Quantum Entanglement Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [2]

Gribbin (1990: 221-2):

Now we imagine some atomic process that produces two photons travelling in opposite directions.  There are many real processes that do this, and in such processes there is always a correlation between the polarisations of the two photons.  They must be either be polarised in the same way, or in some sense in opposite ways.  For simplicity, in our thought experiment we imagine that the two polarisations must be the same.  Long after the two photons have left their birthplace, we decide to measure the polarisation of one of them.  We are free to choose, entirely arbitrarily, in which direction we line up our piece of polarising material, and once we do so there is a certain chance that the photon will pass through it.  We know afterward whether the photon is polarised "up" or "down" for that chosen direction of space, and we know that, far across space, the other photon is polarised the same way.  But how does the other photon know?  How can it take care to orientate itself so that it will pass the same test that the first photon passes and fail the same test that the first photon fails?  By measuring the polarisation of the first photon we collapse the wave function, not just of one photon but of another, far away, at the same time.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the collapse of the wave function, at the same time, for the polarisation of two 'entangled' photons, no matter how far apart, is a construal of experience as instances of the same quantum potential.  The metaphor of one photon "knowing" the polarisation of another is misleading, and is motivated, in part, from failing to distinguish between statistical instances and probabilistic potential.