Models, Theories and Time

"Theories and models are attempts to eliminate time and its consequences, to make the world invariant, so that present and future become one. We need models and theories because of time…You can only be disappointed if you had hoped and desired. To have hoped means to have had preconceptions – models, in short – for how the world should evolve. To have had preconceptions means to have expected a particular future. To be disappointed therefore requires time, desire and a model…You can count yourself lucky if your model of yourself survives its collision with time."

– Emmanuel Derman, Models. Behaving. Badly.  [2011]