Global Models

Abstract

In the last three chapters of this work, I shall attempt to throw some light on the physical content that is implicit in the probabilistic models we use to represent regionalized phenomena. The richness of a physical concept is measured by the number and variety of the phenomena between which it highlights similarities and therefore by the richness of the network of relationships and physical laws in which it is involved. It is this network that, strictly speaking, constitutes the operational definition of the concept. We shall therefore have to carry out a full-scale operational reconstruction of our probabilistic models. It is an immense task, and there is no question of being able to carry it out in its entirety. I shall content myself with examining some typical particular cases, without even claiming in any way that the procedure I shall follow (namely going through the intermediary of “probabilistic representations”) is the only possible one, or even necessarily the best.