> So, is it really important to describe why a ball falls to the ground when I release it, or is it good enough to have a system that describes the interactions

> So, is it really important to describe why a ball falls to the ground when I release it, or is it good enough to have a system that describes the interactions enough that I can apply it to problems?... does it really matter if I think the ball falls back to earth because mass attracts mass or because mass bends spacetime? I think you answer this question in your own post. The answer depends entirely on your goals. "All models are wrong, but some are useful". If all we ever wanted to do was shoot cannon balls over/into walls accurately, then we probably would've never bothered inventing modern physics. But we did want to do other things, so we built better models. It's worth noting that some of those things we wanted to do were more philosophical than others, e.g., engineering ("put satellites into orbit"), explaining empirical observations that seem important ("explain how electricity really works") and philosophical ("understand the nature of reality") are all answers to the question "what are you goals?" that have inspired progress toward better models in physics. > What does applying a similar mind set in something dealing with vastly more complicated systems, such as in medicine, looks like? It takes a certain amount of philosophical sophistication to realize that even the most perfect model is still a model and to then reason through what that entails -- epistemologically -- for less perfect models and for the entire scientific enterprise.