This classification has a subtle ground : the closer and closer connectiveness between the Subject and the Object.Īs we shall see in the following, the notion of levels of Reality will lead us to a general philosophical understanding of the nature of indeterminacy. In his famous Manuscript of the year 1942 (published only in 1984) Heisenberg, who knew well Husserl, introduces the idea of three regions of reality, able to give access to the concept of "reality" itself : the first region is that of classical physics, the second of quantum physics, biology and psychic phenomena and the third that of the religious, philosophical and artistic experiences. In fact, Werner Heisenberg came very near, in his philosophical writings, to the concept of "level of Reality". The view I am expressing here is totally conform to the one of Heisenberg, Pauli and Bohr. But these thinkers, pioneers in the exploration of a multi-dimensional and multi-referential reality, have been marginalized by academic philosophers and misunderstood by the majority of physicists, enclosed in their respective specializations. In our century, in their questioning of the foundations of science, Edmund Husserl and other scholars have discovered the existence of different levels of perception of Reality by the subject-observer. The existence of different levels of Reality has been affirmed by different traditions and civilizations, but these affirmations were founded on religious dogma or on the exploration of the interior universe. The emergence of at least two different levels of Reality in the study of natural systems is a major event in the history of knowledge. For example, Marxist economy and classical physics belong to one and the same level of Reality. The levels of organization correspond to different structurings of the same fundamental laws. Levels of organization do not presuppose a break with fundamental concepts : several levels of organization appear at one and the same level of Reality. The levels of Reality are radically different from the levels of organization as these have been defined in systemic approaches. That does not prevent the two worlds from co-existing.
The discontinuity which is manifest in the quantum world is also manifest in the structure of the levels of Reality. But there is nothing catastrophic about this. There are even strong mathematical indications that the continuous passage from the quantum world to the macrophysical world would never be possible. The recent decoherence models have nothing precise to say on the passage between the quantum level and the macrophysical level : in fact, the main problem is not decoherence but precisely coherence. Semantic glosses, tautological definitions or approximations are unable to replace a rigorous mathematical formalism. No one has succeeded in finding a mathematical formalism which permits the rigorous passage from one world to another. That is to say that two levels of Reality are different if, while passing from one to the other, there is a break in the laws and a break in fundamental concepts (like, for example, causality). It also has a trans-subjective dimension, to the extent that one simple experimental fact can ruin the most beautiful scientific theory.īy level of Reality I intend to designate an ensemble of systems which are invariant under the action of certain general laws : for example, quantum entities are subordinate to quantum laws, which depart radically from the laws of the macrophysical world.
Reality is not only a social construction, the consensus of a collectivity, or an intersubjective agreement. Nature is an immense, inexhaustible source of the unknown which justifies the very existence of science. In so far as Nature participates in the being of the world one must ascribe an ontological dimension to the concept of Reality. It resists in its own way by its simultaneous concern for internal consistency, and the need to integrate experimental data without destroying that self-consistency. In quantum physics, mathematical formalization is inseparable from experience. Quantum physics caused us to discover that abstraction is not simply an intermediary between us and Nature, a tool for describing reality, but rather, one of the constituent parts of Nature. Here the meaning we give to the word "Reality" is pragmatic and ontological at the same time.īy Reality I intend first of all to designate that which resists our experiences, representations, descriptions, images or mathematical formalizations. The major cultural impact of the quantum physics has certainly raised questions for the contemporary philosophical dogma of the existence of a single level of Reality. Levels of Reality as Source of Indeterminacy
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