>>13422510The sole purpose of fields is to introduce locality. There might and probably are some crude ideas how to formulate fundamental interactions without fields, but without a local formulation, you are in for a very rough ride.
But if you want an approach that at least breaks the dogma that every particle needs its own field, have a look into Haag's "local Quantum physics". Haag argues that the need for fields stem from the need of local interactions (at least in a relativistic theory). It is also somewhat rigorous.
