Wheeler's Thought Of Philosophy Of Science

This thesis is on the research of scientifically philosophical framework of Prof. John A. Wheeler and a proposed holism scheme of the reality issues.The thesis started by discussing the delayed-choice experiment of Prof. Wheeler, which acutely demonstrated the defects of reality description by daily language which consistent with the classical physics, culminating the theories advocated by Copenhagen School. Starting on this basis, Prof. Wheeler raised some innovative issues, such as the irreversible influences on the past behaviours of the observed by the present observations. Such influences could be dated back into the early stage of universe formation. Today's world is a result of numerous observatory influences. "Past" is only a theoretical word, which is a way for us to describe the reality. There is not a pre-existed past, past only exists when it is recorded by the present observation.The thesis proposed a holism scheme on reality to describe and explain the theories and phenomena including the delayed-choice experiment.First, reality is divided into three levels: ontological reality, sensory reality and symbolic reality. Then, we call the world which could be directly sensed "basic sensory sphere". Within this basic sensory sphere, humans depend mainly on sights, helped by touches, to sense the world. Both our daily language and classical physics are based on this cognitive model. There are obstacles when humans try to extend this cognitive model into micro and macro worlds beyond the basic sensory spheres. In sensing the micro world which is composed of atoms, humans' languages are inconsistent with the reality. But there is no other choice but to use the present languages, therefore, the languages used will be inconsistent with the classical physics. This phenomenon can be explained as "complementary principle" by Niles Bohr.This inconsistency is reflected on the symbolic reality level, as it only occurs when humans try to use languages to record and explain what they sense. If science is understood only as a means to regulate sensory reality, all the scientific theories, such as object and energy, time and space, particle and wave, are only means to describe the sensory reality. If the ideal science is to set up a holistic framework with the least basic concepts and theories to explain the most sensory realities, there must be inconsistency inside this framework.The theoretical physics tries to explore the limitation of the old theories and sets up new theory when the old ones are not applicable. Meanwhile, the exploration also aims to find more new sensory reality elements. Every time there is a restructuring of theories, all the sensory reality elements acquire new meanings in the new symbols.According to Prof. Wheeler, history is not sensed by humans bit by bit, but came into our senses as a holistic picture at one time. Copenhagen School believe that the micro physics objects and micro observatory instruments, and even the observers themselves should be viewed as a whole and shall not be study as discrete objects. The whole universe, including humans, shall also be viewed as a whole, a Gestalt. Prof. Wheeler further developed this theory, pointing out that not only the universe in space is a whole, but the universe in time is also a whole.The thesis is divided into six chapters. Chapter zero is devoted to introduction of the issues by describing the delayed-choice experiments and its challenges to classic physics. Chapter one is to discuss the relationships between three levels of reality. Chapter two is to discuss the ideal reality of classic physics. Chapter three discusses the limitation of classic reality, the new reality view, and the breakthrough of Prof. Wheeler in physics concerned with reality problem. Chapter four talks about isomorphism relationship between cognitive model and science. Chapter five discusses the holistic explanation of reality by Prof. Wheeler since the universe was formed, and the further explanation of the delayed-choice experiments.