Hello John,
> I don't know about its meaning, but Heisenberg argued that
> we change the world merely by observing. His model has yet
> to be invalidated, even though some of the movers and shakers
> of logical positivism - Carl Popper to name one - was very
> unhappy with the implications. In _The Logic of Scientific
> Discovery_ he assumes that "a photon" must have a single
> path while dicussing the double slit experiment. This of
> course has nothing to do with arch archaeology however.
Yes, I'm familiar with what Heisenberg had to say,
and Popper (who is mostly wrong, in my opinion, although
I quite like his statement " We never know what we are
talking about ".),
but my line of thought was not toward quantum physics,
but toward archaeology.
Fundamental, is interpretation of evidence.
Your knowledge emerges out of a dynamic context of background
knowledge, the matrix of language, shared meanings, and individual
experiences. That is what you bring to the evidence.
This is the frame within which interpretation occurs.
More broadly, that is your ' world ', your ' reality '.
What I meant when I wrote:
> Is it true to say, that merely observing something, thinking
> about something, brings change to its meaning ?
>
> In other words, we alter ' the world ', just by attending to it ?
was something like the idea that merely focussing attention
upon some aspect of ' reality ' can change its meaning.
So, we are changeing the 'world' by directing serious attention
to it ?
Obviously, I don't mean ' altering its physical character as with
a pick and shovel or a bulldozer '.
I'm trying to get at something deeper.
The world 'is' whatever it means to us, whatever we think it is.
(Mostly, what we have been told it is.)
But if you study an artefact, or an aspect of the world, its
meaning changes. Is this just the natural and inevitable result
of focussing attention and interest ?
Make any sense to you ?
Chris.
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~chrislees/tao.index.html
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