Why physics must resist becoming metaphysics
Some time ago, I found myself involved in what can best be described as an intellectual fallout with a group of well‑intentioned amateur researchers. This post is meant to close that loop — calmly, without bitterness, and with a bit of perspective gained since.
One of the more sensible people in that group bothered to push an interesting article onto my desk, and so I want to talk about that one here.
Gary Taubes, CERN, and an unexpected reinforcement
It’s an article by Gary Taubes on the discovery of the W and Z bosons at CERN, later incorporated into his book Nobel Dreams. Far from undermining my position, the article did the opposite: it reinforced the point I had been trying to make all along.
Taubes does not engage in ontology. He does not ask what W and Z bosons are in a metaphysical sense. Instead, he describes what was measured, how it was inferred, and how fragile the boundary is between evidence and interpretation in large‑scale experimental physics.
This connects directly to an earlier piece I published here:
Something Rotten in the State of QED: A Careful Look at Critique, Sociology, and the Limits of Modern Physics
https://readingfeynman.org/2025/12/01/something-rotten-in-the-state-of-qed-a-careful-look-at-critique-sociology-and-the-limits-of-modern-physics/
Let me restate the central point, because it is still widely misunderstood:
Criticizing the ontologization of W/Z bosons (or quarks and gluons) is not the same as denying the reality of the measurements that led to their introduction.
The measurements are real. The detector signals are real. The conservation laws used to infer missing energy and momentum are real. What is not forced upon us is the metaphysical leap that turns transient, unstable interaction states into quasi‑permanent “things.”
Stable vs. unstable states — a distinction we keep blurring
My own work has consistently tried to highlight a distinction that I find increasingly absent — or at least under‑emphasized — in mainstream physics discourse:
- Stable states: long‑lived, persistent, and directly accessible through repeated measurement
- Unstable or intermediate states: short‑lived, inferred through decay products, reconstructed statistically
W and Z bosons belong firmly to the second category. So do quarks and gluons in their confined form. Treating them as ontologically equivalent to stable particles may be pragmatically useful, but it comes at a conceptual cost.
It is precisely this cost that I criticize when I criticize mainstream physics.
Not because mainstream physics is “wrong.”
But because it has become too comfortable collapsing epistemology into ontology, especially in its public and pedagogical narratives.
Why this matters now
There is another reason this distinction matters, and it is a forward‑looking one.
The probability that something radically new — in the sense of a fundamentally novel interaction or particle family — will be discovered in the coming decades is, by most sober assessments, rather low. What we will have, however, is:
- More precise measurements
- Larger datasets
- Longer baselines
- Better statistical control
In that landscape, progress will depend less on naming new entities and more on bridging what has already been measured, sometimes decades ago, but never fully conceptually digested.
That is where I intend to focus my efforts in the coming years.
Not by founding a new church.
Not by declaring metaphysical revolutions.
But by carefully working at the interface between:
- what was actually measured,
- what was legitimately inferred,
- and what we may have too quickly reified.
Closing note
If there is one lesson I take — from the past dispute, from Taubes, from the history of CERN or fundamental physics in general — it is this:
Physics progresses best when it remains modest about what it claims to be about.
Measurements first. Interpretation second. Ontology, if at all, only with restraint.
That stance may be unsatisfying to those looking for grand narratives. But it is, I believe, the only way to keep physics from quietly turning into metaphysics while still wearing a lab coat.
— Jean Louis Van Belle
Reading Feynman 
Jean: the measurements were real, the detector signals were real. But what they measured and detected, was a fast moving electron. That’s all. The existence of the W boson was “inferred” from that. The problem is that electron capture does what it says on the tin, and the neutron has a charge distribution that exactly matches the nuclear force profile. Which means that Rutherford was right: the neutron is a close-coupled electron-proton combination. There’s a neutrino complication, but that’s not a problem. The problem is that beta decay is the inverse of electron capture. It’s like the neutron in a nucleus is braced by the surrounding protons and is stable. However a free neutron eventually shakes itself apart. You just don’t need a W boson for this. Especially an 80MeV W boson that magically pops into existence, then magically pops out of existence before anybody can see it. You probably have already, but if you haven’t, check out The Higgs Fake by Alexander Unzicker.
Hi John,
Thanks for your message — and genuinely, also for the sympathetic tone you showed during the whole Institute fall-out. I haven’t forgotten that, and I do appreciate it.
I think we actually agree on more than it might look at first glance, especially on one key point: measurements are measurements, and what detectors register are charged tracks, energy deposits, timing correlations — not ontological entities handed to us on a plate. In that sense, yes, a lot of high-energy physics is inference layered on inference, and it’s healthy to keep that in view.
Where I think we part ways (or at least where I’ve consciously chosen a different path) is that I’m no longer trying to replace parts of the Standard Model with an alternative story of “what is really there.” I’m trying to reinterpret what we already have, with stability and persistence as the primary guiding principle.
So rather than arguing whether one needs a W boson, or whether the neutron really is an electron–proton bound state, I’m asking a slightly orthogonal question:
Why do some configurations persist, others decay, and others exist only as fleeting resonances — regardless of the language we use to describe them?
On neutron stability, for example, I’m quite close to you in spirit: I do not think of it as a primitive particle with magical properties. Its stability (or lack thereof) is clearly contextual. But instead of pushing that into a concrete alternative ontology, I’m deliberately keeping the language looser: metastable modes, collective equilibria, relational stability. That lets me stay compatible with the empirical bookkeeping (including weak interactions) without having to fight every conceptual battle at once.
As for the Higgs/W discussions — I know Unzicker’s work, and I understand the frustration it expresses. At this stage, though, I’m trying to avoid re-running those debates. They tend to lock everyone into very well-worn grooves, and I’m more interested in stepping sideways than digging deeper into the same trench.
In short: I’m not dismissing your points, but I’m also not trying to win or lose that argument anymore. I’ve just published what is essentially a programme statement for the next phase of my thinking, and I want to see where that line of inquiry leads before reopening old fronts.
Thanks again for reaching out — and for doing so in good faith.
Best,
Jean-Louis