Are Particles 'Physical Things' or 'Abstract Ideas'?

[bennyboy]

In my opinion, at the deepest level, physics is almost indistinguishable from mythology, or numerology, or from various mystical traditions: "There are these fields in space which have no volume, no exact position or shape, and which, in their interactions, sometimes generate particles. . . and then there was the Earth!" isn't philosophically a far cry from "In the beginning was the word. . . 2nd blah blah blah. . . finally, man appeared." I'd say the same thing about the objects of physics: QM particles are tricky, ambiguous little buggers that are what they aren't and aren't what they are. It's as though paradox itself is the building block of the universe. Science doesn't seem to have an advantage in establishing what is real: unless reality is defined by the power to make stuff work; at least it has that.

I have to say that the deeper we get into science, the more and more ideas come up which might as well just be taken straight out of Plato or Aristotle.