 Also closely related is the notion of a probing model (or “study model”). Models of this kind do not perform a representational function and are not expected to instruct us about anything beyond the model itself. The purpose of these models is to test new theoretical tools that are used later on to build representational models. In field theory, for instance, the so-called φ4-model was studied extensively, not because it was believed to represent anything real, but because it served several heuristic functions: the simplicity of the φ4-model allowed physicists to “get a feeling” for what quantum field theories are like and to extract some general features that this simple model shared with more complicated ones. Physicists could study complicated techniques such as renormalization in a simple setting, and it was possible to get acquainted with important mechanisms—in this case symmetry-breaking—that could later be used in different contexts (Hartmann 1995). This is true not only for physics. As Wimsatt (1987, 2007) points out, a false model in genetics can perform many useful functions, among them the following: the false model can help answering questions about more realistic models, provide an arena for answering questions about properties of more complex models, “factor out” phenomena that would not otherwise be seen, serve as a limiting case of a more general model (or two false models may define the extremes of a continuum of cases on which the real case is supposed to lie), or lead to the identification of relevant variables and the estimation of their values.