PHYSICAL CONSTRUCTS

Physics' terminology is strictly limited to symbols of its models' formulas and metalanguage aliases clearly denoting them. Some, like force, speed, temperature, acceleration represent observable events, thus have "phenomenal sense", i. e. can be regressed to their original, "real" territory. We shall call them "eventtual" or "primary".

Other, "auxiliary" or "secondary" ones, like mass, heat, energy, are purely abstract concepts helping to incorporate the primary into well structured mathematical formulas. Postulating and empirically verifying that force F is proportional to acceleration a we express it as F = ma, where m, called "mass" is a coefficient of proportionality. Regression of secondary constructs to "reality" amounts to illegitimate reifications. There are no masses or energies flying around in the "reality".

Yet, such reification of auxiliary abstractions and talking about them as if they were "real" simplifies communication and is acceptable, as long as we do not forget their purely abstract character, strictly limited to symbolic models.

A particularly pernicious pseudo-physical term is "matter". It does not appear in any physical formula even as an auxiliary concept or its metalanguage alias, i. e. there is no such physical term. Nevertheless, one should be aware that it's commonly used as a metalanguage shortcut, as a collective name for "discretized high density field areas", aka "particles".

In any other usage it is a pure meaningless abstraction, whose reification is fatuous and may be dangerous when, underlying a so called materialistic ideology, it sends millions to death in Gulag, in the name of the Pure Idea of Matter.