Re: Current Flow (shouldn't it be "charge flow?")

[Bob Sciamanda <trebor@VELOCITY.NET>]

I have to repeat what I said the last time around on this (Leigh then
chastized: Of course - that goes without saying!):

Our physics is a model, not reality itself - it is couched in OUR way of
thinking - which is to distinguish between SUBSTANCES and their
PROPERTIES.  These concepts and distinctions are about our working model
of reality - we are not asserting that they are externally so. We are
reifying within our model - not in the external world.

Bob Sciamanda (W3NLV)
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hugh Haskell" <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2002 3:44 PM
Subject: Re: Current Flow (shouldn't it be "charge flow?")


At 11:02 -0600 4/20/02, Jim Green wrote:
>  >
>  >I, for one, don't believe so.  Electrons have the property of mass and
> > charge.  Electrons flow through the wire.
> >
> > Brian McInnes
>
> Right you are, Brian, and praise to you for pointing this out -- but we
> physicists -- well, some of us -- insist on reifying properties. It is a
> disappointing habit -- which competent physics teachers should persist in
> trying to obliterate.

Just what is an electron if not the sum of its properties? And what
is reality? Reification gets decried, but just what is reification if
we don't even know what reality is? I don't see how we can talk about
electrons or anything else except in terms of its properties, be they
permanent or temporary.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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