Quantum physics and genetics

When you observe very tiny things, strange things begin to happen.  At a fine grain, beneath what you can see at a microscopic level, even smaller than individual genes and molecules, there lies a world of subatomic particles.  At that level, there is no longer a meaningful distinction between an observer and the thing being observed.

What does that mean?  When you measure something, you are using a probe, which is made of matter.  (Or, when you measure the amount of light reflected from the object you use a light meter.)  But according to quantum physics, at the subatomic level, matter and light both consist of waves which don't fully exist (as particles) until they are measured.  And this works both ways.  The surface of the measurement device (or light meter), and the thing being measured, both consist of discrete waves.  And so neither the surface of the measurement device nor the "observed entity" fully exist until the measurement event occurs.

Yet the word "measurement" is itself misleading.  At the subatomic level, the observed and the observer are both simply wave phenomena, waiting for an interaction to make them "real".  You can't say one party has the privilege of being called the "observer" or "measurer", since they mutually cause the other to exist!

To explain this, I like the analogy of soap bubbles.  Two soap bubbles can interact, but you can't call one the "observer" and the other one the "observed".  They are both changed by the interaction with each other.  At some level, there is no separate observer performing a measurement on something else.  There is no observation, nor any measurement at all.  There is simply "interaction".

Still, I worry about this... Perhaps one entity has more experience encapsulated in its form, and therefore has a more privileged position.  For example, a drug (ligand) binds with protein targets (receptors) in the body.  Once this so-called receptor-ligand complex occurs, the protein undergoes a contortion, or change in shape.  The interaction is what leads to the effect. But it took millions of years for the protein to evolve, therefore it encapsulates more time and experience.  Got to think about this one some more!