Understanding the Electron

Well over a century after the discovery of the electron, we are still faced with serious conceptual issues regarding precisely what an electron is. Since the development of particle physics and the Standard Model, we have accumulated a great deal of knowledge about the relationships among various subatomic particles. However, this knowledge has not significantly aided in our understanding of the fundamental nature of any particular elementary subatomic particle. The fact that many particle properties, such as position, time, speed, energy, momentum, and component of spin, are observer-dependent suggests that these relevant variables do not represent properties per se, but rather the relationship between the observer and the observed. That is, they reflect details about how the electron influences the observer, and vice versa. Here we attempt to understand this by considering a simple model where particles influence one another in a discrete and direct fashion. The resulting framework, referred to as Influence Theory, is shown to faithfully reproduce a surprising amount of physics. While it would be naive to assume that the ideas presented here comprise anything resembling the final word on the matter, it is hoped that this work will demonstrate that a simple and understandable picture of particles, such as the electron, is indeed feasible and should be actively sought after.