Very dear Jola,
I am very sorry for I send my comment to your interesting reply just now. Anyhow, I could not just say something politically correct, as there are truly original points in your text. For instance, you say, "In quantum physics the causal structure is not assumed but emerges in the right conditions. The right condition is the momentum of taking a measure" and you're right; consciousness seems to play a crucial role into awareness on reality. Of course, needless to say that I don't believe in the equation "consciousness = intelligence", of course not; animals, for instance, possess some degree of consciousness about the surrounding medium; it only depends on the existence of a central nervous system which, from a phylogenetic point of view means the notochord. It is a question, minimally, of irritability vis-à-vis of the environment and it meant a huge step in evolutionary systems. Of course, you may argue, your phrase has to do with quantum physics, not with biological systems; I think, it is a "must" in physics that reality is one and that's why I expect there exists a depth, a chasm where everything unifies... Pity we do not know how!
It is down there, perhaps, where symbols play their essential role. A big WARNING is necessary at this stage: symbols pretend to say the world and we cannot avoid them, true, however they are only what they are, symbols. Therefore, symbols do not exempt us from looking deeper into the real world. You know, my dear friend, we already should have learned this lesson in sciences, namely, that mathematics is but an aid to facilitate the symbolic expression of the world and, in such sense, it is totally licit as a searching process. Nevertheless, to pretend that the real world is exactly that seems to be a little risky, isn't it? We are called to describe the universe around us, with us inside, not to invent it... Confusion on these aspects has leaded us to a profound conceptual crisis in the scientific thought.
There is a beautiful example of that in the history of physics. Everybody accepted at once the beautiful advances in differential calculus, derived from the works of Newton and Leibniz, since they provided us with an appropriate language to express the dynamical reality of the word, BUT the same differential calculus was totally unable to explain the beautiful complexity of that world. Michael Faraday, a genius without an advanced training in mathematics, agreed with Newton concerning gravity, namely, that an object can't exert its influence without being there, at the exact point where that influence should change reality (even Newton warned about this "void" in his theory, but the general enthusiasm on quantifiable results provoked, particularly through the 18th century, that almost nobody paid attention to it). So the things, Faraday introduced a brand new idea, the field as the only explanation for "action at a distance". As a consequence, mechanics looked less embedded in a discrete description than before and closer to the realm of optics, this is to say the continuum of waves. We all know what was the issue: Maxwell showing the electromagnetic nature of light and Einstein proving that simultaneity demands time as a fourth dimension, stuck with space coordinates. But still the very depth of field stays in the dark.
You see, polyglotism is not the ultimate solution to our problems, but it opens a horizon of possibilities that, the other way around, the very same way we have been using for the last three centuries, otherwise is nothing but sameness. In a certain manner causality is some sort of neurosis; that is the main consequence of quantum physics.
Well, dear Jola, I hope we will be able to discuss all these issues, and many others, personally one of these days. Would you agree? Thanks once again.
Best regards.
Alex
