Physics textbooks often depict elementary particles as tiny, enduring objects — billiard balls of the quantum world, zipping through space. But this is a metaphor, and a misleading one. What we call a “particle” is not a standalone object with inherent existence; it is an instantiation of relational potential. Its identity emerges only in interaction, in the context of a system of possibilities. Electrons are patterns of constraints and actualisations, not enduring “things” bouncing along pre-defined trajectories. Treating them as objects encourages a Newtonian mindset that obscures the relational and probabilistic nature of quantum phenomena. Reality is not a collection of things, but a field of relational enactments.
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