How are non-contact forces possible

[Dale]

I don't think its an objection to ask how anything works. Obviously fields and space and matter are all 'something' meaning they have properties, rules, and are consistently influencable. They are all physical in the sense we can interact with them.

OK, so given that you understand those properties I really don't understand what you are asking. If you understand the idea of fields, then how can you possibly be uncomfortable with the idea of non-contact force?

I just don't get what you are looking for here.

 

[lightarrow]

My question: how is matter influenced by forces that are non-matter? To elaborate more specifically: the four fundamental forces are non-contact forces, and I do not understand how in a classical reality that this is possible.

This is not a silly answer: how is matter influenced by contact forces? I don't understand it. What does "contact" mean? What comes "in contact"? Atoms? Ok, and what does "contact between atoms" mean, since the forces between them are electromagnetic and so they act at a certain distance?

"Contact forces" don't exist at all...

 

[Jolb]

The sheer amount of discussion, confusion, and controversy here is remarkable. I think this goes back to a fundamental issue: the question of "How?" or "Why?" something happens leads to an infinite regress of "How" and "Why" questions: you can always ask more "Why" and "How" questions unless you eventually reach some concept which you can agree on, somewhat like an axiom.

Richard Feynman was once asked a question along the lines of "Explain the attraction between magnets." After hemming and hawing for several minutes, he eventually said something to the effect of "I can't explain the attraction between magnets because I don't understand it in terms of anything else I'm familiar with." The point is that there are some axiomatic things one must understand without regard to other more familiar objects, and it is these axiomatic things on which one bases their understanding of other objects.

In fact, I think that exact Feynman interview touches on a lot of the issues people bring up in this thread, such as how contact forces are actually microscopic electromagnetic forces, etc. Here is a link: http://youtu.be/wMFPe-DwULM [skip abound 6 minutes if you want to avoid the hemming and hawing. But watching it shows that questions like this can be head-scratchers even for a Feynman.]

The question in the video has to do with the attraction between magnets, but I think it applies equally well to the idea of an electromagnetic field.

I think though that my initial answer--there are actually particles mediating the fields--is actually a deep answer, albeit nonclassical. Modern physics says that particles and fields are unified in the same entity (the quantum field), so one can view pretty much anything as both a particle and a field, so there's really no distinction between contact and noncontact forces. [So what DaleSpam said, "Particularly since in modern QFT matter is made of fields too." is just one way of looking at things--one might equally say that the field is made of particles.]

 

[Feather17]

That was awsome link. Yes a limit of resources would produce a limit in answers to why questions, such as a subset trying to explain a superset. That limitation should be attempted to be understood and all avaliable why's pursued by science.
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From what I have seen of the evolution of science, is how progress comes from giving up classical (normal human perception) thinking. In Aristotle's day, for example it was thought that once something is thrown - something had to be continually pushing it for an object to continuall move. I think we have advanced some - but the problems are describing the world in normal human perception terms (objective).
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Now that pushing has become fields of spatical distrubution of everywhere pushing, and when ask what they are made of we have to resort to saying..."pushing"
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If we don't have to describe all of science in normal human perception terms, it seems straight forward that 'nothing is really pushing and nothing is really moving, but that it is a perception from a conceptual framework that is apparently objective - which defintely is at the other end of the spectrum from classical thinking.