The apocryphal quotation from George Box is well know:
“All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
The actual quotation from his 1976 paper is actually much more relevant today:
“Since all models are wrong the scientist cannot obtain a correct one by excessive elaboration. On the contrary following William of Occam he should seek an economical description of natural phenomena. Just as the ability to devise simple but evocative models is the signature of the great scientist so overelaboration and overparameterization is often the mark of mediocrity.”
This is actually the extension of Aristotles insight from his Nicomachean Ethics:
“[…] it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits” […]
“[We must] not look for precision in all things alike, but in each class of things such precision as accords with the subject-matter, and so much as is appropriate to the inquiry. For a carpenter and a geometer investigate the right angle in different ways; the former does so in so far as the right angle is useful for his work, while the latter inquires what it is or what sort of thing it is; for he is a spectator of the truth.”
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