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You mean the luminiferous aether? It certainly seems like it, at least to an ordinary person like myself. Both were thought up in order to explain gaps in our theories.
Yup:
"The postulated Higgs field in the vacuum is a sort of hypothetical lattice which fills our Universe. We need it because otherwise we cannot explain why the Z and W particles which carry the weak interactions are so heavy while the photon which carries electromagnetic forces is massless." (From the second article in newgreen's link). But then, this is part of how science works. Excellent link, newgreen, by the way.