Ed Delian wrote today to Ivor Catt:

You ask me what happens inside an indivisible particle? “How does the particle’s right hand edge know of a collision of the left hand edge”? The answer is: Since it is an indivisible particle, there is no space for a “signal” to “travel” inside from “here” to “there” in order to transfer information. The whole indivisible particle as a continuum (!)  “knows” what its edges experience, all at the same time.

I responded:

Dear Ed,

Starting the discussion of electromagnetism or even gravity with particles, which are indivisible in one sense or another, is fraught with many problems and issues sticking out that seems impossible to put in order. This is especially problematic if one needs to explain the phenomenon of passing information in digital systems.

That’s why Ivor and us following his views propose to begin with the simple and clear foundational concept of energy current that travels and can only do so with a speed of light in the medium. 

The medium is naturally resistive to this motion, in a manner analogous to friction. These two properties of the medium is the only assumptions we need to make (this “minimalism” is justified by the natural tendency of nature to follow the Occam’s razor principle, as well as experimental facts). The other basic assumption is that nature has different mediums occupying fragments of space and thus has boundary conditions, between which we have no instantaneous action because those boundaries involve distances. So, any particles are the result of the division of space between boundaries, in which energy current is trapped. These entrapments are often ‘leaky’ which allows energy current not just be confined within these particles (due to reflections) but also travel outside the particles and this create levels of interaction. So this way we have elements of mass formed with nonzero volume.

Now, states or levels of the energy current density that are inside and outside those fragments of the mediums form something that traditionalists prefer to called fields, and they can be associated with forces, electromagnetic and gravitational.

So, clearly, talking about particles is possible but not at the fundamental level of passing information in nature.

Kind regards

Alex