> Another way of putting it is "A mathematician might be interested in the general properties of dynamical systems, and a biologists entire research agenda at the moment may very well be this set of equations with a very specific parameter set."

I surely won't disagree, but I want to add the point that when the model turns out to be wrong (and most will), also the biologist will have an interest to know, whether just some parameters (say values of constants, wrong probablility assumption) are wrong or the fundamental model has to be reconsidered.