Modeling Theory and Composing Process Models

Abstract

In 1914, near the beginning of World War I, philosopher Pierre Duhem expressed a profound disdain for scientists who used models as conceptual aids. In Duhem's view, models were a kind of mental crutch, needed only by those poor souls who were burdened with an English mind-a mind that was careless, unexacting, and unable to manage complex systems of abstract representation. The French mind, on the other hand, which was characterized by straitness, clarity, and method, did not require the clumsy simplifications provided by models in order to apprehend reality (68-73). Intricate formulae were its daily fare, if not its raison d'ttre. This ability of the mind to handle complex representational systems without the assistance of mechanical or graphic aids was, to Duhem's way of thinking, not only a requisite for true thought but also another clear testament to the superiority of the race over that of the English. Duhem's argument, developed in The Aim and Structure ofPhysical Theory, is interesting for a variety of reasons, not merely because it manages to combine philosophy with a rather quaint form of Frankish nationalism. It is also noteworthy for the contrast it provides to current critiques of writing process models and their underlying epistemologies. To Duhem, meaningful understanding was intimately linked to rigor, mathematical exactitude, and representational precision; since models were simplifications, their descriptions were unreliable and their utility questionable at best. In an age when positivism had not yet been supplanted as the dominant ideology guiding inquiry, Duhem criticized models for their failure to be positivistic enough. To a number of present-day composition scholars such as Patricia Bizzell, Marilyn Cooper and Michael Holzman (Talking, Reply), and William Irmscher, this view of models-in light of poststructuralist epistemology and reflexive methodological criticism-seems naive, a relic of a past age when scientific subjectivism masked itself as objectivity. In their critiques of cognitive writing process models, notably those models offered by John Hayes and Linda Flower (Identifying, Writing), Robert de Beaugrande, and Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter, these scholars suggest that the epistemological