Chris Lees wrote:
> 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 ?
>
Chris,
I think we have discussed this before. I suppose that observing the world
can change it. For examply, controlled observation via experimentation is a
classic example of this. But even passive observation is a physical process and
certainly if you are part of the world that you observe then the organic aspect
of your processes of observation (hearing, seeing, smelling) is responding to
the sensory inputs as causes so that you are being changed and, therefore, as
part of the world, the world is being changed. But you are raising a different
issue.
As you say, "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 ?"
First, I would ammend your assertion "the world 'is' whatever it means to
us..." by saying "our experiencing of the world is whatever it means to us ..."
By shifting the focus to our attending itself - which is your question -
rather than the objects to which we are attending, then we find the true locus
of meaning. In this way it then becomes quite understandable how we can change
our understanding of the world simply by attending to it (again) while the
world of its physical aspects to wich we are attending remain unchanged. I see
this as distinguishing between how observation - as a causal process in the
world - can change the world while the changing of our understandings of this
world do not. The understandings - the meanings - are cognitive properties so
they reside in the world only by residing in us. When speaking about how a new
discovery in science, i.e., a change in our understanding of the world, changes
the world, then, we have to insert the subject here and point out that that
aspect of the world that is changing is our collective experience of the world.
The world was just as round before this was discovered and the changing of our
understanding of the form of the world did not change that form one bit.
With regard to the artefact, we can change our understanding of the
artefact without at all changing the artefact itself. Similarly, we do not
change the meanings of the artefact as held by those prehistoric subjects who
were responsible for it - since they are dead. Hopefully, of course, the change
in our experiencing of the artefact might be closer in correspondence to the
way the prehistoric users experienced it. I am not saying this, however, in
order to claim that our goals should be simply to produce a facsimile of the
understandings of the users. But if we are to understand the social and
material conditions that brought this artefact into existence, we first have to
understand it in these emic terms.
That is the way I see it.
Regards,
Martin Byers
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