From The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis:
The great masters do not take any Model quite so seriously as the rest of us. They know that it is, after all, only a model, possibly replaceable.
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That’s great coming from Lewis.
The “Model” he has in mind in that book is the medieval model of the universe, but of course his comments apply to mathematical models too. And Lewis might agree with that, since he does talk about scientific models too.
The map is not the territory.
Whether or not he had it in mind, his comments apply to all models period. Had the top financial minds heeded this advice before 2008, we might be is a shallower hole.
See Emanual Derman’s “Models Behaving Badly”