I understand being wary of the question, but imagine a Bayesian rationalist learning physics. First he learns about Classical Electromagnetism using fields, and he assigns this theory a prior probability based on the length of a program implementing this, and updates to a posterior probability based on the experimental evidence available. He then learns about the formulation based on potentials, which he finds makes all the same predictions, but has a shorter program length, so he adds some number of bits to his log-odds for the equivalence class, and he thinks that it is meaningless to ask whether reality uses potentials or fields, because no experiment could distinguish between them. Then he learns about Quantum Mechanics, which indicates that his classical understanding of potentials is an approximation of how they really work, that works on large scale, and that on the small scale where the approximation does not hold, fields are not a useful concept.
Should he be surprised to learn, having thought that experiment could not distinguish the two formulations, that there is an observable underlying reality in which uses potentials and not fields, and it is only in the domains he has previously encountered that fields make sense?
I understand being wary of the question, but imagine a Bayesian rationalist learning physics. First he learns about Classical Electromagnetism using fields, and he assigns this theory a prior probability based on the length of a program implementing this, and updates to a posterior probability based on the experimental evidence available. He then learns about the formulation based on potentials, which he finds makes all the same predictions, but has a shorter program length, so he adds some number of bits to his log-odds for the equivalence class, and he thinks that it is meaningless to ask whether reality uses potentials or fields, because no experiment could distinguish between them. Then he learns about Quantum Mechanics, which indicates that his classical understanding of potentials is an approximation of how they really work, that works on large scale, and that on the small scale where the approximation does not hold, fields are not a useful concept.
Should he be surprised to learn, having thought that experiment could not distinguish the two formulations, that there is an observable underlying reality in which uses potentials and not fields, and it is only in the domains he has previously encountered that fields make sense?
And then he learns Quantum Field Theory, and the shit really hits the fan.