I get that it’s values. It’s like, you assign a value to every point in space. But what “is” the electron field? It’s… what? I mean like a Kantian “field an sich”. Is the electron field the amount of electron-ness at a given point in space? What does that even mean beyond a calculation?
Are fields “real entities” with an objective physical reality? Or are they just mathematical abstractions that we use for calculation? Can you talk about fields without math? Does that even make sense? Like, I can talk about electrons without math. I can say they’re point particles that carry charge. But can you talk about the electron field outside of math? Or the EM field? Does it genuinely exist outside of an Electrodynamics calculation?
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Physicist here. Field is a physical quantity (whatever a quantity is) with their main feature to be spatially and temporarily extent. The values of the field (at some point and time) can be numbers (pressure in a pipe) or vectors (velocity in a pipe). Physics then describes how these field evolve and interact, to ultimately give something that can ne observed or measured (and ideally being useful).
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