Quote Originally Posted by The Summoner of Leviathan View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Yerushalmi View Post
There is no such thing as something that "disappears when you try to analyze it with science" (and don't talk to me about the uncertainty principle, because that has reproducible results - we not only know what becomes uncertain, we can tell you in advance exactly how much of it becomes uncertain).

And of course, once you figure out the rules of something, even if it disappears and reappears under certain circumstances, you can still build a business out of it.
I think the question of whether quantum particles or fields actually are real, exists in the material sense, is a very different question than discussing the viability of the standard model. It goes beyond just the uncertainty principle. There is something more fundamental at question regarding the existence (or non-existence) of quantum particles/fields. There is a really interesting article in the August 2013 issue of Scientific American by Meinard Kuhlmann, a German Physicist and Philosopher, that explores the metaphysical state of quantum particles and the discrepancies between what we see/calculate/do, what we infer, and what actually occurs.

Preview of Article mentioned above. Sadly, not the greatest blurb. :/
The whole point of science is that we come up with a theory to describe what's going on, that theory makes predictions about what will happen under various circumstances, and when those predictions are fulfilled we consider the theory to be correct.

Is it possible that the theory is wrong in some detail? Of course. It is even possible that the entirety of our conception is wrong but merely happens to coincide with the reality in most circumstances, and the moment we find a given discrepancy the entire edifice of theory we've built over decades or centuries will collapse, and we'll have to come up with something else entirely to match the facts? It's happened before.

But even if what we're describing isn't really real, and we'll find out exactly how wrong we are some day, that doesn't change the fact that the theory works for the things it was designed to describe. If particle-field duality doesn't actually exist, and we'll one day replace it with something else, that doesn't change the fact that computers and GPS satellites and particle accelerators and everything else we've built on the base of that theory works. Isn't that the whole point?