Do Feynman diagrams endorse a particle ontology? The roles of Feynman diagrams in \(S\)-matrix theory (Q2724969)

From the conclusions: Thus, from the re-interpretation of Feynman's diagrammatic machinery by Landau, Mandelstam, and Cutkosky arose the \(S\)-matrix focus upon bootstrapped dynamics. And from the \(S\)-matrix focus upon such bootstrapped dynamics arose a further re-interpretation of the physical content pictured in Feynman's line drawings. Whereas these diagrams had once been held, in the hands of quantum field theorists, to depict `aristocratic' scatterings amongst foundational, elementary entities, they were now taken to portray the wild dances of exchanges from which emerged a spectrum of `democratic' particles. While these simple lines were arranged the same way pictorially by Feynman in 1948 and by Chew in 1964, the theoretical significance read into these lines had undertaken a sea-change.NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 0964.00052].