But empiricism dictates, that the experiment is correct and the theory is just a description of the experiment. And if we discard empiricism, then we can not really talk about physics anymore.
Once we accept the basic staring point that physics is the loop in which we do the experiments, refine the models, then refine the experiments, etc, we simply don't need to insist on disclaimers that we do it that that way in every our statement.
Most of the other answers come from the previous iterations of the described loop, David's from the more recent.
Edit:Grammar.
i was pointing out a problem you may read in feynman's and gerard 't hooft's writings and early quantum physicists, when it comes to interpreting quantum phenomena. What is is? do Mathematical entities have outside existence? Kant, Brentano, Frege, Heidegger, empiricists also touched this issue.
ps: I'm a physics graduate and studied/did lab work with CERN neutrino oscillation researchers, so I like such discussions wherever they pop up.
Anyway, this is a rabbit hole that one can go down however far one desires. Even time and space are just theoretical constructions. At some point you have to draw a line and talk about "reality" rather than drowning in a depthless sea of metaphysical hedges.
But I agree, this is a rabbit hole. ( I am not as sure, that it is depthless. ) And of course, if we would need to carry all this meta physical baggage always, then we could not do anything of practical importance.
Yes, but isn't it?
>>The problem with this statement is, that a observed object is said to be made of a mathematical abstraction.
These fields are very real, it is our understanding of them that is perhaps inaccurate!
>Yes, but isn't it?
If you understand 'made of' as: a program that produces identical output from the same input can be expressed in C, then absolutely.
> These fields are very real, it is our understanding of them that is perhaps inaccurate!
Again, this depends on the precise meaning of the words. To start with a analogy, at some point the gravitational force was understood as a instantaneous action over some distance, nowadays it is understood as curvature of the space-time. So if you say that 'the fields are real,' then you implicitly claim that they are fields. And as our understanding evolves, perhaps we will call them something else entirely, we may not even describe them as fields anymore than today gravity is described as a action at a distance.
So you may argue, that this is just semantics. But semantics become important, when you have a theory which predicts that the fundamental particles of the theory can not be observed in isolation. If the only thing that you actually observe is the response of a 100-ton detector, and where you heavily post process the data you gain from observing the detector.
And yet QCD is much more complicated than this... we never go back and reconcile it with the simplified version we saw in high school science class.