Indeed, for electrons or photons, if we took a thousand identical experiments in a thousand different laboratories, and let one particle pass through each experiment, we could add up the thousand different results and still get an overall distribution pattern in line with diffraction, just as if we'd let a thousand electrons through one of those experiments together. A single electron, or a single photon, on its way through one hole in the wall, obeys the statistical laws which are only appropriate if it "knows" whether or not the other hole is open. This is the central mystery of the quantum world.
Blogger Comment:
From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, there is no mystery here. As construals of experience as meaning, the frequencies of particles "instantiate" the probabilities of the quantum as potential, as represented by the wave equation.
The notion of particles obeying statistical laws is invalid on two counts. Interpersonally, it misconstrues probability (modalisation) as obligation (modulation), and ideationally, it misconstrues different orders of experience, the material (particles) and the semiotic (statistical laws), as being of the same order.
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