(Misinterpretations Of) The Wave Function Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Quantum mechanics is the basic framework of modern subatomic physics. It has successfully withstood almost a century of tests, including French physicist Alain Aspect’s experiments confirming entanglement, or action at a distance between certain types of quantum phenomena. In quantum mechanics, the world unfolds through a combination of two basic ingredients. One is a smooth, fully deterministic wave function: a mathematical expression that conveys information about a particle in the form of numerous possibilities for its location and characteristics. The second is something that realises one of those possibilities and eliminates all the others. Opinions differ about how that happens, but it might be caused by observation of the wave function or by the wave function encountering some part of the classical world. 

Many physicists accept this picture at face value in a conceptual kludge known as the Copenhagen interpretation, authored by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in the 1920s. But the Copenhagen approach is difficult to swallow for several reasons. Among them is the fact that the wave function is unobservable, the predictions are probabilistic and what makes the function collapse is mysterious. 

What are we to make of that collapsing wave? The equations work, but what the wave function ‘is’ is the key source of contention in interpreting quantum mechanics.

One option, the ‘hidden variables’ approach championed by Albert Einstein and David Bohm, among others, basically states that the wave function is just a temporary fix and that physicists will eventually replace it. Another tack, named quantum Bayesianism, or QBism, by Christopher Fuchs, regards the wave function as essentially subjective. Thus it is merely a guide to what we should believe about the outcome of measurements, rather than a name for a real feature of the subatomic world. Late in his life, Heisenberg proposed that we have to change our notion of reality itself. Reaching back to a concept developed by Aristotle — ‘potency’, as in an acorn’s potential to become an oak tree, given the right context — he suggested that the wave function represents an “intermediate” level of reality.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory:

1. quantum entanglement is not "action at a distance" but the construal, by consciousness, of the non-semiotic domain as meaning; specifically as mutually dependent instances of the same system of quantum potential.  See previous posts here.
2. the notion that the "world unfolds through a combination of two ingredients" confuses the territory (world) with the map of the territory (Quantum Theory).  The world is a construal of experience as meaning (phenomena); Quantum Theory is a reconstrual of (first-order) meaning as (second-order) theoretical meaning (metaphenomena).
3. the wave function represents a quantum system as meaning potential, and the "elimination of all but one possibility" is an instantiation of that potential, which happens when, through observation, consciousness construes experience of the non-semiotic domain as meaning.
4. the notion that wave function can be observed confuses the map (the wave function) with the territory (observable phenomena); see 2.
5. the notion that wave function can encounter "some part of the classical world" confuses the map (the wave function and a classical description of the world) with the territory (observable phenomena); see 2.
6. the unobservability of theoretical meaning potential (the wave function) is thus not an argument against the Copenhagen Interpretation, nor is the fact that such potential, like all potential, is probabilistic.
7. the "mysteriousness" of the collapse of the wave function is thus not an argument against the Copenhagen Interpretation, since it only arises from an epistemological error, namely the realism embodied in the Galilean notion of 'primary qualities', as previously explained on this blog.
8. the wave function is not a temporary fix, since it continually withstands all tests to disconfirm it.  What needs fixing is epistemological basis on which it is understood.
9. the notion that the wave function is "essentially subjective" comes close to acknowledging that it is meaning construed of experience by consciousness.
10. the subatomic world, like all 'reality' is a construal of experience of the non-semiotic domain as the material-relational domain of meaning by processes of the mental-verbal domain (consciousness).  In terms of scientific validity, the 'real' features of the sub-atomic world are second-order (theoretical) meanings that are demonstrated to be consistent with the construal of experience as first-order meaning.
11. Heisenberg's notion that the wave function represents 'potency' recognises it as potential, though not explicitly as meaning potential.