LOL, Brother Arlen! One does imagine that such consciousness as atoms (and their constituting particles) may possess (if any) would be of comparatively far lower order than the human. Still, those critturs do seem to "act" as if they "knew" how to "follow laws"...at least at the level of their own activity. I wouldn't rule out some type of consciousness there.... Though it sure might sound strange to say it, I don't think we can say we definitively know the answer to that yet.
Sister Jean, cc: al
Looking at how humans tend to get excited and overreact when they hear the buzz of novelty and mystery, just as with the fanciful horror stories (up to and including the Incredible Hulk, 60' Attacking Woman, etc.) I see much falderall(sp?) over the slyness of (what we presently regard as) quanta.
Just because somebody blows the ever loving Hector out of an atom and then its particles, let's say... electrons (which by the nature we know so far are attractive yet repulsive critters -- kinda like rock divas) seem to allude the measure it with a sledge hammer tools that we use --or get back to what they prefer before they were so rudely interrupted, this doesn't necessarily mean much (and certainly can't mean everything that has been postulated about the little buggers* to us) except for our view of what is much nearer and what may be beyond a supposed edge of tinyness.
Tell you what: I'm so ignorant of physics and especially its mathematical language and you are such an ace reporter-with-commentary, please 'splainittome why it is that people claim such a wild thing as the universal... phenomological... principle of "the problem of the observer," when the set of events they are basing this on, is like observing heavily magnetized bowling pins on a sliding, magnetic bowling alley, by ramming a bowling ball cam into them!
(And let's remember both Ockham and its opposite: the human behavior of wild, overly complex explanatory conjecture and even wilder dreams of the ramifications, when people run into the unexplained, especially in new ways.)
Please, someone, give me the 500 or fewer word answer, in linguistic words.
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* American def., not U.K. of "buggers" here, although by this time, I'm sure someone has postulated otherwise.