Instrumentalism
Instrumentalism is an interpretation within philosophy of science that a successful scientific theory reveals nothing known either true or false about nature's unobservable aspects. By instrumentalism, then, scientific theory is a tool whereby humans
predict observations in a particular domain of nature by organizing laws, which state regularities, but theories do not unveil hidden aspects of nature to
explain the laws. Initially a novel perspective introduced by Pierre Duhem in 1906, instrumentalism is largely the prevailing practice of physicists today. Rejecting the ambitions of scientific realism to attain metaphysical truth about nature, instrumentalism is usually categorized as an
antirealism, although its mere lack of commitment to scientific theory's realism can be termed
nonrealism. Instrumentalism merely bypasses debate such as whether a
particle talked about in particle physics is a discrete entity of individual existence, or is an
excitation mode of a region of a field, or whether, reflecting an underlying reality that is not even a field, is something else altogether.