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Re: "non-transfer" of energy



David Bowman wrote:
|" What is physical reality other than a collection of
| physical properties that happen to exist?"

I think this goes to the heart of the matter. Operationally, an electron
is nothing more than the sum of its properties. How else to define
anything except in terms of its properties? - that is what it IS. What is
left to the concept "electron" after you have removed all of its
properties?

This, I think is in contrast to our (Aristotelian) intuition.
Aristotelians (and the Scholastics) distinguished the "essence" of a thing
from its properties ("substance" vs "accidents") - I don't think this is
operationally valid, although it is intuitively natural. Thus, this
distinction never directly enters into our calculational models, but we do
fruitfully use this distinction in our speaking and in our conceptual
models. Our conceptual Physics is in the language of humans and is a
metaphor of the described reality.

Within the scope of testable Physics, It is fruitless to argue about
"substance" vs "accident" or which properties can /should be reified.


Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.