The standard model explains how forces act at distance by invoking virtual particles that come from fields, so the earth’s field of gravity holds the moon in orbit by graviton particles, and the strong field holds the nucleus together by gluon particles, where according to Feynman:
“A real field is a mathematical function we use for avoiding the idea of action at a distance.” (Feyma,Leighton, & Sands, 1977), Vol. II, p15-7.
The electromagnetic field is then a mathematical function used to describe how charge acts from afar, but an equation isn’t a theory. Equations summarize known data but don’t predict as theories do, as the a new values they produce are expectations not predictions. Field theory is only a valid science if it predicts something new, that wasn’t known before, but it didn’t do that. That virtual photons cause charge effects didn’t add knowledge about charge, but it avoided the idea of action at a distance, so it was accepted. It explained the equation but didn’t advance science because it didn’t predict new facts, just as borrowing $10 to make a $10 profit isn’t an advance. Science advances when theories explain more than they assume, not when every new fact needs new assumptions. This tactic of assuming new virtual causes for new forces explains why field theory is currently going nowhere, as will be seen.
By analogy, if I say that your tooth was taken by a tooth fairy, maybe a sock fairy took my sock, and a perhaps a spoon fairy took the lost spoon, but where does it end? These causes lead nowhere because they don’t predict anything new. Likewise, a theory based on gravitons and gluons that predict nothing new is also going nowhere.
The best example of this failure to predict is string theory, which tried to explain all physics by field mathematics. The result was so many possible architectures that anything was possible, but no-one could say which one applied. It was mathematically impressive but scientifically useless, so it led nowhere. Based on field theory, it assumed that our space has eight additional dimensions, but they interacted in so many ways that the result was meaningless. According to Woit, string theory is pseudo-science because:
The possible existence of, say, 10500 consistent different vacuum states for superstring theory probably destroys the hope of using the theory to predict anything. If one picks among this large set just those states whose properties agree with present experimental observations, it is likely there still will be such a large number of these that one can get just about whatever value one wants for the results of any new observation. (Woit, 2006), p242.
The basic problem is that inventing a field across all space adds what mathematics calls a degree of freedom to it, so adding many fields is like adding many dimensions to space. Based on current field theory, gravity then adds one-dimension, electromagnetism adds two, the strong force adds three, and the weak force two. These eight extra dimensions, plus the three of space, are why string theory has to assume eleven dimensions. Its failure to predict illustrates why inventing new fields to explain new facts isn’t leading anywhere either.
That a universe of eleven dimensions somehow collapsed into our three-dimensional world is an untestable theory, like the multiverse, that only exists to support our preconceptions. It led nowhere because the goal of science is the explain outcomes not equations, but how did it come to this?