MICROPHYSICAL ENTITIES AND "TABLES, CHAIRS, BEER MUGS" : The Challenge of Defining Reality, in Physics and Philosophy

We experience clear differences between the macrophysical and microphysical worlds. Therefore, the same question of what actually exists, and what it is, presents itself, in physical and philosophical research, in different terms with respect to the microphysical systems and macrophysical ones. The article explores the difficulty of defining the concepts of existence and reality, considering the historical development of physics and philosophy, before and after the relativistic and quantum conceptual breakthrough, up to the quantum field theory. The role played by mathematics, within the framework of cognitive tools, in describing, conceptualizing and explaining experiential phenomena is also analyzed. The concept of existence does not have a univocally defined meaning. We are forced to resort to assumptions and conventions. This work advances a theoretical explanation of how the macrophysical and microphysical worlds can brought back to a synthetic vision. The article also firmly reinforces the idea that physics, which unlike philosophy, has an experimental character and constraints, must remain rooted in experimental verification, leaving legitimate conjectures about reality in itself to other forms of human thought.