a way of viewing scientific theories and models that says they are merely tools or calculation devices and are not to be interpreted as reality.
A philosophy that views ideas and theories as useful tools with little or nothing to do with correctly depicting reality, merely serving to effectively explain and predict phenomena.
In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism is the view that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments whose worth is measured not by whether the concepts and theories are true or false (or correctly depict reality), but by how effective they are in explaining and predicting phenomena.