It's very unlike mathematics. We have conjecture/theorem/PROOF. Right or wrong.
You have guess/model/experiment/new-guess-completely-unrelated-to-old-guess/model/experiment/tweaking-of-guess-but-who-really-knows-anyway-and-why-did-I-get-into-this-when-we-can't-fully-understand-the-universe-anyway.
That's what separates science from mathematics.
Simple example: the properties of Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein, and Fermi-Dirac statistics can be completely described mathematically. Whether any objects actually follow such statisical laws is a physics question.