The Plane of Existence

How did we get the idea of the electron? J.J. Thomson first discovered the electron in 1897. He heated a wire with an electric current at one end of a vacuum tube and saw a green glow at the other end. When he put a thin Maltese Cross in between, it cast a shadow. Therefore some beam must have gone from the wire to the wall that the cross interrupted.

 

The conclusion is irresistible, but must we really conclude that something too small to see is moving from wire to wall. Something is going from wire to wall but why can't it be just what we see? In terms of experiments doesn't the conclusion, that something is going in between, merely state what we saw happen in different words. That something moves from here to there means, experimentally, that something put in between will interrupt the flow. When we conjure up the electron we do not conjure up a new procedure. We merely give what we have seen a new name. Scientifically, the statement that something invisible exists is just a different way of saying that something visible is one way rather than another. 

 

Thomson continues:

 

The arguments in favour of the rays being negatively charged particles are primarily that they are deflected by a magnet in just the same way as moving, negatively electrified particles.

 

Thomson's experiments allowed him to calculate the mass and charge of the electron. What does the idea of a "particle" add? Nothing to the experiments Thomson did. We might think that the rays are negatively charged particles all we like, but all we know we can do with them is what we did. If we discover that we can do something else it is still something we can do. Can something we see and do force us to believe in something we can't see having an effect on something we can? If we do something that produces some purpose do we ever need some imaginary go-between? The expression “negatively charged particles” is analogous to the expression “slab” and describes what happens in the experiment. If this expression suggests another experiment we would still have to do it to find out if its prediction came true. In 1927 G.P. Thomson (not related)  did an experiment in which a similar beam sent through cellulose produced a diffraction pattern thus demonstrating DeBrogli's hypothesis that the electron could also behave as a wave. Waves are interactions among particles. Thus quantum theory and wave-particle duality was born. The imagined charged particle became the “Classical Theory” to be replaced by Quantum Mechanics, particles that are not anywhere, but have a probability of being a number of places,  and are also waves, inaugurating the theory of  unimaginable wave-particle duality. 

 

The conceptual confusion of quantum mechanics, which disturbed the experimental results not at all, showed that Einstein's refuted objection to "spooky action at a distance" was an objection to a violation of the scientific world picture as a whole. But instead or raising questions about it, it only encouraged an incoherent modification of that picture.

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If we can do an experiment we can do it and that is the end of it. We do not need to mention the electron to do an experiment with electricity. To make a simple circuit to turn on a light we need a battery, some wires, a switch, and a lamp. Connect the wires to the other apparatus thus and so, flip the switch, and the light goes on. That is all you need to know. Nor do we need to mention the electron to build a more complicated circuit, such as that of the I-phone. Again we need only describe how to manipulate what we can manipulate. The enigmatic nature of the electron, which further experiments suggest has the property of being nowhere but having probabilities of being in several different places, is because the word "electron" is used in instructions for many experiments that we try to combine into one invisible thing.