MInD: The Talk — Online Lecture Series

Roughly every two weeks, we host a scholar in philosophy of science for a one-hour online talk: about 40 minutes of presentation, then 20 minutes of Q&A. Talks are on Mondays, generally 15:00-16:00 CET (UTC+1), on Google Meet.
Everyone is welcome, and you don’t need to register.

Next talk: Monday 16 November 2026 · 16:00 - 17:00 CET
 

Edoardo Peruzzi (Leibniz University Hannover)
Progress in Model-Based Sciences: Reframing the Relationship Between Horizontal and Vertical Progress in Economics

▸ Join on Google Meet → https://meet.google.com/dex-ggkd-csd

Abstract. Scientific progress in model-based fields has received relatively little attention. One exception is Grüne-Yanoff and Marchionni (2025), who argue that economics, and model-based sciences more generally, progresses primarily horizontally through the accumulation of models. However, their account leaves unclear how horizontal and vertical progress are related. We argue that their view—linking vertical progress to the replacement of models and horizontal progress to their accumulation—is misleading. Focusing instead on theoretical templates, understood as intermediate representational structures generating families of models, we propose a unified framework that further clarifies their account: vertical progress as systematic development within model families, and horizontal progress as the introduction of new templates that serve for model construction.