‘There is a sense in which what the observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past - even in a past so remote that life did not exist, and shows even more, that observership is a prerequisite for any meaningful version of reality.’
– J Wheeler, commenting on the Copenhangen Interpretation of Quantum physics.
Does this mean that the observer literally creates the universe by his observations? This would be against the laws of casuality!
Einstien did not quite agree and in a letter to Schrödinger, he wrote of the adherents of the Copenhagen interpretation that: ‘most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality.’
There exists, Einstein wrote, ‘a physical reality independent of substantiation and perception. It can be completely comprehended by a theoretical construction which describes phenomena in space and time. The laws of nature imply complete causality.’
So, cause precedes effect… but the actions of elementary particles could not be absolutely predicted, but their actions could only be forecast to a certain level of inexactness through the use of probability functions.
An early implication of this phenomenon was that the measurement techniques used to assess the initial configuration of single particle systems were too heavy handed, and that the measurements themselves so corrupted the system being measured that the results of any subsequent measurements were considered problematical. in short order this conjecture was rejected by many of the prominent theorists and experimenters of the time.
The fact, was that these particles did not, observe the principle of causality. Electrons and protons (as far as experimenters’ measurements could tell) were in specific locations (a physical property) and had speeds (another physical property) with no apparent cause.
That is, no previous measurement of these properties could predict the subsequent measurements of these properties. It was as though the parameters being measured were not really properties of the particles being studied.
A property, in this sense, is an attribute that is an intimate part of the particle, something the particle carries with it into the future until such time that this property is exchanged for another property due to a known cause. Properties were an essential aspect in predicting the future about particles.
When measurements of particles yielded parameters that could not be permanently associated with the particles being measured. then predictability became impossible. and causality was dead.
Einstein who did not like this , had earlier stated that 'Like the moon has a definite position whether or not we look at the moon, the same must also hold for the atomic objects, as there is no sharp distinction possible between these and macroscopic objects.
Observation cannot CREATE an element of reality like a position, there must be something contained in the complete description of physical reality which corresponds to the possibility of observing a position, already before the observation has been actually made.’
So is it all an illusion? Or does causality apply? Did the universe just exist or was the Big Bang the cause for the effect that we see today. Which hypothesis is more easier to accept, everything exists just as we observe it or do all things have a finite position is space/time.
