An import from Measuring Theory

The process of Physics research may be broken up into consecutive steps²:

• Collecting arguments, facts, hints, opinions;- the pre-scientific experiences.
• Defining Observables by a finite set of iteratively refined physical machines, identifying the limes of the respective imaginable infinite series, of which the named physical machines are the first terms, with a mathematical object. defined by the limit.
• Doing experiments with different thus defined observables and collecting measured values to find hints for mathematical relations between different observables.
• Analyze the found relations mathematically to find a suitable and simple³ and contradiction-free mathematical structure.
• Calculate quantitative predictions for realizable experiments to test the mathematical structure.
• Redo all steps of the hereby named process until the predictions are never in conflict with experiments. Then call the mathematical structure a Theory in Physics. Otherwise call it a model for certain aspects.

In this chapter we deal with the first step: collecting arguments for a Theory of 'Mechanics'.


In the earliest days of the development of quantum-mechanics few 'facts' were known, not much was 'understood', but never ever a measured fact contradicted any early predictions of the even fragmentary mathematical structures found at that time. This was the strongest argument that a Theory in Physics was being found, not just a model. The prediction power of a theory makes up of the fascination of Physics, not the 'Anschauung'. And as will emerge, searching for a correct Mechanics, a theory for the time development of mechanical systems leads to a much more far reaching theory, covering correctly all aspects of dynamics of non-mechanical systems as well, and even of not timedependent structural properties. Actually a Theory of all experiments possible action will be developed not just the rather special quest for prediction of time development. Quantum Mechanics is thus a historical but misleading naming for the Quantitative Theory of Measurement in Phyics.