At 02:47 PM 7/12/00 +0100, you wrote:
>
>The eminent physicist John Wheeler said, some decades ago, that
>no phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.
>He was referrring to the collapse of the quantum wave by conscious
>observation.
>Do wolves collapse the quantum wave ?
Interesting. Does this question lead to a falsifiable hypothesis? Suppose
we were to propose the hypothesis: Observation by a wolf does not collapse
the wave function. Is there an experiment we can do to test it?
Sadly, I don't remember the details of how observation collapses the wave
function, so I can't say. But it doesn't seem impossible that there is a
test.
You can perhaps see where I'm going with this. If it turned out that only
observation by humans would do, that might tell us that there is something
unique about us. But if wolves could do it as well, what then? How about
rats, or flies? How about observation by a computer vision system?
Chris
Chris Hope, Judge Institute of Management Studies,
University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1AG, UK.
Voice: +44 1223 338194. Fax: +44 1223 339701
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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