The permanent confinement of quarks is one of the most secure qualitative facts of the Standard Model, and quantum chromodynamics provides its dynamical account. This article does not contest that account, the experimental record, or any prediction of the theory. It contests a specific ontological inference: the reading according to which the unobservability of the isolated quark is exhaustively a dynamical matter, a consequence of the strength of the strong force alone. Applying to the quark th
