What is required for understanding models of development is a combination of linguistic analysis and sociological analysis. It might well be that what is needed is nothing short of a combination of the logical skills of Wittgenstein and the sociological capacities of Weber. It would be presumptuous of me to claim to have effected such a synthesis. On the other hand, it would be ludicrous of all of us not to at least make an attempt to scale the heights. The word model is as slippery a concept as is currently in use by the social sciences. Even if we can settle on a formal definition of the word, namely, that a model is an isomorphic representation of objects that leads to an unmistakable identification of the expression of the object with the physical object, we are left with a host of substantive issues. There are at least three different fundamental meanings which attach to the term model—meanings which almost put the word in a different universe of discourse each time. First, model is used as a surrogate for levels, or an epistemological statement of how the world is carved up. Second, model is used as a surrogate for strategies. This entails the pragmatics of social change, or how one goes about carving a world up. Third, model is often used as a surrogate for theory, or how the explanation of changes in the world can best be made. What I should like to do here is provide at the outset a framework showing what is entailed in each of these types of models of development and then showing the implications of model-construction for social change. In this paper, I do not take my chore to be other than an accounting of the meaning of development at the macroscopic scale (rather than its microscopic details). Nor do I interpret my chore as a presentation of my own model, since this has been attempted elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]