By starting with an abstract premise and asking "let's work out what would happen?", any useful and surprising results tell us connections that we didn't see until we worked them out. If those results match the real world, we learned about the connection between the real world and a plausible abstract underlying structure.
This is a useful method how to derive equations and functions from other principles and empirical observations. You can think of it as a search strategy, to find simpler explanations and mechanisms that produce the complex consequences we observe in real life.
A lot of quantum theory was figured out this way, which has proved very useful in practice. Much of our modern technology depends on it.
By starting with an abstract premise and asking "let's work out what would happen?", any useful and surprising results tell us connections that we didn't see until we worked them out. If those results match the real world, we learned about the connection between the real world and a plausible abstract underlying structure.
This is a useful method how to derive equations and functions from other principles and empirical observations. You can think of it as a search strategy, to find simpler explanations and mechanisms that produce the complex consequences we observe in real life.
A lot of quantum theory was figured out this way, which has proved very useful in practice. Much of our modern technology depends on it.