The Double-Slit Experiment Of Quantum Theory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [9]

Gribbin (1990: 172):

[The quantum world] is holistic; the parts are in some sense in touch with the whole. And this doesn't just mean the whole of the experimental setup.  The world seems to keep all its options, all its probabilities, open for as long as possible.  The strangest thing about the standard Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum world is that it is the act of observing a system that forces it to select one of its options, which then becomes real.

Blogger Comment:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, this is not strange at all.  In the act of observing, experience is construed as an instance of meaning (particles being fired through slits at a detector screen).

The strangeness only arises through an epistemological error: mistaking an instantiation of meaning for an instantiation of (nonsemiotic) "reality".  The error can be sourced to Galileo and Descartes, as previously discussed (e.g. here, here and here).