Seeing red

[The Grand Nudger]

This, however, is an irrelevance, because your criticisms do not arise from any misunderstandings of qm that you clearly have.  It's a bit farther down that that.....right at the very bottom, you might say.  Isn't it?  

I asked you for the size of the particle itself, and you know that what you just quoted isn't what I'm getting at.  You can talk about the size of a wave packet or an orbital, or the field of influence, etc. etc.  But you and I both know that in the article you just linked, there's a reason why elementary particles are called "point" particles.  Gotta be careful quoting sources that ultimately give away the game, no?

You're asking for what the theory does not predict or provide.  Volume is described by relation to the wave packet, as are the those particles you don't understand.  Find the field, find the particle. You're asking me for the mathematical equivalent of a crocoduck, what's worse, you seem to think it's a clever and informative question.

If you want to say, as Jorg once seemed to, that "stuff" is ideas at its most elemental level, then we can all shake hands and /thread.  But let me say this, "we" are not all scientists, and there are many aspects of human life to which scientific ideas don't very usefully contribute either to our experience of things or to our understanding of it.  So I'd say that one of the scopes in which we operate is that of those shared experiences consistent enough to categorize, manipulate, and talk about-- "stuff."  And I've never disputed the pragmatism of doing so.  As I said, if I want a bridge that stands up, I'll go with the science.

But science isn't why the bridge stands up, it's insufficient.  We're not discussing pragmatism. We're discussing the stolen concept which prevents further inquiry. You have accepted as sufficient what you have declared to be insufficient. You'll have to make up your mind. Do ideas (such as the idea of a car, gears, or pistons) actually behave -as though- they were material objects? If they do, then materialism is sufficient. If they do......but something else does not.......say, the idea of mind, then why do those two types of ideas behave so differently, why would what is sufficient for one type, be insufficient for the other?