A few fields are a bit like that. I remember my chemistry teacher in high school saying something similar.

As mostly a math person, it kind of bugs me. There definitely is one set of rules that a field obeys, and while it’s usually necessary to simplify I’d really like to know how not to. Sure, water is mostly incompressible, but it’s not exactly so, and that’s how sound works and can translate to other mediums. And then once you get down to small scales, high energies or low pressures you start seeing the individual water molecules being relevant and doing all kinds of different things. Those factors were always there, even if they weren’t relevant.

Sorry, maybe that’s a bit of a rant, but all that to say I’m sure you can find a consensus on these questions eventually.