The Double-Slit Experiment Of Quantum Theory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [5]

Gribbin (1990: 171):

When we try to look at the spread-out electron wave, it collapses into a definite particle, but when we are not looking it keeps its options open. In terms of Born's probabilities, the electron is being forced by our measurement to choose one course of action out of an array of possibilities. There is a certain probability that it could go through one hole, and an equivalent probability that it may go through the other; probability interference produces the diffraction pattern at our detector. When we detect the electron, though, it can only be in one place, and that changes the probability pattern for its future behaviour — for that electron, it is now certain which hole it went through. But unless someone looks, nature herself does not know which hole the electron is going through.

Blogger Comment:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the reason we construe a particle rather than a wave is that the wave is a construal of potential only, and it is the instance, the particle, that we construe when we are looking.  When we are not looking, we are not construing experience as meaning.

The measurement does not force an electron to choose from the potential.  The measurement is the construal of one instance from the probabilistic array of potential instances.

The diffraction pattern at the detector records the instance frequencies, in line with the probability of the system as potential.