In science, like most things, one prefers simple over complex whenever possible. You keep adding variables until the explanatory juice starts hitting diminishing marginal returns. So cystic fibrosis is due to a mutation at one gene, and the disease expresses recessively at that locus. The reality is that one mutation accounts for ~65-70% of cystic fibrosis cases around the world, and there are nearly ~1,400 known mutations on the CFTR locus. How about skin color? Mutations on a dozen genes can probably explain ~90% of the variance in the trait value across the world between populations. In fact, one single mutation on one base pair can explain ~30-40% of the trait value difference between Europeans and Africans. This is a more complex story that cystic fibrosis; you have not just many mutations, but many mutations across many genes. But, the number of genes and mutations are manageable. You can keep track of most of them in your head (e.g., I can tell you that SLC24A5, SLC45A2, KITLG, and HERC2, can explain most of the trait value difference between Africans and Europeans without looking it up).
