There Are No Electrons Response

Personally I quite disliked this reading, largely because as a physics major I have studied electricity before, and felt that the problems he identified showed a lack of of understanding on his part, rather than problems with the theory itself. I have no problem with attempting to explain things in simpler or more clever ways, but his approach in particular actually conveys misinformation. My biggest gripe is very fundamental, and has nothing to do with electron theory. He misrepresents the type of information that physics provides. For instance, he complains that it only answers “how?”, not “why?”. This is not a problem with electron theory it is an intentional and necessary part of physics, the techniques of any natural science are not suited to answer the question “why?”.  At other times he complains that the electron doesn’t seem real because the attributes assigned it by electron theory don’t intuitively seem like attributes of real things, such as a poorly defined position. My problem with this is that intuition is misleading, and lack of well defined positions for anything, not just electrons is one of the most well “proven” theories in physics. I am sure that his eventual description of greenies is useful to anyone who is new to electricity or not mathematically minded, but I had so many issues with his preface that I could not bring myself to appreciate it.

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