We use models to interpret everything we experience.

Like 2d maps overlap to represent a 3d world models in physics overlap to explain the rules and properties of our universe.

Thales, Anaxamander and others discovered models that helped explain the world around them. Eratosthenes was even able to obtain a very accurate measurement of the size of the planet.

He had heard that south in the city of Swenet the Sun would appear directly overhead at the zenith. So he from where he was north, at noon on the summer solstice in Alexandria he measured the Sun’s angle of elevation. He found it to be 1/50th of a circle. The distance from Alexandria to Swenet was known and from that he was able to estimate the circumference of the Earth.

Unfortunately Aristotle was not so big on checking out that his ideas and theories matched reality. And if they didn’t he would do a little adjusting. Like creating the idea of an Ether. His idea’s and Models held sway for well over a thousand years until people began to question them during the enlightenment.

Ptolemy created a model that explained the motions of the planet with epicycles, circles inside circles. It wasn’t until Copernicus and Galileo almost 1500 years later that better models were created and then they were met with such strong resistance that Copernicus only published posthumously and Galileo was sentenced to house arrest in his old age.

Newton created his models of gravity and motion, Faraday came up with his models of force fields that were explained mathematically by Maxwell and Einstien helped us understand the universe with yet another model that worked even better then the ones that came before.

And today physicists are working on M theory. A collection of theories to explain how everything works from the very small to the very large. Exploration of ideas about multiple universes and why we don’t have to fall back to the no reason of saying God made it that way.