This was in the news recently: http://nautil.us/blog/electrons-dont-think . While I agree with the author Sabine that panpsychism is pseudoscience, I think Euler's meaning may have been that we are limited by our own experience. He was certainly right about that. It is no mistake that Classical mechanics was invented before electrodynamics and quantum mechanics. Suspending disbelief, if electrons were writing all the physics papers, then it is reasonable to expect that electrodynamics and quantum mechanics would have been invented first. A more plausible scenario is where some living entity, either a plant or an insect, could write physics papers. They probably would not have such a mad desire to use physics to invent technologies that would eventually destroy their own habitats (though maybe they would be keen on developing technologies to destroy Homo sapiens habitats). Due to unique adaptations, particular topics might be easier for them to understand or of greater interest. See for example, particularly with Arthropods, Polarization Vision: https://portal.research.lu.se/portal/en/publications/polarization-vision(3bc...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266118072_Polarization_Vision
--Brad On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 11:20 AM Hans Havermann <gladhobo@bell.net> wrote:
There's a 1969 Lipman Bers 'Calculus' that has on p. 301: "... the kind that made Euler say: 'My pen is more intelligent than I.'"
Perhaps this is in reference to a passage in Euler's (translated) reflections on the system of monads (Letters of Euler on Different Subjects in Physics and Philosophy, 1802): "Is it not to be apprehended that the monads which compose the pen wherewith I am writing, may have ideas of the universe much clearer than those of my soul? How can I be assured of the contrary? I ought to be ashamed to employ a pen in conveying my feeble conceptions, while the monads of which it consists possibly conceive much more sublimely; and you might have greater reason to be satisfied, should the pen commit its own thoughts to paper, instead of mine."
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