A reductionist thinks that science is about analysing things into components. An instrumentalist thinks that it is about predicting things.

There are no measurable continuous quantities in physics.

For even in purely practical applications, the explanatory power of a theory is paramount and its predictive power only supplementary.

We understand the fabric of reality only by understanding theories that explain it.

Quantum theory is, as I have said, one such theory. But the other three main strands of explanation through which we seek to understand the fabric of reality are all ‘high level’ from the point of view of quantum physics. They are the theory of evolution (primarily the evolution of living organisms), epistemology (the theory of knowledge) and the t

one of the most valuable, significant and also useful attributes of human thought generally is its ability to reveal and explain the fabric of reality.

High-level phenomena about which there are comprehensible facts that are not simply deducible from lower-level theories are called emergent phenomena.

So knowledge is a fundamental physical quantity after all, and the phenomenon of life is only slightly less so.

We can see that the ancient idea that living matter has special physical properties was almost true: it is not living matter but knowledge-bearing matter