ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the influence of quasirealist thinking within the context of symmetry and, subsequently, on the ontological status of gauge bosons. It examines both classical and quantum mechanical symmetries, whether abstract or physical, and evaluate the validity of a corresponding conservation law. In quantum chromodynamics, the color degree of freedom is an abstract symmetry and a simple extension of isospin. Recall that the treatment of the electromagnetic field potential in quantum electrodynamics results in a mixing of particles and the interactions that act on and by them via the fields. Photons, the electromagnetic quanta, were the first kind of gauge boson to be identified as such. The electromagnetic field quantization is compatible only with zero-mass photons. In the case of the neutral Z and photon, neither of them is uniquely weak or electromagnetic quantum. Electroweak unification is achieved by blurring the boundaries of the several interactions, along with the purity and simplicity of the quanta.
