Let say we have a computer that analyzes the mineral content and physical properties of a rock. It provides a precise list of every physical element that is part of the rock and measured physical properties. Is this list of information objective?
You can do experiments on the rock. Heat it, cool it, apply pressure to it. shoot it with gamma rays etc... and allow the computer to reanalyze the material content/physical properties of the rock under different conditions. Is this information all objective evidence?
If this is still subjective, what makes it subjective.
If you think the information is objective to this point, at what point in the process of science does this information become subjective?
The first point at which subjectivity (or, more accurately, intersubjectivity) enters into the picture is with the idea that there are classes or categories of objects we might call rocks. By “we” I mean humans, who, by virtue of being equipped with particular sensory organs but lacking others (e.g., the ability to “see” thermal radiation) as well as other evolutionary advantages and limitations, tend to categorize certain objects according to particular properties as somehow the same while excluding other objects. This is not as trivial as it sounds. Had we other senses than we do, it would be hard to imagine us being capable of thinking of “rocks” as entities that could themselves possess properties but perhaps easy to think of them e.g., as properties themselves, of as members of a different class of objects (e.g., those objects of the “ground” or “earth” that can be removed with “grock” level of ease, compared to “groot” levels that are required by the same kinds of objects in this scheme but which humans think of as consisting of trees, bushes, etc.).
More problematic is that the assumption that there exists a list of physical properties that we can measure. Here you have assumed as unproblematic that which we cannot currently carry out even supposing that our best theories are actually true, objective descriptions of a truly objective and objectively existing reality. But even under this assumption, there exists and infinite list of what might be called physical properties. These run the gamut from those that seem to be natural given our experiences (but which would be unfathomable to humans in certain past cultures, in which certain things that to us are alien were taken as natural or even “obvious” objective properties of nature) to those which are seemingly bizarre and pointless (a subset of which have turned out to be, or to be similar to, properties vital to modern fundamental physics and the structure of physical theories).
Thus, for example, one might consider as a physical property the tendency for a rock to resemble in shape a cloud, or its use as a writing implement, its degrees of symmetry, its ability to perform like a football/soccer ball in suitable experimental conditions (i.e., a playing field), etc. But we (inter-)subjectively rule out the vast majority of possible physical properties. There was a time not long ago, however, when this kind of issue was a very real problem for a particular take on scientific objectivity, scientific progress, and the nature of science following the advent of special relativity in particular.
We have tended to take as given that objects have properties such as lengths and that these do not depend up things such as the time at which we measure one end or upon time at all (barring changes due to e.g., contraction or expansion from environmental conditions and suchlike). But if the invariance of the speed of light is taken as given (i.e., as a postulate or axiom), then it follows from the assumptions of equivalences of the laws of physics in different equivalent (inertial) reference frames that differing measurements of lengths can be the “same” in the sense that they are equivalent under the appropriate transformations.
What this meant for influential philosophers and some scientists even today, following primarily in the footsteps of Bridgman, was that we should approach theory-construction in science as well as objectivity to operationalism, or the carrying out of specified procedures. Bridgman was impressed in particular with the manner in which Einstein was able to redefine fundamental physical properties in terms of a theory by examining the manner in which they were measured. Why not define, therefore, physical properties in terms of the way(s) in which they are measured? The first and ultimately impossible hurdle was to decide what to include in any given operational prescription of measurement. This was true in particular because Bridgman and sundry were building off of the advance of a theory that triumphed in part by overthrowing what had seemed to be self-evident and obvious (physical properties such as length and what went into measuring it).
Some of the above objections and many more like them can be addressed at least in part by digging more deeply. It matters not, for example, if we cannot perceive something we currently call a “rock” as an entity that can have physical properties or indeed many of our perceptual biases and their influences, extensions, etc., when we can ask about the “fundamental” constituents that make up physical reality. But here we enter into a new set of problems.
From the perspective of the OP’s question, one answer would be to adopt a common, popular approach found among physicists concerned with quantum foundations and accept subjectivity to be at the heart of reality in some sense (e.g., as in QBism). Another answer would be that the fundamental constituents, according to our best theories, are not independently existing entities (and indeed in some cases are not really entities at all even in the extended sense required when it comes to HEP and quantum theoretical systems more generally). They are organizing principles and patterns that result with some probability amplitudes according to certain organizational schemes based upon the selection of certain symmetries and their corresponding groups given certain interpretations of HEP data over the years and the exclusion of others (e.g., the bootstrap S-Matrix approach that was a contender to QFT before the quark model and QCD ultimately triumphed).
“The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment”
d'Espagnat, B. (1979). The quantum theory and reality.
Scientific American,
241(5), 158-181.