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

[Mudhammam]

How many people were killed by radiation a Fukishima or Chernobyl?: More than 1. All done to death by those "unreal" particles.

Bob Kolker

That's a good point. I feel like an idiot for not having thought of that, tbh.

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That kind of settles the question about fields, no?

[bennyboy]

How many people were killed by radiation a Fukishima or Chernobyl?:  More than 1.  All done to death by those "unreal" particles.

Bob Kolker

That's a good point. I feel like an idiot for not having thought of that, tbh.

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That kind of settles the question about fields, no?

Why?

If the interaction of abstract ideas can kill a person, it can kill a person.  If it can melt off your face, it can melt off your face.  None of these very real effects means that particles are things rather than abstract ideas.

[Mudhammam]

That's a good point. I feel like an idiot for not having thought of that, tbh.

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That kind of settles the question about fields, no?

Why?

If the interaction of abstract ideas can kill a person, it can kill a person.  If it can melt off your face, it can melt off your face.  None of these very real effects means that particles are things rather than abstract ideas.

At what point do abstract models crossover into effectual materializations? How does that happen? I view abstract frameworks and material substances as mutually necessary for intelligible interactions but I don't think they have a causal relationship with one another. Rather, I see them as correlative. Change in one is simultaneously change in the other. Now, the idea that QM only deals with abstract entities would mean that at some level we reach the end of (the) matter (pun intended) and are only dealing with the structural form that underlies material phenomenon, and not matter itself (i.e. the formal cause of various motions, not an "abstract cause" of the substances themselves), but if within this domain we observe changes that are experienced in the material world it seems to me only sensible to search for material causes, with the caveat that we can never truly free ourselves from the abstract nature of matter, or highly ordered motions, which make conceptual experience possible. The effects of QM I never doubted, and that nature is every bit as abstract as it is material I'm coming around to seriously embrace, but the question for me was whether or not theoretical physics is really dealing with matter at all, or if rather it instead was confusing form with matter... However, what is seen to have direct consequence on matter (and not merely in terms of a theoretical explanation for observed causes and effects of material objects) cannot simply be form as the latter is only dimly experienced through strictly conceptual means... And concepts aren't physical.

If that sounds garbled, it's admittedly difficult trying to think about this stuff clearly, much less explaining those thoughts.

[JuliaL]

At what point do abstract models crossover into effectual materializations? How does that happen?  I view abstract frameworks and material substances as mutually necessary for intelligible interactions but I don't think they have a causal relationship with one another. Rather, I see them as correlative. Change in one is simultaneously change in the other. Now, the idea that QM only deals with abstract entities would mean that at some level we reach the end of (the) matter (pun intended) and are only dealing with the structural form that underlies material phenomenon, and not matter itself (i.e. the formal cause of various motions, not an "abstract cause" of the substances themselves), but if within this domain we observe changes that are experienced in the material world it seems to me only sensible to search for material causes, with the caveat that we can never truly free ourselves from the abstract nature of matter, or highly ordered motions, which make conceptual experience possible. The effects of QM I never doubted, and that nature is every bit as abstract as it is material I'm coming around to seriously embrace, but the question for me was whether or not theoretical physics is really dealing with matter at all, or if rather it instead was confusing form with matter... However, what is seen to have direct consequence on matter (and not merely in terms of a theoretical explanation for observed causes and effects of material objects) cannot simply be form as the latter is only dimly experienced through strictly conceptual means... And concepts aren't physical.

If that sounds garbled, it's admittedly difficult trying to think about this stuff clearly, much less explaining those thoughts.

Ya put things clearer than I can.
Does the following scan?

Nature has no basic nature.  It is what it is.
Distinctions between abstract and material, particle or wave, are artificial but required by us.
We make mathematical and conceptual models to accommodate our inadequacies in observation and understanding directly.
If we are compensating for our inability to comprehend nature as it is, is it surprising that our models are not fully clear and consistent?
I continue to be confused, still trying to understand but never finally expecting to.

[Anomalocaris]

How many people were killed by radiation a Fukishima or Chernobyl?:  More than 1.  All done to death by those "unreal" particles.

Bob Kolker

That's a good point. I feel like an idiot for not having thought of that, tbh.

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That kind of settles the question about fields, no?

No.  That particular argument settles only that something from Fukushima is somehow correlated with damage and death.  It doesn't settle whether there are real particles there in the something or somehow, or are the particles merely an unreal idea mistakenly assigned responsibility that rightly belong to a real something else.

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As long as we describe them in the language of mathematics, they will be unreal.

What would it mean to say that a particle is real?  How would you describe its realityness?

The first statement would seem to me to be unsupportable for vast majority of plausible answers to the two following questions.

[Mudhammam]

No.  That particular argument settles only that something from Fukushima is somehow correlated with damage and death.  It doesn't settle whether there are real particles there in the something or somehow, or are the particles merely an unreal idea mistakenly assigned responsibility that rightly belong to a real something else.

(Bold mine)
But unless we're going to claim that all material causes and effects we perceive---and not simply their formulaic interactions that account for the "why" of the paths on which they proceed---are abstract, isn't it natural to presume that the "real something else" is physical? (Does it matter if we call it a particle or wave?)

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Ya put things clearer than I can.

That's genuinely encouraging! I had to rewrite a bunch of it a few times to ensure that I was even following own train of thoughts!

Nature has no basic nature.  It is what it is.
Distinctions between abstract and material, particle or wave, are artificial but required by us.

Perhaps but WE are nature, so it's almost as if one could say, at least in some small pockets of nature, the physical and the abstract are required BY NATURE to make it, to some degree at least, intelligible to itself. That these concepts work so well in explaining a record of nature that extends to the "beginning" of time (or the asymmetric "edge") and throughout its possibly infinite spatial magnitude, applying in all places we have been able to verify, leads me to think that these features represent something that is basic and universal, whether it's truly neither or somehow a dualism of both. By "basic" I mean nature as it is versus how creatures (that use equipment developed primarily for survival and not for solving the puzzles that a "deeper understanding" of reality's texture seems to offer) intuitively perceive and conceive it.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Cha-Ching. For all sensible bodies, every substance has a form and every form has a substance.

[Mudhammam]

Cha-Ching. For all sensible bodies, every substance has a form and every form has a substance.

That's essentially Aristotle's contribution, amiright?

[Anomalocaris]

No.  That particular argument settles only that something from Fukushima is somehow correlated with damage and death.  It doesn't settle whether there are real particles there in the something or somehow, or  are the particles merely an unreal idea mistakenly assigned responsibility that rightly belong to a real something else.

(Bold mine)
But unless we're going to claim that all material causes and effects we perceive---and not simply their formulaic interactions that account for the "why" of the paths on which they proceed---are abstract, isn't it natural to presume that the "real something else" is physical? (Does it matter if we call it a particle or wave?)

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Can you tell me what you mean specifically by "physical" and "abstract"?   I like to use terms knowing how they will be interpreted. 

[Brian37]

My understanding of QM, all be it limited is that scientists are not saying "illusion" as if none of this is real. We are real, the "illusion" at the QM level is our own lack of perspective because we are stuck in our macro view. Particles are NOT an abstraction at all.