Art Hobson1 has done an admirable job of analyzing the particle versus field question and bringing it up to date. He lucidly traces the history of this discussion and shows how Quantum Field Theory (QFT) introduces quanta as countable excitations and interactions of fields. He finds no support for a particle concept in QFT, even in some extended sense. Hobson forcefully argues the conclusion that “There are no particles, there are only fields.”
By extending some of Hobson's ideas, I arrive at the conclusion that in addition to there being no particles, there are not even fields!
The fields of QFT are operators. The system state is an abstract vector in Hilbert or Fock space, not described by a field but instead by a “bra” or “ket” vector; simply a label. The field operators describe interactions by which the system evolves in Fock space.
In this view, the...
