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Re: [Phys-L] Particles, Fields or ?

Welcome to the world of Philosophy (Philosophy of Science). The debate about what is 'real', the nature of knowledge, the existence (or not) of Truth (with a capital T) has been ongoing since Plato and the Sophists. I'm listening to a lecture currently (from The Great Courses) on the Science Wars of the past few decades that is dealing with just these kinds of issues. Bottom line...there is no consensus, just varying schools of thought. One sobering comment from the lectures...consider how much of the accepted science (physics in particular) of 1900 is still mainstream today. Can we, should we, expect that today's accepted science will still be such 100 years from now?

rwt

On 12/28/2013 1:41 PM, Larry Smith wrote:
There is an article in the August 2013 (I'm behind) issue of Scientific American discussing the ontology of the universe. The author, Meihard Kuhlmann, claims in the article titled "What Is Real?" that neither particles nor fields are fundamental (or even exist); rather, what is real are the properties and relationships. "What we call an electron is in fact a bundle of various properties or tropes: three fixed, essential properties (mass, charge and spin), as well as numerous changing, nonessential properties (position and velocity).... A particle is what you get when those properties bundle themselves together in a certain way."

Comments?

Larry





--
Richard Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College

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www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html