A Rational Cosmology: Why Force Fields Are Abstractions Only

From the way in which the model of force fields is arrived at, it can be inferred that even the very process of defining an electric field depends on the use of two entities, the entity which exerts a given force and the entity upon which a force is exerted. (Of course, the test particle also can be described as having its own field, which affects the original field-exerting entity.)

Additionally, the model of a field only has physical consequences when an entity is at a given point which the field is said to encompass. That is, when an entity is present "within the field" of another, there is a force exerted. When no such entity is present at a given point "within the field," all that the field model describes is a potentiality, a knowledge that, if an entity of a given nature were there, it would have a given force exerted upon it.

This is useful knowledge to have in order to anticipate positions and behaviors not yet in existence, and the field idea provides convenient symbols and shortcuts to expressing it.

However, this model should not be mistaken for an actual physical existent. The only actual existents are the entities themselves and the forces that they exert. When there is no entity for the field-exerting object to act upon, there can be no force, and the field remains only a convenient abstraction without any physical existence in itself.

A field qua field is neither entity nor quality nor relationship. It is just an intellectual tool for describing an actual relationship, that of force. All the symbols and diagrams associated with fields are also just reliable predictors of entity behavior. The commonly used "field lines" are a visual expression of both the magnitude (via the lines´ proximity) and direction of the force a given test particle will experience at a certain location "within the field," as well as the trajectory that the test particle will follow at that location.

Yet these lines are not actual physical entities. They are not invisible "roads" that a particle will follow; they are not "woven into" the "fabric of the universe." They are just descriptors of a behavior made possible by the presence of entities of a certain type in a certain proximity with respect to one another.

The model of force fields has done useful service in physics, and it ought by no means be discarded. It must simply be put in its proper place as an abstract tool to aid human cognition of real entities but not in itself an entity, quality, or relationship.

Read other parts of "A Rational Cosmology" by clicking here.