"In physics and mathematics, complicated systems are constructed to solve theoretical problems, and the question of whether such a situation could ever arise in practice is considered beside the point.
The scientist is seeking to uncover a truth: What is the reality, what is the quintessential state of things, in a given situation?
The purpose is not to solve a practical problem but to gain a comprehensive understand ing of a truth, to learn the nature of things.
Similarly, when the Talmud discusses a financial dispute between two parties, citing their arguments and counterarguments, it is not necessarily relating an actual case that was or ever will be.
Rather, it is presenting an abstract, theoretical model.
It is endeavoring to discover what God's desire would be in such a situation.
The purpose is not to solve a particular dispute between two individuals but to see how this point relates to the universal order, to the inner life of creation, to learn what it is that God wants from His world."
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From Opening the Tanya by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
