Para quem confunde ciência com certezas absolutas:
"Taking a model literally is not taking a model seriously.
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Models can be both right, in the sense of expressing a way of thinking about a situation that can generate insight, and at the same time wrong - factually incorrect. Atoms do not consist of little balls orbiting a nucleus, and yet it can be helpful to imagine that they do.
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Nobel Prize-winning economist Peter Diamond said in his Nobel lecture that to me, taking a model literally is not taking a model seriously'. There are different ways to avoid taking models literally. We do not take either wave or particle theories of light literally, but we do take them both seriously. In economics, some use is made of what are called stylised facts: general principles that are known not to be true in detail but that describe some underlying observed or expected regularity. Examples of stylised fact are 'per-capita economic output (generally) grows over time', or people who go to university (generally) earn more', or in the UK it is (generally) warmer in May than in November'. These stylised facts do not purport to be explanations or to suggest causation, only correlation.
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We might think of models as being caricatures in the same sense. Inevitably, they emphasise the importance of certain kinds of feature - perhaps those that are the most superficially recognisable - and ignore others entirely.
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Thinking of models as caricatures helps us to understand how they both generate and help to illustrate, communicate and share insights. Thinking of models as stereotypes hints at the more negative aspects of this dynamic: in constructing this stereotype, what implicit value judgements are being made?
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Since each model represents only one perspective, there are infinitely many different models for any given situation.
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When the models fail, you will say that it was a special situation that couldn't have been predicted, but force equals mass times acceleration itself is only correct in a very special set of circumstances. Nancy Cartwright, an American philosopher of science, says that the laws of physics, when they apply, apply only ceteris paribus - with all other things remaining equal. In Model Land, we can make sure that happens. In the real world, though, the ceteris very rarely stay paribus."
Trechos retirados de "Escape from Model Land" de Erica Thompson.
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