What is a model?

What is a model, if not more than a representation of reality? A model can be seen as a way to measure and communicate a set of facts. A model is used to provide a way to express a perception of reality. In a way, it is your own version of reality. The Street-Kuhn maxim states it better by proclaiming that reality cannot make a model less or more fallible. A model cannot be wrong because it is a mere representation; hence it is accepted that it will have flaws. The only way to change a model is by supplanting it with another model.

A model is never defeated by facts, however damaging, but only by another model. — in Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, p. 68, referring to Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions