Quote:
Originally Posted by Disinfo Agent
A model is usually a simplification of reality, but that's a good thing when reality is dumbfoundingly complex. If science had started off by trying to explain the world exactly in all its richness of detail, and never settled for anything less, it would never have got anywhere.
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The objective is efficiency, making the most of our time and resources. Given a handful of observations, Newton (or Halley) could predict future positions of a comet. The "model," if there is one here, is the solar system itself. (Sometimes, the world can serve as its own model.) Newton discovered a method that allows predicting positions from a limited set of observations of that solar system. Newton did not need to construct a limited, sketchy replica of the solar system to simplify the problem. He just needed to discover the most relevant aspects of the solar system to handle the problem at hand.