Comment by undershirt
2 hours ago
We cant even verify if these fields are real though. It is an ordered mythology for making predictions that work. If I have a machine that can reproduce the footprints of an animal no one has ever seen, I have not discovered that animal. (This is personally a more powerful analogy than saying "the map is not the territory" which gets at the same point.)
>We cant even verify if these fields are real though
We can perform casual experiments that are falsifiable against them. This is the scientific definition of real within a probabilistic framework.
Sure. Just making sure people understand that the "scientific definition of real" is based on a metaphysical assumption that real = works. It is very hard to remember this since philosophy of science is not taught in school.