Is a Giant Catfish a Model?

A lot of the things that start off as models ultimately become fables, but they 're still place holders for things that we don't understand. The atom was at one time a model for what was going on. And it could have gone either way. I don't know that i'm willing to make a distinction between fable and model, except in hindsight. How can we simplify so that we can get our head around a complicated construct, yet not over simplify? Were doing damage in our ability to reproduce the characteristics of the data that we observe?