Advantages And Disadvantages Of Theory

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Question 2 v1.0 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Assess the advantages and disadvantages of using models to produce knowledge of the world. Models are used widely in a diverse array of knowledge areas including both the natural sciences and human sciences for a dual-pronged purpose. The first is to explain the cause-effect relationships underlying the observable phenomenon and the second is to predict future behaviour based on fundamental principles that explain the observable. These two propagated outcomes can then aid one in producing knowledge about how the world works, and by induction, produce knowledge on how the world will continue to work based on the principle of uniformity of nature. Whilst the fact that models exist to produce knowledge of…show more content…
Representational models function primarily by concretising an analogue and mapping the conclusions onto the real world subject. This is justified by the way in which the analogue is similar by specific properties to the real world subject. For instance, a wooden scale model of an airplane is said to be physically congruent to the full scale airplane in the relevant aspect where both carry proportional dimensions. This wooden scaled model of the airplane can then act as an analogical representation to allow engineers to postulate the aerodynamic properties of the full scale airplane based on wind tunnel experiments on the scaled model . Hence, representational models allow us to extrapolate the behaviour of such an abstraction to predict how the real-world subject will behave. Thus, such models can be useful in gaining knowledge about the…show more content…
Nonetheless, fundamental assumptions linking the theoretical model to the real world still have to be made when contextualising the models into the real life situation, which potentially questions the model’s validity . Differences and oversimplifications in such assumptions can allow for many theoretical models explaining the same phenomenon to exist. For instance, the classical AD-AS diagram in economics assumes that consumers and producers behave rationally respond flexibly to short-term variations in supply. However, this is not always the case. The contrasting Keynesian AD-AS diagram, assumes consistently irrational behaviour from consumers who would be completely inflexible in responding to market signals, but also accurately explains hidden macroeconomic
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