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Obviously, it depends on what you're trying to achieve. Sometimes it's realism. And there's no substitute, as Mark has said,  for staring at, say a glass ball in the real world and see how refractions work> Or as all of us have done in art classes, putting and object on a table and seeing how shadows work and how light hits the object. Art 101.

That said, once you learn that... by all means expand it. Say "what if?" What if you're creating a fantasy world? In that world, the laws may be different but.... there still have to be laws. So you bend, but not break, things like gravity, light, etc. Create a whole new world, yes. But that world still has to conform internally to its own laws.