My understanding of physics is that physics is a mathematical description of the universe. Certain descriptions are so useful that they almost become real. Electric vector fields are not real. They are a mathematical description of a phenomena that is so useful that they might as well be real. Gradient and Curl are not real except to physicists who spend so much time working with them, they become real. I find nothing embarrassing that the dominant forms of matter in the universe are hypothetical. They are hypothethical by definition.
How about the electron? Every month I get a bill from a utility company claiming that they sent me some electrons. I don't know. I asked one of their EE grid engineers if he had ever seen an electron. He told me to wander up to the physics department. So I did. They said that they knew things about electrons, but had never actually seen one. They sent me to the philosophy department where there was a lecture on aesthetics in art. They said things like, if you saw an electron, how would you know it was an electron? And then, how do you know that you know?