Merton, Scholes, and the other partners in LTCM were well aware of the status of finance theory's models as engines of inquiry rather than exact reproductions of markets, and the details of the models used by LTCM were often far less critical to its activities than is commonly imagined. The episode is interesting from the viewpoint of the relationship between models and "reality," but not by way of the banal observation that the former are imperfect approximations to the latter.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 153