WHAT IS EVERYTHING? If everything is matter, then what is "matter?"

Physicists no longer define "matter" as indivisible bits of particular size, weight and position. They don't even say that matter is "made of" bodies called atoms, protons, electrons, and so on. The word atom or electron is now used as part of an overall descriptive observation that has no meaning except as used by people who know the experiments by which it is revealed. "In field theory, instead of having matter sitting out in space like lumps, you concentrate on the way things interact. The relationships of matter and energy and time are what's determinant. Nothing is static, everything is dependent on and defined by the movements of everything else. The field is not so much a place where all this happens, but a conjunction, the interaction itself. As if the universe is recreating itself, moment by moment" (from Disturbances in the Field, a novel by Lynne Sharon Schwartz).

Modern physics also teaches
1. That a certain particle is able to pass, in its undivided state, through two different holes at the same time.
2. There are large 'holes in the sky' into which time and space not only disappear but in which they actually cease to be.
3. And that the term 'quark' describes a particle of which the essential property when three of them combine, their collective weight is less than that of any one of them by itself; although nothing has been lost by their conjunction.
4. Of course the apparent 'solidity' of 'matter' does not exist on the atomic scale, wherein all things are in constant and rapid motion.
5. Lastly, note the book review.

Thus, modern physics focuses more on the configuration of the cosmos, rather than on proving its solidity or materiality!

But doesn't this mean that the philosophy known as "materialism" is a bit more difficult to believe in today, than during the machine-minded 19th century? Back then, the cosmos was pictured as a giant watch. But today it is picture as a vast flowing 'field' of space/time/matter/energy.

So today, the heart of 'matter' is thought to resemble 'brain waves' more closely than 'billiard balls!'

Secondly, there has always existed the philosophical objection to materialism that, since we only know "matter" through our senses, and our senses only detect the outer sensations of things, then how do we know what the essence of "matter" really is? "Belief in 'matter' is thus a faith in the unseeable--in the famous 'pincushion hidden by innumerable pins' which Coleridge uses as the perfect analogue of Matter hiding behind sensible phenomena" (Jaque Barzun in his book, Darwin, Marx, and Wagner).

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman (Paperback - Oct 1, 1988) QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Princeton Science Library) by Richard P. Feynman and A. Zee (Paperback - April 4, 2006) Feynman Lectures On Physics (3 Volume Set) by Richard Phillips Feynman (Paperback - Jun 1970) Feynman's Thesis: A New Approach to Quantum Theory by Laurie M. Brown and Richard Phillips Feynman (Hardcover - Aug 30, 2005)

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