Abstract
Four lines of evidence out of physics would seem to have direct relevance to the question, how did the universe come into being? (1) Gravitational collapse speaks for the mutability of the laws and structure of physics. (2) No way is evident how physics can bottom out in a smallest object or most basic field or continue on to forever greater depths; and the third possibility presents itself that the observer himself closes up full circle the links of interdependence between the successive levels of structure. (3) What is the explanation for the ‘anthropic principle’ of Dicke and Carter? Carter’s ‘ensemble of universes’, in only a very small fraction of which life and consciousness are possible? Or is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be? (4) The quantum principle shows that 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 then exist, and shows even more, that ‘observership’ is a prerequisite for any useful version of ‘reality’. One is led by these considerations to explore the working hypothesis that ‘observership is the mechanism of genesis’. Testable, ‘falsifiable’, consequences may never flow from this concept unless and until one discovers how to derivefrom it the existence and structure of quantum mechanics.
Preparation for publication assisted in part by National Science Foundation Grant GP30799X to Princeton University.
Invited contribution given August 30, 1975 at the Fifth International Congress of the Division of Logic, Methodology and History of Science of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, originally under the title, “How Did the Universe Come Into Being: Forever Beyond Explanation?”, as updated for publication March 15, 1976 in the light of many much appreciated discussions both at the London meeting and after similar presentations (also under the original title) at the University of Florida, Gainesville, January 26, 1976; the University of Waterloo, Ontario, January 29; and the Columbia University Seminar on the Philosophy of Science, New York City, January 30. A portion of the present report was presented (in reoriented form) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, February 23, 1976, under the titIe, “What is Missing from the Quantum Story?”
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Archibald Wheeler, J. (1977). Genesis and Observership. In: Butts, R.E., Hintikka, J. (eds) Foundational Problems in the Special Sciences. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1141-9_1
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