Biological Observer-Participation and Wheeler’s‘Law without Law’

Biological Observer-Participation and Wheeler’s‘Law without Law’

Brian Josephson

It is argued that at a sufficiently deep level the conventional quantitative approach to the study of nature faces difficult problems, and that biological processes should be seen as more fundamental, in a way that can be elaborated on the basis of Peircean semiotics and Yardley’s Circular Theory. In such a world-view, Wheeler’s observer-participation and emergent law arise naturally, rather than having to be imposed artificially. This points the way to a deeper understanding of nature, where meaning has a fundamental role to play that is invisible to quantitative science.

Some supplementals:

Power Point Slides gathered in a PDF

• Main thesis of this talk: meaning is as fundamental as matter; the two are
entangled

• As Peirce wrote in the 19th century: ‘all this universe is perfused with signs’

•His theory of signs (semiotics) does now have a place in biology (in the discipline of biosemiotics, which studies the role that signs play in biology)

• But it has not yet crept into regular physics, where signs and meaning are viewed as irrelevant

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Some supplementals:

Power Point Slides gathered in a PDF

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I am reading about Circular Theory for the first time.  It seems like it draws conclusions in the same track as myself.  Any western theory acknowledging the value of the Tao is a step forward!

How observers create reality

Brian Josephson

Wheeler proposed that repeated acts of observation give rise to the reality that we observe, but offered no detailed mechanism for this. Here this creative process is accounted for on the basis of the idea that nature has a deep technological aspect that evolves as a result of selection processes that act upon observers making use of the technologies. This leads to the conclusion that our universe is the product of agencies that use these evolved technologies to suit particular purposes.

Reflections from Chris Fuchs, the physicist who came up with the QBism conceptualization of QM:

On Participatory Realism

In the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “ ‘I’ is not the name of a person, nor ‘here’ of a place, . . . . But they are connected with names. . . . [And] it is characteristic of physics not to use these words.” This statement expresses the dominant way of thinking in physics: Physics is about the impersonal laws of nature; the “I” never makes an appearance in it. Since the advent of quantum theory, however, there has always been a nagging pressure to insert a first-person perspective into the heart of physics. In incarnations of lesser or greater strength, one may consider the “Copenhagen” views of Bohr Heisenberg, and Pauli, the observer-participator view of John Wheeler, the informational interpretation of Anton Zeilinger and
ˇCaslav Brukner, the relational interpretation of Carlo Rovelli, and, most radically, the QBism of N. David Mermin, R ̈udiger Schack, and the present author, as acceding to the pressure.

These views have lately been termed “participatory realism” to emphasize that rather than relinquishing the idea of reality (as they are often accused of), they are saying that reality is more than any third-person perspective can capture. Thus, far from instances of instrumentalism or antirealism, these views of quantum theory should be regarded as attempts to make a deep statement about the nature of reality. This paper explicates the idea for the case of QBism. As well, it highlights the influence of John Wheeler’s “law without law” on QBism’s formulation.

Do Our Questions Create the World?

J.Horgan

After Bohr died, his son told Wheeler that his father had felt the search for the ultimate theory of physics might never reach a satisfying conclusion; as physicists sought to penetrate further into nature they would face questions of increasing complexity and difficulty that would eventually overwhelm them. “I guess I'm more optimistic than that,” Wheeler said, “but maybe I'm kidding myself.”

The irony is that Wheeler’s it from bit implies that a final theory will always be a mirage, and that truth is something created rather than objectively apprehended. His view comes dangerously close to postmodernism, or worse. In the early 1980s, organizers of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science placed Wheeler on the same program as three parapsychologists. Wheeler was furious. At the meeting, he made it clear that he did not share the belief of his co-speakers in psychic phenomena. He passed out a pamphlet that declared, in reference to parapsychology: “Where there’s smoke, there’s smoke.”

But Wheeler himself has suggested that there is nothing but smoke. “I do take 100 percent seriously the idea that the world is a figment of the imagination,” he remarked to physicist/science writer Jeremy Bernstein in 1985. Wheeler must know that this view defies common sense: Where was mind when the universe was born? And what sustained the universe for the billions of years before we came to be? He nonetheless bravely offers us a lovely, chilling paradox: At the heart of everything is a question, not an answer. When we peer down into the deepest recesses of matter or at the farthest edge of the universe, we see, finally, our own puzzled face looking back at us.

Do Our Questions Create the World?

J.Horgan

The irony is that Wheeler’s it from bit implies that a final theory will always be a mirage, and that truth is something created rather than objectively apprehended. His view comes dangerously close to postmodernism, or worse. In the early 1980s, organizers of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science placed Wheeler on the same program as three parapsychologists. Wheeler was furious. At the meeting, he made it clear that he did not share the belief of his co-speakers in psychic phenomena. He passed out a pamphlet that declared, in reference to parapsychology: “Where there’s smoke, there’s smoke.”

I did a little bit of reading about Wheeler's virulent opposition to parapsychology a while ago, and found it quite interesting:
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...0#pid21060
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...7#pid21067
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...3#pid21083

His opposition certainly was virulent, but I think it's fair to say that even when he expressed it 40 years ago, it was principally based on evidence that was already more than 50 years old and/or evidence that was entirely mistaken.

There's more on Wheeler's entirely mistaken accusation of fraud against J. B. Rhine in a paper by J. E. Kennedy here:
http://jeksite.org/psi/skeptic81.pdf

Brian Josephson in Science history: The man attempting to merge physics and the paranormal

Jeff Glorfel

He told an interviewer from the Physics World journal in 2002 that, “physicists have an emotional response when they hear anything connected with parapsychology. Their opinion of parapsychology research is not based on evaluation of the evidence but on a dogmatic belief that all research in this field is false.”

He’d started to think about how the brain works and found this more fascinating than anything in physics at the time. He became interested in Eastern mysticism and parapsychology.

"I began to sense that conventional science is inadequate for situations where the mind is involved, and the task of clarification became a major concern of mine,” he said.

“Ultimately, my work on the brain is more significant than my Nobel-prize winning research.”

Josephson’s vocal support for many fringe theories – such as cold fusion and the idea that water possesses memory – has seen him shunned by many other scientists. In 2010 organisers withdrew an invitation for him to attend a conference on the de Broglie–Bohm theory, an approach to quantum physics. However, it was soon reinstated after several other attendees complained.

He continues to be very active, and defiant. On his university homepage he describes his work as “concerned primarily with the attempt to understand, from the viewpoint of the theoretical physicist, what may loosely be characterised as intelligent processes in nature, associated with brain function or with some other natural process.”

Reflections from Chris Fuchs, the physicist who came up with the QBism conceptualization of QM:

On Participatory Realism

Courtesy of the Daily Grail - here's an interview with Fuchs about QBism:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sci...the-street

People who like this kind of thing may find that this is the kind of thing they like.

I thought what he said about the origins of the Many Worlds Interpretation was interesting. In physics, it was proposed in 1957. But in fiction it was foreshadowed by Jorge Luis Borges in "The Garden of Forking Paths" in 1941. However, Fuchs points out that it was foreshadowed earlier on by Olaf Stapledon in "Star Maker" in 1937:
“Whenever a creature was faced with several possible courses of action, it took them all, thereby creating many distinct temporal dimensions and distinct histories of the cosmos. Since in every evolutionary sequence of the cosmos there were many creatures and each was constantly faced with many possible courses, and all the possible courses were innumerable, an infinity of distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal sequence in this cosmos.”