 A longstanding puzzle in the philosophy of science concerns how idealized models and representations (“idealizations”, for short) allow cognitive access to the world. The puzzle is that although idealizations seem to provide real epistemic benefits, the benefits cannot apparently be identified with truth, because to the extent that they falsify or mispresent the world, idealizations often fail to reflect the truth. For example, idealizations often appeal to entities that do not and perhaps cannot exist—fully rational agents, frictionless planes, etc. Or they subtract important worldly elements from their accounts—e.g., long range inter-molecular forces.