Philosophy / Science / Religion

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

And why would they not only use the term "observe," but also strongly imply in all the stories I've seen and heard that it was, in fact, the act of observation and not any interaction with the physical that caused the sub-atom to become either particle or wave???

Because A) Science reporting is by and large abismal, B) The term "observe" is used in a technical sense within the field, so it's an understandable misunderstanding if you are not versed in it's more technical meaning and C) there is still an element of the actual "observation" in that the only way we can KNOW an electron's position is if we observe it, which, obviously, instantly and inextricably requires the kind of inter-particle interactions that collapse probability waves.

In short, our only window into what happens is through what we would generally call "observation", but what happens is not contingent upon what we generally call "observation".