The point is that you may not believe in the existence of fields
Anyone who does not believe in fields would be in denial of radiation. Talk about living in the dark.
or any medium existing in space,
Now you're on my wavelength.
and of course that is your prerogative,
No, I feel constrained by facts.
which deserves respect but many respected theories do believe in fields
I would say that the facts deserve respect, and that electromagnetics is based in fact.
and the existence of mediums for the propagation of force, gravitational, electromagnetic or other.
If your point is to introduce some actual science that speaks to your ideas, then go for it.
Here is a quote from wikipedia:
An electromagnetic field (also EMF or EM field) is a physical field produced by moving electrically charged objects. It affects the behavior of charged objects in the vicinity of the field. The electromagnetic field extends indefinitely throughout space and describes the electromagnetic interaction. It is one of the four fundamental forces of nature (the others are gravitation, the weak interaction, and the strong interaction). The field can be viewed as the combination of an electric field and a magnetic field.
The electric field is produced by stationary charges, and the magnetic field by moving charges (currents); these two are often described as the sources of the field.
The way in which charges and currents interact with the electromagnetic field is described by Maxwell's equations and the Lorentz force law.
From a classical perspective, the electromagnetic field can be regarded as a smooth, continuous field, propagated in a wavelike manner; whereas from the perspective of quantum field theory, the field is seen as quantized, being composed of individual particles. ((citation needed)
I think that deserves a few good edits.
If looked at logically the above makes no sense at all, but that is beside the point.
No, I think it's central to your issues. What doesn't make sense to you?
Other sources claim that space is empty and that EMR is self sustaining.
There certainly is no aether wind, is there. Nor any attenuation. Now what?
So you can take your pick.
As I said before the fact of propagation doesn't bother me. I see no menu of choices.
However, there are still a lot of unexplained phenomenon that require explanations.
I wouldn't say "require". I would say that science is like an ever expanding bubble whose instantaneous surface is woven out of explanations. Presumably this goes on without end, like the propagating field. Of course the mind is the medium in this case. It's very prone to errors, so it needs a lot of checking. Otherwise the science that was bubbling up just collapses, like the field in destructive interference. The trick then, is to avoid that.
Take the field theory quosted above, eventually the postulate is that a field will be needed for every particle making a hundred or so fields. Surely this can be simplified by a evolving a more coherent less bloated theory.
What's not coherent to you? By bloating I think you mean superposition, which is convenient in all kind of abstractions - like finding a center of mass.
This, I hope, is what the discussion in this thread is about.
It's proposing the idea that invokes the fact (aether wind) that was shot shot down by Michelson-Morley. So far, I haven't understood why you think a field is like a medium. A field acting on a medium is one thing but a field being a medium sounds like a language issue.
By the way, getting back to the idea that the intrinsic impedance of free space takes care of whatever you think the mystery medium furnishes, consider this one other perspective on the more familiar E=mc²:
$$E\quad =\quad \frac { m }{ { \mu }_{ 0 }{ \epsilon }_{ 0 } } $$
and then you get another way to look at matter-energy equivalence:
$$\quad m\quad =\quad { \mu }_{ 0 }{ \epsilon }_{ 0 }E$$
It's like saying spacetime is the operator that transforms one to the other. If we expand that a little more, adding in the familiar E = hν (=hc/λ):
$$\quad m\quad =\quad { \mu }_{ 0 }{ \epsilon }_{ 0 }E\quad =\quad \frac { { \mu }_{ 0 }{ \epsilon }_{ 0 }hc }{ \lambda } \quad =\quad \frac { h\sqrt { { \mu }_{ 0 }{ \epsilon }_{ 0 } } }{ \lambda } $$
which looks more interesting to me in this form
$$\quad m\lambda \quad =\quad h\sqrt { { \mu }_{ 0 }{ \epsilon }_{ 0 } } $$
since it gives two essential quantities of phenomena on the left against the mystery medium scaled by h. And what a magic h that is. Just look at the units - J s: it's scaling by an
action. Pretty cool don't you think? Let me see if I can say that back: mass is (indirectly) proportional to its equivalent wavelength by a constant amount that we get by scaling the mystery medium (AKA the intrinsic properties of spacetime, in their geometric mean, by the magic constant of
action.
Whoa, dude. If I was a pothead I'd have to go blow a bong right now. Stuff like this doesn't make me feel cynical or dissatisfied at all. It simply blows my mind. You don't see structure in that? Who needs aether with way more transcendental ideas like this to feed the craven brain.
There's nothing I see lacking in this very elementary concept I've put forward. All that's really lacking is the ability of my mind to completely wrap itself around
what it ultimately means.
That, my friend, is what this discussion is all about. Ultimately, that is.