Dan's Niels Bohr post:

(Minor editing for quotes, italics, line length, etc.)

<——— Original Message Follows ———>
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 22:52:56 -0500
From: Dan Glover <glove@indianvalley.com>
To: quantonics@topica.com
Subject: Re: Another new member.

Hello

Doug wrote:

>Hello,
>
>We have another new subscriber to our quanto list.
>
>Welcome Mukundan Iyengar!
>
>He says it is OK for us to call him Kuntz for short. We shall!

So nice to meet you Kuntz and I am looking forward to hearing from you soon.

>
>Dan, do you want to select a topic to start? Kuntz knows Pirsig's work
>fairly well, so any level of discussion is probably apropos.

Ok, Doug... where to start? Well let's see... in looking into Pirsig's
Subjects, Objects, Data and Values (SODV) paper he writes:

"The most striking similarity between the Metaphysics of Quality and
Complementarity is that this Quality event corresponds to what Bohr means by
"observation." When the Copenhagen Interpretation "holds that the unmeasured
atom is not real, that it's attributes are created or realized in the act of measurement,"
(Herbert xiii) it is saying something very close to the Metaphysics of Quality. The
observation creates the reality." (page 11 of SODV)

Is the act of measuring and the act of observation the same, and is this act
of measuring what creates our reality? The framework of complementarity
states that the measurement and the measuring instrument must be taken as a
complete and unitary whole. Since the measuring instrument of reality is our
individual observations, what happens to reality when the individual
observer no longer measures?

The framework of complementarity states that the reality that is not
measured (that which cannot be distinguished from anything else) does not
exist and can therefore be completely ignored while formulating an
unambiguous communication concerning the observation. The MOQ uses the
phrase "man is THE measure" to illustrate the act of observation and how it
is unambiguously communicated to others. Value must be experienced in order
to be communicated... experience comes before the external world, not after,
and this is how the observation creates reality.

So. Does this mean that there is no reality "really" out there? Hmmm... on
the surface it might or might not, but the framework of complementarity
states there is no way to say with certainty either way. Rather it seems
that reality both is and is-not there depending on (valuing the precondition
of) the observation.

Thoughts, anyone?

Best wishes,

Dan

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©Quantonics, Inc., Robert M. Pirsig (quoted material), and Dan Glover, 1999-2006 — Rev. 25Dec99  PDR — Created 8Jul99  Dan Glover