There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
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Re: There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
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Re: There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
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Re: There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
#4Are fields real though? If so, they point to a mathematical reality that is non physical.
Re: There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
#5Are fields real though? If so, they point to a mathematical reality that is non physical.
Fields are real. They are physical as well as they are the basis of the physical world.
Re: There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
#6Are fields real though? If so, they point to a mathematical reality that is non physical.
Why are fields non-physical?
Re: There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
#7Are fields real though? If so, they point to a mathematical reality that is non physical.
There’s nothing “real” in physics. Everything is a model, and every model is necessarily flawed—otherwise would imply a provably correct, complete formal description of the actual-really-“real”. To obtain that even in theory we would have to observe the real from the outside, which we by definition cannot: we’re necessarily part of what we’re describing, so if we could look at it from the outside all we would get then is a new indescribable “real”.
Hence, a question like “are fields real?” is besides the point: it is impossible to tell whether that theory is wrong or qualify how wrong it is, because the reference point is never available. It’s a model—it works for some purposes, it doesn’t for others.
Re: There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
#8Are fields real though? If so, they point to a mathematical reality that is non physical.
Why are fields non-physical?
Not OP but I think they actually mean non-conforming to deeply held beliefs of an atomic universe a la Democritus
I hope primary school educators are moving past the atomic model, first to subatomic then to quantum fields (even just a hand wavey introduction with no maths)
People hold onto the underlying paradigm they are first taught for an awfully long time even if they logically know better
Re: There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
#9Are fields real though? If so, they point to a mathematical reality that is non physical.
It really depends on what you mean by real. Many philosophers have adopted the stance that if a concept provides a useful way to talk about reality, it's real. There's no such thing as tables or chairs, but we consider them real because doing so is useful. By the same token particles are real because they are a really useful way to subdivide reality, even though their appearance is just a consequence of field theory.
Re: There are no particles, there are only fields (2012)
#10Are fields real though? If so, they point to a mathematical reality that is non physical.
There’s nothing “real” in physics. Everything is a model, and every model is necessarily flawed—otherwise would imply a provably correct, complete formal description of the actual-really-“real”. To obtain that even in theory we would have to observe the real from the outside, which we by definition cannot: we’re necessarily part of what we’re describing, so if we could look at it from the outside all we would get the…
I agree that you can't know what is "real" without looking at our universe from outside it, but that, in and of itself, doesn't imply that every model must be flawed, in the sense that its predictions must not be 100% consistent with observation. We could stumble across the "real" model, or something equivalent to it (in the sense of identical predictions) - we'd have no way of knowing whether the model is "real", but it could still be right.