Abstract
A model always means a more or less drastic simplification of some real system in order to describe or even to explain a phenomenon which is experimentally observed in that real system. A description of a phenomenon is a mathematical formulation of its constitutive variables, mostly in the form of a differential equation or a system of differential equations which contain the experimental parameters of the phenomenon as constants. An explanation goes beyond a pure description in that it reduces the occurrence of the phenomenon to more elementary relationships or laws which were known already. It is evident that the border line between a descriptive and an explanatory model is hazy and very often depends on the point of view.
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© 1981 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Schnakenberg, J. (1981). Models. In: Thermodynamic Network Analysis of Biological Systems. Universitext. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67971-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-67971-1_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-10612-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-67971-1
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