Ludwig Boltzmann’s Bildtheorie has been portrayed as a pre-cursor of the semantic view of theories and as such, the word “Bild” is translated as model. But this anachronistic understanding of Boltzmann’s use of Bilder fails to account for the wide range of roles they play in his understanding of scientific methodology. When the concept of Bild is understood historically in Viennese thought, a much broader sense emerges that leads to the investigation of its use in multiple ways in various contexts (...) in the process of proposing, pursuing, and justifying scientific beliefs. (shrink)