Yes. Feynman related the story about a seminar where it was mathematically shown what the spin state of a particle was. Feynman believed the arguent it is good and convinced him the spin was one. But someone piped up and said, the spin's not one it's three -- they measured it.
Then we measure the reality, and find that it agrees with the math models.
That's right, as in the example above.
Another Cal Tech anecdote, a young underclassman at one of his first seminars hears his professor growl "where's the data".
You haven't been able to get to the substance other than the model or concept. Where's the data? You've got some nice anecdotes -- which science don't make.
The data? That is in the thousands of bees observed by the team.
It is the millions of Hudson's bay company fur returns, and their time sequence, for 300 years.
It is the tens of thousands of measles cases in Baltimore collected over 300 years.
Does that help?
Feynman also wrote in his "Six Easy Pieces" a description of several particles, and didn't have an over arching theory about how they were related.
"And such is the regretable, inadequate state of Physics today."
The quark theory came out a few years later, and provided insights not previously available. Data measured the energy level of the "top quark" that was the last. String theory was developed after that.
When you have a theory that doesnt match the measurements, you are still looking. When you have a theory that matches data, that is as good as a theory gets, until you find data that the theory doesn't explain. Then you look for a new theory.