The Paradox of 'Scientific Progress'

Although we routinely use the expression 'Scientific Progress' in various debates ranging from ecology to religion to witchcraft, it embodies, in fact, a curious paradox. On the one hand, we may believe that 'science' (especially physics and chemistry) gives us an accurate representation of the world through its laws, generalisations, and descriptions of physical reality. But on the other hand, we also believe that this representation is somehow not perfect, that there is a 'gap' or a 'misfit' between the representation and the reality, for if there were no such gap or misfit, how could we talk of progress towards a higher level of congruence between the two?