What is the Electric Field? What is the Electric Potential? I know how to calculate both, but I'm still confused about what they are. This is what David Griffiths has to say about the Electric Field:
What exactly is an electric field? I have deliberately begun with what you might call the "minimal" interpretation of E, as an intermediate step in the calculation of electric forces. But I encourage you to think of the field as a "real" physical entity, filling the space in the neighborhood of any electric charge. Maxwell himself came to believe that electric and magnetic fields represented actual stresses and strains in an invisible primordial jellylike "ether." Special relativity has forced us to abandon the notion of ether, and with it Maxwell's mechanical interpretation of electromagnetic fields. (It is even possible, though cumbersome, to formulate classical electrodynamics as an "action-at-a-distance" theory, and dispense with the field concept altogether.) I can't tell you, then, what a field is—only how to calculate it and what it can do for you once you've got it.
Introduction to Electrodynamics, 3rd edition