Concept
Observer (quantum physics)
Overview
Some interpretations of quantum mechanics posit a central role for an observer of a quantum phenomenon. The quantum mechanical observer is tied to the issue of observer effect, where a measurement necessarily requires interacting with the physical object being measured, affecting its properties through the interaction. The term "observable" has gained a technical meaning, denoting a self-adjoint operator that represents the possible results of a random variable.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Physics must, therefore, be concerned with those features which a physical process has in common for all observers, since such features alone can be regarded as belonging to the physical occurrence itself. This requires that the _laws_ of phenomena should be the same whether the phenomena are described as they appear to one observer or as they appear to another. This single principle is the generating motive of the…
Bertrand Russell, The A B C of Relativity
Names Observer several times.
But the abstraction reaches even further than that; for it is only the aspects in other things, as modifying the spatio-temporal specifications of the life histories of those other things, which count. The intrinsic reality of the observer comes in: I mean what the observer is for himself is appealed to. For example, the fact that he will see red or blue enters into scientific statements. But the red which the…
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
Names Observer several times; states what Observer is.
On a common-sense basis, therefore, the first of the propositions in which we have summed up the behaviourist philosophy must be admitted. There are, however, some very important provisos which must be mentioned. In the first place, a scientific observer is not expected to note his integral reaction to a situation, but only that part of it which experience leads him to regard as “objective”, _i.e._ the same as the…
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
Names Observer several times; states what Observer is.
Related ideas
- Philosophy of physics
- Quantum decoherence
- Anthropocentrism
- Niels Bohr
- Quantum entanglement
- Special relativity
- Uncertainty principle
- Werner Heisenberg
- Interpretations of quantum mechanics
- Copenhagen interpretation
- Wave function collapse
Place in the tradition
Part of Interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Explore Observer (quantum physics) in the interactive graph →