Peter
Thank you for your nice commentary. The net is very slow here in students' dormitory in my university, especially connecting a foreign website like FQXI. Sorry for my late reply.
Perhaps we could find an answer for this through some pure conceptual thoughs. But only through experimens can we know whether it's right or wrong, or at least an ideal experiment. It's very hard, but it's still possible.
However, if we take some furthur thoughs, it may actually be impossible to know what is the answer in reality. Other theories may have the same result. For example, theory A: 1+1=2, theory B: 1+2-1=2. The result shows "2", we still don't the actual precess, it's all possible. From this perspective, we can't know whether our theory is the same as the reality or not, we can only know whether it is useful or not as a model.
As for the Regazas essay, I'm sorry I haven't found that yet. I'll reply to you once I've seen it. Please give me the link.
Regards
Yu
