I've read about how sound propagation can be modeled as phonon particles moving and interacting. I understand that this is a useful mathematical construct to describe the behavior of longitudinal pressure waves in a medium like air.
Are standard model particles actually matter in the same sense mundane stuff we can directly observe (like the air molecules whose motion transmits sound), mere models that describe a (possibly unknown) medium's behavior (like phonons), or do we believe that at its fundamental level that all matter may be like the phonons in that it's all just describing how some field or medium propagates energy?
As it gets beyond electrons, protons, and neutrons, it's not clear to me that the other particles exist rather than being models of how other things behave. I accept the math makes accurate predictions but it's not clear to me that it's not just like phonons that way.
Answer
That's a very philosophical question. You have a model that predicts measurement results, but what is its interpretation? What reality does it represent?
Quantum field theories deal with (spoiler alert...) quantum fields (ok, not much of a spoiler). The particles that one speaks of, like photons or electrons, are the modes of vibration (the waves) in these fields, much like phonons are the modes (waves) of matter vibration.
I prefer to interpret the theory to say that what exists are the quantum fields themselves, not the particles per-se. This allows one to speak of what exists even when there is no perturbative treatment i.e. when the discussion in terms of the modes of vibration (the particles) doesn't make sense. And it appears less artificial to me; positing that only the modes of vibration exist instead of the thing that vibrates seems strange and unnecessary, oddly restricting what exists to only part of what the theory describes.
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