- #1
Cruikshank
- 82
- 4
I'm reading The Logic of Modern Physics by P.W. Bridgman (1927). He states an operational definition of reality: something is a "good construct" if it has a one to one correspondence with a physical situation defined by observations, but it isn't "real" until it has multiple definitions--separate phenomena that yield the same concept. He says that stress is real, atoms are real, but electric field is not. I know it's a philosophical quagmire, but I was hoping someone could tell me whether there are independent ways of detecting an electric field besides the definition of "put a charge there and measure the force." Bridgman was an experimental physicist and knew electromagnetism, so I'm wondering whether a separate, compatible, operational definition of electric field exists now, thereby making E fields "real" according to Bridgman