I feel like the question there is “Does the map match the territory?”
If atoms are real, then there is something in the territory to which the symbol atom on our map refers.
I’m tempted to say that if an atom is real, then any sufficiently accurate model must include something that refers to them. However, wouldn’t that lead to the conclusion that no, atoms do not exist, we were mistaken? Really quantum wave functions exist, and an atom is just a shorthand for referring to a particular type of collection of electron, quark, and gluon wave functions. (um, oops, exceeded my knowledge of quantum mechanics here, replace what I said with whatever quantum mechanics says an atom is.) Or would it lead to the conclusion that atom is a name for a particular well-defined class of collections of wave functions?
If something such as an atom is not real, then they are just a convenient organizing principle that let us achieve a simplified, but necessarily incorrect, model. Whether to keep using the known incorrect model tends to depend on its usefulness, but you must always account for the incorrectness. (For example, we keep using Newtonian Mechanics and the Ideal Gas laws, even though both are known to be incorrect. We just know what domains they are accurate enough in to keep using.)
I feel like the question there is “Does the map match the territory?”
If atoms are real, then there is something in the territory to which the symbol atom on our map refers.
I’m tempted to say that if an atom is real, then any sufficiently accurate model must include something that refers to them. However, wouldn’t that lead to the conclusion that no, atoms do not exist, we were mistaken? Really quantum wave functions exist, and an atom is just a shorthand for referring to a particular type of collection of electron, quark, and gluon wave functions. (um, oops, exceeded my knowledge of quantum mechanics here, replace what I said with whatever quantum mechanics says an atom is.) Or would it lead to the conclusion that atom is a name for a particular well-defined class of collections of wave functions?
If something such as an atom is not real, then they are just a convenient organizing principle that let us achieve a simplified, but necessarily incorrect, model. Whether to keep using the known incorrect model tends to depend on its usefulness, but you must always account for the incorrectness. (For example, we keep using Newtonian Mechanics and the Ideal Gas laws, even though both are known to be incorrect. We just know what domains they are accurate enough in to keep using.)