Are There Really Electrons? Experiment and Reality

OCT 01, 1997

J. J. Thomson “discovered” the electron a hundred years ago. Eventually, the accumulating experimental and theoretical evidence made it clear to all but the most obdurate skeptics that there really are electrons.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881975

Allan Franklin

Discussing the existence of electrons, philosopher of science Ian Hacking has written, “So far as I’m concerned, if you can spray them, then they are real.” He went on to elaborate this view: “We are completely convinced of the reality of electrons when we set out to build—and often enough succeed in building—new kinds of device that use various well‐understood causal properties of electrons to interfere in other more hypothetical parts of nature.”

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More about the authors

Allan Franklin, University of Colorado, Boulder.