Model
Models in systems theory seem to be means of both understanding and testing systems. We create a model to extract or identify "essential or interesting features that can be studied through analysis of the model" (Poole, 60).
Models would seem to need to be formal--that is, they are characterized by rigorous methods, formal rules, and other means of rule-bound abstracting and idealizing.
Poole does mention informal models--or "models expressed in ordinary language" (60)--but the latter seems to me (Ned O) not to be a model at all, since but rather more generically a representation.
Yet, not all models are representations: one could create a model of a system that in no way claims to re-represent something in the empirical world.
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