For a course I am teaching, I am rereading a biography of Einstein (written by Walter Isaacson) and I would like to share a frustration with you.
The author writes, reflecting a consensus in history of science, that Einstein has proved, once and for all, that atoms exist as physical objects.
What is it that Exists?
Such sentences always amaze me. If Einstein’s physics (both quantum and relativity) shows us anything, it is how little we understand what microscopic particles actually are: are they masses or lumps of energy? are they waves or particles, or both? what does that even mean? And what does it mean to say that something exists if you can’t say what that something is (beyond what we can measure in our experiments)?
Certainly, the outcomes of our experiments ‘exist’ – but that is the only claim scientist can and should make.
Read this post about the difficulty of talking about things we can’t measure (such as the electron in orbit around the nucleus of an atom).
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