“Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it.”
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Source: Principles of Research, 1918
About this quote
People navigate reality through mental models that simplify far more than they capture. The passage explains why theories are powerful tools while warning that a useful picture should never be mistaken for the world itself.
When to use it
- An economist tests whether a clean market model still fits the behavior seen in a real community.
- A manager revises a neat org chart after learning how decisions actually move through the team.
- A student compares two scientific models to see which assumptions hide important observations.