The Copenhagen Interpretation Of Quantum Theory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [2]

Gribbin (1990: 161):

Secondly, all we know about are the results of experiments. … What we can learn from experiments, or from the equations of quantum theory, is the probability that if we look at a system once and get answer A then the next time we look we will get answer B.  We can say nothing at all about what happens when we are not looking, and how the system gets from A to B, if indeed it does.  The "damned quantum jumping" that so disturbed Schrödinger is purely our interpretation of why we get two different answers to the same experiment, and it is a false interpretation.  Sometimes things are found to be in state A, sometimes in state B, and the question of what lies between, or how they get from one state to another, is completely meaningless.

This is the really fundamental feature of the quantum world.  It is interesting that there are limits to our knowledge of what an electron is doing when we are looking at it, but it is absolutely mind-blowing to discover that that we have no idea at all what it is doing when we are not looking at it.

Blogger Comment:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, this is not 'mind-blowing' at all.  If there is no observation, then there is no construal of experience as meaning — e.g. as particles and their states.  The construing of experience as a probabilistic system is the construing of experience as potential rather than instance.  The construing of experience as particles in state A, B etc. is the construing of experience as instances, with instance frequencies in line with (and predicted by) the system probabilities.