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The trouble with physics. How physics missed main part of the observer and what comes next

Dainis Zeps

Published Jan 1, 2008• 2 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

In his excellent book (Smolin, 2006) Lee Smolin speaks about crisis in physics, blaming mainly string theory. We argue that modern physics should change its attitude towards what is called observer, but should be called cognitive machine or rather two distinctively different, inner and outer, cognitive machines.

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An holism solution to reconcile the hard problem of consciousness

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Natural science is founded on materialism. We treat the independent relationship between inner experience and outer physical entities as an axiom. This cognitive paradigm has successfully explained many natural phenomena; however, certain phenomena, such as those in quantum mechanics and psychological experiments, challenge this view, suggesting the inseparability of the inner and outer. Yet, the inner and outer appear to be distinct categories of existence, and experimental models demonstrating their transformative relationship remain lacking. This has led to issues like the explanatory gap. We propose that adopting holism is a potential solution to reconcile this dilemma: the inner experience can be objectively described and possesses objective causal efficacy. According to holism, objective reality and a causal relationship are not absolute but inseparable from the cognitive perspective. Materialism's view that the inner and outer exist as independent relations is an underlying assumption based on the third-person perspective rather than an axiom. From the third-person perspective, the physical properties of things are described, and we establish a causal relationship confined to spacetime, where things interact through physical medium. This cognitive perspective excels at describing the laws of motion governing simple systems but simultaneously introduces limitations, such as the explanatory gap. From the first-person perspective, the holistic attributes of things can also be objectively described. "Inner" and "outer" can be seen as two different states of experience, and things here interact holistically without a physical medium, forming causality unrestricted by spacetime. This perspective excels at revealing the laws governing complex systems/phenomena and can reconcile the explanatory gap. These two cognitive perspectives, although superficially opposed, are functionally complementary. Therefore, the generalized complementarity principle based on holism provides a falsifiable research approach for the "subjective" interpretation of quantum theory, potentially reconciling the contradictions between quantum theory and relativity. Holism also offers a solution for reconciling divergent viewpoints among consciousness theories, enabling phenomena related to consciousness across multiple disciplines to be explained within a unified theoretical framework. To test these hypotheses, we propose an experimental model to demonstrate that, similar to the role of force that we revealed in the third-person perspective, holistic interaction without a physical medium from the first-person perspective is also an objective way of interaction between things. Under holistic interaction, the inner experience, as a holistic attributes of things, can also produce observable and objective causal efficacy.

•Sep 28, 2025•0 citations
In physics today it often happens that experimental data is interpreted as proof of a phenomenon that has not been directly observed, but for which phenomenon there is a theoretical model. With the obtained data acting thereby as proof, the model then becomes recognized as “real,” after which the theoretical phenomenon that the model describes also then becomes recognized as “real” – that is, the heretofore purely theoretical phenomenon is acknowledged as a physical reality, even though it has never been observed, by either instruments or human senses. This relatively new situation, in which unobserved phenomenon come to be treated as if they had been directly observed, has lead modern physics into deep epistemological crisis of which it is not yet aware. The purpose of this article is both to identify the epistemological crisis created by this situation, as well as to present a solution to overcoming this crisis.
The capacity to acquire and use fully complex language systems made the members of our species fully conscious and self-aware beings in the vast cosmos. But this enormous privilege came with a price. After our ancestors began to live storied lives in a linguistically based symbolic universe, the world that previous generations experienced as an integrated and undivided whole split into two worlds—an inner world where the self that is aware of its own awareness exists and an outer world in which this self seeks to gratify its needs and establish a meaningful sense of connection with other selves. And this explains why the most fundamental impulse in the storied lives of fully modern humans has always been to close the gap between these inner and outer worlds by integrating all seemingly discordant parts of a symbolic universe into a meaningful and coherent whole. The narrative that has consistently served this function is religion. But during the first scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, another narrative emerged called Newtonian or classical physics that also promised to bridge the gap between self and world by integrating all of the seemingly discordant parts of the physical universe into a coherent and meaningful whole. In this physics, one universal force, gravity, governs the motion, interaction, and blending of indestructible atoms or mass points. And since the laws of gravity were completely deterministic, it was assumed that all events in the cosmos are predetermined by the forces associated with these laws and that the future of any physical system could be predicted with absolute certainty if initial conditions are known. In the worldview of classical physics, human beings were cogs in a giant machine and linked to other parts of this machine in only the most mundane material terms. The knowing self was separate, discrete, and isolated from the physical world, and all the creativity of the cosmos was exhausted in the first instant of creation. As physicist Henry Stapp points out, “Classical physics not only fails to demand the mental, it fails to even provide a rational place for the mental.
The growth of modern science resulted in a radically new cognitive approach to many problems of classical philosophy. In the context of contemporary theoretical physics, if only one avoids easy apologetic, it is no longer possible to defend this version of epistemological empiricism that was defended half a century ago. Whereas in the 1930’s the traditional distinction between theoretical and observational terms was called into question, due to its arbitrary nature, in the 1980’s the basic philosophical opposition between material and immaterial (resp. between physical and mathematical) objects seems arbitrary since the very notion of matter appears nothing but a terminological relic of the bygone epoch.
Natural science is founded on materialism. We treat the independent relationship between inner experience and outer physical entities as an axiom. This cognitive paradigm has successfully explained many natural phenomena; however, certain phenomena, such as those in quantum mechanics and psychological experiments, challenge this view, suggesting the inseparability of the inner and outer. Yet, the inner and outer appear to be distinct categories of existence, and experimental models demonstrating their transformative relationship remain lacking. This has led to issues like the explanatory gap. We propose that adopting holism is a potential solution to reconcile this dilemma: the inner experience can be objectively described and possesses objective causal efficacy. According to holism, objective reality and a causal relationship are not absolute but inseparable from the cognitive perspective. Materialism's view that the inner and outer exist as independent relations is an underlying assumption based on the third-person perspective rather than an axiom. From the third-person perspective, the physical properties of things are described, and we establish a causal relationship confined to spacetime, where things interact through physical medium. This cognitive perspective excels at describing the laws of motion governing simple systems but simultaneously introduces limitations, such as the explanatory gap. From the first-person perspective, the holistic attributes of things can also be objectively described. "Inner" and "outer" can be seen as two different states of experience, and things here interact holistically without a physical medium, forming causality unrestricted by spacetime. This perspective excels at revealing the laws governing complex systems/phenomena and can reconcile the explanatory gap. These two cognitive perspectives, although superficially opposed, are functionally complementary. Therefore, the generalized complementarity principle based on holism provides a falsifiable research approach for the "subjective" interpretation of quantum theory, potentially reconciling the contradictions between quantum theory and relativity. Holism also offers a solution for reconciling divergent viewpoints among consciousness theories, enabling phenomena related to consciousness across multiple disciplines to be explained within a unified theoretical framework. To test these hypotheses, we propose an experimental model to demonstrate that, similar to the role of force that we revealed in the third-person perspective, holistic interaction without a physical medium from the first-person perspective is also an objective way of interaction between things. Under holistic interaction, the inner experience, as a holistic attributes of things, can also produce observable and objective causal efficacy.