Re: What Physicists REALLY Think, imperative of participation

[Dan Fiscus <***>]

Pete,

Thanks for this - great! I have to read again and
follow some of your references and concepts in
more depth, but wanted to say that the participatory
aspect you mention from Wheeler seems to me one
of the keys ways by which the epistemic cut is
bridged or healed (from word root related to making
whole). Also, the impact of organisms and
(communities) on their environments and how this
feeds into evolutionary change forming a loop that
starts and ends with the organism/life form is the
focus of a dynamic new field within ecology and
evolution called variously "niche construction" and
"ecological/ecosystem engineers". Major examples
cited are beavers, burrow makers, hive makers, etc.
They create/construct environments and then
"downstream" adapt to their own creations.

I think of it as "the imperative of participation" and it
includes the view that model making has physical
impacts that change the real world, yet another of
the impredicative loops that to me unifies the
epistemic and ontic realms.

Dan

Pete Giansante wrote:

snip

> I'm not challenging Howard's articulation of the principle as it 
> appears in Barrow and Tipler; I don't have the book so I can't check 
> the original verbiage. (Howard: Please correct any misunderstanding I 
> might have regarding your intent on this point.) Rather, I would say 
> that I infer that SAP entails quite a bit more than just the 
> development of life. I believe that the SAP actually goes further and 
> posits the development of conscious life—in other words, self-aware 
> volitional beings that think about what they think about. The 
> extension of that concept shows up in John Wheeler's participatory 
> anthropic principle, in which we as volitional beings actually have a 
> hand in actualizing (or "reifying", as RR might say) the universe we 
> observe.
>
> Philosophically, I'm inclined to agree for several reasons. First, 
> although I don't think that humankind affects much on the cosmological 
> scale, we certainly have a localized impact on our own environment. 
> Indeed, one of the most significant characteristics of our own 
> species' evolution is the ability to insulate ourselves from 
> environments that are physically hostile to us, and to create those 
> that are favorable to us. We are a species whose purpose has been, in 
> part, to make our preferred environment "portable". Otherwise, no one 
> would be able to live in Nome.
snip