Taming vagueness: the philosophy of network science

Abstract In the last 20 years network science has become an independent scientific field. We argue that by building models scientists are able to tame vagueness of propositions about complex systems and networks, is, make these precise. This makes it possible study important vague properties such as modularity, near-decomposability, scale-freeness or being a small world. Using epistemic model science, we systematically analyse specific nature logic behind taming mechanism.