{"id":237885,"date":"2026-05-28T03:50:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T08:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/are-electrons-real"},"modified":"2026-05-28T03:50:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T08:50:38","slug":"are-electrons-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/are-electrons-real","title":{"rendered":"Are Electrons Real?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/are-electrons-real.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In 2023, philosopher Philip Goff posed a deceptively simple question on X (formerly known as Twitter): \u201cDo electrons exists?\u201d Physicists, philosophers, and a wide range of commentators responded in droves. Their reactions ranged from curt dismissals to insightful reflections on the nature of scientific knowledge. Against this lively backdrop, three academics conducted a formal investigation into how physicists might answer the question.<\/p>\n<p>C\u00e9line Henne is a philosopher working on the epistemology and philosophy of language at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Hannah Tomczyk, a physicist at HighFinesse in Germany, specialized in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Christoph Sperber is a data scientist at T\u00fcbingen University Hospital in Germany. Together, they surveyed 384 physicists, publishing their findings under the title \u201cPhysicists\u2019 Views on Scientific Realism\u201d [<a href=\"https:\/\/physics.aps.org\/articles\/v19\/70#c1\">1<\/a>]. Henne and Tomczyk spoke to <i><i>Physics<\/i> Magazine<\/i> about scientific realism\u2014a philosophical position embraced by many physicists\u2014and about alternative viewpoints.<\/p>\n<p><i>All interviews are edited for brevity and clarity.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2023, philosopher Philip Goff posed a deceptively simple question on X (formerly known as Twitter): \u201cDo electrons exists?\u201d Physicists, philosophers, and a wide range of commentators responded in droves. Their reactions ranged from curt dismissals to insightful reflections on the nature of scientific knowledge. Against this lively backdrop, three academics conducted a formal investigation [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}