Abstractions, Idealizations, and Evolutionary Biology

ion, as described above, is inevitable in all description. So there is no news in the idea that abstraction is essential to scientific work. Without it, communication itself would be impossible. That leaves a significant question, for each field and each question, of how much abstraction is appropriate. Idealization I see as near-enough essential to science also, but in a way that is more controversial and substantial. The practice of science shows that fictionalizing is often a crucially important strategy, and also something that people can do while not recognizing what they are doing, and perhaps while talking in misleading ways about what they are doing. But we can certainly