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

[bennyboy]

What, though, is the difference between describing something and using mathematical expressions which represent things? Would you like to have your description in plain English? And if yes, using which words?

That's an interesting question. I suppose that discrete objects must be identifiable in some way. For example, are there really a gazillion different photons, or does the same exact photon exist in a practically infinite number of places?

What if in the end it's all relationships and interactions that are the real deal, and  "objects" are just a construct to describe them? I don't even know what the difference would be.

The difference would lie in the nature of those things which have not been described, and the expectations you'd hold about any new things you might discover.

So in practical terms, I'd say that you DEFINITELY have abstract ideas at work, and you MIGHT have actual things which they represent, or might not, and will probably never know which is the case due to the limitations of making observations.

Is the cup of coffee standing in front of me right now real? How do you describe this cup, and aren't you just using a set of abstract ideas to describe it and there is no actual thing there? My point is, you act as if the problems you raise are somehow special to fundamental physics, and I wonder whether not the ordinary notions of what is real or not are pretty much on the same footing. That wouldn't mean that the question is not interesting, but it would not be criticism that needs to be specifically levied against modern physics. I find the notion naive, that objects in every day experience are somehow more well-defined and more real just because we can describe them using words drawn from experience. It might be an illusion that those are more real and more concrete than our descriptions of electrons using fields or wave functions.

Two things about that: 1st, I agree about the lack of definition of ordinary objects; 2nd, I'm not trying to criticize physics, but to explain why I think particles are best though of as abstract ideas rather than as "physical things."