🖍️Richard Levins - Collected Quotes

"A mathematical model is neither an hypothesis nor a theory. Unlike the scientific hypothesis, a model is not verifiable directly by experiment. For all models are both true and false. Almost any plausible proposed relation among aspects of nature is likely to be true in the sense that it occurs (although rarely and slightly). Yet all models leave out a lot and are in that sense false, incomplete, inadequate. The validation of a model is not that it is ' 'true" but that it generates good testable hypotheses relevant to important problems. A model may be discarded in favor of a more powerful one, but it usually is simply outgrown when the live issues are not any longer those for which it was designed." (Richard Levins, "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology", American Scientist 54(4), 1966)

"For population genetics, a population is specified by the frequencies of genotypes without reference to the age distribution, physiological state as a reflection of past history, or population density. A single population or species is treated at a time, and evolution is usually assumed to occur in a constant environment. Population ecology, on the other hand, recognizes multispecies systems, describes populations in terms of their age distributions, physiological states, and densities. The environment is allowed to vary but the species are treated as genetically homogeneous, so that evolution is ignored." (Richard Levins, "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology", American Scientist 54(4), 1966)

"It is of course desirable to work with manageable models which maximize generality, realism, and precision toward the overlapping but not identical goals of understanding, predicting, and modifying nature. But this cannot be done. Therefore, several alternative strategies have evolved: (1) Sacrifice generality to realism and precision. (2) Sacrifice realism to generality and precision. (3) Sacrifice precision to realism and generality." (Richard Levins, "The strategy of model building in population biology", American Scientist Vol. 54 (4), 1966) 

"The multiplicity of models is imposed by the contradictory demands of a complex, heterogeneous nature and a mind that can only cope with few variables at a time; by the contradictory desiderata of generality, realism, and precision; by the need to understand and also to control; even by the opposing esthetic standards which emphasize the stark simplicity and power of a general theorem as against the richness and the diversity of living nature. These conflicts are irreconcilable. Therefore, the alternative approaches even of contending schools are part of a larger mixed strategy. But the conflict is about method, not nature, for the individual models, while they are essential for understanding reality, should not be confused with that reality itself." (Richard Levins, "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology", American Scientist 54(4), 1966)

"The validation of a model is not that it is 'true' but that it generates good testable hypotheses relevant to important problems." (Richard Levins, "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology", American Scientist 54(4), 1966)

"[…] truth is the intersection of independent lies." (Richard Levins, "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology", 1966)

"Unlike the theory, models are restricted by technical considerations to a few components at a time, even in systems which are complex. Thus a satisfactory theory is usually a cluster of models. These models are related to each other in several ways : as coordinate alternative models for the same set of phenomena, they jointly produce robust theorems; as complementary models they can cope with different aspects of the same problem and give complementary as well as overlapping results; as hierarchically arranged 'nested' models, each provides an interpretation of the sufficient parameters of the next higher level where they are taken as given." (Richard Levins, "The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology", American Scientist 54(4), 1966)

"Parts and wholes evolve in consequence of their relationship, and the relationship itself evolves. These are the properties of things that we call dialectical: that one thing cannot exist without the other, that one acquires its properties from its relation to the other, that the properties of both evolve as a consequence of their interpenetration."  (Richard Levins & Richard C Lewontin, "The Dialectical Biologist", 1985)

"The organism cannot be regarded as simply the passive object of autonomous internal and external forces; it is also the subject of its own evolution." (Richard Levins & Richard C Lewontin, "The Dialectical Biologist", 1985)

"We believe that science, in all its sense, is a social process that both causes and is caused by social organisation."  (Richard Levins & Richard C Lewontin, "The Dialectical Biologist", 1985)