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From: barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response (SUPERFORCE, New Physics)
Message-ID: <995@ames.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 19-May-85 23:30:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.995
Posted: Sun May 19 23:30:23 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 21-May-85 05:02:44 EDT
References: <-178800@decwrl.UUCP> <4500005@hpfclp.UUCP>
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 35

>Non-objective  reality is exactly  what Davies is  preaching.  He states
>that the observer and the observed are  intimately  tied  together--that
>the phenomenon one is observing  would be different if one was not there
>to observe it.  By merely  examining  reality,  you change  what you are
>examining--thus  your mind can only perceive  distortions of reality and
>that these distortions will be different each time you look.  Let anyone
>who believes  this theory prove it to me by means of data not derived by
>his five  senses--senses  that  "science"  has  shown  can't be  trusted
>because they give us only approximate, subjective perceptions of reality
>and that they are  powerless to find any absolute  truth or certainty in
>the "Modern Physics'" reality.

	I haven't read the book, but I must say your challenge sounds
unfair. Obviously, nothing can be proved without going to the authority
of our senses. That's why solipsism can't be logically falsified, even
though no sane person is a thoroughgoing solipsist. But I don't think
the New Physics argues for solipsism, only for a less rigid idea of what
is meant by "reality" than is traditional. It has been forced to take
into account the fact that the observer is always a part of the observation,
and that objectivity, though it's a convenient fiction, and a powerful
abstraction for analytical purposes, is still ultimately a fiction. No
description can be complete that does not include the observer, but no
description that includes the observer is "objective".
	Philosophical conclusions reached from this principle can be
wrong, just as conclusions based on older, more mechanistic notions of
reality can be wrong. Science is science, and philosophy is philosophy,
and one cannot entirely rest its case on the findings of the other. But
they can still profitably talk to one another, and I find their dialogue
in the 20th century to be most interesting. Don't tune out.

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
                                                NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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