Narratives and Models in Complex Systems

Humans often deal with the world through narratives. Mechanistic scientists do not necessarily recognize when they are using narratives, and some might imagine narratives as nonscientific. The thesis in this chapter is that narratives are in fact the deliverable in science, and that models are a means of improving the quality of that bottom line. It may appear that we are asserting an antirealist point of view, but that is not the case. Most of the time, we are agnostic as to reality, while accepting that the writer, Allen, is in his material study, typing on a real keyboard. That would be a soft realism, which is perfectly acceptable. Our case against hard realism is that reality is often used prematurely as an intellectual crutch in the scientific endeavor. We wish to tighten up standards by getting a clear view of narrative and modeling.