At bottom, all reality is knowledge. This implies that knowing is not the subjective and more or less coincidental adaptation of the independent reality. Instead, knowledge is in the heart of every objective reality — and knowing is itself something objective.
This concept is not so new at all. Logic, for example, is long accepted to be objective, although it is rather some part of the realm of knowledge than of material reality. But not only would any kind of scientific investigation of material reality be impossible without logic, but it is also generally taken for granted that logic exists right in the middle of the things, so that these things operate according to its rules.
Viewed in this light, we do nothing but simply enhance this concept, superseding usual logic by X-Logic. Which is not restricted to truth-value operations, but explores the fundamental laws of knowing.
Although matter itself is subject to the laws of knowing, and so to logic, this does not at all mean that the real-world events could be deduced from logic alone. Not even theoretically. Because the theory of X-Logic knows neither absolutely elementary building blocks nor absolute all-embracing plans. So there is not the one system for everything; nor do closed partial systems without intervention from outside exist.
After all, exactly this knowledge can help making our systems more robust and more practicable. For, on the one hand, we no longer rely on the illusory security of absolute reasons, while, on the other hand, we avoid getting lost in endless chains of them.
So then, does the world need human observers in order to exist? — Well, quite apart from the fact that indeed we do not know our world without us, this question does not arise actually just because we recognize knowledge in the heart of matter. Rather, in giving a definition of knowledge, we render it independent of subjective notions, it gets an objective appearance. As such we can let it act in the physical, not needing to highlight the subjective human perspective — which we never leave, naturally. In this sense, knowledge is not less objective than any atom or so.
But, of course, objectivity does not remain unaffected by this addition (of knowledge). Ultimately it gets a human component. Which is, maybe, not so bad after all.
But now, how comes knowledge into the middle of the things?
In order to be deemed physically real, a thing must show a certain constancy in its appearances. This is a criterion that, though naturally used, did not become part of physical theory. For it is much too fundamental. It is rather logical. That is where it belongs, in the sphere of mental things, the sphere of knowing.
Actually we have made out this steadiness as being essential for knowledge; it is precisely that what we have used to define knowledge. Which, of course, makes sense only if it is complemented by its counterpart, the change that defines activity.
Not only is knowledge the firm ground we can rely on, resting in sameness like a rock in the rough sea of change and activity; it also manifests itself in characteristic activity. It is a bridged and grasped difference; it is captured activity, calmed down, but always potentially present.
And that is exactly how we have to imagine material things, as full of and driven by activity. But this activity is tamed and manifests itself in continual appearances of the things, in their interactions with other things. Physically these determine the things’ mass and energy, for example. These two terms correspond, in the main, to knowledge and activity, though the latter are meant to be much more general, principal, marking a logical conception.
The concept of thing has to be called “logical” because it is simply indispensable. Whenever we think, perceive, measure (or whatever) something, it is about something. This something we call “thing”. And it does not matter whether this means a verbal expression, for example, or a mental image, a notion, an idea, a law, or maybe a material thing. Purely logically, that makes no difference.
However, of course this does not mean that mental and physical things are equal in all respects, or that we know much about the things “a priori”, so to speak. It is always up to the physics (among others) to find out and to decide whether something really (physically) exists or not, with experience playing an important role.
But a lot of what is such a worry to physics because it does not fit into one of the familiar physical patterns, although it is verifiable, perhaps turns out to be not half as mysterious as still considered today. For it just has to be so, purely logically.
In the context of our explorations the notion of space plays an important role — which may differ quite a lot from that normally appearing in physics. This is probably confusing, at first. But hopefully our approach will turn out as a well founded enhancement that makes sense in the framework of physics too.
Especially the theory of relativity makes clear how problematic the conception of absolute space can be. For in order to assign to space physical reality, based on experience, it has to be defined starting with physically real objects. Taken strictly, this induces that it is not allowed to speak of a universal “space”, but only of the “space belonging to a body A”. Exactly this approach is fundamental for the concept developed here, where every thing of whatever kind has a corresponding space of its own.