The nature of force

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Larry Burford</i>As soon as we can detect elysons, the mystery of the gravitational potential field will go away. Along with the mystery of electric and magnetic fields. And the gravitational force field, although not completely explained, will become less mysterious.
Once we are able to detect elysons, of course, one of the very first things we will need to do is explain something about the behavior of elysons that LOOKS LIKE a new kind of force field.
(That new force field will turn out to be built of still smaller particles. Etc.)<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I am somewhat puzzled that on the one hand you seem to realize that you are trapped in an infinite chain of cause and effect argument here, but on the other hand you are not prepared to make a cut somewhere and accept that you have to assume the existence of some fundamental force which is not a macroscopic phenomenon composed of smaller units (in science you always have to exercise a certain discipline of thinking in this respect, if only for the sake of having a workable theory).
I am not even saying that the Law of Gravity in its elementary form is the final truth and that it might not be caused by some underlying physics not known yet (although there is at present no evidence for this). However, as already indicated earlier, it would not solve your problem because you would again have to assume that the Gravitons or Elysons (or whatever you want to call them) have some static force field by means of which they can excert the observed gravity force on interaction with objects.
Again, the magic (if you want to call it this) lies with the existence of forces in the first place, not with the existence of fields (which are merely formal quantities that mean nothing unless contained within the force equation; the electric field of a charge q1 at distance r (i.e. E1=q1/r^2) for instance is meaningless unless multiplied to a second charge q2 to yield the Coulomb force F=q2*E1 = q2*q1/r^2 ).

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The meaning of E1=q1/r^2 as posted above is not meaningless standing by itself if you know the value of E,q&r. We know

[Thomas] " ...and accept that you have to assume the existence of some fundamental force ... "

No. I do not have to assume that. Rather than just give up, as you advocate, I can assume that what you see as a fundamental (magic) force field is in fact made of something.

Something that we are not yet able to detect. But, if we keep trying, we will learn how to detect it one of these days.

Now, if I want to look at a field for which I am not able to find any parts (yet) from a *purely mathematical* point of view, then yes, I can treat it as if it were some kind of magic thing that just is.

But to make the mistake of thinking that this will tell me anything about what is going on physically is just silly.

Physics is more than math.

And this is, after all, a physics board.

If you want to explain how something works, show me some physics.

If all you want to do is describe what something does, show me some math.