Introduction
Following the example of Wigner (see Quantum Mechanics: Is Wigner’s View Justified?21/02/25) who maintains that, in quantum mechanics, the decoherence of quantum superposition occurs not at the moment when an experiment is carried out but at the moment when one becomes aware of the result of that experiment, one may wonder if this does not apply to all science.
The Formal Nature of Knowledge
In other pages of this site, we have developed the notion of « physical reality ».
We have come to the conclusion that it is better to speak of (limited) knowledge, of this « supposed reality »[1], than of physical reality, which would presuppose a « perfect knowledge » of the physical object under consideration.
Indeed, the concept of knowledge is objective and indisputable because it can be « measured » and therefore represent the degree of knowledge of a subject under consideration.
Information theory provides a formal illustration of this because, in some cases, it is possible to determine the information that must be acquired in order to fully determine a system that can be compared to that acquired through experiments and/or formal considerations (theories for example).
The Practical Nature of Human Knowledge
A human being’s knowledge of information about a system requires the use of human temporal and spatial ressources.
Thought is not « instantaneous », it has a temporal and spatial extension in our brain, at least. It is entangled in the physical or formal mechanism that it apprehends and, as such is part of the knowledge of the phenomenon, it belongs to it.
Can we extract physical reality from the knowledge we have of it?
Can we detach this recourse, which is necessary when we become aware of the phenomenon, a recourse with an intellectual spatio-temporal thickness, from the phenomenon described in order to extract from it, what we could consider to be the objective phenomenon, freed from this subjectivity inherent in the way in which this knowledge was acquired?
The result is like an alloy of two elements where the resulting structure is not an aggregate of the two components but a new structure (crystalline in this case) which, in general, confers properties (mechanical in this case) quite different from those of the constituents themselves [2].
If the knowledge of a phenomenon in physics is of this type, we see that it will not be easy to recognize and extract from it, what can be considered as physical reality, because it can have very different appearances.
The objective (universal) character of a « physical » event must be associated with a universal concept.
Minkowski declared that time and space, inherent in our consciousness, have no physical reality because, for the same « physical » phenomenon [3], the measurements of time and space (the experimental counterpart of formalism [4]), made by different observers on this phenomenon do not coincide.
On the other hand, the calculation of space-time (the ds², made with the experimental data of time and space) relating to the same phenomenon, will be concordant for all observers.
It should be noted that it is by reference to a principle, formal and structural, between the universality of the physical phenomenon and the universality of its experimental measurement, that Minkowski bases himself on attributing a physical character to space-time, on the grounds that a « physical » phenomenon has an objective character (a unique entity) and does not depend on the way in which it is observed and measured.
This formal principle associating something universal (the physical phenomenon) with a universal formal concept (space-time for its experimental measure) is necessary, but there is no evidence that it is sufficient.
What is the distortion between reality and phenomenon?
It must depend on the phenomenon under consideration. For the mesocosm (on the scale of our terrestrial activities), the distortion is small: space-time does not manifest itself in ordinary activities [5]) and the concepts of time and space reputed to be only shadows of space-time are generally sufficient and adapted to everyday life.
It is quite different in the microcosm, as quantum mechanics and quantum field theory testify, where it was necessary to invent a formalism to describe it and whose results are sometimes difficult to interpret.
It is certain that on this scale, we are no longer a negligible quantity and that this must be taken into account.
This task, the subject of an abundant literature, which, although it has made it possible to identify innovative ideas, has not entirely led to a consensus, goes beyond the scope of this article, which is intended to be general.
Making knowledge timeless?
If, for example, writing the result on paper to archive it (at least for a certain time) would seem to indicate that it can be detached from the time constraint, for it to be useful, another consciousness, which wants to appropriate it, will go through the same mechanism of acquiring knowledge (reading and understanding the result mobilizes time and space).
Archiving appears as a « pause » function on a description.
Our brain footprint linked to knowledge is one of them
According to this approach, science is more about our knowledge of the world than about an « objective » description of the world, which implies that our « brain fingerprint » is part of the phenomenon.
Notes
[1] Plato’s world of ideas describes a supposed reality.
[2] Duralium, also known as duralumin, is an alloy based on aluminum (95%), copper (4%), magnesium (0.5%), composed of metals with low mechanical strength, has a mechanical strength of the order of mild steel.
[3] Phenomenon is taken in the general sense. It can be the spacetime interval between 2 events (appearance of 2 supernovae at 2 spatiotemporal points in the universe) whose time and space (shadows) are measured to define the spacetime interval.
It should be noted that some measurements (for example involving zero geodesics for light) relate to natively spatiotemporal elements.
[4] Physics is an experimental science. The theory must be able to be validated or invalidated experimentally.
[5] Apart from GPS for precision measurements, relativity is not invoked. On the other hand, in astronomy and cosmology it is essential.