The use of the term model is an acknowledgment that our knowledge of the actual is not complete and thus must always be representative of something out of reach (temporarily or permanently), so models can never be fully faithful to what they actually model, for then we would know the actual. If we choose not to define our scientific truths as models, then they become states of practical knowledge rather in the manner in which we practice engineering - EM radiation can be though of propagating electric and magnetic waves and we design an antenna as if the electric wave was a real physical entity. It's good engineering, but it is clearly a model representing a much deeper underlying reality. As soon as we acknowledge that fact we have created a distinction between what we observe and what that observation actually relates to. At a stroke the "state of practical knowledge" that could be thought of as having no representational value now becomes a model that is a human representation of absolute reality.

The role of science surely is to acknowledge the model as an objective human representation, to acknowledge the limits of science and to pursue the reality as best as we are able to. That pursuit has revealed a notion of unreachable absolute reality, but I don't see this as insulating us from nature, I see it as very much defining our place within nature.