Quantum Uncertainty Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [9]

Gribbin (1988: 106-7):

Notice the way I said that by measuring momentum precisely we are selecting a wavelength for the electron.  It is no longer merely the case that the answers we get from nature depend on the questions we ask.  What the uncertainty relation is telling us is that what nature is depends on the questions we ask.  By choosing to measure the momentum of an electron, or beam of electrons, very accurately, we are creating uncertainty in the position of the electrons; by measuring the position of an electron very precisely, our experiment itself produces uncertainty about the wavelength, or momentum, of an electron.  This is just the edge of the very deepest and most mysterious of quantum mechanical pools, a glimpse of the way in which the experimenter, or observer, becomes part of what he is observing.   In fact, it makes more sense to say that neither the position nor the momentum of an electron has any meaning at all until one of them is measured.  And this uncertainty extends to other pairs of properties, such as the time a fundamental event takes and the amount of energy involved in the event.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, the selection of a wavelength for an electron is the instantiation of one potential wavelength, rather than another, and the instantial wavelength of an electron depends on the frequency and speed of such particles in a beam.

Moreover, "the answers we get from nature" and "what nature is" is a false distinction; "the answers we get from nature" and "what nature is" are both construals of experience as meaning.

"What the uncertainty relation is telling us" is that there is a complementary relation between the probabilities of momentum potential and location potential in a quantum system. 

The experimenter/observer is "part of what he is observing" in the sense of being the medium through which experience is construed as meaning.

The reason why "neither the position nor the momentum of an electron has any meaning at all until one of them is measured" is because each constitutes meaning construed of experience, and because measuring construes experience as an instance of meaning.