The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness
Obviously, a model that abstract from the environment and considers the economy in isolation from it cannot shed any light on the relation of the economy to the environment. This kind of mistake was given a name by the philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead. He called it the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. By that he meant the error of mistaking the map for the territory. The error of treating an abstract model, made with the purpose of understanding one aspect of reality, as if it were adequate for understanding everything, or entirely different things, things that bed been abstracted from in making the model. Whitehead was no enemy of abstract thought. He emphasized that we cannot think without abstraction. All the more important, therefore, to be aware of the limit of our abstraction. The power of abstract thought comes at a cost. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness t is to forget that cost.