The 'Schrödinger's Cat' Paradox Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [2]

Gribbin (1990: 203-5):

Schrödinger suggested that we should imagine a box that contains a radioactive source, a detector that records the presence of radioactive particles (a Geiger counter, perhaps), a glass bottle containing a poison such as cyanide, and a live cat.  The apparatus in the box is arranged so that the detector is switched on for just long enough so that there is a fifty–fifty chance that one of the atoms in the radioactive material will decay and that he detector will record a particle.  If the detector does record such an event, then the glass container is crushed and the cat dies; if not, the cat lives.  We have no way of knowing the outcome of this experiment until we open the box to look inside; radioactive decay occurs entirely by chance and is unpredictable except in a statistical sense.  According to the strict Copenhagen interpretation, just as in the two–hole experiment there is an equal probability that the electron goes through either hole, and the two overlapping possibilities produce a superposition of states, so in this case the equal probabilities for radioactive decay and no radioactive decay should produce a superposition of states.  The whole experiment, cat and all, is governed by the rule that the superposition is "real" until we look at the experiment, and that only at the instant of observation does the wave function collapse into one of the two states.  Until we look inside, there is a radioactive sample that has both decayed and not decayed, a glass vessel of poison that is neither broken nor unbroken, and a cat that is both dead and alive, neither alive nor dead.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the "two overlapping possibilities", and the "superposition of states" they produce, are construals of experience as potential meaning.  Instances of that potential are only construed when observations are made.

The mistaken notions that a radioactive sample is "both decayed and not decayed", that a vessel is "neither broken nor unbroken", and that a cat is "both dead and alive, neither alive nor dead" all arise from misconstruing potential meanings of experience as instances of Galilean "objective reality".