The Copenhagen Interpretation Of Quantum Theory Through Systemic Functional Linguistics [4]

Gribbin (1989: 383):

What version of quantum physics, however, is appropriate when we are describing the whole Universe?  Remember that quantum theory tells us nothing about how a particle, or a system, gets from state A to state B.  The conventional interpretation of quantum physics is the Copenhagen Interpretation.  This says that when we are not looking at a system it exists in some sort of superposition of all the possible states it could be in, and that the act of measuring the system — or looking at it — causes a "collapse of the wave function" into just one of these possible states, a state selected solely on the basis of probability.  When we stop measuring the system, or looking at it, it spreads out, in the quantum sense, from that certainty into a new superposition of states, only to collapse again, perhaps in a different way, the next time it is measured.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic theory, what quantum theory tells us is that if we want to know how a particle, or a system, gets from state A to state B, we have to be able to construe experience as a continuous transition.

When we are not "looking at a system", we are not construing experience as meaning.  This is distinct from a "superposition of all possible states" which is a construal of experience as potential, as the word 'possible' makes clear.  When we are "looking at it", we are construing one instance of that potential; that is what the 'collapse of the wave function' is: an instantiation of quantum system potential.  The probability of instantiation is a quantification of that potential.