The 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences' may at times give the impression that natural science, especially modern theoretical physics, is all but a formal apparatus. However, a key challenge of physics remains to align everyday notions of experience -- be it directly or mediated through instruments of arbitrary sophistication -- with their mathematical formalisation. This applies in particular to quantum theory, arguably the most successful theory of physics ever invented. One of its core assumptions postulates:
Observables correspond with self−adjoint operators. Here, we argue that already this most basic premise about the quantum formalism falls apart under careful scrutiny, at least when understood for all observables at once. In other words, we challenge the role of the noncommutative algebra of bounded operators as an adequate formalisation of the 'algebra of observables', understood as (equivalence classes of) measurement procedures that admit a coherent empirical interpretation.
Is mathematics the only language of science? Is there an equation for the observer? If not, can science ignore observer as unscientific. Was Wigner right when he talked about the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics? Was Godel's incompleteness theorem based on natural mathematics? What is the basis of number theory? If we re-envision classical and quantum observations as macroscopic overlap of quantum effects, we may solve most problems. The physics community blindly accepts rigid, linear ideas about the nature of space, time, dimension, etc. These theories provide conceptual convenience and attractive simplicity for pattern analysis, but at the cost of ignoring equally-plausible alternative interpretations of observed phenomena that could possibly have explained the universe better.