Moreover, can we ever know?
Here is a similar thought by Peter Szekeres:
When we consider the significant achievements of mathematical physics, one can not help but wonder why the workings of the universe are expressible at all by rigid mathematical 'laws'. Furthermore, how is it that purely human constructs refined over centuries of thought, have any relevance at all?... Some of these questions and challenges may be fundamentally unanswerable, but the fact remains that mathematics seems to be the correct path to understanding the physical world.Though the above is philosophical, I think it is still worth pondering.
To Me It's Okay Because The Models Have Predictive Power.
Even if physical theories are no more than models, I still find the pursuit of science very valuable because of its predictive power. Models or not, modern scientific theories predict masses, velocities, positions, charges... From these predictions we can create electronics, build cities, cure diseases, etc...
Science therefore does not suffer from the same thing that plagues many other philosophical constructs. For example, from Steven Weinberg:
Why was Aristotle... satisfied with a theory of motion that did not provide any way of predicting where a projectile or other falling body would be at any moment during its flight...? According to Aristotle, substances tend to move to their natural positions... but Aristotle did not try to say how fast a bit of earth drops downward or a spark flies upward. I am not asking why Aristotle had not discovered Newton's laws...
What puzzles me is why Aristotle expressed no dissatisfaction that he had not learned how to calculate the positions of projectiles at each moment along their paths. He did not seem to realize that this was a problem that anyone ought to solve.Even if physical theories are only models of reality, with modern science we have real predictive power so Aristotle's problem no longer exists and I believe this is a wonderful thing.
