The observer has so far avoided comprehensive integration into the formalism of physics, even if some observer related effects were found to be indissociable from quantum mechanics about a century ago. Here, we propose a theory of the observer sufficiently comprehensive for use as the foundation of physics. Let us first state that our proposal significantly simplifies modern physics, reducing it only to a single axiom along with a few pages of mathematical derivation. But it's scope remains

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... ct: specifically, we show that our theory uniquely entails quantum field theory, general relativity as well as the indispensable quantum gravity, in addition to providing a resolution to enduring problems such as the origin of the Born rule, the dissolution of the wave-function collapse problem and the selection of the interpretation of quantum mechanics. But how do we get there, and what is the starting idea? Essentially, and at the highest level of abstraction, we construct the observer as an object able to execute the scientific method on experiments, and we let it deduce the physics it is subjected to. To formulate the method without ambiguities, we will define experiments as reproducible protocols, and express them in terms of Turing complete languages and halting programs. A listing of such experiments is recursively enumerable and as an incremental contribution to knowledge serves as a foundation to test all falsifiable sciences. In turn this formalization leads to the remarkable result that the observer takes centre-stage as a measure space on all possible experiments, from which fundamental physics is entailed self-reflectively as the rules that observer participation in nature can and cannot do. Or more tightly formulated: physics is the measure on experiments that maximizes experimenter freedom.