The Copenhagen Interpretation Of The Wave Function Of The Universe Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Gribbin (1989: 383):

This [Copenhagen] interpretation of the quantum maths works very well as a practical tool for calculating how many atoms and subatomic particles (and, indeed, molecules) will behave.  But it is hardly common sense, and there is a real difficulty in trying in trying to apply the Copenhagen Interpretation to the entire Universe.

We can imagine the Universe as being described by quantum mechanical wave functions, of course, even if we can never hope to write down the equations that would describe the "wave function" of the entire Universe.  But since, by definition, the Universe includes everything of which we can have knowledge, including ourselves, there is nobody "outside" the Universe to observe it and thereby to cause it to collapse into one possible quantum state.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, this confuses two orders of experience.  An observer is a construal of experience as first-order meaning, whereas what they construe as an instantiation of quantum potential — "collapsing the wave function" — is a construal of experience as second-order meaning.