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The importance of the observer in science
The concept of {\em complexity} (as a quantity) has been plagued by numerous
contradictory and confusing definitions. By explicitly recognising a role for
the observer of a system, an observer that attaches meaning to data about the
system, these contradictions can be resolved, and the numerous complexity
measures that have been proposed can be seen as cases where different observers
are relevant, and/or being proxy measures that loosely scale with complexity,
but are easy to compute from the available data. Much of the epistemic
confusion in the subject can be squarely placed at science's tradition of
removing the observer from the description in order to guarantee {\em
objectivity}. Explicitly acknowledging the role of the observer helps untangle
other confused subject areas. {\em Emergence} is a topic about which much ink
has been spilt, but it can be understand easily as an irreducibility between
description space and meaning space. Quantum Mechanics can also be understood
as a theory of observation. The success in explaining quantum mechanics, leads
one to conjecture that all of physics may be reducible to properties of the
observer. And indeed, what are the necessary (as opposed to contingent)
properties of an observer? This requires a full theory of consciousness, from
which we are a long way from obtaining. However where progress does appear to
have been made, e.g. Daniel Dennett's {\em Consciousness Explained}, a
recurring theme of self-observation is a crucial ingredient.Comment: In Proceedings The Two Cultures: Reconsidering the division between
the Sciences and Humanities, UNSW, July 200
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