Practice
Vol. 10 (2), 1971)
"An analogy is a relationship between two entities, processes, or what you will, which allows inferences to be made about one of the things, usually that about which we know least, on the basis of what we know about the other. […] The art of using analogy is to balance up what we know of the likenesses against the unlikenesses between two things, and then on the basis of this balance make an inference as to what is called the neutral analogy, that about which we do not know." (Rom Harré," The Philosophies of Science" , 1972)
"Metaphor and simile are the characteristic tropes of scientific thought, not formal validity of argument." (Rom Harré, "Varieties of Realism", 1986)
"A model can become a symbol when its source of projection is lost or forgotten as, for instance, the bull's head became alpha, but a symbol cannot become a model." (H Rom Harré, "Modeling: Gateway to the Unknown", 2004)
"An object, real or imagined, is not a model in itself. But it functions as a model when it is viewed as being in certain relationships to other things. So the classification of models is ultimately a classification of the ways things and processes can function as models." (H Rom Harré, "Modeling: Gateway to the Unknown", 2004)
"Models, analogies and metaphors are closely related, though
not identical tools for rational thought. […] A model for something, be it
thing or process, can be described in the language of simile as a thing or
process analogous to that of which it is a model. […] The model offers us nothing
by way of explanation, and no existential hypotheses, but it does provide, in
the system of metaphors, a picturesque terminology. Many metaphors are indeed
just this, the terminological debris of a dead model."
"The word that has survived throughout, enlarging its meaning and in some circles losing meaning altogether, is the word 'model'. Thinking with models is likewise called 'modeling'. We make and use 'models', concrete representations of the central material entities, structures and processes of a domain into which a scientist might be enquiring. The focus shifts from discourse, talking and writing about nature, the most general theory of which is logic, to modeling, reproducing and representing nature materially, the most general theory of which is analogy." (H Rom Harré, "Modeling: Gateway to the Unknown", 2004)
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