Modeling

Science is largely devoted to developing progressively more refined models of the natural world.

A model is an abstract representation of something. It does not represent all properties of that thing, but represents certain specific properties that have been chosen to be components of the model.

Consider the following two model airplanes. The first is modeled to look like an airplane, complete with wings, cockpit, propellor, horizontal and vertical stabilizers, and landing gear. It cannot, however, fly. The second, a paper airplane, bears little resemblance to an airplane other than in its ability to fly.