3.1.1 The Historical Significance of Models and Languages
Models are an integral part of human history, perhaps even predating the invention of languages. People have always lived with representations of the world, which have had a significant impact on the evolution of the world, or its simulation, as some may think. Languages have enabled the sharing and transmission of knowledge over time. As uses have evolved, technology has developed, and wars have happened; languages have grown, specialized, or blended, often making interpretation more difficult.
The rest of this section will focus on understanding the roles and subtleties in the relationships between systems, formal languages, and models (Figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1 Relationship between system, language, and model.
A model represents a simplified version of a system, ignoring certain details to focus on the features of interest. Thus, a model is never totally accurate, but it can still make fairly good predictions about the system being studied. For example, Newton’s laws predict how planets move. While these equations do not fully account for all the complexities of planets and their interactions, they provide sufficiently accurate predictions in many cases.
A model is expressed using one or more languages. At first, natural language may suffice to describe ...
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