Idealization and Concretization: Subject definition List

When scientists want to explain, they usually prefer simple explanations. They like to start whith one single, main idea, and only later, and only if necessary, complicate their considerations. This is called the "method of idealization and concretization". In analyzing how scientists work at theories along these lines, the questions are:

1. What are the factors relevant to the problem the theory deals with?.
2. How is their order in terms of relevance?
3. Idealization: what is the "ideal law" mimicking the working of the main factors in isolation (everybody usually is convinced that nowhere, not even in the best laboratory, this "pure" situation can be seen in reality)
4. Concretization: in what order and how are the secondary factors introduced into the problems the theory deals with? How does this improve the precision of the approximation of the theory's outcomes with what is observed in practise?

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