When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example – rather than by total abstraction – works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense – as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms – but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.
