The Distinction Between Classical And Quantum Physics Though Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 135-6):

For our present purposes, the central feature of the quantum theory is indeterminism. The old physics linked all events in a tight chain-mesh of cause and effect. But on the atomic scale the linkage turns out to be loose and imprecise. Events occur without well-defined causes. Matter and motion become fuzzy and indistinct. Particles do not follow well-defined paths and forces do not produce dependable actions. The precision clockwork of Newtonian mechanics gives way to a ghostly mêlée of half-forms. It is out of this submicroscopic ferment that the essential quantum uncertainty emerges. What happens from moment to moment cannot be predicted with definiteness — only the betting odds can be given. Spontaneous random fluctuations in the structure of matter, and even of spacetime, inevitably occur.

Blogger Comments:

From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the main distinction between classical physics and quantum physics is that quantum physics introduced the distinction between potential and instance, whereas classical physics is only concerned with instances.

The 'precision clockwork' of Newtonian mechanics is only concerned with the quantification of instances. Quantum mechanics, however, is concerned with the quantification of both potential and instance, where potential is quantified in terms of probabilities (uncertainty, 'betting odds'), and instances are quantified in terms of frequencies that manifest those probabilities.

It is the probabilistic nature of potential that the authors describe in terms of instances that are 'fuzzy and indistinct' and a 'ghostly mêlée of half-forms'.