More Weyl Quotes and Some Thoughts On Physics

[StrangeCaptain]

From the introduction of Hermann Weyl's "Space Time Matter":

It is easily seen that such a quality as "green" has an existence only as the correlate of the sensation "green" associated with an object given by perception, but that it is meaningless to attach it as a thing in itself to material things existing in themselves. This recognition of the subjectivity of the qualities of sense is found in Galilei (and also in Descartes and Hobbes) in a form closely related to the principle underlying the constructive method of our modern physics which repudiates "qualities". According to this principle, colours are "really" vibrations of the aether, i.e. motions. In the field of philosophy Kant was the first to take the next decisive step towards the point of view that not only the qualities revealed by the senses, but also space and spatial characteristics have no objective significance in the absolute sense; in other words, that space, too, is only a form of our perception. In the realm of physics it is perhaps only the theory of relativity which has made it quite clear that the two essences, space and time, entering into our intuition have no place in the world constructed by mathematical physics. Colours are thus "really" not even aether-vibrations, but merely a series of values of mathematical functions in which occur four independent parameters corresponding to the three dimensions of space, and the one of time.

I quoted the above so that the context for the next quote would be in place.

Expressed as a general principle, this means that the real world, and every one of its constituents with their accompanying characteristics, are, and can only be given as, intentional objects of acts of consciousness.

This last quote is pretty deep I think. And it is not a "you create your own reality" idea either IMO. I am not particularly qualified to comment, but it seems to me that looking for the the most fundamental approach to studying reality, and assuming for a moment that time and space ARE rather subjective, we are left with the study of masses. This would bring us eventually to quantum mechanics of course. I do not refer to a particular theory but just the idea of studying the mechanics of quantum interactions. But... Fulcanelli mentioned the following in "The Dwellings of The Philosophers":

...living nature is not to be studied outside of its activity.

Not that Fulcanelli is god or anything, but... But I think he may be warning against divorcing a system too far from its environment when trying to study reality. Can quantum interactions be studied at all without this kind of divorce? Anyway... There's my Saturday morning musings.

 

[John G]

Neo-Kantian sounds good to me and even the realm of conscious thoughts can be described I think by math. Course math can also describe stuff that has nothing to do with any reality so one has to be careful.

John... in Tucson