Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation Of Quantum Theory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [6]

Gribbin (1990: 244-5):

As DeWitt explained in an article in Physics Today in 1970, the Everett interpretation has an immediate appeal when applied to the paradox of Schrödinger's cat.  We no longer have to worry about the puzzle of a cat that is both dead and alive, neither alive nor dead.  Instead, we know that in our world the box contains a cat that is either alive or dead, and that in the world next door there is another observer who has an identical box that contains a cat that is either dead or alive.  But if the universe is "constantly splitting into a stupendous number of branches," then "every quantum transition taking place on every star, in every galaxy, in every remote corner of the universe is splitting our local world on earth into myriad copies of itself." … DeWitt's conclusion is as dramatic as the earlier conclusion of Wheeler:

The view from where Everett, Wheeler and Graham sit is truly impressive.  Yet it is a completely causal view, which even Einstein might have accepted … it has a better claim than most to be the natural end product of the interpretation program begun by Heisenberg in 1925. 

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, there is no paradox in the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, because 'alive' and 'dead' are potential states of the cat only.  An act of observation construes one instance of that potential or the other.

Not distinguishing between potential and instance has caused some physicists to hypothesise a "stupendous number" of universes, none of which can be observed.  Accordingly, the many–worlds interpretation has no claim whatsoever 'to be the natural end product of the interpretation program begun by Heisenberg in 1925'.