Abstract
In a typical scattering process among elementary particles, observation is limited to the asymptotic regions, where ingoing particles and outgoing particles behave like free, non-interacting particles. The region of interaction is not accessible to our observations. These would be interfering with the phenomenon under study. The interaction region is thus an “opacity” region for us. Starting from such a remark, I then discuss the behavior of open systems and their interaction with the environment. The discussion is further extended to the brain functional activity and to the possibility to describe consciousness and mental activity as inseparably linked to neuronal activity.
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Notes
- 1.
Light is an em radiation; in the following the word light is used to denote generically an em wave and vice-versa.
- 2.
We do not enter here in the discussion of the role of the observer in determining the result of the observation of microscopic and quantum phenomena, which goes beyond the scope of this work.
- 3.
This dissipation process goes under the name of Joule effect. We are sure that the reader knows what the Joule effect is. In fact, he knows that the current that circulates in the resistance of an electric stove or in the filament of an incandescent lamp generates heat. The lamp, like the stove, heats up and it is good not to touch it … This is the Joule effect.
- 4.
In addition to the em interaction we know the gravitational interaction, the weak one (about 1000 times weaker than the em interaction), responsible for, for example, the process of decay of the neutron and the strong one (about 1000 times stronger than the em interaction) responsible for the interaction between proton and neutron, particles of which the atomic nucleus is composed (in reality the reference force is that between the quarks which are the constituents of protons and neutrons).
- 5.
It is a bit like the theater and the literature: it is the plot of the show or of the novel that defines the characters. In the absence of plot, no character exists.
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Vitiello, G. (2019). The World Opacity and Knowledge. In: Urbani Ulivi, L. (eds) The Systemic Turn in Human and Natural Sciences. Contemporary Systems Thinking. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00725-6_2
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