After reading Art Hobson's article titled, "There are no particles, there are only fields" published in The American Journal of Physics in 2013, I'm wondering what other experts think of his main thesis
I think there's some merit in it, but there's plenty wrong with it too. See his paper on the arXiv where you can read this: the Schroedinger field is a space-filling physical field whose value at any spatial point is the probability amplitude for an interaction to occur at that point. A physical field is a probability field? I don't think so. And whilst I like each electron extends over both slits, I don't like the field for an electron is the electron. OK the electron isn't some point particle. It has a standing-wave standing-field nature, such that the electron's field is what it is. But it's still a particle. Saying it's not, and that it's an excitation of the electron field, doesn't help much I'm afraid.
The double slit experiment, in all her variations, can be completely explained through relativistic quantum physics (quantum field theory) and that the alleged particle/wave "weirdness" is only weird because
I don't think it's weird at all. The electron or photon goes through both slits, but when you detect it at one slit something akin to an optical Fourier transform occurs. It becomes pointlike, so it goes through that slit only. Then when you detect it at the screen something akin to an optical Fourier transform occurs. It becomes pointlike, so you see a dot on the screen.
people don't realize that our best physical models of the universe model that universe as composed of fields ("particles" are excitations of that field).
I like this in his conclusion: In the 2-slit experiment, for example, the quantized field for each electron or photon comes simultaneously through both slits, spreads over the entire interference pattern, and collapses non-locally, upon interacting with the screen, into a small (but still spread out) region of the detecting screen. But I don't like this: the electron-positron field fills
all space. Because I share Einstein's view that a field is a state of space. Space can't have two different states at one location. And we can convert photons into electrons and positrons and vice versa. The different fields can't be fundamental. They must be different aspects or configurations of the thing that is.
I get how it can explain everything in the double-slit experiment except the following- how can fields explain why, when you watch which slit the "particle" goes through, does the interference pattern disappear?
Like I was saying, something akin to an optical Fourier transform occurs. See Steve Lehar's web page for the optical Fourier transform performed by a lens.