rationalskepticism.org

zaybu wrote:

twistor59 wrote:
Reread the last sentence (highlighted above) in my last post. I'm expressing the opinion that the term "particle" is best associated with first quantization i.e. quantum mechanics, and this is even less appropriate (some would say impossible) for photons, whereas it is for electrons. Photons are less localizable than electrons.

Fine, but you can't stop just at QM, which was developped in the 1920-30's. A lot was said about QM in those days, which most of it being plain wrong, including statements by Bohr, Heisenberg, and yes, even Einstein. Only a thorough study of QFT, which was developped between 1930-1970's, will make those ideas go away. The most revolutionary idea was not from Einstein but from Yukawa who demonstrated that ''forces'' are really the exchange of particles. What was thought as matter and forces, we know now that it's really just particles, and all of these can be identified by their mass, spin, parity, and what types of charge they carry. All particles of ''matter'' have half-integral spin (fermions), all particles of ''forces'' have integral spin (bosons).It is really Yukawa's idea that made unification a possible idea in physics. If you look at that youtube video, there's no question that light is made of particles, spin-1 bosons known as photons.