The 'Schrödinger's Cat' Paradox Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [3]

Gribbin (1990: 205):

It is one thing to imagine an elementary particle such as an electron being neither here nor there but in some superposition of states, but much harder to imagine a familiar thing like a cat in this form of suspended animation.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, imagining a cat, like seeing a cat, is a construal of experience as an instance of meaning.  On the other hand, the "superposition of states" — live cat vs dead cat — is a construal of experience as potential meaning.  It does not equate with an instance of a cat being in suspended animation, since this misinterprets the range of potential as a single instance.