Daniel Whiteson

You're not seeing the field.

You're seeing the effect of the field.

So some people think, well, maybe fields are not real.

Maybe they're just a calculational tool.

They're like an intermediate step in the calculation.

Like if you want to calculate the force of gravity on something and you're using Newtonian gravity, you can just calculate all the forces at all times.

Or you could say, look, I have this thing.

It has a mass.

I'm going to calculate the gravitational field.

That's a helpful first step so that anything that comes near it, I know already what the forces are going to be.

It's like get you halfway.

And maybe the fields are just a calculational tool, right?

Then maybe they're just in our minds.

They're like a helpful way to organize our calculations, not something that's out there in the universe.

So there's a philosopher out there.

His name, ironically, Hartree Field.

And he wrote a book called Science Without Numbers.

And what does that mean?

Science without numbers?

Like, what are you talking about?