Quantum Uncertainty Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [3]

Gribbin (1989: 231-2):

The implications of this are very deep indeed.  For one thing, we can no longer say that an electron, in principle identifiable as a unique object, starts at one side of our experiment and follows a unique path, a trajectory, through to the other side.  The very concept of a continuous "trajectory" is a hangover from classical Newtonian ideas and has to be abandoned.  Instead, quantum physicists talk in terms of "events," which may happen in a certain order in time but which tell us nothing about what happens to the particles involved in events when they are not being observed.  All we can say is that we observe an electron at the start (event 1) and that we observe an electron at the finish (event 2).  We can say nothing at all about what it does in between, and indeed we cannot say that it is the same electron that is recorded in each event.  Fire two electrons off together, and although two electrons arrive on the detector screen a little later, there is no way of telling which one is which.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the continuous trajectory of an electron is a construal of experience as meaning. Whenever there is no observation, there is no construal of an electron in space-time.