Rethinking progress in urban analysis and modeling: models, metaphors, and meaning - Urban Remote Sensing: Monitoring, Synthesis and Modeling in the Urban Environment - page 355

26.2 Pepper'sworld
hypotheses: the role of root
metaphors in understanding
reality

Contextualism draws inspiration from the common-sense
experience of unique events. It sees the world as an arena of
unique occurrences for some local contexts. It seeks to unravel
the texture and strands of processes operating in, or associated
with, particular events. Its world-view is a dispersed one with a
synthetic goal. Contextualism espouses an operational theory of
truth. What is considered as true is something that works or can
be operationalized (at a time) in the real world. Its practice motto
is to ''get to each individual thing itself.''
Although published over 65 years ago, Pepper's world
hypotheses are still highly relevant today to help understanding
the diverse strands of urban analysis and modeling efforts.

Inspired by Buttimer's (1993) early work on the topic, Pepper's
world hypotheses will be used as the guiding conceptual frame-
work for this chapter. In his classic volume on metaphysics,
Berkeley philosopher Stephen Pepper (1942) postulated four
world hypotheses, each having its own root metaphor, theory
of truth, world picture, and narrative style (Table 26.1). As
Buttimer (1993) has demonstrated, Pepper's world hypotheses
can serve as an inclusive framework for our understanding of real-
ity in general, and the models in social sciences and humanities
in particular.
Formism grounds itself on a common sense experience based
in similarity; its cognitive claims rest on a correspondence theory
of truth. A proposition is considered as true if it corresponds to
a fact or some portion of reality. Its world picture is a dispersed
one; each form may be analyzed and explained in terms of its
own nature and appearance. Its practice motto is to ''get to the
top of things.''
Mechanism takes a common sense experience with the
machine as its root metaphor. Its claim to cognitive validity
rests on a causal adjustment theory of truth, which is based on
the idea that a proposition is considered as true only if there is
an appropriate causal connection between the states of affairs.
Mechanism offers an integrated world view while also affording
guidelines for detailed analysis. Its practice motto is to ''get to
the bottom of things.''
Organism also offers an integrated picture of the world, but
it aims at synthetic understanding of the whole rather than the
analysis of its parts. It implicitly assumes that every event in
the world follows a concealed process, all eventually reaching
maturation (and transcendence) in an organic whole. It sees all
events in life cycles, more or less following specific organic forms
of growth. Cognitive claims of the organic world view rest on
a coherent theory of truth. The truth of any new proposition
consists in its coherence with some specified set of propositions.
Its practices motto is to ''get to whole of things.''

26.3 Progress in urban
analysis andmodeling:
metaphors urbanmodelers
live by

There have been continuing efforts to review progress in urban
modeling during the past 50 years (Harris, 1965, 1985; Batty,
1976, 1994, 2007; de la Barra, 1989; Klosterman, 1994, Wilson,
1998; Wegener, 2004). In general, a consensus seems to exist
among urban modelers that there are at least two generations
of urban models (Sui, 1997). The first generation correspond-
ing largely to those published prior to Lee's (1973) paper, are
typically top-down models focusing on land-use and transporta-
tion interaction according to principles drawn from neoclassic
economics, regional science, and spatial interaction models. The
second generation favors a more bottom-up approach, focus-
ing on individual behaviors using either cellular automata or
agent-based modeling approaches. Although classifying models
through this two-generation-approach serves a pedagogic pur-
pose for students of urban modeling to understand fundamental
changes in urban modeling, it doesn't do justice to the diverse
literature on urban analysis modeling.
Looking through the glass of Pepper's four world hypotheses,
the efforts of urban analysis and modeling during the past 50

TABLE 26.1 Pepper's world hypotheses, root metaphors, and theories of truth.

World Root metaphors Theories of truth World picture/ Practice motto

hypothesis narrative style

Formism Mosaic/similarity of

forms

Correspondence Dispersed/analytical ''Get to the top of

things''

Mechanism Machine Causal adjustment Integrated/analytical ''Get to the bottom of

things''

Organism Organic whole Coherence Integrated/synthetic ''Get to the whole of

things''

Contextualism Arena/spontaneous

(historic) events

Operational/pragmatic/
anarchistic

Dispersed/synthetic ''Get to each individual

thing itself''