Re: When was the observer effect (physics) first observed?

On Thu, 15 Aug 2024 17:42:53 +0000, Martin Harran wrote:

It seems to have been first formally stated by Heisenberg in 1958 his
book "The Physicist's Conception of Nature" but I would have thought
that it would have been noted earlier than that.
>
The reason I'm asking is that Teilhard de Chardin effectively
describes it in his foreword to 'The Phenomenon of Man' - "Object and
subject marry and mutually transform each other in the act of
knowledge; and from now on man willy-nilly finds his own image stamped
on all he looks at."
>
Teilhard wrote that somewhere in the last 1920s/early 30s which more
or less coincides with the early days of QM. I'm wondering if Teilhard
was reflecting what those involved in QM were already talking about or
whether he arrived at this under his own steam.

I don't think this is specifically about QM, rather, it is
a general epistemological theory that draws on (at least) two
different traditions. One is the monist tradition from
Leibniz to Russel, Whitehead and James, the other linguistic
relativism which is even older, but became prominent in the
19th century with Humboldt, Boas and finally in the
Sapir and Whorf: We can't understand reality but through
our language (the human subject imposing its categories
on its object)but at the same time, the world/object
shapes our categories. Ultimately a dynamic, evolutionary
epistemology that is still monist in nature, but replaces
the static "pre-established harmony" of Leibniz (God made
it so that the way mind shapes matter is also truth-tracking
with an evolutionary account (over time, our concepts etc
get attuned to the outside world, to a degree)
So in this sense, it is not primarily the result of
"observation", though the observations by anthropologists
 how language shapes perception played a role - and as
he himself said, he was always more an anthropologist than
a physicist.