Even with the startling revelations that at velocities approaching that of light or at very small distances the observer is embedded in his or her measurements, the goal of physics remains Galilean: to describe laws that are invariant. We have no reason to abandon this goal. This is because Einsteinian and Heisenbergian observers, while embedded in their own measurements, are still psychologically transparent. Their consciousness and motives, despite occasional arguments about their importance to quantum measurements by philosophers of physics, do not have to be taken into account to practise physics. The mind remains well removed from nature.
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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, physics doesn't describe laws, but reconstrues material phenomena — construed of experience — as theoretical meanings, including laws. The laws are a feature of the semiotic description, not of the described material. The description and the described are different orders of construed experience. Moreover, in terms of interpersonal meaning, physical laws are modalised statements (probability and usuality), not commands or modulated statements (obligation), as the limit of physics, quantum theory, demonstrates.
Einsteinian and Heisenbergian observers are "embedded in their own measurements" in the sense that any perception of material phenomena requires a senser through which the mental process of perception unfolds. It is in this sense that consciousness has been introduced into physical descriptions of nature, thereby creating an inconsistency with the Galilean epistemology that forms their foundation, as previously explained. This is, however, distinct from any desiderative mental processes ("motives") of observers, which, as Edelman says, do not have to be taken into account to practise physics.
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