This article describes the way in which the idea of model began to be discussed in science, in particular in physics, towards the end of the 19th century. Physics is perhaps the first scientific domain that explicitly and consciously made use of models in a way that was understood to involve abandoning any attempt faithfully to represent natural phenomena. The representation of electromagnetic phenomena by means of analogies was in question.
Model; Maxwell; Electromagnetism; Representation; Boltzmann; Physics in the 19th century
