[Phys-L] Re: Fields etc

[Jim Green <JMGreen@SISNA.COM>]

At 12:43 25 03 2005 , the following was  received:
> At the risk of sounding like a former president, what do you mean by
> "real"?
>                         Regards,
>                                 Jack

Jack, I don't much like the word "real" to describe this sort of
concept.  In my initial post I used the word "reify" -- You can look this
up if you wish -- I later reluctantly used the word "real" in quotes
because others had use this word and I was quoting them.

In retrospect I should not have done this.

Physicists frequently reify or anthropomorphize a concept -- which laudably
adds a bit of color to a rather dull discussion for students -- but we
should make this coloring clear both to our students __and__ ourselves. --
especially in our discussions here.  Otherwise we have posts of which we
understand the words per se but not the content - as has been pointed out
elsewhere recently .

Jim
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