what is the biggest most fundamental question in all of physics?

sophiecentaur

That presupposes that a field has to be anything more than a way of explaining an effect.
If someone said that a 2kg mass and a 2kg mass, when added together, give you a 4kg mass, would you think to ask the question "what is arithmetic?". Is the arithmetic part of the Physical World around us or just a tool with which we can predict certain things? Using the concept of Fields to explain and predict could be thought of as just the same as using arithmetic for a similar purpose.

There can't be a hierarchy of significance to the questions that arise in Science because they only exist in the context of all the others.

This thread is a bit like the final question on 'Any Questions" and other discussion panel programmes. Not as trivial, of course, but it's not unlike "what Christmas present would you want to give your favourite politician and why?"

Just listen to the Guru Feynman about the "Why" question. I think he gets it just right - in a nicely grumpy way.

DennisN

I agree with most of what you say above, sophiecentaur. Science deals more with "hows" than "whys". But it seems it is in our human nature to first ask the question "why" and then try to explain/model "how", regardless of if "why" has been/can be answered or not (this is no criticism of science from me, it's just an observation of human nature ). And I agree Feynman was great, but he was still just one scientist among others, though. The field question (as jnorman originally formulated it) is a reasonable question IMHO. I see it as related to questions of the nature of vacuum;

"It [the field] occupies space. It contains energy. Its presence eliminates a true vacuum." (Wheeler)

"The fact that the electromagnetic field can possess momentum and energy makes it very real... a particle makes a field, and a field acts on another particle, and the field has such familiar properties as energy content and momentum, just as particles can have". (Feynman)

sophiecentaur

This is too abbreviated, I think, because any statement which purports to be stating 'reality' should, implicitly or explicitly, be saying something like "The following model of reality, which we call a Field, behaves in the following way. . . ."
It is very handy to use the concept of Fields because it works very well. There need be nothing more than that.
We have almost managed to come to terms with the 'duality' of waves and particles and no one with any sense demands that we should choose one or the other. It is only a matter of time before an 'alternative' to Fields comes up which will explain certain things much better but not other things. (Sounds like String Theory, for instance). There will be a duality in this respect, too - so the Field will be recognised as just one way of looking at things.

I agree that Feynman was just one among others. He clearly had a number of hangups (not helped by his Ginormous EGO) but, on the whole, he was good value, I think. Goddam smart too.

DennisN

Sophiecentaur, I agree. And I think the progress of science will be something like you describe, in one way or another. And hey, we still use Newton now and then even though 300+ years have passed, so we'll probably be using fields too for a long time still . (Btw, the quotes were just examples that even Wheeler/Feynman may have wondered about the reality of fields at some point before; I'm of course not completely certain of how they were reasoning, though ).

sophiecentaur

Only now and then?????
When did you last sort out your car or put up a shelf using Relativity or QM?

DennisN

Good one! (I was thinking of gravitation). But you made a false assumption, leading to a false conclusion. I don't own a car.

sophiecentaur

But you do put up shelves?

This Forum's full of false assumptions.

mklejeune

In general I tend to agree, though modern developments in philosophy (in those areas you mentioned) have done a good job of examining the "sense" of certain questions. For example, the question of "what was going on in the Universe before stuff started existing?" may be more of a grammatical blunder than a tough nut to crack.

DennisN

Yep. For shelves I use common sense, a good hammer and Euclid if I ever would have to.