Statut et rôle des modèles dans le travail scientifique et dans l'enseignement de la biologie

Abstract

Status and role of models in scientific work and in the teaching of biology. The word model is increasingly used in the vocabulary of science, and in teaching. Does this mean that we have a new scientific method in Biology, or a new philosophy of science ? The author, after analysing several historical and contemporary examples, elucidates certain common properties of analogical and formalised models, and defines the principal characteristics of the evolution of modélisation. He compares this scientific process with classical analytical experimentation, and describes three types of models used in Biology. Finally he underlines the principal obstacles, the false frontiers and the true limits to the use of models as a mean of reducing complexity. These limits are made apparent if attention is given to the specificity of the biological object and to the possibility of illness.