Colligation in modelling practices: From Whewell’s tides to the San Francisco Bay Model

“Colligation”, a term first introduced in philosophy of science by William Whewell (1840), today sparks a renewed interest beyond Whewell scholarship. In this paper, we argue that adopting the notion of colligation in current debates in philosophy of science can contribute to our understanding of scientific models. Specifically, studying colligation allows us to have a better grasp of how integrating diverse model components (empirical data, theory, useful idealization, visual and other representational resources) in a creative way may produce novel generalizations about the phenomenon investigated. Our argument is built both on the theoretical appraisal of Whewell’s philosophy of science and the historical rehabilitation of his scientific work on tides. Adopting a philosophy of science in practice perspective, we show how colligation emerged from Whewell’s empirical work on tides. The production of idealized maps (“cotidal maps”) illustrates the unifying and creative power of the activity of colligating in scientific practice. We show the importance of colligation in modelling practices more generally by looking at its epistemic role in the construction of the San Francisco Bay Model.