"The term 'model' has become fashionable". What Mary Hesse characterized in the mid-1960s as a trend in logic, mathematics, and the natural sciences, applies today in general for a broad spectrum of disciplines. Today models appear to be of "extraordinary importance" compared to the first half of the twentieth century, when models were neither mentioned nor contemplated, either generally in scientific publications or specifically in the philosophy of science. It is even assumed that models are "the key to science" and (...) that today's science is largely... (shrink)