Nature

   Modern Science Focuses Not on Nature Itself, But on Abstract Representations of Nature

   To Newtonians, each question had its singular answer, one that would remain the same no matter who asked it, or why. But now, the uncertainty that undercuts every measurement of some fact in the real world compels the observer to choose which question to ask, which aspect of a phenomenon to study.

   The necessity of choice became overwhelmingly apparent when Heisenberg elevated uncertainty to a principle in quantum mechanics in 1927, having recognized that on the subatomic level the observer had to emphasize only one of a pair of properties to study at any one time. In one of the prominent interpretations of quantum mechanics, the idea took on a larger meaning: that in choosing what to study, the scientist in effect creates the object of his inquiry. . . . The impossibility of constructing a complete, accurate quantitative description of a complex system forces observers to pick which aspects of the system they most wish to understand. . . .

   What one studies from among this wealth of choice depends on what one wants to know; the questions create-or at least determine-the range of possible answers. No such answer can be completely "true": instead of saying "This is what nature is like," they can claim only, "This is what nature seems like from here"-a vastly diminished claim from that of Newton. The critical issue raised by such subjectivity is how to decide what value each partial answer has, what connection it actually makes between the real world and our understanding of it. The object of study, the focus of much of modern science, has therefore shifted inward, to examine not nature itself but rather to study the abstract representations of nature, the choices made of what to leave in and what to drop out of any given study. (Levenson, 1995, pp. 228-229)