When, as a child of three, I stuck a bobby pin into a light socket and had to wear a cast for several months, I came to the conclusion that electricity exists, but I still cannot define it. I know what a “force” can do, but I do not know what a “force” is. Bosons are energy particles (photon, gluon, W, Z, graviton, and Higgs) that carry and transmit force to fermions, or matter particles, but what they are delivering, this thing we call “force,” remains inscrutable. The forces in the Standard Model that shape the world around us are due to gauge symmetries that transform the properties and actions of quarks and leptons, the building blocks of the universe, relative to one another — yet the force remains undefined, a spectral presence/non-presence.
Mysteries abound wherever we may look. Events occur that I can recognize and even manipulate or control but cannot actually define in their nature. To see a force represented as a peppering of particles or a swayback wave or a vibrating string is merely to remark a signature of its presence without knowing what it is I am observing. The mystery is not only how the universe functions and the nature of the relations among its parts, but the property that is carrying the message that tells these parts how to behave, its quiddity, as a philosopher might say, its essential whatness. What is the “message” that generates a response?
Similarly, what do we mean by a “field”? In Brian Clegg’s phrase from The God Effect, “Each natural force has a corresponding field, a sort of texture of the environment in which it works, which is communicated by a boson,” our old friend the messenger particle. Magnetic fields are associated with moving electrons, but why that phenomenon exists or what can cause or explain it at the most basic levels escapes me like a Pink Panther jewel thief. None of this is helpful with respect to the fundamental property of either force or field. As for particles, they have been so variously described that they are like chameleons in the deep forest of the universe.
We know the results of the transaction between particles, forces, and fields, but we do not know the nature, composition, or essence of the thing or process itself. We are naming something by its consequences without knowing what it is we are naming that produces these consequences. As noted, particles may be waves, oscillations, or jiggling strings. Fields are disembodied patterns or notional frameworks or something else entirely. To say a quantum entity called a “force” initiates a series of effects between particles dancing in Strawberry Fields Forever might as well be a pop song and does not clarify anything fundamental.
What exactly nearly fried my arm? What did the stream of photons pack and channel? What is a particle, a wave, or a string transmitting or receiving? What is the field-like medium through which the force is acting? One is inclined to think we are witnessing the will of the Lord in action. It makes as much sense as any other proposition we might suggest. We live haunted by the inexplicable at every moment. The physics of the universe we take for granted, including the laws of nature, are things we know nothing profoundly about. All we know is that they are, and they act.
The mystery deepens at every turn. True, I can imagine particles, though their diverse manifestations muddy the waters. Fields are the vaguest of abstractions and cannot be represented either visually or in their repercussions. Forces are extrapolated only in their effects.
Perhaps reason can arrive at non-empirical truths, or, if this is not feasible, at least validly raise non-empirical questions, as I have tried to do here. Nonetheless, I still am not sure what a “particle” is, have no idea what a “field” may be, and when it comes to a “force,” I can feel its existence regarding how it affects the material world, including the “star stuff” we are apparently made of. I am as inclined to suspect the mysterious operation of the Divine Will in its work as I am to credit the ineffable virtú of a “force” acting on “particles” via the invisible and supporting web of a “field.”
Regrettably, though, I have not heard a voice from above saying, “May the Force be with you.”
The culture doesn’t take a day off—and neither do we.
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