Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
Well, good thing you aren't being obnoxious.
Pythagoras: the triumph?
- Thread starter Symphony D.
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Well, good thing you aren't being obnoxious.
Couple of points:
1. You do not need to explain me what quantum fields are. I work with those.
2. And if you needed to explain it, quoting a popular science article is not the best way to do it.
3. If you have an argument please state it instead of just pasting partially relevant quotes
4. That text does not address my point that there is no reason we cannot think of quantum fields as objects
5. It fails to realise that the concepts of particles and fields are just that: concepts. As are quantum fields.
Symphony D.
Deity
But that's the whole point: to discard objects in favor of their characteristic tropes and/or the relations between objects rather than the objects themselves. Stating quantum fields are objects isn't a refutation.
That's also the point: they're concepts that the actual meaning of is difficult to grasp, and they could thus be discarded for more intelligible ones.
But that is a contradiction: You cannot discard objects and then describe properties of them or realtions beween them.
Quantum fields being objects is a refutation of the statement that we cannot describe the world by objects. The argument is that we cannot decribe the world in terms of particles and fields, but that does not matter.
What is "actual meaning" supposed to mean? Quantum fields have an accurate definition, they're just not easy to explain for someone who is not willing to spend the time studying physics in detail. And this is not going to get any easier, if you choose another interpretation.
Symphony D.
Deity
I don't really think we're seeing eye-to-eye on what the article is even conjecturing.
This is not a contradiction, it is a different frame of reference. Instead of Object A → Properties {X,Y,Z}, you are just looking at it as Properties {X,Y,Z} → Object A, particularly as particles and fields have finite and determinable essential Properties. That is the entire point of the idea. You can disagree, but it is the precise stated intention.
e: for the sake of clarity, I'll freely admit I don't know enough about the subject to contest your authority on it and am just going by what's written, but I also don't think it's being understood clearly.
This was outright stated to be the function of tropes: "You can regard properties as having an existence, independently of objects that possess them. Properties may be what philosophers call "particulars"—concrete, individual entities. What we commonly call a thing may be just a bundle of properties: color, shape, consistency, and so on."
This is not a contradiction, it is a different frame of reference. Instead of Object A → Properties {X,Y,Z}, you are just looking at it as Properties {X,Y,Z} → Object A, particularly as particles and fields have finite and determinable essential Properties. That is the entire point of the idea. You can disagree, but it is the precise stated intention.
No, it isn't; the argument is that particles and fields are essentially mutually interchangeable ways of viewing objects, and to focus on the properties rather than the objects. That they are both equally valid as objects is irrelevant to the notion of essentially ignoring them as fundamental in favor of Properties. It is not a "strawman" of only particles disproven by fields.
The meaning of QM isn't clear, hence all the interpretations. Reframing the mechanisms might reframe and make more intuitive the interpretation. This may or may not actually be possible or useful, like getting around virtual particles in Feynman diagrams. This seems to be the entire point of the exercise. But perhaps it won't, I don't claim to know that for sure.
e: for the sake of clarity, I'll freely admit I don't know enough about the subject to contest your authority on it and am just going by what's written, but I also don't think it's being understood clearly.
But this does not discard objects, so in the end we still think of objects. So this seems to be just a semantic issue and I do not see how this is going to make any interpretation any easier.
Then it is wrong. The concepts of particles and fields are neither interchangeable nor are they valid as a description of a quantum field. Usually one or the other is a useful approximation, but fundamentally they are both flawed. If you talk about the fundamentals in QFT you should not talk about particles and objects at all.
The different ways to interpret QM already occur if you just consider classical fields and classical particles. Once you resolve those issues, the meaning of QFT which builds upon QM becomes clear. You could claim that the other way around, interpreting QFT first and then going back to QM, might be the way to go. But before I believe that, I need to see some evidence instead of some nebulous claims.
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