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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
It is proposed that we use the term “approximation” for inexact description of a target system and “idealization” for another system whose properties also provide an inexact description of the target system. Since systems generated by a limiting process can often have quite unexpected—even inconsistent—properties, familiar limit processes used in statistical physics can fail to provide idealizations but merely provide approximations.
I thank Elay Sheck, Mike Tamir, and Giovanni Valente for helpful discussion and Bob Batterman, Nazim Bouatta, Jeremy Butterfield, Erik Curiel, and Wayne Myrvold (and students of the last two at the University of Western Ontario) for helpful remarks on an earlier draft.