Do electrons exist?

[Angrboda]

We describe atoms using various models because that is how our brains process information, as models, descriptions of how things appear rather than as what they are. It is impossible to think in terms of the things themselves, or have immediate knowledge of anything. And so we're led to intuitions like the Principle of Sufficient Reason which states that everything (or most everything) must have an explanation. This simply reflects the fact that we have no other way than a model or mechanistic explanation for describing things, and so the parts of our model themselves need models to explain their behavior, and the models of the parts of the model also have parts that need models to explain their behavior. And so it goes. Because we have no other means other than a model to represent reality, there is nothing other than yet another model in need of explaining to terminate this infinite regress. The alternative is simply to accept certain behaviors and phenomena as brute facts, requiring no explanation, but many find this emotionally and philosophically unsatisfying. Others, unhappy with the indeterminate, make the principle of sufficient reason a prescriptive norm, that things "must" have explanations or else we simply have not understood the phenomena and our thinking is in error. I think such people are being unreasonable, but most are of good intent.