Island Biogeography and the Multiple Domains of Models

This paper adopts a symmetrical approach to controversies over R.H. MacArthur and E.O. Wilson’s equilibrium model of island biogeography, in order to show how different interpretations of the model depend upon different philosophical understandings of the application of models and theories. In particular, there are quite distinct domains to which the model could apply; in addition, some equivocation among these domains is important to the model’s success. Therefore, apparently inconsistent interpretations, interpretations that fit into roughly instrumentalist, realist and rationalist conceptions of science, may be mutually supporting in practice. Descriptions of scientific practice, then, should not adjudicate among these interpretations, but should instead recognize ways in which successful models translate among domains, and in so doing can become realistic, instrumentally successful, or rationally established. As complex social objects, models can afford complex representational relations.

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