This is probably way outta left field, and I certainly have no expertise in this topic, but the way you wrote your request made me think about Maxwell’s papers on electromagnetic theory. In essence he takes empirical data from experimentalists (chiefly Faraday) and creates an entirely metaphorical model (in the sense that it is merely an abstracted mental aid to envision EM processes and doesn’t purport to be what’s “actually happening”) that encompasses all the data in order to produce elegant equations that turn out to be correct (meaning, they actually predict EM behavior) even though the model is a complete abstraction! A really excellent case study on the uses of abstraction and also a really eye opening look at the philosophy of physics for a nonscientist like me.
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